2018 Clubhouse: Cleveland Indians

#36. Edwin Encarnación

#37. Corey Kluber

#38. Francisco Lindor

#39. Andrew Miller

#40. José Ramírez

This is pretty spot-on for the Indians team set. Since Andrew Miller's been hurt a lot of the season, his spot could easily go to maybe Trevor Bauer (ew) or Carlos Carrasco, but he's still one of the best relievers in the league. Encarnación probably isn't one of the five best players on the team either but him being here doesn't seem strange to me (even though squeezing his name onto the card wasn't easy).

Miller and Lindor are the autograph subjects. Again, probably the alpha and omega autos.

And for the last parallel, how about something a little different? Since these are the least rare of the parallels (#/150), why not go a little crazy? The rainbow here paired with the ice/atomic/crackle effect is definitely unique compared to the rest of the slightly sparkly solid color borders. I can only do so much digitally but I think these would be pretty cool in-hand.

2017 PENNANT BOX BREAK - PACK 18

266. Neil Walker

200. Brett Gardner

47. Ian Desmond

100. Billy Hamilton

125. Miguel Cabrera

102. Cameron Maybin

73. Joe Mauer

233. Corey Kluber

176. Wade Davis

TI24S. Kevin Quackenbush - The Incumbents (shimmer parallel)

The obvious card to discuss here is the Kevin Quackenbush insert. It’s basically the Pennant version of a Topps Chrome Refractor. It’s hard to show the difference between “chrome” and regular stock with just digital cards like this, but I figured the rainbow gif thing would do the trick.

2016 Spirit Base

With pitchers and catchers reporting today, what better time to unveil the look for the 2016 Spirit flagship set. Just like last year, I've designed a card for every team. You can see a roundup of them all below but to get a better look, you can check them out on my Instagram page. Without further ado, let's breakdown this year's design.

For the fifth straight year, the flagship set is borderless. (Just wanted to point that out since Topps seems to be getting a lot of credit for going borderless in 2016...) These diagonal bars in team colors coming from the edges converge to add a little bit of dynamism that you don't get from just plain old rectangles. I guess diagonals are all the rage in 2016. The team logos are back to full-color after I went with gold foil last year. The last element is a small accolades strip extending just above the bars. For any award-winning or all-star player, there's a designation to help them stand out a bit from the rest of the league. You can really tell below even at these small sizes.

Though he's kinda cut off, I had to go with the Cal pic for Machado's card. And that A-Rod photo is so trolltastic I love it.

The Donaldson photo seemed like a good emblem of his 2015 season.

Solid trio of cards here. I like how you can see Kinsler's bat in the bottom left corner, peeking out.

Check out the flow on Keuchel's beard there. Also, I was just barely able to get the ball in frame on the Santiago card without the whole thing getting imbalanced. Just barely.

All three batting cards featuring different parts of the swing. God I love Nelly's fly ball pose.

Good balance of photos here. A candid on-field, a candid dugout and a statue-esque action shot.

The look of concern on Joey Walks face is something you'll probably be seeing a lot of this season.

Piscotty gets the RC logo in the bottom right corner. It's a little tight but fits. I decided to go with red and teal for the Diamondbacks even though they don't actually feature it much in their new identity. Anything to add some unique colors to the set.

Glad the Padres added yellow to their team colors. The sand was always so drab. Maybe next year they'll add brown in there as well.

The back are a progression from the 2015 design, updated with the 2016 design elements. Everything fits pretty coherently. For veterans with years and years of service, the stat box will get a little crowded but that's always been the case with any base design. I think my favorite part is how the logo fits perfectly below the card number and to the left of the vitals, filling the negative space from the diagonal photo.

Well this is the fifth Spirit base set I've designed. If I find the time I may do a retrospective post comparing them all across the years. Maybe even a poll for everyone to vote for their favorites. Stay tuned for that....

2014 Spirit Base: 421-430

#421 - Mark Trumbo
This dugout shot is kinda unique so I figured I'd go with it to stave off redundancy.

#422 - Aaron Harang
He's basically Bartolo Colon minus the comical at-bats. Who had him penciled in for double-digit wins before the season started?

#423 - Delmon Young
Believe it or not, he's actually played some games in the outfield this season. Even on an AL team!

#424 - Edward Mujica
He didn't quite pan out this season like I'm sure the Red Sox were hoping he would. Much like the rest of the club I guess.

#425 - Anthony Rizzo
Rizzo kind of looks like an adult-sized baby in this pic. I think it's the chubby cheeks and thunder thighs.

#426 - Chris Sale
Man, I have such a hard time finding Chris Sale photos to use. Not because there aren't plenty of options but because each one looks so friggin' awkward and painful. It's hell trying to fit all of his limbs into frame without shrinking down the whole photo. Here's a suitable alternative.

#427 - Brandon Phillips
I hear Cardinals' fans aren't too crazy about dat dude.

#428 - Corey Kluber
Kluber's a dark house Cy Young candidate this season. Leading the AL in FIP, second in WAR for pitchers and strikeouts, top 5 in wins, ERA, innings pitched and shutouts.

#429 - Brandon Barnes
The Rockies should wear more purple. If nothing else, ditch the black hats for purple every game.

#430 - Joe Nathan
Better than Valverde I guess.

2014 Clubhouse

Here's a look at the 2014 design for Spirit's low-end product, Clubhouse. Having lived with the 2013 design for a year now, I decided to shift the tone back a little more toward "fun" this year. There are definitely some similarities between 2014 and the initial 2012 design. Obviously there's the horizontal format but also the bold names and the bold colors. This is bringing the set back to what I originally had in mind.

With the horizontal format we'll see more dynamic action shots, different from those on the vertical Spirit base design. There's a full-color action cut-out on top of a team-color shaded background. Just above the secondary color bar with the player position/team name is a big, bold last name. Tucked just above that is the player's first name in a nice script font. In the bottom right corner is a white triangle leaving just enough room for the team cap logo.

On the back are a couple of color boxes for all the pertinent player bio information. Next to a small portrait is a stat block with the player's five most-recent seasons along with their career totals, leaving room for a few sentences about them. As you can see from the numbering in the upper right, the set is a lot bigger than most non-flagship releases. A 600-card, no-foil low-end set would definitely fill a hole in the current baseball card landscape.

I'm adding a single parallel to the set, Clubhouse Gold seen here. Just like the original Topps Gold parallels, these are strictly the same cards but with gold foil embellishing a few areas. I also made the background color gold, too, to help set them off in case the foil gets overlooked.