#57 - Mark Lowe

What’s that Turtle doin’? Demonstrating the pitching motion once again. I think if one were trying to study how that motion works, this card pairs perfectly with the Lincecum card just 2 checklists spots prior. Perhaps Tim Lincecum was able to famously generate more rotational force with his shoulder via a much lower starting point for the baseball in his right hand.

On this card, implied motion somewhat oddly stops. The dramatically lit-up pinstripe on Lowe's uniform draws the eye away from the imminent route of the ball to Home Plate, but then the pair of arms extending in the other direction draws the eye back over to the ball. Although this is an excellently framed and appealing card, it doesn't have the same flow that many other live action pitching cards do.

The background of the card is a nice, varying combination of sunlit areas and shaded areas. 

Of all the advertising one sees while viewing baseball games and baseball players on baseball cards, I can't think of a more perfect spot to advertise grass care products than on the outfield wall of a baseball stadium.  

Uniform Hero? Pickings are getting a little slim here by #57 but Mark Lowe did indeed wear #57 for Texas in 2012, though he wore a variety of uni #s in his career. A far more famous pitcher, with perhaps a bit of an infamous No Hitter to his credit even, wore #57 on a uniform where it is clearly seen - Johan Santana. But as it turned out, his main Sea Turtle card appeared in Series 2, though we will also see him a little further along on this checklist here in Series 1.

Where’d the egg hatch? Lowe was drafted out of college by the Mariners in the 5th round of 2004,

How about the migrations? and would rather routinely (for a college player) debut with them almost exactly 2 years after the draft. 2008 became his first full year in Seattle's bullpen; his career would become a classic migratory reliever pattern that began with a trade from Seattle to Texas. However as Seattle was also sending Cliff Lee to Texas in that trade, it is not really worth considering the trade outcome much here.

On the standard "cya" day in Major League Baseball, Lowe was released by Texas the day after the 2012 World Series and then signed with the Dodgers for the year of the Sea Turtle cards but would not make it out of Spring Training with them. He was able to latch on with the California Angels for the 2013 season but would appear in just 11 games.

All in all, a rather curious checklist selection by Topps here, as middle relievers like Mark Lowe only sometimes, more not than often really, appear in Topps Baseball sets. Across a 10 year career, Lowe would appear on just 5 Topps Baseball cards, generally in the Update release, and a smattering of other small sets.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

I would say the Topps card back writer hit a nice single here, always nice to read as they will always be writing more of these in a week or two. What I am referring to is the nice shout-out for very local fans in the Arlington area; not all that many MLB fans connect MLB players to their collegiate play.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 253 games played, Lowe is 999 away from Jesse Orosco's all-time record of 1,252.

As a Tigers fan, I was pretty sure which record comparison would be made here, before I turned the cad over, for for a player so well fitting the classic "journeyman reliever" trope. This is only the 3rd card so far to feature this comparison.

After his brief 2013 season with the Angels, Lowe would also pitch a similarly brief amount for the Indians in 2014 and then make the also classic outside-looking-in career move of once again signing with the team that drafted him - Seattle - who would trade him to Toronto at the 2015 trade deadline. As usual for a low leverage veteran reliever, very few would be able to recall much on the careers of the 3 other pieces in the trade.

Somehow in Toronto in the home stretch of the 2015 season, everything would click for Mark Lowe and he would have the best 2 months of his career, turning in a 0.842 WHIP for a Jays team on their way to the ALCS, where Lowe would allow just one Hit (& 1 HBP) in 3.1 innings of relief in a series loss to the Royals.

That brilliant stretch somehow convinced the very new GM in Detroit, Al Avila, that Mark Lowe was worth signing for $5.5 Million for 2 years, a decision which proved to be completely wrong. Perhaps Avila hadn't yet conceded that Detroit would no longer be able to purchase enough veteran talent to achieve decent results in the standings, who knows?

As it turned out, 2016 in Detroit would be the final season of bouncing around the Leagues, (or at least, appearing on a mound in an MLB game) for Mark Lowe as he could not repeat that mysterious late 2015 brilliance and the Tigers had little choice but to release him during Spring Training in 2017 and just eat the $5.5 Million they still owed him. I think that perhaps that particular expensive decision finally convinced everyone in Detroit of the reality of what they were facing, and also ended a long era of attempts to staff a bullpen with expensive veterans, a routine habit of former Detroit GM Dave Dombrowski.

The White Sox, Mariners (again), and the Dodgers (again) would each give him one more "look" but he would not return to the Majors; sometimes the complete MLB Transaction list can tell some rather sad tales.

With 382 games pitched, Lowe finished his career 870 away from Jesse Orosco's all-time record.

Subspecies? By now you probably already understand that middle relievers are lucky to appear in a standard issue Topps Baseball set. There are no other 2013 baseball cards for Mark Lowe.

Bling That Shell I went a little round & round with this selection. Early on in collecting 2013 parallels I obtained the Black /62 parallel for this card as part of a lot purchase and included it as the permanent parallel Turtle. Over time I grew a little dis-enchanted with the blue-team-on-black parallel cards, more due to how they look in-hand than they do in a scan, where they look quite nice. Blue-on-black just didn't have that "pop" that looks so good in a baseball card collection. 

I also considered using the Blue Sparkle parallel here due to all the variety in the background of the photo, which does look nice. But a blue-on-blue combo is right out.

But all that was making this page difficult to fill and I have 110 pages to fill. I also somewhat want at least one example of every team color + parallel color. Eventually I decided that a) Black parallels of sunny day cards look nice, and b) if a team logo had at least some red to it, the overall effect would be 'poppy' enough to use a blue team card with a black Turtle shell, like this one:

#39 - Scott Feldman

What’s that Turtle doin’? I have been looking forward to blogging about this card since before I started this blog. Why this card? As I begin this post, I still know only one thing about Scott Feldman - he has a baseball card in one of my favorite sets of baseball cards. And that's it.

And that's why I collect baseball cards - to try and stay 'up' on all the players of the game, which I would rather do with cards than by watching hours of cable TV as often as daily. Cable TV is not something I usually have access to in my life, and I don't miss it.

This particular card was the last card I needed to complete this page of parallels, so I often pondered it - just who is Scott Feldman?

On this card, Scott has just delivered a pitch. His leg kick is just about over, and overall he doesn't seem in any way tensed up. Probably, the ball landed in the Catcher's glove, and he is mostly intent on hearing the call from the Umpire. That's my take on what remains of the "action" here.

The overall lines of the card flow from his glove and all the way through his just completed motion, and then his hand-less right arm is sliced off by the Sea Turtle itself. A bit of a downer here, really. How many viewing the card think it will be called a Strike?

The "40" patch on his right sleeve is not a simple anniversary patch for their stadium, as you might all too easily conclude for many other MLB outfits. 40 years was the age of the Texas Rangers club itself, in 2012, as they debuted as an expansion team in 1972.

A final interesting element on the card is what I call "That Necklace." Baseball players have worn necklaces for a long time, though I have to wonder how many could be found on any 1950s baseball cards. But in 2013, I think there was a peak of wearing this certain plastic necklace, generally of 2 colors as shown here, and available to the players in matching "team colors" if they wished. 

I'm not sure of which year was the actual peak; perhaps by looking at this question via baseball cards I will figure that out on a one-year-later basis. But I have been setting aside stray copies of cards of players wearing this necklace whenever one appears in a pile of dups/doubles/extras, since 99.9% of such cards have essentially no value, anyway. Eventually over on my main blog I will show off some of the results. One thing I still need to do is find Patient/Card Zero with this - when was the first time this necklace was seen on a card? I am pretty sure that will be in the early 2010s. But to find the last example of this necklace on a card, well, that might not have happened yet - because I saw one on 2018 Topps Baseball cards, and in the Update set even. So perhaps 2019 will be the first Topps Baseball sets to not have an on-card example of "That Necklace."

Uniform Hero? This card throws one for a loop a tiny bit, compared to so many cards that have just appeared, with the clear numerals '40' on the shoulder, but on card #39.

It is also probably where the Topps checklist composer probably first hit the realities of Major League Baseball Uniform #s. The most prestigious Uni #s are usually the lowest, though of course lately Topps has been able to make some very easy decisions about which New York Yankee to assign card #99 - this checklist technique did not debut in 2013 Topps Baseball, nor has it gone away again completely, either.

Until this checklist spot, there was no shortage of players to generally select one to honor a great player with a card # that matched his uniform #. The few times a just regular player was selected, there has been an alternative, more famous player, that didn't work out to use with this concept.

I count about 15 other players that will appear in this set that wore #39 in 2012. But it would be about impossible to rank one ahead of another in terms of fame, or stats, or recent postseason glory, or any other comparative. And of course, that would be inevitable in trying to construct this checklist. We will see some more interesting combinations of uniform and card # as we move along, but the odds of seeing an All-Star match will begin to decline sharply.

Where’d the egg hatch? Feldman was drafted by the Rangers in 2003, in the 30th round, making him the current highest draft position on this checklist, so far.

How about the migrations? Scott would debut in Texas in 2005, pitching as a reliever for his first 3 seasons. That garnered him a few baseball cards, because everyone wants Rookie Cards, Rookie Cards, Rookie Cards. In 2008 he moved into the starting rotation for Texas, but he wouldn't get a Topps Baseball card again until 2010, after his second campaign as a starter. This is because no one wants baseball cards of relievers, in a general sense, and it took Topps an extra year to notice the change in his career. But when you go 17-8 as a starter you do earn their attention once again.

2010 did not work out as well for Feldman despite being the Opening Day starter for Texas, leading to a demotion to the bullpen. In 2011 he battled injuries and threw only 32 innings. Leading once again to a demotion from the Topps Baseball checklist. Then in 2012, he returned to the starting rotation and thus back on to the checklist for 2013, where we find him here.

But by the time this card came out of packs, Feldman was no longer a Texas Ranger, having signed with Chicago in late November, 2012. Topps can't endlessly shift every baseball player changing teams while they create these baseball cards, so Feldman appears as a Ranger.

He then makes a natural candidate for a card in the Update set, where he duly appears as a Chicago Cub - despite having been traded to Baltimore in early July of 2013. My guess would be that was because a Cubs card for Scott Feldman had already been issued in the Factory Team Set blister pack, so it was easier to just copy/paste that one down, 299 baseball cards in the Update set to go.

Chicago would receive Pedro Strop in return, who would appear in the Update set as a Cub even, along with Jake Arrieta, who would not receive an Updated card at all. So 2 players traded for each other would be "Updated" onto new cards on the same team.

After years of looking at both Series One and Update cards, I had never made that connection between an S1 card and an Update card until writing this blog post - I could not even draw the connection that they were the same player. That is how much of an "Everyman" player Scott Feldman was I guess, and for me, a good illustration of why I will continue to collect baseball cards. Major League Baseball rosters have lots of Scott Feldmans, and they are all absolutely incredible at playing the game of baseball, amply demonstrated by their ability to even make a Major League roster in the first place. 

Yet Feldman would never receive a card as a Baltimore Oriole at all - perhaps I shouldn't rely so much on Topps to keep me 'up' on the game of baseball. He would go on to pitch for 3 more teams after Baltimore, and appear on a few more scattered cards. In 2017 he had a knee injury while pitching for Cincinnati, which effectively ended his career. Then in 2018, his everyman-become-journeyman baseball career would be capped with a true "sunset" Topps Baseball card, with 100% complete MLB stat totals, something not even every All-Time Great receives. That card also features a truly epic first-ever-to-do-X statistic of the type that only Topps can deliver, but I will leave that one to a set blogger for the 2018 cards to bedazzle you with.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

Whew. So I am all up-to-date on the career of Scott Feldman. I hope you are too, now. If I hadn't decided to write up this blog post, maybe all I would ever know about him was being the 2nd player to start a season 0-6, and then go 6-0. What a loss that would have been.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 204 games pitched, Feldman is 1,048 away from Jesse Orosco's all-time record of 1,252.

I guess Topps could never quite decide if Scott Feldman was a Starter or a Reliever, so they went with the simple record for Relievers.

Feldman finished his MLB career having pitched in 342 Games.

Subspecies? Perhaps it is a minor miracle that Feldman's signing with Chicago would be documented by Topps in the Update set, given their on-again, off-again coverage of his career. No other Texas Ranger 2013 cards of Scott Feldman needed to be created.

Bling That Shell This parallel was another one that 'completed' the page when I received it. At one point in the project, I was selecting the Toys-R-Us Purple parallel for lots of Texas Rangers cards, because of the way their official on-card logo here mixes red and blue. What do you get then? Purple.

But then I grew a little disenchanted with the lesser-than-possible contrast of the blue Sea Turtle on the Purple parallel, so I went away from the idea of using this combo. But I can't always get what I want - a page of 9 baseball cards in perfect popping contrast, with no repeats. So I went back to my original Purple Rangers idea, and I do still like it:

#30 - Neftali Feliz

What’s that Turtle doin’? This card is an example of a seeming ever increasing style of baseball card in each given year's Topps Baseball set.  Whereas horizontal cards had generally been used for some of the best action photos available to the set editor, they are now more likely to use just a simple individual profile shot like this one.

One reason for that could be a basic increase in horizontal cards. It does seem clear to me that they are cut off of the printing sheets from adjacent positions - because these days they always arrive together, in packs, which is true even of the smallest runs of base cards as when 2 of them are packed together in a retail 'blister pack' including 2 parallels. Those will both be horizontal, or both be vertical. No one will find a pack of all horizontal cards as there aren't quite that many, but no one will ever find a pack with only one horizontal card, either. Though it is possible to open a pack with zero horizontals.

Now it would be easy to conclude with that printing sheet based logic that each large checklist release might now have one sheet of horizontal cards each time, but I don't think that is the case. 2013 Series One being examined here has 330 cards and was most likely produced from 3 sheets of 110 cards each - but there are not 110 horizontal cards in this set. Lately, I am pretty sure printing sheets have been changed to 100 cards each, as Opening Day and Chrome checklists have decreased from 220 card sets to 200 cards (2 sheets each), while S1 and S2 have increased to 350 cards (3.5 sheets each).

But let's get back to this Neftali Feliz card before it scrolls too much further away. I do like this particular card. Feliz's arms obviously set the main line of whole image. What I like about it is all the harmoniously parallel lines with that - the brim of the cap, his eyes, even Neftali's mouth; they all are inline with the plane to the Plate he is about to deliver that fastball right through.

Ultimately for all the cards like this one now, I like some of them a fair bit, but perhaps that just depends to a large degree on how many such cards I have run across on that particular day. Some days, it's too many.

I still don't much care for this white Texas uniform, though it does come off better being in 'full' view on this card, as it pleasingly participates in the main line of the card. 

One thing that arrives to the viewer much more slowly from this card is the colors in the composition - & I don't mean the fantastic red glove making a trio with the cap and the red sleeves. This card is a "Mother's Day" card, from a photo taken on that day each year when MLB teams wear a pink ribbon on the left breast, which many players augment with pink "flair" in various ways. Feliz decided to sport a pink necklace, though it takes some familiarity with the card to realize that, after the red glove captures so much attention, at first. I very much like these Mother's Day outings in MLB, which donates some money to Breast Cancer research along the way. My own Mother has survived Breast Cancer, twice, while one of her sisters has not.

Uniform Hero? Still rolling strong here. Topps occasionally slots 2 teammates together on their checklists, and sometimes even several altogether and then more rarely entire teams get sequential checklist ordering. Probably, this happened on this unique checklist more due to the random chance of who sported Uni #s 29 & 30 in 2012 MLB, and how Topps felt about all of the players to pick from here.

Where’d the egg hatch? Feliz was originally an international signing out of the Dominican Republic, scouted and signed by the Braves. He was subsequently traded to the Rangers at the 2007 trade deadline as part of the package Texas received for Mark Teixeira, who now lives just 5 cards away on this checklist. He then debuted impressively with Texas in 2009 but did not use up his "rookie limits."

How about the migrations? Thus 2010 would become his official Rookie year and he would subsequently win Rookie-of-the-Year honors for the AL. Feliz contributed much to the strength of the Texas clubs, early in his career, and I well recall the Tigers facing him in the 2011 ALCS, where it hardly seemed fair to see someone so good in a bullpen; a luxury I can rarely recall the Tigers having.

But the 2011 postseason was probably the peak of his career, unfortunately. Injuries would become a sad routine for him and he would pitch only 4 2/3 innings the year this card arrived. Texas eventually traded him away during the 2015 season, the start of a four team odyssey that never saw a return to the brilliance of his first years in the Majors. His last stop was with the Kansas City Royals in 2017 but he was subsequently unable to reach the 'bigs' in 2018 from within the Diamondbacks' minor league system. Although he might well throw a baseball for an MLB club in Florida or Arizona in March, 2019, not much optimism remains for the career of this former Topps All-Rookie Cup selection.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

Basically reads now as a sad foreshadowing of what was to come, rather than what could have been.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 74 saves, Feliz is 534 saves away from Mariano Rivera's all-time record of 608.

A simple comparison choice to make for a Rookie breaking into MLB so spectacularly as a Reliever.

Neftali Feliz has 107 Saves after the 2017 season, though technically he could still pitch again in Major League Baseball.

Subspecies? As evidenced by this checklist position, Neftali Feliz was an exciting young Pitcher as 2013 got rolling; he was also placed in the Opening Day and Chrome checklists with this same card composition, but without any known variants in those products. There is one more Topps Baseball product that could still yield a variant of this card, that I have not been able to examine just yet.

Bling That Shell Although the ab-fab red glove, etc., makes it tempting to pick a Target Red parallel for this card (and those do work well for the Ranger team logo in particular, with the blue Sea Turtle), I much prefer accenting the Mother's Day memorial-ness of the card by using the Pink parallel: 

Also of note here is that this card is the 9th horizontal card in the set. Back in 2013 I quickly had far more copies of the base cards in this set than I truly needed, so early on I began assembling a side collection of the horizontal cards. Going forward in baseball card collecting, I am pretty sure I am going to junk sequential checklist #-ing on binder pages and display all the horizontal cards together, like this:

Oops!

That was just a somewhat inevitable result of pondering the parallel possibilities presented by this next page...and I would rather this post end with a very nice page of baseball cards, the way they are meant to be enjoyed:

#29 - Adrian Beltre

What’s that Turtle doin’? Here we have a "Tatooine" card. I don't know if anyone might assemble all such cards, all together on a series of binder pages, rather than just commenting on them one at a time. But I would imagine Third Basemen might get the largest portion of such cards, given how a baseball infield works and where photographers can likely get access to it. Or at least when such cards are showing live action fielding, rather than base-running.

I first read of the concept on baseball card blogs of course, and here once again is a key link to the Garvey Cey Russell Lopes blog where I first learned the term - perhaps coincidentally, with regard to this card, of a Hall-of-Fame Third Baseman.

This card doesn't have so much of a certain line to it as much as it does have a nice smooth curve of Adrian Beltre's right leg flowing to his turning torso, illustrated by the wrinkles of his uniform - all as he pivots on his left leg to complete a throw. At the end, his right arm leads you to discover a live baseball almost hidden there next to the frame.

The white uniforms the Rangers wear always confuse me the most. Everyone around baseball games is so familiar with the term "road greys" for which so many teams use the name of their city. For Texas, these "home whites" use the location portion of the team name.  Almost every other team in baseball puts the team name on their home uniform, not the city name. But, since Texas doesn't have a city name.....zzzzzzz........this is one of the most boring uniforms in MLB; I much prefer seeing the one that says "Rangers" when they choose to wear the whites.

At least Adrian Beltre is not boring, though we will have to flip the card over to get more out of it. I do like a Tatooine card when I find one. I wonder if there has yet been a tattoo'd player on a Tatooine card? I expect so.

+Bonus points for the sunglasses stashed there on the ball cap. I bet you don't wear sunglasses like that.

Uniform Hero? We are still in "of course" territory here, though the Texas uniform doesn't include such on the front.

Where’d the egg hatch? Most fans know that Beltre came up with the Dodgers, via an international signing in 1994 before a merely ordinary Rookie campaign in 1998. 

How about the migrations? From L.A. Beltre would move on after 7 seasons to Free Agent contracts with the Mariners (5 seasons), Red Sox (1 season), and finally to the Rangers, where he would be entering his third season on the 2013 card.

He would ultimately play 8 total seasons for the Rangers before announcing his retirement in November, 2018. That all adds up to a stellar 21 year career placing him 14th All-Time in Games Played and 8th All-Time in At Bats. All of which makes this a completely certain Hall of Fame baseball card.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

Somewhat surprisingly, there are only 2 League Leads on this baseball card.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 346 home runs, Beltre is 416 away from Barry Bonds' all-time record of 762.

This chase selection on the part of Topps somewhat illustrates how Beltre's career took a somewhat stealthy path towards being considered a lock for the Hall of Fame. Having 346 Home Runs as an age 34 season began doesn't quite say "automatic" in HoF regard, as careers rarely continue into the 2nd half of a player's 30s anymore.

Yet Beltre finished his final, age 39 season, with an OPS still 35 points higher than the MLB average. It wasn't clear at the end of that season if he even would retire - Texas was certainly willing to let him keep playing.

As noted above, Adrian Beltre approached some All-Time marks in MLB stats and I have to wonder if anyone else in the set will best an 8th All-Time finish as he did with At Bats. Other notable such stats for him include being 11th in Doubles and 16th in Hits at 3,166.

The big stat, that Topps had in mind here in 2012, is Home Runs and some thought he might play long enough to reach 500. As it turned out, Adrian Beltre hit 477 Home Runs in Major League Baseball, good for 30th All-Time.

Subspecies? Not surprisingly, this same card appears in Opening Day and Chrome. A little bit more surprisingly, Topps created no other variations of this card.

Bling That Shell You know, this guy keeps sayin' he don't wanna use them Camouflaged cards for his parallel project, but here comes another one...

I think at one point I had this page completed a few different ways, and probably with this card as a Toys R Us Purple. But ultimately, for an all-dirt card, the /99 "Desert Camo" just felt like the right way to go, though it took an eBay watch list a year to cough one up for me. I still don't much care for how the foil-printed names look on these cards, in-hand, though they do scan perfectly.

Blog Updates & Highlights

As I was unable to complete the All-Parallel set before launching this blog, I will show you any Sea Turtle cards I manage to acquire after a particular card's blog entry, from time to time. These might not necessarily be parallels, either, as I continue to track down rare Sea Turtles, always on a tight budget.

I have added a desired parallel for the #11 - Yu Darvish card.

For the #17 - Shin-Soo Choo card, I have to decide between 2 intriguing parallels.

Though the Choo decision could ultimately impact another card on that page, I do have the probable parallel acquired for the #19 - Joey Votto card.

I have even updated yesterday's post, #28 - Prince Fielder, already, showing off a highlight of my 2013 Topps Baseball collection with a key trading card product image.

#18 - Mitch Moreland

What’s that Turtle doin’? This is a Hitting card without one key piece of evidence for such - a baseball bat. Though few baseball fans would fail to recognize first a batting helmet and second a batting glove.

There is a vague sense of motion, but only a vague one. Though it does seem Moreland just made contact with his swing, it leaves the viewer with the impression that he is not all that optimistic that his AVG, rather than only his BABIP, will be going up. Unlike the Bryce Harper #1 card, I would hesitate to call this a Base Running card, even though a similar amount of time has likely passed since the swing was completed.

One odd thing about the card is what is going on with Mitch's left hand and that batting glove. Try making your fingers appear like that - this is making me wonder just how the pads and velcro on the palm of a batting glove might be working.

One positive thing about the card is the nice, clear, script "Rangers" being so prominent, a good thing for a team essentially without any iconography at all. Unlike a solid majority of teams in the set, the team name is printed on the card for the Rangers, but in the smallest type of any such effort. A perfectly illustrated team name on the uniform generally makes for a solidly executed baseball card image composition - examples of such are not as common as you might think.

+Bonus points for another tiny appearance by MLB's Logoman, upside down this time and possibly in black&white, there on the wrist cuff of Moreland's batting glove. Which just now made me realize, after all these years of staring at it, that the Paul Konerko #14 card is actually a Double Logoman card - there can't be too many of those.

Uniform Hero? Another card in this set telling you the card #, by looking right at the picture on the front.

Where’d the egg hatch? Mitch Moreland was drafted by the Rangers in the 17th round in 2007, the highest pick we have seen yet in this set. He reached the Majors with Texas in 2010, his official Rookie season.

How about the migrations? Moreland is a First Baseman that was still with Texas when this Sea Turtle card was contemporary; he remained in Texas until the completion of his contract after the 2016 season.

For the 2017 season, Mitch signed a one year deal with the Red Sox. This makes Moreland somewhat confusable with Mike Napoli, as he basically replaced Napoli on each of Texas and Boston at First Base, before Napoli returned to Texas in '17 and replaced Moreland at First Base there. A pity that a potentially epic Who's On First? dual card was never created along the way somewhere.

Moreland subsequently signed a 2 year deal with Boston for 2018 & 2019. 

First Base is often somewhat dismissed by fans, compared to other positions, but much is expected of a First Baseman, specifically in the power department. It is not completely easy to maintain status as a regular starter at the position, particularly in the American League, as the Yankees have been demonstrating lately.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

A straight-forward example of Topps keeping you up-to-date with some basic player news from around the League, covering what happened last year and what to expect this year.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 40 home runs, Moreland is 722 away from Barry Bonds' all-time record of 762.

Even without a calculator, we can do our own double check of the Topps math here.

Moreland's power #s (SLG) have remained remarkably consistent through his career. Before the 2019 season commences, he has 147 Home Runs.

Subspecies? This is our first singular Sea Turtle, with no other variants or appearances on other Sea Turtle based checklists, beyond the 'Mini' version of this set. And, of course, those parallels -

Bling That Shell As construction of this page continues, for now I have a /2013 Gold card lined-up for this one, because that is what I pulled from a pack, though I am essentially leaving that card on the extensive roster I have for such cards, as I still need a difficult parallel on this page before assigning a final starting line-up.