Only $9.99, Part 2

 The second half of the 2023 Durham Bulls. 

This first group is soild. All of these players are 25 or younger and all of them will end up in the Majors at some point in the near future. Although, LaSorsa got traded to the Nationals. Manzardo and Mead will likely be starters with the Rays, Misner is a great defensive outfielder. McKendry is a middle of the rotation starter.  Lopez is a good left-handed reliever.  

Mead is the best prospect in this group and should be the Rays third baseman by the beginning of next year. He is consensus Top 100 prospect across the board. The Rays actually got Mead from the Phillies in a trade for a Minor League relief pitcher. Pretty good deal.  

In this group, I like Rene Pinto and Luis Patino. The Rays got Patino from the Padres for Blake Snell. Rene Pinto is a catcher who seems fairly talented, but he's on his third season in a row with the Bulls.  As good as the Rays are at making their own players, they are not good with catchers. Pinto is honestly one of the better homegrown catchers I have seen over the past decade.  

Card backs, a little crooked.  

Last few players along with the manager, pitching coach, hitting coach, and strength and conditioning coach. Brian Reith is the only coach on the Bulls who played in the Majors. He was a middle reliever and spot starter for the Reds in the early 2000s and ended his career with an ERA of almost 6.  

The bios of the coaching staff.  

Trainer, trainer, bench coach, mascot. 

 I like Wool E. Bull's giant Championship Ring. I have never seen him with that ring.  

That's all for the official 2023 Durham Bulls team set. Funny thing, I basically ran into a second Durham Bulls team set this week. I will have to post it in the next few days.  

Not Just Any Team Set

I have been on a roll with finding some tough Durham Bulls team sets and cards during the past year.  My best find up to this point was the first half of the 1997 BellSouth Bulls to Braves set, which celebrated the team's long-running affiliation with the Atlanta Braves.  The cards have proved nearly impossible to find over the years as single cards, and I had never seen them together in any sort of a set before them last fall.  

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I was able to find another really tough team set two weeks ago.  I had been looking for a team-issued Durham Bulls from 2001, but could not even find evidence that such a set existed until 2015 when the set was finally added to the Trading Card Database.  To this day, there are only pictures of a few cards from the set. 

First edit date on Trading Card Database was May of 2015.  

Even though the set first appeared on TCDB in 2015, it has not shown up on Ebay until this year.  

There are always a lot of Major League players who appear in Triple-A baseball card sets, but this set feels like it's above average in terms of quantity.  Here are the cards, starting with the team checklist.  

The front of the card has the team logo.  The back of the card has the team checklist.  

Out of the players with cards in the set, only Norm Hutchins did not appears in the Majors.  The set has a few players with World Series rings, including a World Series MVP.  Also included is a guy who is now a pharmacist, a one-time billionaire who is now bankrupt, a future Durham Bulls manager, and an International League Hall of Famer.  

Here is the basic design of the cards using Brent Abernathy.  

I like that the team put the "Acquired" information on the back of the card.  Feels a little bit like the old Donruss cards.  Plus with Minor Leaguers, you know half of them were traded for Major Leaguers.  Always fun to see some of those names, like Steve Trachsel.  

Here are the rest of the player, coach, and manager cards.  Also Wool E. Bull, the mascot.  

I am not going to talk about every player.  

Two notable names in this group of cards.  

Pat Borders was at the end of his career at this point.  He was nearly 40 years old.  Borders was on the two Blue Jays World Series winners in the early 1990s and won the World Series MVP in 1992 against the Braves.  He played until 2005, retiring at the age of 42.  

Lee Gardner was in Triple-A for 8 years, 5 of those seasons were with the Durham Bulls.  He is in the International League Hall of Fame and I believe he is the Durham Bulls all-time saves leader.  

Two more notable players in this group.  Huff won two World Series with the Giants.  Toby Hall was in the Majors for a few years but was a really good Minor League player.  He was in Durham for roughly 3 years and is considered one of the best catchers to have come through town.  Strictly talking about Minor League numbers with Hall.  

Jared Sandberg is Ryne's nephew and he managed the Bulls for four years.  In his last two years as the manager of the Bulls the team won the International League Championship.  

Now, this is a good group.  

First, we got Jason Tyner.  Jason Tyner was a fan favorite in Tampa.  Scrappy player.  He ended up getting his own bobblehead day with the Rays.  The problem is that he was demoted back down to the Bulls before it was given out.  

Is it too late to get your money back? 

Matt White owned a couple billion dollars worth of Goshen Stone at one point.  Goshen stone is used for swimming pools, kitchen counters, and landscaping.  It currently costs $75 to $150 per ton.  

How did this happen?  

White had an elderly aunt who lived in Massachusetts and needed $50,000 to get into a nursing home.  She sold White some land she owned in a rural part of the state.  White wanted to build a house on the property, but after checking with a builder, the land was too hard.  He called a surveyor who found 24 million tons of Goshen rock on the property.  Rather than settling for part of 2 billion dollars by selling the land to a company that could process the rock, Matt White tried to start his own company.  The company went bankrupt.  He was forced to sell the land for a fraction of its value.  

Ron Wright played in one Major League for the Seattle Mariners in 2005.  He retired and went back to college.  Wright studied pharmacology and now works as a pharmacist in Portacello, Idaho.  

Bill Evers is the second-winningest manager in team history.  For a long time, he held the record but was passed by current Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo.  

I have wanted to write about Mako Oliveras for a while.  I have several of his cards, low-key really important player and coach.  

Last group of cards.  

Joe Coleman was a pitching coach forever, including for the Cardinals while Joe Torre was managing the team.  Mickey Callaway was the Mets manager and the pitching coach for the Indians and Angels.  He is currently unemployed for good reason. 

Wool E. Bull.  What would he say about this card?  

2018 Durham Bulls Team Set Part 2

Part 1 of the Durham Bulls team set for 2018 can be found here.  Here's the second half of the set....

Feels like there were a whole bunch of former Mariners players on this year's squad.  Andrew Moore was one of them.  He spent some time up with the Mariners last year, but was not very good with them.  He did pitch really well with Tacoma though and they are in a really hard part of the Pacific Coast League for pitchers.  Pitched decently with the Bulls this year.  I think there is some hope with him.  

Russell is a North Carolina native and a graduate of the light blue ACC school.  Seems like 

Russell is a North Carolina native and a graduate of the light blue ACC school.  Seems like a solid defender, but I am not sure he is ever going to hit in professional baseball.  The Rays have a ton of versatile infielder types too.  Maybe somewhere else.  

Schultz went to High Point University which is not far from Durham.  He misses a lot of bats, but he has been in the Minors for a long time, a few in Durham.  Not sure why a guy with as many strikeouts as Schultz keeps ending up in the Minors.  The Rays used him as a relief pitcher this year, started last season, still misses a lot of bats.  

Forrest Snow is another former Mariner.  He's 29 and in Triple A.  Solid starter this year in Triple A, but I am not sure what sort of future he has in the Majors. 

Velazquez spent a chunk of the year in Durham.  Seems like a solid player, in that mix of really versatile infielders that the Rays have on their 40 man roster.  Velazquez ended up in the Majors for awhile the Rays.  Definitely a future in the Majors.  

Snyder has been around for awhile.  Good older player to have around.  He has been in the Majors a few times and has been a very good player in Triple A.  Seems like a good guy.  

Justin Williams ended the season with the Cardinals Triple A team after being traded away for Tommy Pham.  He actually won a Triple A National Championship ring after the Memphis Redbirds defeated the Bulls.  It was the third time the two teams have played in the Triple A National Championship Game.  The Bulls had won the last two.  

Did I mention there were a lot of former Mariners players on the Bulls this year?  Meet Ryan Weber.  

Hunter wood became one of the "Openers" for the Rays.  Good pitcher.  Does not make all of those prospect lists, but seems to have a Major League arm and a good idea of what he is trying to do.  I very much enjoy watching him pitch.  He has a few other cards out there, might pick up a few of them this offseason.  

Kean is Kolten's brother.  Similar player, but the Rays have a ton of middle infielders and Kean is not better than most of them.  I think he's trade bait.  Definitely a Major League player, just not in Tampa.  

Rick Knapp has been around a long time as a coach.  Read the biography on the back of the card.  Sandberg has been the Bulls' manager for a few years now, really grown as a manager.  He's only 40, so he should get a shot at coaching or managing at that level at some point.  

Dement is a career Minor League guy.  Played for awhile, has coached for awhile.  There are tons of coaches like this, invaluable to the organization for the sake of consistency.  

Ben Johnson was actually a Cardinals draft pick, even has some Bowman autographs in a Cardinals uniform, as well as a long time Padres farm hand.  I am not sure how long he has been coaching, but he seemed to do a good job this year.  

Last card.  Best card?  

Everyone loves the Bull.  

Things I Am Sorting...Part 2

I might have to do two of these posts this week.  During Spring Break I began the process of remodeling my baseball card room.  My card room has always been my little corner of the house complete with a television I bought in 2004 and refused to throwout and some old furniture.  Same as the television, not parting with any of it.  New furniture and television along with a little calmer paint job means that a lot of cards that were sitting out got put away.

Here's a look at the paint job.  The room was red, now two different colors of grey...

The cards that got put away were kind of put places.  Anywhere.  

Before the remodel I had set out a lot of doubles from different sets that I had sorted out onto a desk.  I not only put the cards away to avoid the risk of paint splatter and drips, but also because I got rid of the desk.  The cards on the desk were put into about a dozen 800 count boxes, four 3,200 count boxes, and the rest were stacked up in a closet.  The top view of the desk is on the right, closet on the left.  More on these cards later in the week.

There are plenty of cards to sort at the moment, so I am focusing my time and energy today working on sorting out my cards from Topps Series 2 and Pro Debut.  I opened a box of Series 2 awhile ago, I just haven't made a post about them.

There are all sorts of photo variations and the whatnot in there, so here are my hit cards....

This Pham autograph is obviously my favorite.  He had an autograph in Topps Update last year, but for some reason it is crazy expensive.  I understand that Cardinals collectors can be rather enthusiastic at times, but come guys...he's a fourth outfielder.  I like picture on the card and Pham has a nice signature.  Here are my other two cards.....

I am really burned out on the manufactured cards this year and probably plain pieces of relic too.  Yawn.  The base set is what you would expect out of a base Topps set, same with the parallels.  I have not pulled an acetate yet this year, haven't bought one either, think that's going to change soon though.  

Which brings me to my last thing I am sorting this week.  I ended up with a box of Topps Pro Debut about two weeks ago.  I am not going to recount the whole story about how the box came to be in my house, but I made a trade and ended up with the box.  It's not what I traded for.  Reminded me a little bit of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry gets a van and Kramer tries to trade for it, but instead of a van it was baseball cards.....

I actually really like the cards, not quite sure why I did not pull the trigger with my local card on buying a box of this product.  Minor League cards are way up my alley.  I could do a post with just the base cards, and will at some point, but for the moment I will share my hits out of the box.

First up, my two autographs.  

Justus Sheffield was a first round draft pick of the Indians in 2014 and is playing this year in the Carolina League with Lynchburg.  I have seen the Hillcats this year, but I missed out on seeing him pitch while they were in town.  Currently he is striking out about a batter per inning, has a 3 to 1 strikeout to walk ratio, and has an ERA just below 4.  Not bad.  Baseball America has him ranked as the fourth best prospect in the Indians system at the moment.  

Next up is Brewers outfield prospect Omar Garcia.  Well, I am not sure that this guy is much of a prospect actually.  Garcia is in his fourth year in the Brewers system, is unranked on every top prospect list out there, and has played just 11 games at Double A.  He's a speed guy, but the problem is that he does not always get on base.  Last year he stole 53 bases for Brevard County, but had a .318 OBP.  That's not going to hack it.  

Next.  The manufactured stuff.  

Franklin Barreto is a really good pull out of a prospect set.  He's one of the better prospects in the minors at the moment, most major publications place him in the Top 50 and at the top of the list for the A's.  He was originally a Blue Jays international signing, but was traded for Josh Donaldson.  There are different levels of the pennant cards, with this being the gold, and numbered to 50 copies.  

Two more.  

Umm.  I have seen this card before, but you can never have too many Wool E. Bull cards.  Last one, promise.  

I also landed a printing plate of Mariners pitcher Edwin Diaz.  There are always a few guys in the Pro Debut set who have cracked the Majors and Diaz is one of them.  He's appeared in 17 games this year for the Mariners and has some really good numbers like: 17.3 K/9, 2.89 FIP, and a 164 ERA+.  This card pictures Diaz on the Jackson Generals, Double A, where he started the season and skipped over Triple A.  He was a starter in the Minors, but still had good numbers with high strikeout totals.