Baseball Cards: Topps 2011

For those of you keeping tabs on my blog-worthy activities, I have finished the story mode of Injustice (but I haven't yet attempted climbing any challenge ladders), I have constructed a ballot for my next round of All-Star voting, as of the season's 1/4 mark (roughly 40 games), but have yet to actually cast the votes. And I've been happily reigniting my passion for baseball cards. The first set I presented was the most recent set. Last week's set was the oldest set I have. So continuing the pattern of starting at the extremes and working towards the middle from both ends, here's a roster made up of cards from the Topps 2011 set. This was the set that originally inspired me to revisit the simplicity of baseball cards, and I must admit I went a little overboard in terms of purchasing packs - I had more than 100 valid player cards to choose from when constructing this roster - but give me a break, they were the first baseball cards of any kind I had purchased in more than five years. Here's what the team looks like, arranged in their projected batting order from top lef to bottom right.

Derek Jeter might not honestly be the best choice to lead off and play SS - benchwarmer Alexei Ramirez was worth more WAR than his counterpart up the middle 5.5 to 1.8 (3.0 of which came with his glove, in a season in which he curiously won a Silver Slugger award). But because Cap'n Jetes outscored the "Cuban Missile" in fantasy points 1,883 to 1,694 (in a season in which he curiously won a Gold Glove) and because he has a team captain worthy personality and because we happen to share a birth sign, I've given him the honor. In addition to being the best second baseman on the market, Martin Prado also qualified at 3B (although don't expect Adrian Beltre and his 2,213 points to be unseated any time soon), and would move to LF the following season. Albert Pujols is a no-brainer here, as he led all fantasy offensive players in scoring in 2010 (only Jose Bautista and his 54 HR came close), led his league in two Triple Crown categories (his .312 average didn't make the top 10), and finished second in MVP voting.

With an all-time great like Pujols in there at 1B, I obviously envision Adam Dunn as DH - and he would go on to play that role with his new team, the Chicago White Sox, in whose uniform he is not pictured. While Beltre topped Dunn's overall point output, I constructed the order so as to have a nice R/L/R/L/R split starting with Pujols and going all the way to Choo and Young. The last two spots were battles up to the end: Yadier Molina was an All-Star and won the NL Gold Glove, but Ruiz scored almost 2.0 more PPG and notched exactly 1.0 more WAR than the Cardinals backstop. And there were three things going for Andres Torres over Hunter Pence (in his last full year with Houston) despite the 200+ point gap in Pence's favor: 1) their PPG were virtually identical, 2) Torres leads the WAR battle by nearly 2.0, and 3) Torres actually qualifies to play LF. Pence is still on the bench (along with Ichiro [no last name printed on the card]), so never fear, a platoon is possible.

Talk about a rotation topped by a couple flashes-in-the-pan. Ubaldo Jimenez scored the most fantasy points in his career by a huge margin in 2010, for which he earned the start in that year's All-Star Game (which I attended, and at which I saw Ubaldo launch one of his warmup tosses into the stands... a prelude of things to come?). Josh Johnson had a couple of good seasons back to back, but he would never come within half a win-above-replacement of his 7.2 in '10. After a decade of solid quiet dominance ending in 2010 (his split season between the Phillies and the Astros), Roy Oswalt would never again break 1,000 points. Tim Hudson has not only been solid for his entire career, he's also a frequent contributor to my baseball card teams: earlier this week, I indulged myself in one more 36-pack of Topps 2013's, out of which I drew Huddy (who, incidentally, replaces an injured Josh Beckett in my roster) and also Hunter Pence. Chris Carpenter, who had already overcame two lost seasons due to injury by 2010, is at this moment staring in the face of a third.

Rafael Soriano leads this relief corps, coming off the 2,146-point season that got him the job of Mariano Rivera's setup man (and eventual place-holder). There's Jonathan Papelbon, another member of my Topps 2013 squad, but this time he's in his original uniform. I was not sure which lefty to choose from as the long reliever: Jonathan Sanchez led by more than 100 points and helped pitch his team to a World Championship, but Gio Gonzalez led slightly in WAR and is still performing well today. In the end, it was purely an A's/Giants decision for me.

Sticking to this pattern I've established for myself, the next set I will cover will be Topps 1992. This set could be my favorite set of all time, mostly for sentimental reasons, but also because it's quite cool. You will find out in what ways next time!

Baseball Cards: Donruss 1990

The last time I posted a lineup based on baseball cards, it was made from the Topps 2013 set, the most up-to-date set I own (indeed, there is no other set that's more up to date). So it's only fitting that the next lineup I post is from the oldest, and thus most historical, set in which I own a significant amount of cards: Donruss 1990. All of these cards originate from a factory-sealed box I bought at a garage sale several years ago containing several unopened packs and a special edition puzzle of Carl Yastrzemski, who had retired six years before this set was published. At the time, Donruss was a brand owned by Leaf Inc., as I learned from reading the back of the cards in detail. Today, Donruss is now exclusively a football and basketball card producer, as I learned by digging deeper on Wikipedia. As they were made for the beginning of the 1990 season, the stats we are working with are from 1989, a year in which the Oakland Athletics won the World Series, as I learned from baseball-reference.com. Let's get right into a photographic version of the lineup.

I'd like to start with the rotation, just so that we can start the post by seeing how AL Cy Young Award winner Bret Saberhagen's blue Royals uniform stands out against the delightfully retro red and black background (although the white cursive does make those names a chore to read, even on the actual cards themselves). But that's right, my rotation is anchored by the guy who led the major leagues with 9.7 WAR in 1989. He also led the majors in ERA, W, and WHIP, en route to his second Cy Young Award, all at the tender age of 25. Behind him is #8 on the WAR list (6.0) Bert Blyleven, heading out of his last great year: at age 38 he finished 4th in the Cy Young voting. His longevity truly was amazing; I think the only reason they kept him out of the Hall of Fame for so many years was because of how much Twins fans hate his play-by-play calling. Next is a member of the World Champion Oakland Athletics, Dave Stewart. Stewart's 21 wins led him to a better finish in the CYA voting than Blyleven ("Smoke" finished #2) even though he averaged about 10 fewer fantasy points per game (61.9 for Stewart, 71.8 for Blyleven - they both finished well behind Saberhagen, who clocked in at 89.6 [for a whopping 3,224 on the season!]).

Our first NL pitcher is Doug Drabek of the Pirates, who in 1989 was one year older than his son Kyle is in 2013, where he is currently struggling in the Blue Jays organization. But no matter how much success young Kyle has in the majors, he will never have a cooler moustache than his pops. The battle for #5 starter was neck and neck between a 23-year-old Greg Maddux and a 35-year-old Dennis Martinez. The choice is more than obvious if this were a keeper league, but looking at '89 alone they were pretty comparable by all measures: Maddux trails insignificantly in Points (2,070 to 2,081) but Martinez finishes slightly lower in WAR (4.7 to 5.0). I went with The Professor just because of youth and reverse nostalgia, but El Presidente still made the team as the all-important long reliever/swingman/sixth starter. At the back end of the bullpen is lefty John Franco in his last year on his original team (the Reds) before he was traded to his hometown Mets, for whom he would go on to play for 14 years and record 276 saves.

Now the batters:

I organized this by position rather than by batting order, because if your baseball knowledge starts in the late '90s (which mine does) you will be confused to see Craig Biggio, someone you're used to seeing as an infielder, instead playing behind the plate. 1989's Silver Slugger at C would go on to play two more seasons at that position before moving full time to 2B - he played there primarily for 14 of his the next 16 seasons, all as an Astro. Pedro Guerrero isn't a guy you hear about too often after his trade from the Dodgers to the Cardinals, but he had somewhat of a resurgence in '89, finishing 3rd in MVP voting. 2B Ryne Sandberg is someone I'm really sorry I didn't get to see play extensively - he retired after the 1997 season - but a quick glance at his numbers show that he was consistently one of the best in the game for a very long time. It's too bad he could not have taken the Cubs to the World Series one of those years. One player I did get a chance to see a little of is Wade Boggs, but mostly when he was with the Devil Rays, i.e. after his amazing stretch of 12 straight All-Star Game appearances. He actually trailed fellow 3B Bobby Bonilla in fantasy points (2,074 to 2,152), but Boggs's monumental WAR advantage (8.4 to 4.9) plus the fact that he is a Hall of Famer, a leadoff hitter, and one of the all-time greats solidifies his spot in the lineup. Also Bonilla still makes the team as the DH, so all's well.

On the subject of Hall of Famers and all-time greats, Cal Ripken mans the shortstop position at a time in history when there was no one better. In addition to his well-publicized "Iron Man" consecutive games streak, Ripken was also in the midst of 10 straight seasons in which he hit more than 20 HR and an unprecedented 19 straight seasons where he made an All-Star appearance. Our left fielder and cleanup hitter Kevin Mitchell, however, had pretty much the exact opposite career trajectory. Mitchell played for 13 seasons and amassed 29.0 WAR in that time, but nearly 38% of that total came over two seasons, the first of which being 1989, when he led the league in HR, RBI, and OPS en route to winning the NL MVP award and leading his Giants to the World Series (only to see them fall to the A's). In center field is Mitchell's MVP counterpart in the other league, Robin Yount, a full nine years before the Brewers switched leagues (it was the last awards recognition he would receive for the rest of his Hall of Fame career). Rounding out the outfield is the fifth Hall of Famer in this lineup, Tony Gwynn, who qualified at RF, but who I was surprised to see played the majority of his 1989 in CF, his only full season in which he did so. I was also surprised to see that he stole 40 bases that year, which would have been impractical in his later, heavier years when I first started watching him.

Among the honorable mentions are an entire lineup made up of Hall of Famers: C Carlton Fisk, 1B Eddie Murray, 1B George Brett (he had moved from 3B two years prior to the release of this set), 2B Roberto Alomar, 3B Paul Molitor, SS Barry Larkin (who won the Silver Slugger that year despite playing only 97 games and averaging 10.7 PPG), OF Dave Winfield (although he spent all of '89 on the DL), and RP Goose Gossage (at the tail end of a fine career). We also have AL Silver Slugging 2B Julio Franco, pre-steroids Barry Bonds, on-steroids Jose Canseco, and current Five Hour Energy spokesman Bo Jackson. A pair of all-time great Braves starters, John Smoltz and Tom Glavine, join such other future greats as Curt Schilling, Larry Walker, and Bernie Williams (in all their Rookie Card glory). And we also have three current managers (Mike Scioscia, Robin Ventura, and Kirk Gibson) and four future TV announcers/pundits (Al Leither, John Kruk, Rick Sutcliffe, and Mark Grace).

2012 All-AAA Teams

Wil Myers, the 2012 Topps Minor League Player of the Year...
will not make an appearance on one of these teams.

Before I go back and play more Injustice: Gods Among Us, and before I dig deeper into my collection of baseball cards, and before I reevaluate the top MLB players for my second round of All-Star voting (I seem to have a lot of tabs open in my mental browser right now...) I'd like to revisit my ongoing 40-man rosters project. As I've mentioned many times before, only 25 members of the 40-man roster are on the active or MLB roster, which means the other 15 play in some level of the minor leagues. My objective for this post is to examine (in the form of a lineup, how else?) the best players who are currently on MLB 40-man rosters, but who spent a significant portion of their 2012 seasons in the minor leagues. My hypothesis is that this experiment will result in some awesome lineups!

So far I've only gone through players that spent most (or almost most) of their 2012 in Triple-A (AAA), the highest level of the minor leagues. The tricky part about dealing with players in AAA is that the minor leagues are essentially a feeder system for major league talent. So it stands to reason that if a player does well enough in AAA, he will eventually get called up to the majors, reducing his chances to put up more big numbers in AAA. But I'm confident that these two lists (there's one for each of the AAA leagues) include players who performed well enough in the minors, but who could still make an impact in The Show. And of course there's also the commentary section, where I will go over any noteworthy exceptions or honorable mentions.

Starting with the Pacific Coast League, you'll notice that there aren't a whole lot of household names on this list (unless you hang out in my household), which is to be expected in a list about minor leaguers. Before going into the PCL's historically-inflated offense, a word about the color coding and capitalization of the list: a green highlight in the Position column indicates that the player qualifies as a rookie heading into 2013 (i.e. less than 130 AB or 50 IP in the majors). A yellow highlight in the Name column indicates that player joined a new team during the off-season. The all-important Bats/Throws column shows that player's status on his team's 40-man roster: no fill for active, blue for optioned to the minors, and red for 15-day DL. And lowercase letters in both the Level and 2012 MLB Experience columns indicates that player did not play enough games to qualify for a fantasy position, provided there was a fantasy league for the minors.

As I mentioned before, the Pacific Coast League typically produces better-than-average offenses, but that shouldn't take anything away from the top two offensive performers Adam Eaton (not to be confused with the former pitcher with the same name) and Jedd Gyorko (who doesn't share either a first or a last name with any other major leaguer past or present). Both of these players were slated to begin the year in their respective team's starting lineups, and while Gyorko has experienced a bit of a learning curve while playing 3B and 2B for the Padres, he has at least been able to play every day - Eaton has yet to play a game with the 2013 Diamondbacks after suffering an elbow injury prior to the season.

A couple of top performers were involved in transactions this off-season: former Dodgers prospect Jerry Sands was sent to Boston as a player to be named later in last season's mega blockbuster, but was then shipped to Pittsburgh in the Joel Hanrahan deal, where he is currently struggling in AAA (but hey, it's better than season ending surgery, which is what's happening to the guy he got traded for). Middle infielder Jake Elmore was plucked off waivers by the Astros: Arizona could afford let him go, despite his .908 OPS and 32 steals last year, because they netted top shortstop prospect Didi Gregorius in a trade. (Gregorius spent most of his 2012 in AA, which is why he doesn't appear on this particular list.) Rounding out the list of new faces in new places, longtime Cardinals farmhand Andrew Brown signed with the Mets on a minor league deal, was called up early this month, but was optioned to the minors to make room for newly acquired Rick Ankiel.

Although the warm climates of the PCL ballparks make for high offensive production, it's the pitching staff that has had more of an impact in the majors this year. Trevor Bauer (traded to the Indians in the aforementioned Gregorius deal) has contributed nicely to Cleveland's rotation, and the rash injuries that always seems to befall A's starters has given Dan Straily an opportunity to start in Oakland (an opportunity he is currently squandering with an ERA over 7.00). Fellow A's starter A.J. Griffin joins Cardinals phenom Shelby Miller in the pitching division of the honorable mentions, as they were both given their first shot in the show in 2012. While we're on the subject, the best player in the minor leagues last year, Wil Myers (above), does not appear in this lineup because he is not currently on the Rays' 40-man roster (even though Jake Odorizzi, who arrived in Tampa Bay in the same trade, currently is). We should see Myers in the bigs soon enough: even though he's struggling in AAA right now, he would still be an upgrade for the offensively-starved Rays. In the bullpen, you might recognize Jim Henderson as the Brewers' new closer ever since fellow Canadian John Axford lost the mantle before the season's first week was out.

Moving on to the International League, there even fewer household names on this list. The only one who has seen significant major league action is veteran Ramon Ortiz, and the last time he pitched more than 35 innings in the majors was 2007. The only reason the Blue Jays have space for him on their 40-man roster is because their season is already in the pooper. Don't get me wrong, there are a few viable major league contributors on this pitching staff: although currently back in AAA, Tyler Cloyd is the best candidate to take Roy Halladay's spot in the Phillies' rotation, Jeff Locke has an ERA under 3.00 as a starter for the Pirates, and Zach Duke made the Nationals as a lefty specialist. And while Donnie Joseph has some upside (he was traded from Cincinnati to Kansas City for Jonathan Broxton), there's an awful lot of red in the rest of this bullpen.

The all-rookie offense, on the other hand, leaves much to be desired. Hector Gimenez is the only player currently on an active roster and the only other two players to have reached the majors in 2013 are infielders Cord Phelps and Brandon Laird. However, we do get to experience two more colors: Chase d'Arnaud, the brother of Mets catching prospect Travis (another honorable mention on the PCL team), is highlighted orange to denote his placement on the 60-day DL (and thus technically off Pittsburgh's 40-man roster, but this team was too desperate for infielders for me not to include him). Mauro Gomez has a nice cyan highlight, which means that he changed teams during the season: he was claimed by the Blue Jays in one of their myriad waiver wire moves, but was optioned before he played in a major league game.


So there you have it: a graphical and statistical analysis of the Pacific Coast League's utter dominance over the International League. The next stop on my ongoing analysis of the minor leagues will take me to the AA's trio of the Eastern League, the Southern League, and the Texas League. Whether I write a post about them remains to be seen.

Injustice: Gods Among Us, Chapters 1-4

The first thing you see upon starting the story mode of Injustice: Gods Among Us (subtitled The Mighty Among Us in the Middle East), is a quote from Lex Luthor: "I believe there are infinite alternate universes all going on at the same time and in all the different combinations of possibilities, etc." (Loosely paraphrased.) This is a very important premise to buy in a format that depends on the different alternate universes of no fewer than ten superheroes from ten distinct publications. However I've never held any illusions that I cared at all (or indeed knew anything about) any of the universes other than Batman's. So it's nice that you get to start your journey through the fighting game's story mode as Batman. But before you start fighting, you have to figure out what universe you're in.

The first universe you see involves the destruction of Metropolis (which I know enough to know is from Superman's universe) by a nuke that was somehow controlled by Joker (Batman's universe). Superman is so mad that he kills the shit out of the Joker and (SPOILER ALERT) becomes some kind of power-crazed autocrat. But before we see that happen, we're immediately transported to a second universe (hereafter known as U-2, with a dash to differentiate from the pop band), where the Justice League is trying to prevent the events of the first universe (U-1). Interesting piece of trivia I found out: the group that was also known as the Super Friends was almost called the Justice Society, but was changed to mimic the popular American League and National League. This is one of the rare instances (outside this blog) where the two subjects of this blog, Baseball and Batman, come together.

In the U-2 universe, Batman begins the game by fighting two characters who were featured in the first two games represented by the Unreal 3 engine: Deathstroke from Arkham City and Bane from Arkham Asylum. Now, in none of the Batman universes with which I am familiar can the caped crusader take on the Venom-enhanced barbarian in a straight-up fist fight, so right away we're playing fast and loose with the rules we all know and love. But that is to be expected in a game where characters can only interact with each other in straight-up fist fights. The fighting mechanics are easy to pick up if you're familiar with 2011's Mortal Kombat. The controls are a little dumbed down, with only three strike buttons instead of four - the back/high kick button was replaced with a one-button character specific power. The pacing is a little more jumpy than Netherrealm Studio's previous fighting entry, perhaps sacrificing some of the smoothness in favor of more interaction with the fighting stages.

I understand using a simpler control scheme to try to draw in more casual comic book fans whose fighting game affinity stops short far before the complexity of the Mortal Kombat series, and I understand wanting to have Batman be able to utilize the secret rockets concealed in the Batcave during a fight. But what I don't understand is Batman's damn fighting stance: standing upright, legs straight, his rear fist extended behind him like he's poised to throw an invisible javelin (see above). I was picturing something more crouched and active, like the pose you strike in the Arkham games when you hit the counter button when nobody's around to counter. While the Injustice Bat-stance doesn't appear to make tactical sense from any martial arts standpoint I've heard of, it did immediately strike me as similar to Scorpion's stance from Mortal Kombat. And when you consider that Batman's use of the grapple gun as part of his special moves repertoire shares more than a few characteristics of Scorpion's spear, perhaps this similarity starts to make sense. Batman's other moves include a standard Batarang projectile, a parry that allows him to counter an incoming attack, and a super move (read: X-ray attack) that involves an exploding Batarang, a taser attack, and a hit-and-run from a remote controlled Batmobile.

Anyway, before Batman's third fight against Lex Luthor, you have a chance to experience a new gameplay mechanic: a button matching minigame allows you to attempt to weaken your opponent's health before combat commences. Just another little add-on to make sure you're paying attention during the cinematics. Speaking of which, after defeating Luthor, a lengthy cinematic depicts how a group of U-2 characters (namely Batman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, and the Joker) somehow get transported into an alternate U-1 future while attempting to stop the clown prince of crime from detonating his nuke in the middle of Metropolis. Which becomes the inciting incident for the rest of the game.

After U-2 Batman and the Joker square off in an alternate U-1 Gotham, your time playing as Batman is over, and along with it my resolve to pay very close attention to the characters. As cool as it is to follow the game's storyline through however many alternate universes we're eventually going to explore, I just don't have any real emotional connection to Green Lantern or Aquaman, even when they are fighting dark doppelgangers of themselves (which provides excellent excuses for showcasing alternate character skins). Through the exploits of these lesser heroes, we learn that U-1 Batman is leading a resistance against evil U-1 Superman (known as the High Councillor) and the legion of heroes that have joined with him in his quest for absolute power (which means that there are two active Batmans in U-1, making it infinitely cooler than any other possible universe). Things start to get interesting when you pick up play as the Joker in Chapter 4 and see what happens when a long-dead seminal figure in the world of supercrime suddenly returns and starts causing trouble. Will he join with Batman, Lex Luthor, and the other time-transplanted U-2 superheroes against their common enemy? Or does he have another trick up his sleeve? I've downloaded a move list from GameFaqs, so now I'll be ready to super competently march onward through the story and see what happens.

Baseball Cards: Topps 2013

I have enjoyed baseball cards for the better part of 20 years, ever since I inherited a shoebox full of them as a child. I have no memory of how I acquired this veritable treasure trove, and the only reason I know the rough timeframe is that the most recent cards in the box were from the 1992 Topps and Upper Deck collection. It wasn't long before I started organizing these cards in plastic sleeves. I just had a couple at first, for the top cards in my collection - Frank Thomas, Cal Ripken, Roger Clemens, etc. - while the rest remained jumbled in the box. Once I began expanding my collection, I decided that every card deserved a spot in my plastic sleeves, which eventually filled binder upon binder with immaculately organized cards. I even remember the first card I got as a gift: it was a 1994 Upper Deck foil of Cal Ripken, which I promptly ruined by bending the corner while trying to transfer it from its protective casing into my plastic sleeves...

As you can probably infer, not many of my cards are in mint condition, but resale value was never high on my list of reasons for buying baseball cards. I like them more for aesthetic reasons (there are few things more comforting to a fan's heart than the look and feel of a brand new pack of baseball cards) and of course because each one represents a snapshot of a particular player at a particular time in his career but also in baseball history. And you know what I like to do with snapshots of specific players at a particular time: make lineups out of them.

Last week, I picked up some baseball cards with the express purpose of seeing what kind of lineup I could craft with the limited options available to me. I got two promotional items from Topps: a four-pack of 2013 Series 1's (including an exclusive chance to participate in the "Million Dollar Chase" giveaway) and a double pack of the "Opening Day" variety. What follows is a starting lineup resulting from the cards in the packs I opened.

Before getting into the lineup, a few brief observations about the cards themselves. The two versions have the same layout: a white background with the player's name and team logo in the bottom left and right corners respectively, the Topps logo in the upper left or right corner (depending on the picture), and a stylized home plate just above the name, which extends into a border around the picture in the team's colors. The obvious way to distinguish the two is the Opening Day April 2013 banner stamped on the (you guessed it) Opening Day variation, but the more observant viewer will notice that while the player names and Topps logo are printed in a nice shiny silver chrome in the Series 1 set, they are in a simple matte gray and white, respectively, in the Opening Day set. I noticed this by looking at both versions of the only duplicate card I got (Josh Beckett) side by side. The two sets are also numbered differently, despite looking nearly identical: my No. 4 starter is 219 in Series 1 and 192 in Opening Day.

I'm also convinced that the colors are a little bit more vibrant in the Series 1 versions, which is unfortunate, because not only do the Opening Day cards generally include better players, but it's clear that they were also printed more recently than their counterparts. You can tell because free agents from the Opening Day pack who were signed during the off-season (namely B.J. Upton and bench player Nick Swisher) appear in their new uniforms, whereas Series 1 free agents (fellow benchers A.J. Pierzynski, Jeff Keppinger, and inactive roster member Stephen Drew) appear in the uniforms of their former teams. But whatever teams they play for, the players listed above form the best starting lineup/rotation assembled from the approximately 75 cards included in the packs I bought.

Looking at his sub-.300 OBP and negative WAR values so far in 2013, B.J. Upton looks like a terrible choice to lead off and play CF, but he's there because I'm an admitted rankings slave: the elder Upton ranked between 50 (MLB) and 90 (ESPN) places better than his next best competition Angel Pagan, both of whom showed up in the Opening Day pack. In addition, 3/4 of my starting infield came from the promotional pack: 1B (and cover boy of Topps 2013) Prince Fielder, 2B Brandon Phillips, and 3B Will Middlebrooks (who is filling in for another injured Opening Day player Aramis Ramirez, currently on the 15-day DL). We've already seen the depth at 3B (the position also includes yet another O.D. contributor Kyle Seager), but the other two positions are well-stocked too, with Freddie Freeman and Chase Utley (both also from the O.D. pack) backing up Fielder and Phillips, respectively. The only shallow position on this roster is SS, which has Ben Zobrist at his third position (behind 2B and RF) as the best option in front of fellow Series 1 members Stephen Drew and Clint Barmes.

The rest of the outfield includes AL Central stalwarts Josh Willingham and Alex Rios, but the most surprising dark horse here has been Starling Marte (in a Rookie Card edition), who inexplicably has the seventh-highest point total among all batters, ahead of such luminaries as Robinson Cano and Mike Trout. The only position in which Series 1 has a marked advantage over Opening Day is behind the plate, where Buster Posey and Joe Mauer act as C and DH, while still leaving A.J. Pierzynski available off the bench. In the rotation, the most impressive (and GIF-worthy) starter is clearly Yu Darvish, the highest-ranked pitcher on this squad and the second-highest scoring pitcher in all of baseball. It's no surprise that both he and his number 2 in the rotation, Adam Wainwright, also comes from the Opening Day pack, as does star closer Jonathan Papelbon. The top pitchers from Series 1 are Braves lefty Mike Minor and Giants closer Sergio Romo, after whom there is a big drop indeed.

I realize that most of the fun associated with baseball cards flies out the window when they're represented as a simple list, so I've included a visual representation of my depth chart made out of my cards. And although seeing a picture of them doesn't let you hold them, turn them over, and feel the permanence of them in your hands, I hope that this can at least begin to capture the excitement of playing with baseball cards again. Writing this post certainly did for me, so don't be surprised if you see further instances of me dipping into my archive to present similar projects of card sets from years past.