Monday Morning Autograph - Mark Mulder

I own a couple of thousand autographs, the majority have never appeared on my blog. Here is a random autograph that I have never posted.

Today: 2000 Bowman Draft and Prospects Autographs Mark Mulder 

Why Do I Own This Card?

We all remember the Cardinals years of Mark Mulder? Hopefully you remember him pitching for the early 2000s Moneyball A's teams. He was traded to the Cardinals in December of 2004 for pitching prospect Dan Haren, catcher Daric Barton, and relief pitcher Kiko Calero. Mulder pitched decently in 2005, but then ran into shoulder problems which limited him to just 23 games in 2006, 2007, and 2008. It was a sad ending to an otherwise really good career. If you don't remember him on the Cardinals, do not go refresh your memory. It's not pretty, nor happy.  

The biggest highlight from his time with the Cardinals was hitting a home run on the first Opening Day at Busch Stadium III while also collecting a win against the Brewers.  

When Did I Get This card?  

I own several Mark Mulder autographs, all of them were bought post 2005 when the prices of his card tanked. 

Haiku About Mark Mulder 

Moneyball, pitcher 

Shoulder injuries, Big Trade 

Oh! What Could Have Been

Back of The Card 

Bowman cards from this era always have nice write-ups on the card backs, and this one is no different. They give mention to his college career, time with USA Baseball playing in the Pan Am Games, and his quick ascension through the Minors and into the A's starting rotation.  In all, Mulder only pitched 24 games, all in Triple A, before the A's made him a starter in the middle of the 2000 season.   

Let's All Flip Out

Things happen to players that makes us want to run away.  Sometime in the spring of 2005 I went all in on Mark Mulder cards.  The Cardinals had just been to the World Series and upgraded their starting rotation by trading for one of the A's big three pitchers.  As a Cardinals fan I loved the move.  The team had a very good starting rotation in 2004, I figured Mulder was going to be a big winner with the Cardinals.

I started hitting up the local card shops around St. Louis looking for cool Mulder cards and found plenty of great options.  Plenty of other Cardinals collectors did the same thing.  His cards were pretty reasonable and Mulder had done a fair amount of signing while he was with the A's.  One of the first Mulder cards I picked up was a copy of his 2003 Donruss Signature Series Autograph.

The 2005 season came and went.  The Cardinals reached the NLCS and lost to the Astros.  Mulder did not have his best season, but still won 16 games.  Chris Carpenter had a career year and won the Cy Young, so really being the second starter in the rotation seemed decent.  Then 2006 happened and Mulder's shoulder basically fell off.  

Collectors flipped out and there were tons of cheap Mulder cards everywhere.  I was happy to take some cheap cards off other people's hands and loaded up on his cards.  My favorite cheap Mulder card was a copy of his 1999 Topps Traded autograph.....

The way I saw the whole Mulder injury at the time was that he was going to miss a year, come back, and generally be his former self.  Not what really happened since Mulder's career was basically sunk after 2006.  He pitched a few games in 2007 and 2008, tried a comeback with the Angels a few years back, but basically he was done.  I probably should have known a little bit better, although I still love the Topps Traded autograph.  

Since the days of collecting Mark Mulder cards I have developed a system of sorts for collecting cards of players who are injured.  There is inevitably either some level of panic with a drastic sell off, or just a slow steady decline.  Either way, the price of the players cards are going to go down.  So, here it is.  Shoulders are bad and we do not touch them.  I could see good reason to flip out.  

until the price of their cards levels off.  Scott Rolen had a bum shoulder after he was run over by Hee-Seop Choi in 2005.  He missed time, his power numbers dropped, and he ended up on the Blue Jays and Reds.  For awhile I just avoided his cards, but they are pretty consistent now and much more affordable than when he was with the Cardinals.  

Then there are elbow injuries.  Everyone is always bummed out when a pitcher on their team has Tommy John surgery.  People can flip out about these injuries, but should they?  I remember back in 2011 when the Cardinals lost Adam Wainwright to an elbow injury.  Sure the Cardinals won the World Series that year, but they lost Adam Wainwright right?  So many affordable Wainwright cards......

and then he came back and won 53 games in 2012, 2013, and 2014.  No, Wainwright did not win a Cy Young Award, but everything after the elbow injury worked out pretty well.  Until that whole Achilles Tendon thing, but I haven't really thought that one out yet.  Not a real common occurrence in baseball.  Maybe a reason to flip out, the Achilles thing, not the elbow.  

Currently there is a bit of a meltdown amongst Cardinals fans about Alex Reyes.  I am sad he's out for the season too, but it's an elbow injury.  I am feeling alright about his future still and am still out trying to find his cards.  No need to flip out.    

I just picked up a really nice looking Bowman's Best autograph of the hard throwing pitcher just a few days back......

His card prices aren't sinking like a boulder in a lake, but it sure does seem like a lot of people have really lost interest in this guy.  I am still happy collecting cards of Alex Reyes and I am pretty sure that he's going to be a good pitcher.  Yes, there are pitchers who do not make it back from elbow injuries, there is always that chance, but in that case I can look back at Alex Reyes and think about would could have been....  

Bargain Archives

I have been slowly working on assembling a few Topps Archives Cardinals autographs from this past season.  I posted a copy of my Andres Galarraga Archives card a few weeks back featuring the Big Cat with the Birds on the Bat.  As I pointed out at the time, the Cardinals players that were included in this year's Topps one per autograph box (one card per box too) were really known for playing elsewhere.

Maybe you do remember some of these players as Cardinals, so I can at least safely say that their best days were spent elsewhere.  Probably a safer statement.  My latest Cardinals Archives autograph fits that description well.  Here is the card.....

Sorry the scan is a little fuzzy.  My scanner seems to not like these cases.....

Mulder is best remembered for his time with the Oakland A's, but was traded to the Cardinals before the 2005 season.  He helped the team reach the playoffs that year before falling to the Astros in the National League Championship Series.  He started out as the ace of the Cardinals rotation in 2006 even hit the first home run at the current Busch Stadium....

At some point Mulder's shoulder pretty much fell off and he was not really ever heard from again.  He did get a ring for being on the Cardinals roster that year.  The pitching challenged team also ended up adding spare part Jeff Weaver from the Angels to deal with injuries to players like Mulder.  

Not that I am ever happy to see a player get injured, but that whole Jeff Weaver rental worked out pretty well as I recall....

Needless to say the Mulder Cardinals year's were not his best, but he was still apart of a World Series winner, so it's nice to add a copy of a Cardinals autograph to the collection.  As an added bonus, the person selling this card had a few other Archives autographs on the cheap.  

Here are my other three cards.....

Damon on the Rays is kind of cool.  As a Durham Bulls guy I kind of have become a pretty big Rays fan.  Similar to Mulder, Johnny's best days were spent elsewhere, but it's not like he was terrible during his time in Tampa.  I am pretty sure that his Rays cards in Archives are his only certified autographs in that uniform.  Cheap card, can't pass it up.  

The next two are cool 80s players....

I remember Baines as a White Sox, A's player, and with the Rangers.  He and Willie McGee, briefly, were also my favorite players on the 1990s A's teams.  Truth be told, at the time, I was not really a huge fan of McGwire and Canseco.  Especially Canseco.  Annoyed the hell out of me in Middle School.  Baines was cool though.  

Tony was in the humongous Fred McGriff, Roberto Alomar, Joe Carter trade, plus he was on the Blue Jays when I was a kid.  The Blue Jays were always a cool team in my book.  I liked the unis and a bunch of the players on that team.  Tony kind of bounced around for awhile, again always liked him.  I am pretty sure he has some other autographs out there besides this one.  This card was just kind of there....

#MyCardMonday

I love following along with the offseason dealings in Major League Baseball.  It's always fun to see where everyone ends up signing, who's traded, and what your team looks like heading into the next season.  As a Cardinals fan, there have not been many disappointing off seasons over the past decade.  I mean there was that one year that they signed Kip Wells and Adam Kennedy, but they generally seem to do well with trades and signings.

One of the first things I do when the Cardinals add a new player is to run out and find their cards.  Sometimes I am happy with just adding a token autograph, but there are other times I feel obligated to go beyond just find a few cards.

Mark McGwire.  I was all in from day one.

Jim Edmonds.  Token autograph to start, all in by the middle of his first year.

Scott Rolen.  All in right away.

Matt Holliday.  All in right away.

Those four players seemed to work out well for the Cardinals on the field and were fun for me as a baseball card collector.  Still, there were a few other players who did not work out as well beyond the aforementioned Kip Wells, his friends call him "Kipper", and Adam Kennedy.  There was also this guy....

I loved the idea of the Cardinals trading for Mark Mulder.  The tall left hander was a great pitcher for the A's and seemed to be just the thing to put the team over the top after losing in the World Series to the Red Sox.  Within months of the trade I had all sorts of Mulder cards.  He has a ton of autographs, but my collection started with this 2003 Donruss Signature which I actually pulled out of a pack of cards when the product was released a few years prior.

Mulder has been a pretty generous signer over the years and I had a lot of fun picking up his autographs along with other cool looking base cards and inserts.  Really fun player to collect, but unfortunately a shoulder injury wrecked his career.  Every collector has some player, or set, in their collection that they totally missed on.  Mine was Mark Mulder, but I do not regret it for a minute.  Find new players to collect is one of the best parts of the hobby.  Even when they do not pan out.

Who was your favorite collection flame out?  

Friends Don't Let Friends Airbrush

Two weeks ago Topps released its third and final installment of its base product for the year.  The Update set included the usual assortment or rookies and traded players from the baseball season, but also included one curious baseball card of Brian Fuentes.

2012 Topps Update Brian Fuentes 

Any guesses as to what is wrong with this picture?  It would appear that Topps placed Fuentes in a Cardinals uniform wearing the uniform number 57.  The 57 jersey number has not been worn by a Cardinals player since June 22, 2002 when the late Darryl Kile died in his hotel room in Chicago.  Buy a Tony LaRussa book and you can read about the whole thing.  Now, the number is not on the left-field wall where all the retired numbers of the Cardinals are recognized.  It's not even listed on the website.  However, there is a plaque in the Cardinals bullpen and more curiously if you try to buy a customized 57 jersey from the Cardinals or MLB the website will turn you down.  

Obviously some people were a little steamed that this card was issued and Topps acted about two or three weeks too late and issued a statement:

"We do our best to include all traded players and call ups in product, in effort to do this sometimes requires us to photoshop and made decisions upfront to get done. It appears we made mistakes on this card in effort to include. We apologize, Thank you."

So, in other words the quality and historical accuracy of the product means very little to Topps these days.  It's more important to get those cards in the packs and get them into the card shops and Target as quickly as possible.  A discussion ensued one morning on Twitter with a fellow Blogger and a highly respected collector when an employee of said card company wondered into my end of the conversation when I asserted that Topps would probably not make these types of errors with Yankees players.  Struck a nerve indeed.

The direct message read "This is about getting a product out by a deadline and it can't always be perfect.  Just look at Mark Mulder.  We messed up that airbrush and only some people got upset"

I knew of no such error on an airbrushed Mulder card, so I had to go look for myself.  Now, to the calendars credit the Cardinals and A's surprised everyone that offseason with the trade on December 18th, 2004.  The first series of Topps was released a month before the trade and prevent Topps from doing their usual airbrush butchering of a card.

2005 Topps Mark Mulder Series 1

Now, Topps clearly had time to issue a butchered version of Mulder in series 2 which released in April of that year, or heaven forbid got a current picture from spring training.  Luckily, they left Mulder out of series 2 and issued a picture of him during spring training in their Update set in late October.

2005 Topps Update Mark Mulder

That covers the base sets.  However, it doesn't cover some of the other releases from that year.  For example, this quality piece of air brushing.  

Clearly airburshed.  Note his cleats have somehow turned into low top Moon Boots.  You can also make out that Mulder is wearing the number 20, which is another retired number in St. Louis.  That number has not been worn by a Cardinals September 30, 1979 when Lou Brock retired from the sport. Curiously, Topps is not the only guilty company.  Donruss also placed Mulder in a Lou Brock uniform for at least two of their card releases in 2005.  They do have a better airbrush artist then Topps though.  

2005 Donruss Team Heroes Mark Mulder

2005 Donruss Classics Mark Mulder 

Now, for all the history talk that Topps spews out in their press releases and sets its funny how they seem to not respect it very much when it actually comes down to the cardboard.  This is one team and two different instances, but Topps should take note that there are better ways to handle players changing teams other than airbrushing something randomly at the last minute.  Let's take a look at how Upper Deck and Fleer handled that same trade.  Fleer first.

Now, at the beginning of 2005 Fleer was actually going through bankruptcy.  They had one final release to make in April which was their Fleer Platinum release.  They issued a great card of Mulder in his A's uniform in the follow through of his throwing motion.  Note the card places him on the Cardinals in the bottom right hand corner.  Overall, the card has a clean look with a nice picture.  

2005 Fleer Platinum Mark Mulder

Seems like a pretty sensible way to handle the Mulder trade.  How about Upper Deck?  They did release several Mulder cards that year.  Their first two card releases of 2005 were the Upper Deck ESPN and Upper Deck Artifacts sets.  Just like Fleer, Upper Deck steered clear of airbrushing Mulder in either set.  Instead, they used a picture of Mulder wearing an A's jersey and simply used the Cardinals markings and logos on the cards.  

2005 Upper Deck Artifacts Mark Mulder

2005 Upper Deck ESPN Mark Mulder

Mulder was not included in the early Upper Deck base sets as a Cardinals, but they did include him in their series 2 release during the summer.  Note this card features Mulder in an actual Cardinals uniform and not airbrushed.  

2005 Upper Deck Mark Mulder

So, what can we take away from all of this?  Sure, Topps wants to include players that have changed uniforms in their products and give collectors a chance to see all of the players from their teams in their new uniforms.  However, with the number of card releases that occur every year I don't see why this cannot be done without airbrushing and make absurd inaccurate cards.  Do I want a Brian Fuentes Cardinals card?  Sure, but if it means I have to wait until spring to see the uniform displayed the right way I can live with it.  Topps also should realize that they are the only card company that can display logos and uniforms on their cards.  Do it the right way.