Like Rhys Hoskins, But Cheaper

There have been so many home run hits this year.  It seems that no matter what team's stat page you check out, there are tons of players who have crossed the 20 home run mark, or more.  Is it now common place that the majority of position players are going to end up hitting 20 home runs, give or take, assuming that they receive a decent number of plate appearances?

I decided to flip through my cards a few weekends ago to check out some of the cards that I had from the big home run hitters during this baseball season.

Of course there is Mike Stanton.....

who is nearing 60 home runs.  As a Cardinals fan, I remember the excitement around the McGwire/Sosa home run chase in 1998.  I got to see Big Mac's 70th home run in person.  It feels odd that there isn't a little more excitement surrounding Stanton's pursuit of number 60.  I will be watching this weekend, feels like more people should be too.

The American League has Aaron Judge.

He has crossed 50 home runs and broken Mark McGwire's rookie home run record, which was set with the A's in 1987.  Judge is not only leading the AL in home run, he also is leading the league in strikeouts and walks.  Pretty cool feat.  

As a Cardinals fan I have had fun watching Paul DeJong....

who has 25 home runs, 51 extra base hits, it just over 100 games this season.

Recently I decided that I was going to try and track down a few other players who have enjoyed break out season during this baseball season.  I made a list and went out looking for what was out there.  The most obvious choice, given I am going with the whole home run theme, would be to try to find a cool Rhys Hoskins card.  He was the International League MVP this year, so that's where I started my search.

However....

there are not many of them and they are all off brand, non-licensed, cards like Leaf and Panini.  Although someone tried to flip me one of these for my Judge autograph.  LOL.

So, I went to the second name on my list, which was Matt Olson from the Oakland A's.

and I was shocked.  It was the opposite of looking up Judge cards, or Hoskins cards.  I think Judge and Hoskins are fine players, but when you look up auctions for young players and think, "I could buy this card or a very nice Stan Musial card" it's time to just keep moving....

Olson's cards, when I bought this one, were under $10.  Has anyone actually look at his stat sheet?  They have doubled over the last week, or two, but I still ended up with two of his cards.  One for today, another for a different day.  Here is the first one......

I love the Bowman Inception cards and could not pass this one up.  The art/pictures always seems really well done and you always get an on-card autograph with this set.  No stickers stuck on cards.  The back of the card.......

What's not to like?

Some quick numbers on Olson and Hoskins, as a Cardinals fan I can tell you they are both better than DeJong.  Hoskins is at 48 games, Olson is at 59 games, so there is going to be a little disparity between some of the counting number stats.  Olson is at 24 home runs, Hoskins is at 18.  Olson's slash line is .259/.352/.651, while Hoskins is .265/.401/.642.  Olson is at 2.4 WAR and Hoskins is at 2.1 WAR.  Too me, the biggest difference is the fact that Hoskins takes walks, Olson is more of a free swinger.

In a normal world there probably wouldn't be a $100 difference between a Hoskins and Olson autograph, but here we are.....

New Cards From North Of The Border

Canada has contributed greatly to the world of sports cards over the years.  Where would we be without hockey cards.....

or football cards from a league with a 55 yard line and field goal posts in the front of the end zone?  (Go Redhawks! Beat Kansas)

or baseball cards with the players position written on the front in both French and English?  

I shutter to think of a world without all of these great contributions that our fine neighbors to the north have made to my favorite hobby.  The Canadians have also had a pretty good run of producing some fairly nice baseball players.  The Cardinals have even had a few over the years, most of them not as good as Fergie Jenkins or Joey Votto, but still good.  

Who remembers Stubby Clapp?  

He's actually turned into a really nice Minor League Manager for the Cardinals currently working for their Triple A team in Memphis.  

John "Axman" Axford?  Probably a better memory for Brewers fans, but I actually have a card of him playing for the Canadian National Baseball team......

He's been making some pretty funny tweets recently about being an unemployed baseball player.   Then there is Larry Walker who is easily the best Canadian born player to have ever worn the Birds on the Bat.  

Walker played for the Cardinals the last year and a half of his career.  Not sure people always remember him ending his career in St. Louis, definitely a very memorable career with the Expos and Rockies, still a nice player during that time for the Cardinals.  

His power dropped off and he was much more of a role player behind stars like Pujols, Edmonds, Rolen, and Chris Carpenter.  

It's been awhile since the Cardinals have had a Canadian on the roster, but there is a pretty talented outfielder in Triple A right now who has a pretty good shot at getting to St. Louis in the near future.  

Meet Tyler O'Neill.  

The Cardinals actually traded for him this summer.  He was originally drafted by the Mariners out of high school back in 2013, but was traded over to St. Louis in exchange for Marco Gonzales.  Over the last three years in the Mariners system his home runs totals have been 32 in 2015, 24 in 2016, and 29 this summer.  Almost every major baseball publication who ranks prospects puts him within the Top 50 in all of the Minor Leagues.  

Seemed like the type of player you'd buy a baseball card of, file it away in a box for a few years, and then revisit it at some point in the future.  So, I set out to find one.  Maybe two. 

Here's the first one I found.  

For a Top 50 prospect, who hits a lot of home runs, his cards aren't too expensive.  I mean, they aren't giving them away on Ebay, but it's realistic to set a $5-$10 budget and walk away with something fairly nice.  I ended up with this Bowman's Best autograph which made me very happy.  There is a nice finish on this card and the signature is on-card, always a plus.  

The only thing I don't like about this particular set of Bowman's Best, 2016, is the honeycomb design in the background of the card.  Sort of reminds me of the alternate Georgia Tech football helmets.  

Now the really nice autograph.  I have always loved this set, every year it has been released, and was happy to have another player with a Cardinals connection in this set.  

This is also a 2016 card, but the year doesn't really matter with the Inception brand.  Topps always does a really nice job with the cards.  It's one of the few sets with a dark background that still looks good with a signature on the front.  The autograph of O'Neill is consistent between the two cards, but this is easily my favorite of the two.  If he were to not remain on the Cardinals, they do have a ton of outfielders between their Major League and Triple A rosters, I would still keep this card.  The scan doesn't even really do the nice card stock used justice.  

Hopefully I can look back at this card in a few years and O'Neill will already be amongst the best Canadians to ever play for the Cardinals.  Not sure that's a very high bar considering that would mean being better than Stubby Clapp and John Axford.  

Jose DeLeon? Have We Met Before?

Many of the Cardinals teams from my early teen and high school years were fairly hard to watch.  Yet, I still really enjoy collecting many of the players from those teams.  My favorite Cardinals player to collect, Ray Lankford, played the majority of his career during that time.  The talent level on those teams was generally lean, but every once in awhile someone would stop by for a season. Danny Jackson, Andres Galarraga, Gregg Jefferies, and Tom Henke were just a few All-Star caliber player who were subject to the cheapness of August Busch III.

No post of Gregg Jefferies to link to?  I'm on it.

While there were a few good players here and there on those early 1990s Cardinals teams, the vast majority of the roster was filled with all sorts of cast offs.  Who remembers Denny Walling or Dave Collins on the Cardinals?  Darnell Coles?  All bad.

There were some cast offs who faired well with those Cardinals teams.  Bob Tewksbury would probably be the best of the bunch.  He had some rough years with the Cubs and Yankees before landing with the Cardinals.  His 1992 season was downright Maddux-like.  Not joking.  One of the other somewhat successful cast offs was former Pirate and White Sox Jose DeLeon.  

The Cardinals acutally got Jose during the late 80s, his time in St. Louis just spilled over into the early 90s.  

Jose's Cardinals career started out well.  During his first two seasons he won 30 games, finished third in strikeouts in the National League behind and David Cone and Nolan Ryam, and then led the league in Ks the following season in 1989.  DeLeon played three more seasons with the Cardinals and he won 14 games.  That included a 19 loss season, the second of his career, and a season where he won 5 games in 32 starts with an 2.71, or basically Pedro Martinez, Tom Glavine, or Jose Rijo minus about ten runs.  

Always felt kind of bad for Jose, better teams would have definitely landed him a few more career wins, a little bit better legacy too.  Perhaps if the White Sox could have traded him elsewhere....then I would have missed out on having Jose in my stacks of Cardinals cards.  

Speaking of trades and Jose DeLeon, a brand new player named Jose DeLeon has entered my life, and card collection via a trade.  This new Jose DeLeon came over to the Rays from the Dodgers this past off season.  He's spent some time in Durham, but has really spent most of this season sitting on the disabled list.  Still hasn't stopped me from picking up a few of his cards recently.  

First up is a 2016 Bowman Inception autograph.  I always really loved the Inception brand and have picked up a ton of these cards over the years.  I like the coloring and background on this card, love that it's an on card signature too.  Pretty popular card last year since DeLeon was a Top 100 prospect in most of those publications with top prospect lists.....

I really wanted a Rays autograph of the new Jose DeLeon, but Topps is still putting him in Dodgers uniforms.  In fact, I am pretty sure that he has about twenty Dodgers autographs this year and one Rays autograph.  I ended up with another Dodgers autograph because it looked like this......

Inception was actually switched over from Topps from Bowman this year, they are the same company, but the cards still look really nice.  I kind of dig the lighter backgrounds on this year's set.  I will have to get a Rays Jose DeLeon card sooner than later, in the meantime I hope to see him back on the field sooner than later.  Hope this Jose DeLeon can fair a little better than the other Jose DeLeon in my collection.  

Double Helping of Piscotty

Thanksgiving has been good this year.  My in-laws were in town from northern Michigan and my wife and her sisters made a really good dinner.  I got the day off of work and had some really good time with my kids today.

I couldn't fit the cranberries on my plate and passed on the sweet potatoes.  Pretty sure I am one of the few people who lives in North Carolina who is not crazy about sweet potatoes.  

I had a good time today sorting out a few cards and sets that were lingering around my baseball card room and I also had the chance to sit down and scan a few cards.  Tonight I am going to share a pair of picked up a few weeks ago that were in my stack of cards that I sorted out today.  

Piscotty is one of my favorite current Cardinals.  First card.  

Love the Strata cards.  The cool thing about these is the authentication sticker that can be traced to a specific game.  Some of the jersey swatches are tied to some eventful games, others not so much.  Last month I picked up a Strata card of Astros card Dallas Keuchel who did not even play in the game tied to his jersey swatch.  

The Piscotty swatch?

The Cardinals won the game 10-2 against the Reds and Piscotty even played in the game.  He was hitless, but did walk and scored a run on a double by Mark Reynolds.  Not the best stat line by any means, but given the game that was connected to the Keuchel swatch, I am happy just knowing that Piscotty was actually in the game.

Next.

I have always really enjoyed the Bowman Inception cards and this year's were no different.  On-card sigs, nice design, etc.  Very cool.  Piscotty has actually been in previous Inception sets, but this might be my favorite autographed card of his over the past few years.  I like the card dark background with the faded area for the autograph.

Franklin Was A Shortstop And A Good Shortstop Too

One of the people I talk baseball with has been really big on Franklin Barreto the last few years.  I believe our conversation started a few years ago while he was playing in the Blue Jays farm system.  Barreto was playing in the Appalachian League and was barely scrapping together a season above the Mendoza line, but he was really young at the time and had some obvious tools.  I was shocked to see him involved in the Josh Donaldson trade this offseason as one of the primary pieces go back to the A's.  Naturally I decided to spend a little bit of time following him this season and I was pretty impressed.

Barreto spent the year playing in the California League where he posted a .302/.333/.500 line with 13 home runs and 22 doubles in just 90 games.  Pretty nice line for a 19 year old shortstop who was rated as a pre-season Top 100 prospect by Baseball America, MLB.com, and Baseball Prospectus.  So what cards are out there of Franklin Barreto?

He has two certified autographs at the moment.  If you really like Barreto he has an autograph in the 2014 Bowman Chrome set which has been selling pretty well.  I have seen several copies approaching $20 with some of the lower numbered print runs pushing well past that mark.  However, if you just simply want to own a copy of his autograph, just for the sake of have an autograph of a potentially nice player, than look no further than the Bowman Inception autograph pictured above.

I found my copy for less than $5 and there are currently other copies of this same card sitting on Ebay and COMC at the same price point.  In fact, there are copies of this card's gold parallel, out of 50 print runs, for less than $10.  Interesting to see how long this card continues to fly under the radar....

Bowman Burner Turner

I missed getting to see Trea Turner in the Minors this summer, but it is good to see him up in the Majors playing for the Nationals.  It's been a little bit of a slow start for the shortstop so far with just 1 hit in his first 14 games.  Still most baseball fans are expecting good things from the former Padres first round draft pick who officially came over to the Nationals this summer after being traded last fall.  It's a long story.  While I am not a huge fan of the Nationals I have enjoyed following Turner's career since he starred locally for NC State.

Turner should move into a starting role next season for the Nationals and should provide the team with good defense up the middle and lots of speed.  I have seen a couple of Nats fans question Turner's ability to hit given his struggles so far in the Majors, but I think he is going to be just fine in the long run.

My newest Turner card comes from the Bowman Inception set and features a nice on-card autograph of the former NC State star.  Turner has had numerous autographs over the past few years, but I think this might be the best of the lot, meaning it's not an unlicensed card or airbrushed from a stock college photograph.  I am guessing a Nats autograph could show up at some point this fall, until then this is my favorite Trea Turner autograph.  

#MyCardMonday

I always try to post my weekly #MyCardMonday on Sunday evening, but sometimes I feel like I do better with the player when I wait the extra time and make my post on Monday evening.  I like the player in the post to be someone who is in the news and sometimes an extra few hours can change my mind on the player and card that I select.  Sunday evening I had a player already to go and post and then I waited.  In the middle of the day I checked Twitter and I found....

I was excited to see the news.  Piscotty has been regarded as one of the Cardinals top hitting prospects.  I was actually surprised the Cardinals have taken this long to try Piscotty out at the big league level given the fact that the team has lost Matt Adams for the rest of the season and they were without Matt Holliday for a good chunk of time.  It's been hard to wait, but I am excited to see what Piscotty will do with the Cardinals.

Since Piscotty is debuting this week in Chicago I am going with one of my favorite Piscotty cards from the first Bowman Inception set.

Topps Pitches a Shutout

I love baseball cards.  I mean I really love them.  They have their own room in house.  I spent time every week writing a blog about them.  I love baseball cards.  If you ran a baseball card company why would you ever give me, a paying customer, a really good reason to walk away from a box of cards?  I have now collected cards for 32 years and can rarely remember walking away from cards.  Sure, there are bad trade proposals and badly priced card shops, but rarely does a manufacturer of cards make me turn around and take my time and money elsewhere.

Well, that is until last week when Topps released the Bowman Inception product.  I like this product and have picked up cards from the set the last few years.  One of the last Inception card I picked up was a really cool green Oscar Taveras autographed card.  Really sweet.

I liked this card so much that I actually almost asked my local card dealer about pricing out a box of Inception.  When it released I checked out the auctions on Ebay and could not find a single Cardinals card.  I check the Rays too, but nothing.  I left it for a day or so before I had to go to Cardboard Connections to check out the checklist.  That's when I realized that I had been shutout.

I do not go into opening a box thinking I am going to pull a Cardinals or Rays card, but the possibility to do so makes a lot of difference.  I think about it this way:  If there are few cards that I would be happy pulling from a box of cards why buy the box when I can let others assume the risk and simply buy the singles?  I know if you are a hobby shop owner right now I probably pissed you off a little bit with that last sentence, but it has nothing to do with hobby shops and everything to do with companies like Topps.

Beyond selling boxes it also lessens the opportunity that hobby shops have to sell singles back to collectors which is an important revenue stream for many hobby shops.  Think about the Taveras autograph above.  I don't remember how much I even paid for it at this point, but lets give it the round number of $25.  Some percentage of that $25 was profit for my local card shop, but beyond that the card got me in the door.  I am sure that I just didn't buy a card while I was in hanging out at the store.

I'm not in cardboard rainbows, but......

I ended up picking up another copy of a 2014 Bowman Inception card of Oscar Taveras.  I added a copy of the pink card last week and already owned a copy of the green card.  Here's a look at the newest card which is gold and numbered out of 99........

I am not into the whole rainbow thing, but these cards are starting to look nice together........

and this one........

So there are four of them right?  I'm a plain autograph short of the rainbow?  I really hate EBay at the moment, but it looks like I need to track down a card.....

Pink Oscar

I ended up with a completely ridiculous Oscar Taveras card this past week.  I picked this card up from a local collector in Raleigh.  I have several other copies of this card, but did not have the pink copy of this card.  In fact, I do not think I have a copy of a pink Inception card.  The pink parallels only appeared in the 2014 version of Inception (the product started in 2013) and are all limited to just 50 copies.   I spent a little bit of time looking around Ebay and COMC at the pink parallels after buying this card.  Seems like there are some possibilities out there that would look nice in my collection.  There are not a lot of Cardinals and Rays in this set, so I will have to surprise a little bit with the next version of this pink parallel that I pick up.  Like most Bowman products Taveras is wearing a Minor League uni in his picture which reminds all Cardinals fans of that time that the team broadcast referred to Oscar as Minor League Guy.  

Hit Bull, Win Steak Part 1

I was reading through the FanGraphs 200 prospects list last week checking out where all of our favorite future baseball stars are ranked paying special attention to the Cardinals and the Rays.  Both teams have a handful of players on the list, but neither franchise is probably where they would really like to be in terms of quantity and quality of prospects.  Which reminded me....

I needed to pick up a few baseball cards.  Yesterday they started to show up in my mailbox.

First up is Cardinals prospect Robert Kaminksy.  The Cardinals left handed pitching prospect went 8-2 with an ERA of 1.88 in 100 innings last year in the Midwest League (A Ball).  His WHIP was 1.01 and he struck out 79 on 31 walks.  Oh, and he's 19.  So, why is this pitcher not on the Baseball America Top 100 Prospects list, nor in the top 100 prospects on the FanGraphs list?  He's, um, you know.....


short.


Could that be a problem?  Perhaps, but it seems like being 5'11 isn't hurting Kaminsky too much with that ERA under 2.  In the meantime, the Cardinals pitching prospect has several nice baseball cards floating around from both the 2013 and 2014 card products.  None of them are overly expensive and given Kaminsky's numbers and age, I would guess that the odds of him appearing in a Major League at this point are above average.  This beautiful on-card autograph of Kaminsky out of the 2014 Bowman Inception product cost me right at $5 delivered.

Redemption Blues

It's a commonly held feeling amongst card collectors that redemption cards really stink.  I have always held the philosophy that redemption cards are not good cards and therefore should be sold or traded as quickly as possibly.  For years this worked beautifully and kept me away from making posts about sitting and waiting for a card, or yelling and screaming about how the redemption went unfilled and the card company substituted several undesirable cards in place of the card I should have received.

This year I actually redeem my redemption cards.  Huge mistake.  They seemed like they would be cool cards to own at the time and it's not like they were top dollar cards either.  The first redemption I pulled this year was an autographed Postseason Relic from Anibel Sanchez.

This should be a cool card, right?  Almost a year after redeeming this card it is still sitting on the redemption dashboard on the Topps website as "Pending".  Will this card ever show up?  I am anticipating a package from Topps filled with a nice apology letter and an autograph of Mike Leake.  There is better hope for my other redemption card which came out of my Topps Update box.

Again, a cool card, but not a top dollar card.  Teheran seems like a goos signer too, so I hold out hope that this card might one day find its way into my mailbox.  After pulling these two cards I have decided that any 2015 redemption cards I pull will be traded or sold.  I am not sure what I was thinking this year, but it probably has not worked out for the best.  To illustrate how poorly the redemption system at Topps works, I actually ended up with a third redemption card this year that I did not post.

I picked this redemption card up from a frequent trade partner on Facebook knowing that the cards had been signed and were already out on the market.  That was sometime early in December.  Almost a month and a half later we have.......

A nice card of Rays second baseman Nick Franklin.  The fact that there have been several of these on Ebay for the last couple of months, but it took weeks to fill a redemption speaks to the fact that the problem with redemption cards goes beyond the fact that players sometimes simply do not honor their promises to sign and return cards.  Processing cards that are clearly in stock and signed should not take weeks and just adds to the frustration of collectors who are already trying to wait patiently for their cards.  Redemption cards, no thank you.

A Trip To Big D's Card Shop Part 1

My trips into my favorite local card shop tend to focus on adding some cool Cardinals or Rays cards to my collection.  Actually this trip was for a box of cards, but in the meantime, the owner of Big D's Jimmy had his eyes open looking for some cool cards for my collection.  We will get to the box in Part 2 of this post, but first let's look at some cool single cards.  Lot's of cool things here, the Rays are up first....


Both Rays items I picked up yesterday were signed items from players who had stopped in Durham on their way to the Majors.  Really cool items that Jimmy found from a great local autograph collector.

This is a Jeremy Hellickson autograph on a ticket stub from his first Major League victory.  Really cool and unique item of one of my favorite Durham Bulls.  I love collecting autographs and the vast majority of my autograph collection is in card form, but I love finding unique items like this.  Who has a ticket stub from Jeremy Hellickson's Major League Debut hanging out in their house?  I do not know, but I am really happy to own this piece.  Here's a look at Hellickson during the game.  John Jaso is catching....

I also landed a nice ball from pitcher Matt Moore.  Moore spent a good deal of time in Durham before landed a job in the starting rotation of the Rays.  The ball is from the Southern League and features a nice signature of Moore on the sweet spot of the ball.  

Two really nice Rays autographs and both are on unique pieces.  On to the Cardinals half of the post. All my Cardinals additions are in baseball card form.  First up are a few Yadis.

Starting simple, this is a Molina short print from this year's Topps Heritage set.  Not many cards show off Yadi's cool neck tattoos.  One more Yadi short print.....

I posted one or two of these variations before with my box breaks.  This is the Stats variation which features the Sabermetric stats on the back of the card instead of the traditional stats that Topps has put on their cards for years and years.  Topps has already added the WAR stat to the back of the regular cards, but think a few of these stats could find their way onto the regular issue of Topps cards.  I'd love to see the OPS+ stat there.  

Still staying pretty simple, this is a pair of rookie cards from new Cardinals pitcher Sam Tuivailala.  I have a good feeling about Tuivailala and could see him moving into a prominent role in the Cardinals bullpen in the near future.  I had posted a pair of his autographs a few weeks back.  Nice player, give him a look.

On to things that are a little bit harder to find...This is a nice copy of a 2013 Bowman Platinum Blue parallel.  The card is numbered to 40/199.  Taveras cards still seem to be selling low even though he has started to pick it up at the plate in recent weeks.  Hoping that Matheny can find him some at-bats on a regular basis next season.  Next Taveras card.......

I have always love the Bowman Inception cards.  Last year the set was my favorite product of the year.  It was a nice product again this year, and I have added a few autographs from the set, but not quite as gaga over this year's issue.  Still I love this Taveras.  He's got a great signature and the card has a nice on-card autograph.  This is the green version of the card and is serial numbered to just 75 copies.  

Jimmy picked this card up for me this past week.  I pulled a copy of the Hank Aaron card like this and was more than happy to pick up a Wacha card numbered to just 25 copies.  Have you looked at the Wacha card from Allen & Ginter and compared it to the Trevor Rosenthal?  They could be brothers.  

On to my favorite.  I LOVE THESE.....

Topps puts out all kinds of parallels.  Pink, camo, etc, etc, etc.  The best of them all have been the Acetate parallels numbered to just 10 copies.  I have picked up a few Cardinals cards.  Love this card and the set.

Overall, the single cards and items I picked up from Big D's today were all really awesome adds.  I am not sure how I would ever find half of the cards I pick up for my collection if it were not for the owner, Jimmy, keeping his eyes open for all of these cool cards.  If you live around Raleigh-Durham, or are visiting, a trip to Big D's is well worth your time.  If you can't make it into the store, you can also check out the shop on Facebook and Twitter.