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).

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.