Friday 5: Five(ish) Cards I Love In 2015 Topps Update

I opened a little bit of Topps Update last weekend and walked away with an obscene number of throwbacks.  There were other cards in the boxes outside of the all of those cool 60s and 70s Topps cards.  For this week's Friday Five I am going to work a little bit with the base set cards from the Update set.  I tried to go through and pick out just the five coolest cards from the set, but that proved a fairly tough task.  So, instead I am going with five cool things I found in my two boxes of Update using five(ish) cards.


5. Former Durham Bulls in the Majors 
The ultimate goal of a minor league team is to graduate players to the Major Leagues.  Even if they do not end up playing for the Rays in the long term, it is still cool to watch a baseball game and see somebody in there from the Bulls.  This year's Topps Update set offered several Durham Bulls, but since this post is using five(ish) cards I am going to limit this section of my blog post to exactly five cards.

First, there are the normal Minor League types who get called up to the Majors and make the team.  Mahtook was a high draft pick by the Rays out of LSU and Andriese was in the Brad Boxberger/Logan Forsythe trade with the Padres.  Both players had been with the Bulls before this season and had proven their worth to the Rays.  

Then there are a few former Durham Bulls who are good stories.  Joey Butler was a career Minor Leaguer who started the year out in Durham, but spent the majority of the summer with the Rays playing well in his first extended stay in the Majors.  Sometimes players like Butler can fly under the radar in the Update sets, great to see Topps get him a card.

Stephen Vogt has an All-Star card in the set.  He was kind of a forgotten player with the Rays and ended up being more or less dumped in a conditional trade to the A's.  Awesome to see him get a little recognition for his good play this year with a trip to the All-Star game.

and then there is this card.  Yes, Travis Shaw is a nice looking prospect for the Red Sox, but Allan Dykstra is also on the card.  Last summer he won the Triple A All-Star Game home run derby in Durham.  He signed a minor league deal with the Rays, spent time in the Majors during April, but was released in the middle of the summer.  He still has the championship belt.....

4.  Former Cardinals on the All-Star Team 

It was great to see Albert Pujols regain some of his power this summer, although his slash line was down across the board, and make the American League All-Star team.  Shelby Miller was a really good story this year.  Sure, his win-loss record was something terrible, but he still pitched well for the Braves and seems to be an important part of the team's future.  

3.  Current Cardinals All-Stars 

I really liked these cards in the Update set.  Not every team has a card like this, but I liked the idea of having a team like card show the All-Star Game representatives.  Not sure why they did not just make this a straight team card instead of assigning it to a player, this is a Trevor Rosenthal card, but I still like it.  These guys all got booed......

2.  Jason Heyward on the Cardinals 

I'm not sure if the Cardinals are going to sign Heyward.  I have enjoyed watching him play this year, but this card could be just about the last wearing a Cardinals uniform, or this could be the start of a long run of cards with him in Cardinal red.  

1.  Rookie Cards 

The best part of buying Update sets is the rookie cards.  I liked the Joey Gallo and Kris Bryant cards the best.  I swear that's Joey Gallo in all of that Gatorade.  Pretty cool card.  The Bryant card is a little simpler, but it's always nice to see a card with Wrigley Field in the background.  

 

Collecting the Durham Bulls: Joey Butler

Opening Day is getting close, so I am going to start in on the players who are going to end up starting their summers in Durham playing for the Bulls.  There are some great new players on the roster, so I have been excited about going through my boxes and pulling out cards that are already in my collection and searching Ebay and COMC for the ones that I am missing from my collection.  First up is outfielder Joey Butler.

Butler has appeared in Major League games during both the 2013 and 2014 seasons for the Rangers and Cardinals.  Although the experience amounted to just 14 games and 21 plate appearances, both promotions were well earned through good offensive numbers in Triple A.  The 29 year old, former University of New Orleans player, has posted a .304/.397/.472 line.  Butler has a produced a 20 home run season, stolen 15 bases in a minor league season, and had a 30 double season too.

In some regards his stat lines remind me a little bit of a guy like Justin Ruggiano.  It seems like Joey Butler can do a little bit of everything, but has never put every thing together in one season, and like Ruggiano, been stuck at Triple A behind good Major League depth.

Butler is going to start the season with the Bulls, but could be up quickly if there is an injury or if a young player, like Steven Souza, were to falter.  In my opinion, Butler should be similar to some of the older minor league guys who have rolled through Durham over the years like Chris Richard or Jerry Sands.

The card selection on Joey Butler is limited.  He was a fifteenth round draft pick and never considered a big enough prospect to pick up a card appearance in Bowman, but there are still two good solid cards of the outfielder out there for fans to grab.....

My top choice of Butler cards is from the 2011 Topps Pro Debut set.  This Double A All-Stars card is an insert, but still not too hard of a find, nor expensive.  There are currently none of these on COMC, but a few have sold on EBay with most hanging out below a dollar.  If you are looking for something from a little bit better set Butler did appear in a Topps Heritage set in 2014....

The card is split with Jim Adduci, but adding cards from Topps Heritage is always a good thing for your baseball card collection.  Butler does not have any certified autographs, but there are a good amount of in person autographs listed/sold on Ebay.

Overall, I am looking forward to seeing Butler playing in Durham.  I am not sure that he will be with the team the whole year, but he should be fun to watch during the first few weeks of the season.  Especially at the plate where he could provide some pop along with a few other veteran bats the Bulls will start out with on their roster.