2014 Topps Finest 51-60

Way back in August of 2014 I started posting about the 2014 Topps Finest baseball set, working through the checklist in groups of ten. I got four posts done between August and October 2014, then skipped over a year and posted about cards 41-50 in early 2016. I still have the scans in my folder, but I just never make the time to get them cropped and loaded into the blog. At this point, a base set from 2014 is maybe not the most exciting thing in the world. It feels weird to leave it incomplete, though, so I've got another couple of posts queued up. Today, I talk about cards 51-60. Today's post is pretty heavy on the AL East and recently-retired greats.

Taijuan Walker spent a couple of years being touted as a breakout candidate in Seattle, but never really got going there. He showed flashes, but they traded him to Arizona this year in a deal that included Jean Segura going the other way. He was doing pretty well for them, with an ERA about a run lower than he'd produced the last two years in Seattle, but recently landed on the DL with a blister.

Christian Bethancourt's story has become kind of interesting recently. He hadn't found much success with his bat over a couple of seasons with the Braves and Padres, so he is currently working on converting himself into a bullpen pitcher. He has struggled so far in the role, but I guess that's to be expected.

Here is a guy with plenty of controversy lately, as he continues to flip his bat and jaw with other teams. After a down 2016, Jose Bautista started off pretty slowly for 2017. He's turned things up a bit lately, though, so maybe he hasn't fallen all the way off the cliff in his age-36 season.

Although he retired at the end of 2014, Jeter still appears in the news so much that it's like he never left. The Yankees just recently retired his number, blocking any future Yankees from wearing any single-digit numbers on their jerseys. He'll probably waltz into the Hall of Fame when he's eligible, so he should remain prominent in the news cycle for a while still.

David Ortiz is another recently-retired player in the Hall of Fame discussion. If he does struggle to get in, it will probably be due to PED issues and the amount of time he spent playing at DH rather than in the field. I think he's popular enough that he gets in at some point.

Manny Machado is a guy I targeted in most of my fantasy baseball drafts this year. I didn't land him in any leagues, though. He's struggled (by first-round fantasy draft standards) this year so far, but he's still no slouch. His 162-game pace according to Baseball Reference is still 87 runs, 40 home runs, 95 RBI, and 8 stolen bases.

Felix Hernandez has been the ace for the Mariners for about as long as I can remember, but last year he started to regress a bit in his age-30 season. This year he made five starts, with his last start on April 25th ending after two innings with a shoulder injury and a DL stint. He might be back in June. I wonder if he'll return to his 'King Felix' form?

Adam Jones has been his usual consistent self this season, doing a little bit of everything. I used to pick him up in fantasy baseball nearly every year, but I didn't get him on any of my four teams this season. He has a reputation as being underrated, and it's come full circle so that now he's so underrated that he's overrated.

I picked up Schoop in a couple of my leagues, hoping for some power out of my 2B slot. He delivered in April, with 5 home runs and a good average. That has all disappeared in May, as he hasn't hit a home run this month and has only generated 2 RBI. Hopefully he can get back on track going into June.

Joe Mauer has been okay this year, although you definitely want some more production out of your 1B spot. When it comes to 1B-eligible players in fantasy, he barely cracks the top 50. His glory days are well behind him.

And that's another 10 cards knocked off the checklist of 2014 Topps Finest. It's still a cool-looking set, with all those crazy colors, but I'll be happy when I post the last ten cards and close out this series. At my current pace, I should be able to finish it in 2021. I'm going to dig deep and try to get it done by the end of this year, though.

Gint-a-Cuffs VIII: Pack 9

My second hit of the box barely moves the needle on my points per pack, and I am pretty sure there is nothing else coming that will change that story. Even my current pace of 80 points seems like a stretch at this point. It will be interesting to see how the other contestants' breaks go.

Kole Calhoun: +5 (Full-Size Relics Version A +5)

Pack Total: 5.00
Running Total: 40.00

Average Per Pack: 4.00
Box Pace: 100.00

Finally! The 2015 Topps Stadium Club Set

I've been trying not to bust packs too much lately, as it seems to be more cost-effective to buy collated sets and cherry-pick the hits I want from online sellers. I miss out on the thrill of pack-busting, but I guess that's what repacks, group breaks, and the occasional hobby box are for.

With that attitude I didn't purchase much 2015 Topps Stadium Club at all. I saw plenty of it on the blogs and picked up a few singles here and there, but I was waiting on the base cards until I could pick up the whole set in one go. It took a while, but I finally had a set fall to me at my (cheap-ass) price ceiling. I got it for about 19 cents per card, which I thought was a pretty decent deal. I flipped through the whole thing and picked out a few favorite cards to scan here. I tried to ignore some of the cards that have already had plenty of run in the blogosphere, so you won't find Bip Roberts, Ernie Banks, or George Brett here. I'm no Yankees fan, but this Mariano Rivera card shows how I reacted once I actually landed this set for my collection.

If you're going to use zoomed-in shots of players on your cards, that Josh Donaldson photo is a good example of how to do it. At this point it is hard for any Jose Bautista card to live up to the 2016 Topps Series 1 bat flip card. It would be awesome to be a fan who shows up on a baseball card, but it would be significantly less awesome to be a fan on a baseball card making a derp face.

That J.J. Hardy card is pretty chaotic. I guess the Orioles won't be mixing baseball with Twister again anytime soon. Not pictured on that Dale Murphy card is his mom telling him to clean up all that baseball stuff before someone trips on it and gets hurt.

It's nice to see an athlete showing proper form for the Anthem. So many times on TV broadcasts I see athletes dancing around or focusing on something else during the National Anthem. Football players seem to be the worst offenders in that regard. I guess not all the players are from America but for me it's not a negotiable thing. Bo Jackson was so cool back in the day. I don't even like thinking about the Astros right now. They've got a lot of expectations piled up now, and I have to wonder if their bats can be hot enough and their pitchers can throw well enough to stay in the mix this year. Evan Gattis will play a big role in the team's fortunes once he gets back from hernia surgery.

I don't have much to say about this batch of photos. Just nice photos all around. Stadium Club is a cool set. Maybe if every product looked like Stadium Club it would be too much, but I don't know. What cards out there look better than Stadium Club?

For a while there Yoenis Cespedes must have had his bags all packed, because he moved a few times before finally signing a deal with the Mets. Doug Fister was brought in to (probably) fill one of the back-end rotation spots on the Astros' roster. Hopefully he'll be able to put a poor 2015 behind him.

I picked these cards more for the photos than I did for the guys pictured on the cards. Felix Hernandez showed up to Spring Training this year having bleached his hair and goatee. The look has been universally panned by press and teammates, but Hernandez says he plans to keep the look all year in spite of the criticism.

In the lead paragraph I said I would try to avoid photos that had already seen a lot of run on the blogs, but I couldn't leave out that Eckersley card. It's probably my favorite card in the set. I watch a lot of A's broadcasts on MLB.tv, so I see the big-head A's quite a bit over the course of a season. I'm not sure why it works out that way, but if the Astros aren't on the A's are usually my go-to team. Next on the list would probably be the Blue Jays and then whichever matchup on the day features the most players on my fantasy baseball team.

In hindsight I think the Derek Jeter or Fred McGriff cards would have been better to close the post than that Scherzer card, but I wasn't really thinking about that when I did all the scanning for this post. Oh well.

I'm glad I was able to finally add the set to my collection. My patience paid off in the end, as the price was about 65% of what I anticipated a full set would cost me. There were a couple of cards missing from the set when it arrived, but I was able to purchase the missing cards on Sportlots quickly and without much expense.

Pack of the Day 112: 2015 Topps Update Blaster Box

One of my sons saved up enough money to buy a toy he wanted, so I took him to Target to make the purchase. While we were there I grabbed a blaster box of 2015 Topps Update. I've been thinking about set building lately as the last set I built from packs and singles was 2014 Topps Stadium Club. Every 2015 set I have was purchased online from a case breaker. It is definitely cheaper in the long run to buy the sets outright, but you lose some of the sense of accomplishment that comes when you track down those last few cards that you needed. Instead you click a button and a few days later the whole thing shows up in a box. I don't think 2015 Topps Update will be the next set I build on my own, though.

I picked out a few base cards to scan. Evan Gattis was probably my favorite regular season Astro, but he sure seemed to struggle during the playoffs. His at-bats were painful to watch, and he just looked uncomfortable out there. I felt bad for him. I felt like Conger played pretty well this year, but it sucked when a speedster from the opposing team got on base because you knew Conger couldn't throw them out. It seemed like if I guy got to first on Conger you might as well let them go straight to third. I picked the Joey Gallo card because I thought his running face was kind of funny. Felix Hernandez is one of the guys I kind of collect, but I don't really specifically chase his singles down. I just hold on to his cards when I get them.

Correa and Altuve make up quite a duo in the Houston middle infield. The corners are where the Astros have problems. When I pulled that Francouer card I thought, "That guy is still around?" It seems like he's been around forever. Looking into it a little more, he was drafted in 2002, which is two years after I graduated from high school. So he has been hanging around the MLB for basically my whole adult life. I thought something was off about that Ike Davis photo, like maybe it was an airbrush job or something. The stadium looked right for an A's player, though, so I wasn't sure what the deal was. I went to Getty Images and searched out the photo. It is an actual A's photo from a game against the Angels on April 30th, but whoever adjusted the picture for this baseball card turned the green up to eleven. In the actual photo the jersey and helmet are very dark, to where they could almost pass for black in spots. On the card they are a ludicrous shade of bright green.

My other note on the base cards is that whoever does the font for the card numbers is a lunatic. Some numbers are in very little font and some numbers are printed in huge characters. I couldn't find any rhyme or reason in it. Maybe cards from certain sheets have different number sizes or something. I don't know. If I were a basic white girl, I literally couldn't even.

I think that Highlight of the Year set is a continuation of an insert from the other Topps sets this year. There are plenty of big names in the set, as big plays are how you become a big name. Tape Measure Blasts is pretty much what it sounds like. It's a set that records the estimated distance of some famous home runs.

This 1st Home Run set is a Retail-exclusive set that highlights a player's first big league home run, with the date on the front and a description of the hit on the back. I guess it's a cool idea for an insert set, and based on these pulls it looks like there are a few names on the checklist that don't often get a lot of hobby love. We'l revisit this 1st Home Run theme later on in the post.

My timing for posting about it is off a bit, but I pulled that Jackie Robinson card on the anniversary of his death. I kind of like the design for the Rookie Sensations insert of Jacob deGrom. He's having quite the start to his career. He was the Rookie of the Year last season, an All-Star this season, and he's starting Game 2 of the World Series on Wednesday. Most guys don't even do all that in their careers, let alone pack it all in to the first couple seasons. The two cards on the bottom are throwback variations, which I believe are exclusive to cards purchased at specific retailers. They've got Gold borders and an old-school Topps logo to set them apart from regular base cards.

I also pulled a couple of Gold parallels, Justin Turner and Bobby Parnell. They are numbered # / 2015. That Valencia card is a Rainbow Foil parallel. They are a tougher pull (1:10 packs vs. 1:6 packs) than the Gold parallels, but they are not serially-numbered. The Michael Wacha card is a Sabermetric Stat Back variation. Those are pretty rare, with the odds telling me they are a 1:68 pack pull. Too bad it's Michael Wacha, who is pretty much the least interesting name on the Stat Back Variation checklist.

Rareties is an insert that celebrates rare achievements in baseball, like a walk-off steal of home and earning a save on 3 pitches. Pride & Perseverance is an insert about players who have overcome disabilities and hardships to have major league careers. Buddy Carlyle was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. This and the Whatever Works insert are the two from Update that I am thinking about collecting. Maybe that Rookie Sensations set too, although those are likely to be overpriced. Whatever Works talks about different superstitions and rituals that ball players have used to keep their luck up or stay consistent. The Biggio card talks about his crusty batting helmet. I believe the All-Star inserts, like that Manny Machado card, are also a Retail-exclusive set.

That Greinke card is also part of the All-Star Game Access set. Each blaster also comes with a special 1st Home Run medallion card, which is pretty much the same as the regular 1st Home Run set except that it has a big metal ingot in the middle of it. When I grabbed this Mark Teixeira card just now to look at the back of it I dropped it on my desk and the lower right corner is pretty gnarly-looking. So much for that card. It always sucks to drop a card and have it come away damaged. With the weight of that medallion even a three- or four-inch drop is enough to completely annihilate a corner. In light of that turn of events I don't really feel like writing any more about this blaster. I didn't pull anything too crazy, but it was nice to get a look at the set and see some of the inserts and base cards. I'll probably wind up buying a set online to close out my 2015 Topps set for the year.

At the Trade Deadline 33: A Long-Forsaken Zippy Zapping

I've been digging through my scans folder in an attempt to get everything cleared out, and I found a batch of photos tucked in between a bunch of 2014 Topps Mini scans. After some research I determined that this was a long-lost Zippy Zapping from the writer of the Torren' Up Cards blog, who is known for sending out very generous packages to unsuspecting bloggers. The date on the scans was 06 DEC 2014, so this thank-you post has been a long time coming. Probably the highlight of this first scan is the Robinson Cano Bowman card and its Chrome companion.

Mike Zunino's Chrome card down in this scan has its base twin up in the first scan. I probably should have scanned them together, but I didn't. George Springer has been playing well for the Astros in the playoffs so far (I am writing this last Sunday evening, just after Game 3 of the ALDS against the Royals), and I really hope the Astros can close the Royals out in Game 4. I guess by the time this post goes live we'll know how things worked out. I know people have mixed feelings about the All-Star cards in Topps Update, but I think they're okay. I like to see players in uniforms different than the ones we're used to seeing them wear. That Felix Hernandez card is pretty good; probably my favorite card from this scan.

I sat here for a little while trying to come up with something to say about any of these four cards, but there wasn't much there. Zunino and Montero got almost the same base card photo. It's a good thing Montero has that goatee or we're have no idea who was who.

Robinson Cano makes another appearance in this scan, this time on a Donruss card. There are several sets here, representing three different decades of cardboard.

It wouldn't be a Zippy Zapping without some prospects in the mix. If you keep up with his blog or his comments on other blogs, he manages to know something about nearly every prospect in the minor leagues. I can't even keep track of four or five big-league rosters, let alone all 30 teams and their attendant minor league systems. 

Zippy Zappy included a hit in the package, this Bowman Chrome Prospects Refractor Autograph of Dylan Unsworth. A little bit of Googling tells me that he is attempting to be the first South African to make the major leagues. He made it as far as AA this year and he is still pretty young, so there is time for him to achieve his goal. This autograph card is numbered # 011 / 500.

This Franklin Gutierrez card comes from Topps Attax, another in a long line of fairly short-lived baseball card games. I like the idea of sports card games, but in practice it seems like they don't work out well. I am not sure why. I guess this kind of game is a niche hobby within a niche hobby, and you just can't get enough people together in groups to build a robust community. I don't even know any other baseball card collectors in person, let alone baseball card collectors who might also be into gaming.

One of the hallmarks of a Zippy Zapping are cards from SEGA Card-Gen, a set of cards that went along with an arcade game in Japan. This component of Zippy Zappings is likely to go away sooner rather than later, as the game has been cancelled and I have noticed that the eBay and internet pipelines for these cards are drying up. I got lucky in this Zapping with a card from way back in 2010. I have a fair number of Card-Gen cards from 2012 and 2013, but this might be my only 2010.

Thanks for the Zippy Zapping! I feel really bad for losing this in my scan folder for so long. This was a great batch of cards, and it was poor sportsmanship on my part to leave this post on the shelf for so long. I hope you can forgive me someday!

Contested Shots 7: Better Winning through Losing Pt. 2

"How can you fail so hard, RAZ?" - Aristotole, Ancient Talker of Trash

My previous post was about a prize I won for being the last person to appear on a randomized list. This post is about I prize I won for finishing in last place in the March Madness bracket tournament hosted by the Cards on Cards blog. I felt pretty good about my bracket heading into the NCAA tournament (doesn't everyone?), but pretty early on my picks started falling hard and entire sections of my bracket were marked out in red ink (I like to keep manual brackets and mark the game results down by hand as the scores come in). I didn't realize that I had lost until I saw the post announcing the end of the contest. Maybe next year I will be able to redeem myself. In the posts surrounding the contest there were veiled threats that the last-place prize might be a stinker, so I wasn't really sure what to expect when I saw the envelope.

The stacks of cards were book-ended by these Ray Lankford cards from the early 90's, and I half-expected the rest of the cards to be nothing but Portland Trail Blazers cards featuring Rick Adelman and Cliff Robinson. But Ray Lankford was actually hiding a whole stack of cards for my team and player collections, as well as the Aristotle mini that heads this post. Here is a partial review of the cards in the package:

There were a number of Felix Hernandez cards in the package, including a folding stand-up card from Topps Lineage, an Opening Day insert, a Chrome Heritage card from 2015 (it looks like Hernandez has been taking hat-wearing lessons from Fernando Rodney, and the Atlanta Braves are likely to want to fight about it), and a Bowman Chrome Refractor. That's a lot of cool cards, and it's not even all the Hernandez cards from the group.

Jose Bautista got a few nice cards in the package, too. That Heritage card is again a shiny Chrome number, the Attax game card is a shiny foil example, and the card featuring him in a Pirates uniform is actually from 2015 Topps that celebrates his first big-league home run in 2006. Ken Griffey, Jr. also made an appearance in the package, and on an insert card to boot!

The horizontal stuff had to be scanned together, so King Felix and Joey Bats make additional appearances in this post along with a cool insert of Bryce Harper losing his helmet in order to show off his hair and a nice Hakeem Olajuwon insert from '94-'95 Fleer Ultra. That card is 20 years old now, which makes me feel a little bit old, since the mid-90's were the heyday of my teenage basketball-collecting life.

The basketball cards in the package focused heavily on my favorite team, the Houston Rockets, while also featuring other players I collect, like Spud Webb there in one of the better basketball card photos out there. Luis Scola had some decent stats for the Rockets, but I can't say I liked him all that much. And for those who are into celebrity gossip, James Harden is supposedly dating Khloe Kardashian. Someone named Amber Rose is super-mad about this because people keep dating her and then bailing to hook up with various Kardashian sisters. I guess Kanye West and Amber Rose were an item before he went off and married Kim Kardashian and James Harden and Amber Rose dated at some point and now he's paired up with Khloe Kardashian. No word on how Farrah Flositt feels about this situation.

Rounding things out are a couple more basketball cards. Otis Thorpe snagged a ring with the Rockets during their first Championship season, and then was involved in the deal that brought Clyde Drexler (back) to Houston for the Rockets' second Championship run. After Hakeem Olajuwon, Gheorghe Muresan is my second-largest basketball player collection. And Spud Webb makes another appearance in this package, with a card from an Upper Deck promotional set distributed by McDonald's. There was plenty more stuff in the package, including more cards, some stickers, some oddball stuff, and even a couple of redemption cards good for coins in the Topps Bunt mobile app.

I have to say that this package was a pretty darn good consolation prize for the dubious honor of making the worst picks out of a few dozen players. I really thought I had done my homework on the bracket this season, and it just blew up on me in every way. This marks the end of my Better Winning through Losing series, although the other day I did wind up in last place on another contest randomization from the Jaybarkerfan's Junk blog. I'm starting to get a bit of a complex about appearing at the bottom of lists.