For Tomorrow

 

These days, unless you debut in like mid-May or whatever, you're probably not getting a Topps rookie card in the calendar year you debut. The cutoff keeps zipping back up, to the point where it wouldn't shock me if, by the end of the decade, there was no room to do anything in Update except redo half of flagship regardless of anything that's happened during the season. I think about the fact that Jacob Misiorowski, Cam Schlittler, Roman Anthony, Kyle Teel and Cole Young won't have cards in Update because the Topps printing schedule is now at 1978 levels apparently. In 2011 they'd all be fine. That's the shitty part. 2011 Update, the city upon a hill Topps knows they're matching up to with Update sets, at least could include rookies from later in the season. If it had today's standards, Mike Trout would have to wait til 2012 Topps to see cards. That'd be worth way less. 

I look at some of these guys who came up in August differently though. Wouldn't have made the cutoff anyway, probably a shoo-in for 2026 Topps, mostly up to run out the clock. Good previews of what's to come. And that's how you describe guys like Jakob Marsee and Parker Messick. Just appetizers for what could happen in a full season.

Jakob Marsee, I'd say from the moment he came up for the Marlins, seemed like one of the most powerful young hitters in the game. In 36 games he has 41 hits, 25 RBIs, 4 homers and a .926 OPS. He's showing more offensive ability and versatility than a lot of people on this team. The majority of this team is guys like Dane Myers and Xavier Edwards and Derek Hill, replacement level guys from other systems who CAN have good seasons now while waiting for organizational pieces to come up. And in the last year or so we've seen genuine keepers show up, like Kyle Stowers, Edward Cabrera, Otto Lopez, Liam Hicks and Agustin Ramirez. Marsee seems like the next step forward, because you can see the team circling around him and setting him up as the big piece. 

Then you have Parker Messick, who just became a viable rotation option with the Guardians. Parker Messick has made 4 major league starts, and already he ranks 7th on the team in WAR. Honestly that says more about the Guardians this year than it does Messick, they have a lot of replacement level disappointments on the roster this year, or guys who are good for like a month and then drop off. But still, in those four starts, Messick has displayed a starting dominance that rarely anyone else in Cleveland has shown this year. Maybe Ben Lively before he got hurt, but all of Bibee, Allen and Williams have had their awful stretches. Messick, since activation, has a 2-0 record, a 1.93 ERA and 18 Ks. He's figured out how to keep runs down and not overexert himself, and that might be enough. I do wonder what a full season of that will look like, because last year we had a low-K, all-dominance pitcher in Valente Bellozo and this year we found the limits of that. So it'll be interesting to see if Messick is a full season success given a revitalized Guardians rotation.

I see Jakob Marsee having a bit more staying power than Messick, but you can never tell from just a couple months in the bigs. Maybe we'll find out next year..

Coming Tomorrow- After several years of injury-plagued obscurity, a guy that almost won Rookie of the Year and lost to some has-been named Ohtani roars back with a team desperate to stay in the race.