Here One Minute......

I have been following Taylor Motter's career since he first appeared with the Durham Bulls nearly a decade ago. This was my first card of Motter on the Durham Bulls.......

Last year, Motter played for my Cardinals and even though the quantity of Cardinals cards was limited, I still collected them.  In this case, limited means one Topps Heritage card with one parallel.  

I still keep my eye out for new Motter cards. I recently found a printing plate from his 2016 Topps Update card, which is his rookie card. The plate was only a few dollars on Ebay.....

and the back of the card.......

Seems like a great addition to the Taylor Motter collection, if only the printing plate had been here for longer than a minute....... 

An update post coming soon.......

Pujols Parade - 2022 Topps Update

We are nearly at the end of the 2022 baseball season and there have been very few new Albert Pujols cards in a Cardinals uniform outside of a bunch of Topps Now issues. I know he signed late in Spring Training, but it feels like there have been far more Dodgers cards of Pujols made than Cardinals cards.  Granted, I have not done much with the Topps Now cards, I do appreciate that they were made, and will probably buy a bunch of them at some point down the line.  

In the meantime, I will hope that Topps catches up with some of their late in the year product releases.  

Topps Update has several Pujols cards in a Cardinals uniform and I am going to pick his base card for my once-a-blue-moon-when-I-blog Pujols post.  

This year's Topps design is decent. I don't love that you can barely read the player position in the lower right corner of the card, but the rest of the design elements are decent enough. I love the photo on the front of this card with Albert tipping his hat to the crowd. After looking around on the internet for a few minutes, I am almost certain that this photograph was taken at Busch Stadium during the Cardinals Home Opener.  

Well done, Topps.  

Back of the card.  

No write-up or blurb needed, just two decades worth of numbers.  

Great card.

I'm Just Happy To Be Here

Six years ago Merrill Kelly was a fringe prospect pitching for the Durham Bulls.  He played in college, so he was little older by the time he reached Triple A.  Merrill Kelly played for the Bulls during the 2013 and 2014 seasons, and was good enough to make the International League All-Star team his final year in Durham.  I liked watching Merrill Kelly for the two years he was in Durham, even if he never got a chance to play with the Rays.

I posted his team set card from 2014 a few years back.

Merrill Kelly would eventually end up in Korea, where he would pitch for the SK Wyverns.  They have baseball cards. I think this might one of the only Korean cards in my collection.

Merrill Kelly ended up back in the US this past season with the Diamondbacks.  He was mostly an average pitcher this year in Arizona, but still had some good moments during the season.   

I'm just happy that there are Merrill Kelly cards.  

Topps had the great idea to make a bunch of Merrill Kelly baseball cards.  He also signed a ton of autographs for them.  I waited awhile, but recently had the chance to buy a bunch of Merrill Kelly autographs.  All totaled, it cost right around $10 for three cards.  I also pulled one out of a pack of cards a student got my as a holiday gift.  

Here are my four Merrill Kelly autographs in countdown form:

4. Topps Chrome Update

Aren't all the Chrome autographs normally on card?  The sticker looks a little bit out of place on this card.  Get rid of the sticker, make it an on-card autograph and it might be at the top of the list.  It also looks like it was not Merrill's best day signing autographs.  Again, I really wish that this autograph was on-card, I would rate it much higher.  

3. Topps Tek 

I like Topps Tek.  It's affordable and the autographs are all on-card.  Topps has simplified the pattern aspects on these cards, so they all look the same.  I also like that Topps has a faded area around the bottom for the signer.  Always makes for a nice card.  Still, there are better cards of Merrill Kelly out there.  

2. Topps Gallery 

Topps Gallery is a sticker autograph, and I do not even care.  It's well blended, and the art on this card more than makes up for the sticker autograph.  Plus, it was a good signing day for Merrill Kelly when he was autographing these cards.  This is the lone autograph on this list that I did not buy off of Ebay.  My students at school all know that I enjoy a few baseball cards, sometimes they give me packs.  This came out of a Gallery blaster.  

1. 2019 Topps Update 1984 Topps Merrill Kelly 

I did not really do much with the 2019 Topps sets.  Any of them.  I did really enjoy these 1984 style inserts and autographs though.  It has long been   Last year, I spent time working on assembling a set of the 1983 cards, plus I found several of the autographs.  This year, I have completely skipped over most of the base set in favor of spending my time and money on the autographs.  It's the end of the year, this is likely the end of my 2019 Topps cards, so it's a nice way to end the year.  

Motter's Magenta Hair Flow

The Rays recently traded one of my favorite former Durham Bulls to the Mariners.  It always makes me sad to see players leave and go elsewhere, but at the same time this move will likely result in Motter getting some more consistent playing time.  As a baseball fan in Durham, it has been fun to watch Motter play here the last few years.  

Taylor plays all over the field with a high level of effort and energy.  I enjoyed getting to see him get in some time with the Rays this year and was more disappointed when they sent him back down to Triple A without giving him much of a chance to stick.  The hitting hadn't come around yet at the Major League level, but a lot of other Taylor Motter goodness happened for the Rays with him in the game....

not to say that he did nothing on offense.  He is definitely a capable hitter.  This was one of my favorite moments from his time in the Majors....

hitting a home run against the Marlins which were his favorite team growing up.  Really cool.  

Even though he has moved on to the West Coast I am still excited to collect more cards of this former Durham Bulls favorite.  My most recent card, his Topps Update Magenta Printing Plate, is something I picked up last week.  I have been on the lookout for some non-base Motter cards, but with no relics or autographs, I have been focused on finding some different parallel cards.  The plate is obviously the rarest one I have, but there are a few other low numbered cards out there that I want....

I Was Hopeful For An Aledmys and.....

Card collectors sometimes like to look over the checklists of products before they come out, see what is in the set, and sometimes gleefully hope that they pull something cool they see there from a favorite player or team.  Really, how often does that happen?

I have been on the lookout for an autograph of Cardinals rookie shortstop Aledmys Diaz and had sort of formulated this plan in my mind to skip over the Topps Update product in hopes of putting the time, effort, and money into tracking down that elusive Aledmys autograph.  Welp.

I found myself walking in the door of my local card shop, The Trading Card Co-Op, and found myself standing face to face with Topps Update.  I'd like to think about what happened next as a brief moment of weakness.   Like driving through St. Louis and not stopping for Imos.....

I was trapped.  Jimmy, one of the store owners, insisted that he picked out the Aledmys Diaz card in the box.

So, before we get to the good stuff, here are some of my "hot" takes on the Topps Update set.  Let's start with a few base cards.  I will narrow the few hundred base cards down to my favorite two cards, one from each of my two primary rooting interests....

My favorite Cardinals card in the base set belongs to "rookie" pitcher Seung-Hwan Oh.  He actually spent years and years playing in both Korea and Japan before landing with the Cardinals last off season.  While Aledmys Diaz got most of the rookie spot with the Cardinals, Oh had quite the rookie season too.  I have picked up a few of his cards here later in the 2016 baseball card calendar.  Plus, I like the action shot on this card.  

My favorite Durham Bulls related card belongs to, sigh, former Rays infielder Taylor Motter.  He was actually just traded to the Mariners this week.  I am not even sure what the Rays got back in return, I have brought myself to even look up the players.  More on Motter later this week.  Cool to see a Topps base card of him with the cool long hair.  

On to other things......

My favorite insert set in Topps Update is the Fire cards.  Topps sold these last year as an online product, I picked up a Molina card off of Ebay.  Not sure I every wrote the card up on this space, but it's a pretty cool card.  The biggest difference being that the online cards were metal, these are cardboard.  Still, they look cool.  

On to the hit cards.

My two "relic" cards......

Kind of the typical Topps box.  The All-Star relics have long been a staple of the Update sets.  Jay Bruce is meh, but I pick the Padres colored uniform swatches.  The Yaz "relic" or manu card is okay.  I used to like these cards, but I am getting a little bit tired of coins and the whatnot.  The picture is cool, the card background is cool, the jumbo coin?  I could take it or leave it.  

Last card.  I bet you might have inferred from the title.....

I could not believe it when I pulled this card.  I sat and stared at for a few minutes.  When do you ever pull a card from a checklist, especially a hit card, when you buy a box?  I can hardly think of a time that it has happened to me, but I am glad this came out of one of my packs.  I am still thinking of adding another Aledmys autograph, I have my eye on one, but maybe I will be a little bit more patient with the next one....

4 Innings In April

I am going to go for a player who is a little bit off the beaten path tonight, but one I was excited to see finally end up in a baseball card set.  Well, at least one that was not in a team issued set sold in the team store at a Minor League Ballpark.  Not really a player of note, in fact, you probably know his wife Sara Walsh from ESPN better than him.

If you don't know Sara Walsh.....

she is on an abundance of different ESPN shows, but I do not watch any of them.  I am not really into writing about ESPN anchors though unless they have a baseball card.  Sara Walsh has no baseball cards.  

I first ran into Matt Buschmann as a member of the Durham Bulls during the 2013 season.  Truth be told, he actually appeared in 2 games during the 2012 season for the team, but I apparently missed them.  At the time Buschmann was a 29 year old who had spent seven years, at that point, shuffling around the minors for the Padres and Rays.  If you spend enough time in Triple A ballparks you can find quite a few players who have similar stories as Matt Buschmann.  

Buschmann ended up having a great year for the Bulls during the 2013 season.  In 18 games, 17 starts, he posted an 8-2 record with more than a strikeout per inning and helped Durham reach the Governors Cup finals for the International crown where the team defeated Pawtucket.  Throw in 11 starts made in Double A Montgomery that season and he ended the year with 14 wins, a 2.86 ERA, and 167 strikeouts.  All great numbers for a year in the Minors.  

The past few years Matt Buschmann has bounced around the Minors with stops in the Reds and A's systems, a brief return to Durham for a few starts in 2015, before landing as a minor league free agent with the Diamondbacks.  Surprisingly, after ten years in the Minors the Diamondbacks brought Matt Buschmann up for the start of the season.  

He pitched in three games in April.  In a total of 4 innings he did not figure in any decisions.  He did get a write up ESPN.  I like seeing the former Bulls players I watch locally make it the Majors, and I like finding their cards, but I did not give much thought to a Matt Buschmann card until there was a Matt Buschmann card in my hand.  

I was surprised.  

I have spent time on my little blog in the past harping on Topps for putting players in sets months after they are released or sent back down to the Minors.  In this case I feel like I have found an exception to something that normally is a little irritating.  After ten years in the Minors, even though the appearance was brief, it is cool to see Matt Buschmann get a baseball card in a Major League uniform.  

Not the card I was expecting to find in my packs of Heritage High Numbers this year, but I think it sets a cool precedent for card companies to include players with similar career paths.  I am sure that it wouldn't add too many cards onto the existing sets and I am also pretty sure that the cards would be well received.  

In fact, as surprised as I was to find one Buschmann card, I was equally amazed to see him also appear in the Topps Update set.  

No, I did not buy a single copy of Matt Buschmann's Update card.  I opened a box, I haven't posted it yet.  Good things came out of it.  Again, really impressed to see Buschmann get a little bit of love on cardboard after years riding buses around in the Minors.  

I usually do not plug things on my blog, but if you are interested in helping a good cause, please continue reading below.  

My wife and I both work in the same line of work in central North Carolina.  A few years back I worked with a former University of Michigan baseball player.  We were right across the hall from each other and spent a good deal of time talking sports.  Sometime later he switched jobs and ended up working with my wife.  I still run into him from time to time and we still talk sports and the whatnot even if it's via social media.  

Anyway, one of his teammates at the University of Michigan was former Major League pitcher J.J. Putz who appeared for the Mariners, Mets, White Sox, and Diamondbacks.  He has retired from playing baseball, but has taken a job working for the Diamondbacks.  

This week the team's charitable outreach, DBacks Care is holding an event, Driving Out Domestic Violence, in Phoenix to benefit victims of domestic violence.   Specifically the funds for this event will go to Chrysalis which provides shelter and assistance services.  

The event supports a great cause and as collectors we can help contribute in two different ways.  First, there is a great list of items up for bid if you click here.  Doesn't matter what sport you collect or follow, there is something for everyone.  If the auction items are a little out of reach, you can always click on the donate button make a donation to the charity.  

Again, it's a great cause.  Thank you for reading my schpiel.  

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.  

 

The Wizard of Manus

The stream of 2013 Topps Update cards has slowly begun to flow into my mailbox after a few weeks of holding out and resisting.  I knew it was a matter of time before I found a few cards that I liked and I am slowly coming around.  Slowly.  Late last week I checked out the Manupatch products from the Update set and found some pretty slim pickings and a few weird cards.  One of them was an Ozzie Smith.  I bought the card despite it's oddness.  Let's take a look...

2013 Topps Update Record Holder Rings

I guess the concept behind this set of cards was giving Championship Style rings to some of Major League Baseball's record holders.  I guess the concept seems alright on the surface, but I am not sure I really like the style of the cards.  First, Topps has made other manupatch ring cards in the past and they have been a much higher quality than this card.  The piece of "ring" in the middle of the card feels cheap and undersized compared to past issues.

Second, why break from the award theme started in earlier series of 2013 Topps baseball and make-up cheesy rings to give players.  Topps did Silver Sluggers and MVP awards in Series 1 this year and Rookie of the Year Awards in Series 2.  Why not give out Gold Gloves or Fielding Bibles, more MVPs.  Something cooler than this.

It's been a good year for the Manupatches in the 2013 Topps cards, but the Record Holders cards are a little bit of a let down at the end of the year.  I am not going to turn down many Ozzie Smith cards, but this card would be awesome with a giant metal Gold Glove attached in place of the slightly crooked thin cheap ring currently there.

2013 Topps Traded Cards: 3

Do you remember the beginning of Ferris Bueller's Day Off when Cameron is laying in bed and cannot motivate himself to get out of bed?  I have been having this very same feeling during the past few weeks about buying anything from the Topps Update set.  

I want to buy some Topps Update cards.  They're are staple of the card calendar year.  I've eyed the price of boxes, sets, insert sets, autographs, and anything else that might be cool from this year's release.  The variation thing is still just really bothering me, but I am trying to move past it and just buy the set for the sake of completing my run of Topps baseball cards for the thirtieth year in a row.  Not many people can say they've done something thirty straight years, so I am a little sad that this year's set is so disappointing that I am having trouble being motivated to complete a task that should be an automatic.  

I finally picked up a singular Topps Update card last week when I picked up a Bob Tewksbury autograph from Ebay.  In the middle of the week I added a Ruben Sierra (The Village Idiot) autograph and included it in a post yesterday.  I have been fortunate enough to add another cool card from the Topps Update set.  Did you see...I said cool card and Topps Update set in the same sentence.  I am coming around.  

2013 Topps Update All-Star Stitches Yadier Molina Jersey 

You can never go wrong with a Yadier Molina card and finding a jersey relic or autograph card is just icing on the cake.  Molina is not a big signer, but also does not have a ton of relic cards floating around either.  They are usually limited somehow, disappear quickly, and rarely reappear for resale.  I managed to add this card for $5.  Go search the Completed Items on Ebay and you will find that price is a bargain for a Molina jersey.  

The relic piece itself has a cool texture and is obviously a piece of the warm jersey worn by Molina the night before the All-Star game during the Home Run Derby and other festivities.  Since Molina was not a participant, he really just sat around on the side of CitiField wearing this jersey, but I am still cool with that.  Feeling pretty good about my newest card and getting a little bit closer to pulling the trigger on some more 2013 Topps Update cards.  

2013 Topps Update Bob Tewksbury Autograph

The World Series has put a series dent into my blogging this week, but I have spent a little bit of time on the eve of tonight's important game 6 showdown between the Red Sox and Cardinals to catch up with my writing.  A bunch of packages, cards, and topics to sort through for my upcoming posts, I sticking with simple for the first of two for the day.  I wrote a post last week about the insanity that Topps has created in their third installment of the Topps Update set with the over use of variations.  Needless to say, I have been a little bit slow in picking up cards from the set.  However, the Topps Update set is one of those annual sets that always seems to end up in my collection.  I am just being really lazy about picking up my pieces for the set.  You should check out the Brent and Becca store on Ebay.  Great case breakers with good deals on complete sets.  Topps Update done in a few clicks of the mouse button.  What about the inserts and whatnot?

Unfortunately Topps did not put any cool die cut cards into the insert set, the manu-cards are some goofy league leader/career leader cards, which leaves few options for the inserts.  I am sure that I will add some in the coming weeks and will post when I finally get around to it, but I am not busting down any doors to add many things beyond the base set.  Which leads me to a card I was actually happy to add to my collection from the Topps Update set....

2013 Topps Update Bob Tewksbury Autograph 

This is Tewksbury's second Topps autograph of the card calendar year, with the other autograph issue coming out from the Topps Archives set.  This Chasing History insert celebrates the rarely recognized walk per nine innings ratio that Tewksbury held in the 1992 season pitching for the Cardinals.

Tewksbury, or Tewks, pitched for the Cardinals during the Joe Torre era during the early 1990s.  He was easily the best pitcher on the team for several years.  While many Cardinals fans are quick to point out that this part of the team's history was a low point for the franchise, some of the pitching performances out of Tewksbury would have been stellar and more recognizable on better teams.  At first glance, his statistics look rather pedestrian.  His first two seasons with the Birds on the Bat were basically .500 with fewer than 100 strikeouts while starting almost 60 games.  That means that Tewksbury missed few bats and did little to help the team win many of his starts.

However, the 1992 season was one of the greatest exhibits in control pitching during the last 20 years.  Tewksbury raked up 16-5 record during that season with a 2.16 ERA, but more impressive was the fact that he only walked 20 batters in more than 230 innings pitched that season.  Tewksbury's BB/9 ratio that inning came in at 0.773 which puts him amongst the lowest ratios of all times.  He also almost match his 1992 ratio during the 1993 season when his final number came in at 0.842.  Both numbers rank amongst the 100 lowest BB/9 in the history of the game and since World War II only three players have posted a lower number (Cliff Lee in 2010, Carlos Silva 2005, and Brett Saberhagen 1994).

Overall, I really enjoy enjoy seeing cards of cool players like Tewksbury who might have flown under the radar, but had a good following during their career.  Topps did a great job to give him a few cards this year and really cool that they recognized his incredible walk ratio despite the fact that the record has been broken a few times since he set it in 1992.

The Dull Trading Deadline Made Worse By The Royal Baby

The past week leading up to the trade deadline offered the usually assortment of smoke, but there was not any fire when the trade line actually came and went this afternoon.  There was the Jake Peavy trade which saw the White Sox pitcher land with the Red Sox, Avisail Garcia with the White Sox, and Jose Iglesias land with the Tigers.  Bud Norris landed with the Orioles for L.J. Hoes.  Really not much to see.

The slow trade deadline will eventually be felt this fall when Topps releases the third installment of its base set.  While the majority of traded players are featured on airbrushed cards its still always cool to pick up cards of old players on new teams.  I will have to get a Bud Norris on the Orioles, but that might be the crowning glory of the Update set...maybe.  This year I guess that will be even less exciting.

Topps is figuring that a dull trade line might result in a dull Update set too, so how do they solve this problem?  Gimmicks of course.  To boast the sets release later this fall Topps announced an additional card to the Update set to attract a little bit more attention and help generate more sales.  I am slightly disturbed.

Topps has put all kinds of gimmicky cards in their sets of the past years.  Some of the cards, such as the Skip Schumaker rally squirrel card, end up making a pretty good splash.  Others, like the Ryan Dempster/Abe Lincoln card, just turn out lame.  I guess this all started with the Jeter/Mantle/G.W. Bush card in the 2007 Topps set, but the announcement of the Royal Baby card is not sitting well with me.  Is that RC circle in the corner a rookie card stamp?  Lame.  

All excitement has been dampened to the point that I might simply quietly buy the complete set off of Ebay, flip through the box, and then put it away into my card closet.  The royal family does not excite me, nor interest me in the least.  However, I know that there are people who are gaga over anything to do with them, so I am imagining that the update set could have a few crazy moments when it first hits the secondary market.  

You remember when the Skip Schumaker Rally Squirrel card was selling on Ebay for the first two days at $400?  Now the card is $40-50.  I see something crazy like that happening with the royal baby card.  If I land a copy it's going on Ebay immediately.  Cashing out.