Just the Commons, Ma'am 10: John Kruk 1986 - 1992

After I picked up his 2015 Topps Archives Signature Series card I went a little crazy and ordered a whole John Kruk player collection from the Just Commons website. As usual there was a card that came up missing in their inventory, but they sent me a refund pretty quickly for it. Their prices on singles are pretty good and you get free shipping on orders over $15, but it takes a while to fill orders, there is usually at least one card missing from your order, and I am not a fan of their packaging methods. Just Commons fills a particular niche that I find valuable, so in spite of my complaints I will keep using them. This is a pretty nice bunch of cardboard, but there sure is a lot of it. I scanned it all grouped by year, and this first batch goes from 1986 to 1992.

I have a passing familiarity with all of these sets, but for the most part they predate my entry into collecting. I do vaguely remember having a giant stack of 1987 Topps that I got from somewhere. One of those Fleer cards is the glossy version.

I always thought of Kruk as a member of the Phillies, but he played over a third of his career games with the Padres. One endearing thing about Kruk is that he looks like a regular dude. There are a lot of athletes that you just can't identify with because they look like athletes.

That card in the center of the bottom row is the one that started this while project. Kruk's 1989 Topps Traded card is one of the ones that Topps selected to buy back for the 2015 Archives Signature Series product. It's just such a weird picture to choose for a card, with Kruk staring vacantly at the camera in a very shadowy room.

I had my first fantasy baseball draft for the 2016 season this week. I'd run quite a few mock drafts and I felt pretty ready for it, but of course my plans all fell apart within a couple of rounds. The season might be recoverable, but I'm thinking I might lose the $20 entry fee this year.

One of those 1990 Topps cards is an O-Pee-Chee. From the front they look the same, but the back has all the French on it. I like the picture they used on that card.

My draft started out pretty well. I got Manny Machado, A.J. Pollock, Edwin Encarnacion, and Corey Kluber to start things out in the first four rounds. I would have liked more home runs out of the first few picks, but I still think I did okay there.

There are some pretty nice photos in this bunch, with some good batting shots and a couple of action photos of Kruk working in the field. I especially like the 1991 Leaf in the left center, the 1991 Score card in the middle, the 1991 Topps card in the lower left, and the 1991 Upper Deck in the lower right with the ball visible in the shot.

In the fifth round things kind of fell apart for me. I didn't really like any of the available picks, so I chose Miguel Sano as the clock ran out. I just don't trust the younger players much on my fantasy rosters. I'm more of a high floor guy than a high ceiling guy. Then I picked Eric Hosmer. There were several runs on pitching and I grabbed Sonny Gray and Cole Hamels next. Picking three pitchers early meant that my stock of bats was lower than I like it to be. At this point in the draft any batter you pick is going to have a big hole or two in his game somewhere. I still had a couple of outfield spots to fill, but I had 12% of a plan for them. Filling out my infield was where my struggle was going to come. I also tried a new strategy of ignoring relief pitchers until the end of the draft. That was a bad move on my part.

The Donruss and Donruss Triple Play pictures look like they were taken in the same game, maybe even in the same at-bat or same swing. I'd have to inspect the crowd a little more closely to be sure. I'm not sure on the Fleer card, but that one looks pretty close, too.

So at this point in the draft I was hurting for a 2nd baseman, a catcher, two outfielders, and a utility guy. I wanted some power, but I didn't want to draft any guys with really low batting average to get there. It's incredibly hard to make up ground in the ratio-driven categories like batting average, ERA, and WHIP. Even strikeouts are basically a ratio because the leagues have innings limits and you need to maximize your K/9 if you want to be competitive. I got Roughned Odor at 2nd, Evan Longoria as my utility guy, and Billy Burns and Alex Gordon to fill out my outfield. They're all good enough players, but none of them really stand out as that guy who is going to put a roster over the top. I closed out this portion of the draft by grabbing Devin Mesoraco at catcher and Hisashi Iwakuma because I needed to bring down my ERA and WHIP.

There are some pretty nice gems here, although Kruk is doing some serious mean-mugging on that Studio card. I guess this is also when the card brands exploded so much that I needed two scans to fit all of the 1992 cards in.

By this time in the draft (Round 15) anyone who was an established closer was long gone as well as most of the high-end middle and late relievers. I wound up with a couple of guys who are battling for closer jobs (Carter Capps, David Hernandez) and a few guys who have traditionally good ratios or who might have a shot at some saves if the main guy goes down (Darren O'Day, Hunter Strickland, Koji Uehara). I also rounded out my bench and my starting rotation, again trying to balance counting stats against ratios. My final roster looks like this:

It's not the greatest assembly of talent I've ever seen. I used a fantasy website to look at my league and it churned this Position Analysis out for my team:

It's a 12-team league, so you can see that things aren't looking good for me outside of my starting rotation and my corner infielders. I think it's probably counting Manny Machado as a 3rd baseman rather than a shortstop where I will be using him, so maybe my middle infielders could get a bump there. But my relief pitching is weak, my outfield is shaky and low on power numbers, and my catcher is a big question mark. It could all pan out in the end, but right now I feel worse about my roster than I do most years.

I realize that telling someone about your fantasy roster is about as exciting for them as hearing about your Dungeons & Dragons character or the dream you had last night, but I like to capture my feelings about the fantasy baseball season for my own benefit from time to time. Hopefully there were enough cool John Kruk pictures to make it worth scrolling past all of my draft talk.

Just the Commons, Ma'am 9: Rich 'Goose' Gossage Instant Player Collection

One thing I like to do to get a nice player collection started is go onto the Just Commons website, search for the player's name, and add everything that's reasonably priced to my cart. I did that with Mario Mendoza and a couple of times with Jon Singleton. They split out some of their sets by condition, and because I'm not a details guy I will wind up with duplicates like those 1980 Topps cards on the lower right of the scan. I basically just go down the search list and add anything under $0.50 or so. Anything higher than that will get a short glance and a decision one way or the other. This time I built a quick Rich 'Goose' Gossage collection. I even picked up his 1973 Topps rookie card, although it is not in great shape. It must have been cheap! Filling out this scan are a couple different sizes of 1975 Topps and what I think is a 1976 SSPC issue.

I'm not sure how that Nolan Ryan / J.R. Richard card got in there, but there it is. Like I said, I'm not a details guy when it comes to this process, so I got three different Rich Gossage / Rollie Fingers Leading Firemen cards from the 1979 Topps set. A contributor to the duplication problem is that the shopping cart on the site is a visual mess, so it is hard to see what exactly you've got in your cart and make adjustments. I'd rather order a couple extra cards and be out a dollar or two than sort through that mess.

Apparently duplication was a problem for me with the 1979 Topps set. Oh well. One of them might be a Burger King variation; maybe the one with the red banner. We still haven't reached the mustache years, but they are coming. I was going to say that 1981 Donruss card marks the first non-Topps card in this post, but the SSPC up above would make that a lie. It does mark the first year I was alive, though, but in all likelihood the set was released a few months before I actually entered the scene.

This is a colorful bunch of cards, with a couple of O-Pee-Chee cards sneaking into the mix. I do like that Super Veteran card in the bottom row.

I think these were all from an early-80's sticker set. They were a different size, so they got their own scan in this post. At first glance the one in the middle and the foil one look like they could be duplicate photos, but the pose is different.

This scan features a nice variety of cards with Gossage in a Padres uniform. He is probably most famous as a Yankee, but he had some pretty long stints with a couple of other teams. I especially like that 1986 Sportflics card, although it is the one that scans most poorly. The 1985 Donruss in the upper left is probably my second choice out of this batch. I never like the Classic brand cards. The ones I got for my basketball collection always seemed cheap and second-rate. They were usually damaged right out of the pack, with poorly-cut edges and bad corners, along with poor photo selection and design. Maybe other people had different experiences with them, but I didn't like Classic.

We're now approaching the cards I might have been aware of in my youth, as I really got my start with 1989 and 1990 Topps, but accumulated some cards from the surrounding years as well. The woodgrain 1987 Topps cards stand out as ones I definitely had a few of in my youth.

Posts like this usually sit in my queue for months because I have a hard time getting through so many paragraphs. I've been working most of the day on getting this post done, and I am making very slow progress without even really saying much. My kids have been off the wall all day and I've been running back and forth dealing with their issues. I love my kids, but they sure know how to make my Saturday disappear without anything to show for it but a bad attitude.

For whatever reason the set I most associate with the smell of baseball card gum is 1989 Topps. Something about that set just brings that smell and taste to mind right away. I don't have a particular memory to tie that sensation to, but it must be locked in there somewhere in my subconsciousness.

That card in the upper left commemorates 24 JUL 1991, when Nolan Ryan recorded his 308th win and Gossage his 308th save in the same game. That's a pretty cool moment, although it looks like Gossage had a pretty rough season overall. Ryan was still dealing pretty well in 1991, though. I also like that leaf card, with the baseball hanging out there in the foreground. 

The Leaf card in the previous scan started the rush of parallels, and there will be quite a few of them over the next couple of scans. This one features a Topps Gold Winners parallel and a Score Gold Rush parallel. It looks like the Gold Winners cards were part of some kind of redemption program. I don't know. I wasn't really aware of 1992 Topps at the time.

One set I really liked during the heyday of my collecting in the mid-90's was Upper Deck's Collector's Choice brand. The packs were pretty cheap and the photography was great, with a lot of fun shots. I wasn't really into baseball cards at that time, though. I was buying basketball cards. I always liked getting the Silver Signature cards, even though I never pulled anyone that was any good. I'd say that Collector's Choice is the brand from my youth that I miss the most. Probably the closest thing to it these days is Topps Opening Day, but that is too much of a reprint (pre-print?) of the base Topps set to really compare to the niche that Collector's Choice filled.

That card in the middle seems a lot like Upper Deck was trying to be Stadium Club. I guess you can't blame them. Stadium Club was a nice-looking set a lot of the time.

Here's all the newer stuff. That 1973 Topps in the middle row must be a reprint of some kind, maybe a Cards Your Mom Threw Out card? I still don't really know where the Obak cards came from. I'm sure they are a reprint of an earlier set, but I am not familiar with the early set or which company printed the new ones. I guess it'll remain a mystery until I go out and research it. There are a couple of Archives and Gypsy Queen cards in here, too.

And that's it for this batch. Outside of a break between ~1998 and ~2008 (I'm going by memory here, so the estimate might be off by a couple of years in either direction) this player collection runs from 1973 to 2015, or over 40 years of cardboard history. I'm sure there are Gossage cards from the missing time period, but I didn't collect during that time frame and Just Commons didn't have any cards available from that time. It makes sense that he would start getting cards printed again in the 2008 range, as he got inducted into the Hall of Fame and collector interest probably picked up a bit. This lot was a pretty good addition to the Gossage autograph I picked up earlier this year.

Just the Commons, Ma'am 8: Jon Singleton Patch Auto and the Replacements

As part of the Just Commons order I started talking about yesterday, I grabbed a couple more cards for my Jon Singleton player collection. This was the main attraction. It's a Clubhouse Collection Autographed Patches card from the 2013 Topps Heritage Minor League Baseball set. Even with a sticker autograph it's a pretty cool card. I do wish the photo and the relic swatch were a bit bigger, but Topps had to put all kinds of other stuff all over the card.

The back of the card shows the serial number, which makes this card copy # 03 / 10. In addition to the information reminding you that the relic can't be traced to anything specific, the card features a cartoon on the back. Informative and entertaining!

I grabbed these because they were cheap and I was pretty sure I didn't have them yet.

Ditto for these. 

These too.

In January I posted about a previous order from Just Commons and some Jon Singleton cards that were destroyed by some combination of my dog and my kids. I replaced those cards with this order, and added a couple of other shiny cards to my collection, too. The new cards are the Bowman Platinum in the upper right and the Blue Refractor in the lower left. I think that die-cut in the lower right is a duplicate that I probably bought because I wasn't sure. Now I have two of them.

Just the Commons, Ma'am 7: Dickey, Reddick, and Some Horizontal Stadium Club

A couple of months back I was looking to fill out some player collections and finish my 2014 Stadium Club set, so I made a purchase from Just Commons. There wasn't a lot of new stuff for my R.A. Dickey and Josh Reddick, but I did grab one card for each of them. The Dickey is a Season Statline parallel from 2014 Donruss, celebrating his 177 strikeouts in 2013 with a shiny card numbered # 089 / 177. The Josh Reddick card is a Topps 100 Prospects insert card from 2010 Bowman. I like these sets that list the top prospects in order based on some scout's preferences.

You've gotta show the backs of the cards sometimes. Dickey has been all right in Spring Training so far, but it's a sample size of six innings so far and you can't really tell what might happen with the knuckleball over the course of a season. Reddick has only appeared in one Spring Training game so far, going 3 for 3 with 2 runs and 2 runs batted in. Based on those numbers, he should have 486 hits in the regular season, with 324 runs and 324 runs batted in.

In purchasing all of the cards I was missing from my Stadium Club set, I realized that every single one of them was of the horizontal variety. I had up to seven multiples of some of the vertical cards, but I was missing a decent stack of cards and they all were horizontal. I don't know if that means the sideways cards were short-printed or what. I don't recall that happening with other sets, so I wonder what made these cards harder to pull.

That Nolan Ryan card was one I really wanted, so of course it was one I just couldn't pull from any of the many Stadium Club boxes I opened. It's not too often that you get to see livestock on a modern trading card, but I believe there was a David Price card a couple of years ago that showed him with a cow at the stadium. That Johnny Bench photo is pretty cool, too.

To balance out the pitchers in the first scan, here are four pictures of hitters, including some pretty nice shots from angles you don't see too often on cards. Also notable is the fact that you can see most of the players rather than just close-ups of their torsos. Heck, you can actually see things like the catcher, the umpire's butt, fans in the stands, other players watching from the dugout, and huge advertisements for Monster Energy Drinks and AAA Insurance.

Just the Commons, Ma'am 6: Jon Singleton and the Case of the Folded Refractors

I made an order from Just Commons in order to grab a couple trade cards I needed, and I filled it out past the Free Shipping threshold by grabbing a bunch of Jon Singleton cards for my Singleton player collection. There's a variety of stuff in this lot, included a timeline of minor league Topps cards from his time down on the farm. Here we've got his 2010, 2011, 2012, and 2013 Topps Pro Debut cards.

I don't have a lot of experience with these minor league cards, but I think they're pretty cool. It's crazy that these guys are under such a huge microscope at a young age. 

And here is a similar timeline for Topps Heritage Minors 2012-2014 and also his big league 2014 Heritage High Numbers card. The 2013 Heritage card shares a picture with the 2013 Pro Debut card, although I guess at least Topps took the time to crop it differently. That still doesn't make it a different picture.

The card backs on this group is definitely more interesting, with cartoon pictures, stats, and plenty of informative text.

At the time this package arrived I had all of my card boxes out on a table in the living room. I was trying to get everything in my collection sorted out and arranged before school started up again. I didn't quite get the project finished, so I had to pack it all back downstairs partially sorted. I set these cards on the table at some point, and when I got back I noticed that a few of them were scattered around on the floor. A couple of the ones from the floor had been picked up and folded neatly into quarters. No one admitted to having anything to do with it, but I am guessing that when my dog jumped up to bark out the window at someone passing by he knocked the cards off the table with his tail. Then one of my kids found the cards and folded a couple of them in half, then in half again.

So I hope no one out there wanted Singleton's 2014 Bowman Chrome Refractor # 418 / 500, because it's been folded a couple of times and scraped up a bit.

This Bowman Platinum card was also lost in the incident. This is becoming more bloody than one of Zippy Zappy's Clone Breaks. Some of the less shiny cards were knocked down and scattered about, but they weren't scraped up or folded.

I thought this was kind of a cool-looking insert, all die-cut and trophy-looking. I'm told that it's a 2011 Bowman Chrome Futures Refractor. It's got a bit of the Chrome-y curl to it, but that doesn't matter too much.

In addition to all the Singleton cards and tradebait, I also picked up this Members Only card of Christian Yelich from the 2014 Stadium Club set.

Just Commons is a nice cheap way to get cards for sets or player collections. My only real complaint is that sometimes cards show up a little more damaged than I'd like and often some of the cards I order are out of stock. This particular batch of cards was in pretty good shape (until my dog and kids caught up with them), but there was one card I ordered for a trade package that was out of stock. The refund for the card was issued quickly, but when ordering from Just Commons don't update your want list until the cards actually arrive.

Just the Commons, Ma'am 5: Another 51 Topps Opening Day Blue Parallels

Don't worry, I won't be showing all 51 of the Blue Opening Day parallels I got from JustCommons, but I have scanned a number of my favorites from the lot. After adding these to my collection I am down to just needing 4 cards to complete the set, which incidentally is the same number of cards I still need from the 2013 Opening Day Blue Parallel set. I really ought to track those down one of these days.

Over the last week I have not been paying a lot of attention to my baseball cards. Or to much of anything, for that matter, outside of the baseball video game sim OOTP 15. DO NOT TRY THIS GAME! IT WILL TAKE OVER YOUR LIFE! I find myself playing just until the All-Star break, then maybe just until roster expansion, but then my team wins a few games and I decide I'll just close out the season, and then it's a few hours later and I've played two more years' worth of games. My fictional Houston Astros team had a couple of championship runs during the first three years of play, boosted mostly by strong pitching, but injuries in my lineup late in the season have contributed to me getting bounced from the playoffs early on over the past three years. I also draft way too many catchers and middle relievers.

Carlos Gomez found himself in a spot of trouble recently when he showboated a bit after hitting a triple off of Gerrit Cole. Cole had some choice words for him as he slid into third, Gomez went after Cole, the benches cleared, and Travis Snider got a black eye from Martin Maldonado. Gomez is on a couple of my rosters in fantasy baseball, and he's been pretty good so far this year.

Seattle has not been very good this year, and it appears that they might have a mold problem, as Hernandez and Iwakuma seem to have some mossy growth on their chins. Must be all the humidity up there. Or maybe that's pine tar.

I love that uniform that Lohse is sporting. Super classy. I'd wear that cap.

I'll close out this post with a few guys who are on my borderline player collections list. I don't necessarily seek out cards of these guys, but when they come to me I feel pretty good and kind of set them off to the side. Unless I need them for a set. Then they go in the set. It's too bad Topps couldn't have managed to get a Future Stars logo on that Ryu card, too, just to really overload that thing with clip art.

And here are a couple of pitchers who I am a fan of, but I don't think I got them in any of my fantasy leagues this year, and so I have no idea how they are doing so far. Maybe I should look it up. Samardzija is 0-2 after five starts, but it's not really his fault. Through 35.1 innings, he's got 27 strikeouts, a 1.53 ERA and a 1.10 WHIP. Those are some pretty good numbers.

Scherzer has been similarly dominant, but he actually has a couple of wins to his name. He also has five starts with a record of 2-1, and through 33.0 innings pitched he has 44 strikeouts, a 2.45 ERA and a 1.03 WHIP.