A Heard of Bulls, A College of Cardinals, And Carter Kieboom

I picked up a bunch of 2020 Topps cards a few weeks back on Twitter.  I do not buy or trade a ton of cards there, but I saw a good deal on a Mike Brosseau Stadium Club autograph and ended up with a few other good cards in the process.  

A Heard of Bulls.  

Here is the Brosseau autograph.  

I'm not sure what to think of this year's Stadium Club.  I usually like this product, but I also usually buy a few packs at some point during the year.  I am convinced that there are zero packs of baseball cards at retail stores in all of the Raleigh area.  For the moment, I have a Mike Brosseau autograph.  That's a good start.  

I am a big fan of combined shipping, so I always ask about Rays who were on the Durham Bulls and Cardinals when I buy an inexpensive card.  Here are my other former Bulls players:  

I already have one of the Lowe autographs, but these are really great cards.  I couldn't pass one of these up for a low price.  Lowe is having a great season too.  

I also received a pair of Brendan McKay 1985 Topps cards.  He's out for the season with an arm injury, but I am hoping that he can make it back at some point in 2021.  McKay is a two way player, not sure that will last long, but it is fun for the moment.  

Last former Durham Bulls card....

Meadows is a pretty good young player.  He's having a bad year, but I am still hopeful.  I really like these sepia parallels.  I know they are not serial numbered or tough pulls, but they always are pretty eye appealing to me.  

A College of Cardinals 

All three of these cards are pretty simple, but I like the looks of each of them.  I got two sepia cards and a base of Miles Mikolas.  I don't really collect these three players, but they might some of the few 2020 Cardinals cards in my collection.  

The last card in the group was Carter Kieboom.  Always love a throw-in card.  

There Are Enough Baseball Cards For Everyone

 Have you tried to find baseball cards recently? 

There are not any for sale in retail stores these days.  I am certain they have all been bought in bulk and are all currently being resold on Facebook and Twitter for twice the price.  I am not going to provide an examples, or call out anyone's social media posts.  They are plentiful if you want to find them.  

All this craziness over a White Sox prospect/rookie who has been in baseball card products the last two years.  As a baseball card collector who does not do "prospecting", but watches a lot of Minor League baseball, you should buy cards of prospects who the Cardinals are too cheap to sign.  Like Luis Robert.  

Sure bet they are at least a solid Major League player.  

Here's another Luis Robert gem from my collection.  

    

My teaching assignment for the coming school year has changed a few times over the past few weeks, a little stressful, and slightly time consuming.  I have picked up a few new cards over the past two weeks, but have not had the opportunity to sit down and write anything about them.  While people can buy out all the packs of 2020 Topps cards at Target, there are still plenty of baseball cards out there in other places.  There are enough baseball cards for everyone.

My first pair of cards are from the 2020 Topps Heritage set, both autographs that I found on the cheap.  

First up is A's pitcher A.J. Puk.  I saw him play for US College National team while he was in college at Florida.  I saw him pitch a combined no-hitter, so I am collecting his card regardless of how well he pitches in the Majors.  For what it is worth, he off to a good start during the first few weeks of the 2020 season.  The A's are using him as a reliever, but he's done well in that role.  I am probably biased to some degree, but he is going to be a really good pitcher.  Hopefully he gets back into the rotation.  

Next.  

Everyone's favorite Cardinals shortstop who strikes out way too often.  I am not a huge Dejong collector, but if the cards are there, cheap, and I can use combined shipping then sure, I will buy them.  I do not own many DeJong autographs.  Maybe only two or three, which is a low number for a modern Cardinals player with a high number of certified autographs.  I think this might be the nicest one in my collection.  Love the 1971 Topps design.  

I saved the best cards for last in this post.  I was really excited to add these cards to my collection.  I have been working on the 1970 Kellogg's passive-aggressively for the past three or four years.  They are more expensive than the other Kellogg's sets, but they are a personal favorite.  So, I picked up three cards.  Two of these are new, and another is an upgrade over another copy I own.  

This Gibson card is my upgrade. 

This is a pretty clean copy.  The bottom border is a little discolored, the scan did not pick it up, but that is much better than having a giant crack in the middle of the card.  

The last two Kellogg's cards are former Durham Bulls.  

Again, this is a passive aggressive attempt to collect the 1970 Kellogg's set.  If I end up with the whole set at some point, these cards will fit into the set.  If I never quite get there, then they are nice additions to my collection of former Durham Bulls cards.  Morgan played for the Bulls in 1963.  This card has a really clean surface, but again the border has some discoloration.  You can see it a little better on the right side of the card.  It's hard for a white border to stay white for 50 years.  

Last card. Lolich was on the Bulls in 1959 and 1960.  Really unrated pitcher from the 1960s and 1970s.  Much more deserving Hall of Fame candidate then Jack Morris, right down to the Game 7 pitching heroics in a World Series.  Of the three Kellogg's cards that I have posted here, this is by far the cleanest of the group. 

A Few From 2019

The first series of 2019 Topps released this week, so I ventured out to Target on Wednesday to pick up a few packs.  Retail packs are not the best way to put together a set, but it's a good way to get a look at the new cards.  Since I am limiting the number new sets that assemble this year, and limiting the amount of time and money spent on them, these few packs were more fun than an actual attempt to make a set. 

My first card of 2019..... 

was Ronald Acuna of the Braves.  Conveniently, if I were trying to put together a set out of retail packs, Acuna is card number 1 in the set this year. 

I think it is a pretty solid design this year.  I like that Topps has gone back to using a border on their base set, ask me at the end of the year what I think about the design.  Last year, I felt I made fun of the cards at the beginning of the year for having that AquaFresh looking think on the front of the cards, but they grew on me as the year went along.  

My first Cardinals card was Paul DeJong.  

Nice action shot of the Cardinals shortstop.  There are several different Cardinals cards in Series 1.  Not sure which of the cards I like the best.  I feel like I am leaning towards the Molina card, which has a nice action shot of him throwing the ball.  

Nothing better than a card of a catcher wearing their gear.  

First former Durham Bulls card of the year belongs to Cubs utility player Ben Zobrist.  I bought several packs of cards and it took me several packs to finally run into one of their players.  Considering they are the Triple A team of the Rays, and most of their players went through there on the way to the Majors, I was a little surprised it took so long to find one....

While we are on Zobrist, I can point out one other design element that I like on this year's Topps cards.  Last year, maybe 2017 too, they had chopped down the stat line to a five or six year window.  It felt like the old Donruss cards.  It's fine on younger players, even if I am missing a year or two of stats when I flip over the card.  However, with older players like Zobrist.....

It's nice to be able to flip the card over and look at all the different years that he has played.  Look, he played with the Rays back when they were the Devil Rays.  Seems like a long time ago.  Probably because it was a long time ago.  

Favorite Durham Bulls card.  

That's a pretty run of the mill picture of Blake Snell, but I love seeing him on League Leaders cards.  He was such a great pitcher while he was in Durham, which does not always guarantee that the players are successful in the Majors, but he was in a different world at times.  So much better than that level of competition.   Just completely dominate.  Nice to see Snell pitch well enough to win the Cy Young last year. 

Final card. 

Just as I loved the 1983 styled insert cards last year, I also love this year's 1984s.  I have a soft spot for the card designs of my childhood.  I could tell you this is one of my favorites, but that's generally true of most of the card designs from the 1980s and early 1990s.  

They even duplicate the backs.....

Not sure if this is going to be something I pursue this year, or not.  Last year, I put together the first series of these cards, then stuck to the Durham Bulls and Cardinals players in the later releases.  Leaning towards just buying singles again this year. 

How many wins would Greinke have if he had not played on the Royals for seven years? 

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.....

A Bowman Cardinal With A Yankee. Twice.

I kind of skipped over the whole Bowman thing this year which is really unusual for me since I really like following along with the Minor Leagues.  I ended up not completely skipping the set outright, I did end up with a copy of the set, I just didn't bust open any packs to put together.  Just helped out by the generosity of a case breaker.  It's a little late to the party, but I have put together a few autographs from Bowman over the past few weeks.

My first Bowman autograph is a Cardinals prospect.  I bought the card and the seller threw in a Yankees autograph really cheap, so I couldn't pass it up....

This Piscotty autograph was one of the first cards I wanted to find out of Bowman.  I have been looking for a new Cardinals player to collect and have enjoyed picking up some Piscotty cards the last few months.  The right fielder is also having a great season with a .299/.374/.497 slash line, 13 home runs, 23 doubles, and 53 RBIs.  Looks a lot better than whatever Jason Heyward is batting at the moment.

My cheap Yankees autograph.....

Luis Severino was a really highly touted prospect back in 2015, but has not really done well in the Majors.  This year he is winless and has an ERA of 7.46.  At the same time he has pitched really well for Scranton in the International League.  I guess if he does not pan out this can go in my good Minor Leaguers box, but hopefully he can put it together for the Yankees.

So, my next two Bowman cards are similar to the first two autographs: One Cardinals autograph that I wanted and a Yankees card that was sort of put into the trade.  Cardinals autograph first:

Little bit of a gamble here, but DeJong has been one of the Cardinals better power prospects.  The team is not really great at developing power hitters, but this former Illinois State star might break the mold.  Last year DeJong hit 9 home runs in just 66 games in Rookie and A Ball.  This year he's on the Cardinals Double A affiliate in Springfield, Missouri where he has 17 home runs, 17 doubles, and 59 doubles.  Sounds good until you look at the 104 strikeouts and .314 OBP.  The Cardinals already have Randal Grichuk.....

My Yankees more or less throw in.....

Feel like Refsnyder is somewhat similar to Severino in some regards.  He's been good in the Minors, played better in the Majors than Severino, but not sure if the Yankees are going to give him much of a chance with Starlin Castro playing second.  I keep waiting for him to be traded......either of them.