Pujols Post - 2002 Upper Deck Vintage

I am going with a checklist this week, because it is one of the few cards that has Albert Pujols and Mark McGwire pictured together as teammates during their active careers. Few may remember the two were teammates on the 2001 Cardinals team. Pujols was a rookie, McGwire was in his final season. Pujols was a joy to watch that summer, McGwire was not anything resembling his usual self.  

Here is the front of the 2002 Upper Deck Vintage card.  

Upper Deck Vintage ran for a few years in the early 2000s. Basically, they ripped off a random Topps design and threw a bunch of modern players on the front of the cards. In this case, the design was bottow from the 1971 Topps set. Love those black borders. Upper Deck Vintage were nice enough cards and I put together a few of these sets.  

The picture on the front of the card is decent. Kind of looks like Pujols is ignoring McGwire, but it's in game and not airbrushed. Upper Deck did not participate in that sort of nonsense. I wish the photo weren't so tightly cropped. It would be nice to see what is happening in the background and who the Cardinals were playing. Is this after a home run?  

If you don't remember what happened with Pujols and McGwire in 2001......

McGwire only played half a season with the Cardinals, missing most of the first half of the season. He hit 29 home runs in a limited number of at-bats, but also hit under .200 and struck out 118 versus just 56 hits. At the end of the season, he retired from baseball by sending a fax to ESPN. Meanwhile, Pujols hit almost .330, 37 home runs, drove in 130 runs, and won the National League Rookie of the Year. I heard a stuck around for a few years more and did alright for himself.  

Back of the card......

It's a checklist.  

Small set, so really hard to argue with the names on the checklist. My only gripe is the prospect card. The early 2000s were lean years for the Cardinals Minor League system, but I would have gone with Placido Polanco over either Ortega or Saturria.  

Friday Five: Top 5 Sets From 2002

5. Topps Total- There were two mega sets issued during the 2002 summer: Topps Total and Upper Deck 40 man.  The boxes of Total were pretty cheap, but with a total of 990 cards collectors needed several boxes and loads of patience to assemble this set.  However, even if you are not into putting together this gigantic set, it's still a plus for team collectors and individual player collectors.  There are dozens of players in this set that do not appear in other sets and honestly, where else can you find a set with 30 players from your favorite team?  Not many Mark Little cards floating around, but he was on the 1998 Cardinals which makes it a keeper.

4. Upper Deck Vintage- If Upper Deck had decided to rehash the wrong Topps set and pass it off as a Vintage set I would have gladly walked the other way.  However, a rehash of the 1971 Topps set is always worth your time and effort.  These cards were really cool with 1971 players and they are also really cool with 2002 players.  The set is not too big and not too difficult to find at low prices.  I loved putting this set together and went through and picked up a lot of the insert sets too.  There are relic cards and autographs too, but you might actually have to spend time and money to land them.  Overall a really good set.

3.  Topps Pristine- I got a bunch of these when they first came out and just remember being completely annoyed at the fact that there was a pack of cards inside another pack of cards.  It reminded me a little bit of the 2001 Donruss cards with the "retro" packs stuffed inside of the regular packs.  Over the years I seem to have ended up with a whole lot of these cards in my collection.  A big chunk of the base set, a ton of the transparent autographs, and some of the encased rookie cards.  For me, the autographs are the real stars of the show.  The signatures are mainly younger players from that era, but that includes nice autographs from Pujols and Jimmy Rollins.  If nothing else, these are fun cards to look at and worth a little bit of your time and money to track down a few.

2.  Topps Super Teams- This was a fun little set and flies under the radar a little too often.  The set focuses on 11 different World Series winning teams and features cards of their key players and manager.  There are foil parallels, autographs, and relic cards too.  Not the most popular set, but it's one of my favorites from this year.  A lot of good names from good teams, cool pictures, and the autographs are aren't too expensive either.  I cannot remember the last time I saw a complete set floating around.....

1.  Topps Heritage- Based on the 1953 Topps set this is the second rehash set to appear in my list this week.  However, Topps rehashing their own card design in a product that is one of the most popular releases annually versus whatever Upper Deck did with the 1971 Topps set (it's beautiful) is a completely different story.  I liken the Topps Heritage sets to Godfather Part 2 with the original design of these cards being the original Godfather.  I almost liked this set better than the 2001 Topps Heritage set for several reasons.  It has the short prints and logo variations and night card variations and everything that goes into a good recreation of the 1953 Topps set, but the extras that come with a modern baseball card set were a little bit more achievable in this set.  I am still looking for the Edmonds autograph....one day.  

My Top 50 On Cardboard- #27 Nomar Garciaparra

My Top 50 On Cardboard
#27
Nomar Garciaparra

1992 Topps Traded Nomar Garciaparra

My favorite, and maybe only tolerable, Red Sox of the past fifteen years.  Nomar Garciaparra was also a pretty fun player to watch and one of those players who you wouldn't mind seeing win something.  Unfortunately, the Red Sox traded him before they won they title in 2004.  Would have made that pill a little easier to swallow.  Anywho, Nomar's rookie card showed up in the 1992 Topps Traded set as a USA Baseball player.  This was a really cool, and slightly pricey card back in the day, but has lost much of its luster nowadays.  A really easy find on Ebay for a couple of bucks.  You can also check out the 1993 Stadium Club Murphy which has the added bonus of being sold in a set that comes in a giant plastic model of Jack Murphy Stadium.

Hobby Impact-
Nomar was part of the big three AL East shortstops in the late 90s with the other two being Derek Jeter and Miguel Tejada.  Garciaparra has always been second fiddle on that list to Jeter with baseball card collectors and it appears it is kind of permanently etched that way at this point.  Garciaparra is still plenty popular though.  In my opinion, he was the face of the Red Sox from late 90s through the early part of the 2000s.

 Even after he was traded, he remained a popular figure with Red Sox collectors.  Topps has put out several Nomar cards including autographs and relic cards since his retirement from baseball in 2009.   My key to find good Nomar cards goes like this: remember that Nomar played for the Cubs, Dodgers, and A's, now go find his Red Sox cards.  The Red Sox traded Nomar for a good reason and the later years of his career were not really reflective of the type of player he was for much of his time on the Red Sox.  Well, maybe 2006 with the Dodgers.

Nomar has plenty of cool cards out on the market largely due to the fact that he was a great player, a popular Red Sox, and just a cool player to watch.  Collectors have their choices with plenty of cool base cards, inserts, and short prints to nab.  If I had to add one Nomar card to my collection though, I would save my money up and buy one of his autographs.  Like this one:

2000 Topps Stadium Club Nomar Garciaparra Lone Star Signature Autograph

Nomar has a great signature which has changed very little over the past fifteen years and is a great add to any collection.  Many of his early Red Sox autographs are on-card signatures (Dodgers and Cubs tend to be stickers) and can be had for between $40 and $50.  A little bit more than the average autograph, but the popular Red Sox factor drives up the price a bit.

On The Field Impact-
As mentioned before, Garciaparra was apart of the big three shortstops in the AL East during the late 1990s.  The American League also had Alex Rodrgiuez at the time making the position quite deep.  Don't tweet me about Omar Vizquel.  For the time being I am just going to focus on Jeter and Garciaparra.  ARod was better than both Jeter and Nomar, and despite spending half his career at third base, ranks as a top 5 shortstop all-time on several different lists.  However, I really despise those who think that Jeter was really better than Garciaparra during the late 90s.  Lets look at some numbers.

Let's start by look at their WAR (Wins Above Replacement) for the years 1997-2000.  That would be Garicaparra's first season through Jeter's fourth World Series title.  According to the court of public opinion, I would guess that many would place Jeter ahead of Garciaparra, but math doesn't lie.

When you compare the years each player you can see that Jeter has two years where he is high than Garciaparra and vice versa.  However, the total number of WAR over this four year stretch is slanted in favor of Garciaparra with 30.6 Wins Above Replacement compared to 28.4 for Jeter.  Jeter also had a negative defensive WAR in two of the seasons during the four year stretch, meaning the Yankees had better defensive options at shortstop, while Nomar had none.

In fact, if you look at the 7 year-peak WAR used for the JAWS rating, Garciaparra is still higher than Jeter despite the fact that Nomar's seven seasons are diluted by injury shortened seasons.  It's one stat, but there are others we can compare too...

Let's take a look at one more.  Here are the two shortstop's OPS+ from the same four year stretch.

Garciaparra has a clear advantage in this stat too.  While Jeter is shown to be an above average player, though 1997 he's rather pedestrian, he is below Garciaparra in three of the years and be large amounts.  The one year that Nomar is not ahead of Jeter, they are just even.

Really the only thing Jeter has going for him in an argument against Nomar Garciaparra is longevity and his World Series rings.  Although it would probably pain Yankees fan to know that Garciaparra has a higher postseason batting average.  If Nomar had played twenty seasons and been manning shortstop in 2004 and 2007, maybe this season too, nobody outside of New York would even debate the better shortstop.

Garciaparra could be a Hall of Famer.  Still really popular as witnessed below.

Favorite Card-
My favorite part of watching Nomar play was watching him hit.  He could hold his own in the field, but he was a great hitter.  He was really busy while he was up at the plate and had the same busy routine before every pitch.  Here it is while he was in AA

 

The pre-pitch routine was cool, but the guy could hit.  I have always enjoyed the cards of Nomar batting more than the cards in the field, so I am going with this one as my favorite. 

2002 Upper Deck Vintage

This appears to be somewhere during the foot shuffle/stomp part of the pre-pitch routine.  Really good photograph by Upper Deck.