2026: Mind the Elephant Dung

 

It's not as if the MLB hasn't done a 'let's pretend everything's normal' season before. You saw it in 1995. You saw it in 2020 and 2021, after the pandemic. You saw it after free agency began in the 70s. There is always going to be an effort, whenever there is something that, in a just world, would lead to work stoppage or a deliberation, for the people who lie and die by the revenue to go 'okay, from the top, just like the last time'. 

More than even 2023, the league seems headed for not just a players' strike, but a complete lockout. The wealth disparity between owners has become ridiculous, with teams like the Dodgers able to routinely buy championships, and teams like the Guardians [who, keep in mind, also have CEOs with plenty of money] not at all able to compete. The players are gonna go towards the best offers to sustain their lifestyles, and the guys with the bigger pockets are gonna have those, so they're gonna keep winning. Kyle Tucker, Dylan Cease and Tyler Soderstrom will be making Shohei Ohtani money for their solid but not overly spectacular gameplay. And so the owners' immediate response is, 'okay, let's pay everyone less and do a salary cap'. Not to actually put more money into the team and try as much as the top guys are. No, bring them down and justify their lack of spending. 

It's 100% true that every MLB player, and MiLB player, deserves the right to earn enough to make a living. But if there's a pay disparity, the workers should not be blamed or penalized, the owners and CEOs should. Without players, there is no product, as the owners will likely find out in a year's time. If you want to bring in revenue, you need to pay your star players, or any players, what they are worth. We know what happens when an owner doesn't do this, and it leads to a mass talent exodus that makes John Fisher only the SECOND-worst owner in A's history. Now, it's also an issue when the lack of talent on the field, and the lack of ticket sales, doesn't provide an incentive for owners to spend because they own 3 or 4 other things with more immediate revenue. 

Regardless, something needs to be done. I'm of the opinion that a salary floor should be implemented above all else, to incentivize the Bob Nuttings and Pohlads of this world to actually build teams. Some cap might need to be in there as well None of the players' union people want a salary cap, even with Tony Clark conveniently leaving his position ahead of the union a year or so before deliberations begin [it's still bad what he did, I just think the timing of it coming out is really suspicious]. You have two stubborn camps, one with money and one without, and like in 2023, and 1994, you can kind of guess who's gonna cave first. Whether or not the solution will actually help anyone, that's another thing entirely.

But with all this a year away, and with the tensions between the owners and players still relatively high [remember, Bryce Harper nearly beat the shit out of Rob Manfred last year], there's still a season of baseball that needs to be played. Which means everyone needs to act like there isn't gonna be a work stoppage next year and deliver an exciting season. Easy, right?

There's obviously a lot of great storylines to follow this season. The Cubs are certainly one of them. Yes, they lost Kyle Tucker, but they gained Alex Bregman, still an elite third baseman and an upgrade from Matt Shaw in several ways. Bregman-Swanson-Hoerner-Busch may be one of the best infields in the league, on a count of how much can be produced, and how much value you're getting. The Cubs have reportedly tried to trade Nico Hoerner, but I wouldn't dream of it considering how valuable he's been for them, and how consistent he's been since 2022. With the Brewers looking to continue their sleeper-hit status and the Reds looking to compete without overdoing it, the Cubs are the favorite for 1st in the NL Central. Y'know, like last year. Is this the team that actually gets over the hump?

A lot of really cool stuff could happen in this season. Konnor Griffin might be ready in Pittsburgh, and that team might have enough to sneak into the conversation. The Athletics might be a playoff team this year, and have the contracts to last them through the Vegas premiere. Murakami might be the piece that gets the White Sox out of 'laughable' status. Andrew Painter might FINALLY get to start MLB games. Ohtani and Judge might chase 50 again. There's all sorts of promise and excitement, and I really hope this year can deliver, even if it's looking pretty likely that we might not get a full season next year. 

What Happens if Bonds and Clemens Get In

 Last year was the first year since the inception of the blog that I didn't do a Hall of Fame ballot post. 

There were two reasons behind it. One was that I had a feeling that nobody would be getting in, as the ballot-tracker spreadsheet was already tracking people at 60s at the very highest. The second reason was that there was a large probability that some of the steroids guys would make it in, and I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

In case I haven't talked about it much on here- I don't collect players that took steroids. As a hypocrite, I've made the occasional exception, like Andy Pettitte, who took them to get over an injury and has expressed regret about it, or David Ortiz, who did enough in the wake of the non-Mitchell-report HGH claims to gain a lot of headway, as well as becoming an important sports figure that seems to even forgive a major scandal, sort of like Brett Favre or Ray Lewis. And I'll go into more detail about it when I do a ballot for the blog, but Ortiz still gets my vote. Because of the timing, his career outweighs the steroids push. Which I can't say for Clemens or Bonds, or even Robinson Cano or Alex Rodriguez, people who I rooted for that played with HGHs. 

So, I've had to even stop collecting people like A-Rod, or Jason Giambi, or Marlon Byrd, people who did enough for my team to enjoy them but eventually became more steroid than player. And that's really where I'm at with Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

Let's do the math right now. Barry Bonds started working with the BALCO trainer in 2000, so I would say that anything from 1986 to 1999 is fair game. In that time he has 445 home runs, 460 stolen bases, hits .288, has 2010 hits, and has a career WAR of 103.7, which is already great career numbers. Roger Clemens started working for his steroid-supplying trainer in 1998, so anything from 1984 to 1997 is fair game. In that time he has 213 wins, a career 2.97 ERA, 2882 strikeouts, a 1.147 WHIP, and a career 92.7 WAR, similarly excellent. 

If Bonds stops playing after 1999 and Clemens stops playing after 1997, I have a clear conscience, they both go in easily, they deserve accolades as ambassadors to the sport. But the fact that they weren't satisfied with everything they had already achieved, including 3 Cy Youngs and an MVP for Clemens and 3 MVPs for Bonds, irks me. 

I did a research paper on steroids in eighth grade, and I talked with Howard Bryant, who literally wrote the book on the subject, and who my dad knew well from college. While admittedly my interview skills were not up to snuff at that age [that was around the time I started writing the blog], I got the sense from his book that giving respect to these players was entirely counterintuitive. Bryant knows the strength of a great black role model in sports, he's written books on Hank Aaron, and one of his chief subjects is the race discrepancy in sports, especially baseball. So the fact that the man who dedicated several years to a work about why Hank Aaron was great also dedicated even more to a work about why Roger Clemens, Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire were indefensible...stuck with me. 

Bryant was preparing for a world in which the right choice for many sportswriters would be to enshrine Clemens, Bonds and Rodriguez anyway, and talk about their high points while sweeping their 'cheating' under the rug. In 2013, the first year Bonds, Sosa and Clemens went on the ballot, Bryant handed in a blank Hall of Fame ballot. No names. Not even admirable choices like Craig Biggio, Mike Piazza, or even Lee Smith, Tim Raines or Edgar Martinez, would be on his ballot. And that year, no one got in. It was a habit that Bryant would go back to on a few more occasions. He wasn't doing this, in my opinion, for attention from the public. He was trying to get the attention of his fellow sportswriters. Basically saying 'if you give them glory, you'll be encouraging people to forget about steroids'. 

Howard Bryant's main thesis is that these players deserve to be remembered, but not for the awards and the records. For breaking the rules. They shouldn't be legends, they should be cautionary tales. And already, a lot of these people, like Jose Canseco, Lenny Dykstra and Ken Caminiti, have become that. 

And so here we are. 2022. The last year that Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa or Roger Clemens can get into the Baseball Hall of Fame before a veterans vote inevitably gets them in anyway. It is looking very likely that Bonds and Clemens will get in, primarily for their pre-steroid numbers, but also for their 2000s numbers, record breaking and the like. 

So what happens then? I collect the Hall of Famers, I have a binder full of contemporary releases of HOF players. I try to collect everybody, even the obscure ones, and even the ones I didn't love getting in, like Harold Baines and Ted Simmons. I'm already telling myself that I won't collect Jim Kaat, solely because I don't agree that he should be in, and also I'm not ready to forgive him for that racism on the air against Ohtani. And so if Bonds and Clemens get in...I'm not gonna find all my Bonds and Clemens cards and re-add them to my HOF binder. I just don't see the point of rewarding that, or wasting binder space for them.

If anything, it'll mean that these players' market stock will rise, and that it'll be easier to deal away some of the higher-price cards I have of them, once I eventually figure out how to properly do eBay. But this July, there will still be a ceremony in Cooperstown that rewards these players, and the gift shop will sell Bonds and Clemens merchandise along with Minnie Minoso and Tony Oliva stuff, and...it won't sit right for me.

I can't change the system. The system rewards baseball greatness regardless of moral obligation [no word on Joe Jackson or Pete Rose, though]. The system rewards not the people who break the rules, but the people who are talented enough to get away with it. 

So if I can't change that, I guess I'll just have to change how I think about it. 

Fanaticized

 

I didn't post about the MLBPA license acquisition by Fanatics last fall because I wasn't quite sure how I felt about it, and therefore what to say about it. Part of it was, for the first time ever as a collector, I wasn't sure what the future held for the hobby.

I started collecting in 2007, as I've discussed, and I knew full well how far the hobby had come. I'd gone through my dad's collection, watching Topps' 70s and 80s run be eventually joined by Fleer, Donruss and Upper Deck, I traced the overproduction boom in the 90s to the premium, multi-tier collecting market in the mid-2000s, and I enjoyed having the selection of Topps and Upper Deck products. Then, in 2010, I saw Topps become the top dog, and promptly go on auto-pilot, once UD would lose their license. Some things in the last decade I didn't see coming, like Panini's more creative ideas without a license, or the total collapse of the retail market in 2020 thanks to stir-crazy prospectors, but I could always point to what I knew, or what was constant.

And as it stood with the license acquisition, after 2022 there wasn't going to be anything constant. Which I had problems with.

I...don't think I've ever talked about this on here, but I've spent most of my life living with autism, and taking in the therapies and behavioral ideas in order to fit in with everyone else. One of the things I've always had troubles with is changes in routine. If something has been one way for as long as I can remember and just suddenly changes without much leeway, I had troubles with that. I point to whenever a website I use often changes its interface, or when a process I've been relying on for some time changes or ends and I have to pick up something new. And I'm working on my response to this, and I always manage, but...it's difficult. 

I will say, though, that one of the few times change excites me is when it's tied to collecting. When I get to see cards of people in new uniforms, especially if they're only known to me in one primary uniform, it's insanely cool. Or seeing the first few cards of a new product. That's something I've always enjoyed. 

The point is that all my life, I've had Topps releases every year, things to look forward to with that. And with the Fanatics licensing acquisition, I wasn't sure what would be waiting for me on shelves. The silver lining is that Fanatics would improve distribution, as evidenced by their merch sales, but what would Fanatics Baseball be? What would the cards look like? What idea men would be on that? Would it in any way resemble the feeling of opening Topps cards? And I say this as someone who's been very critical of Topps ever since having the universal license. Yes, Topps has made some mistakes, but I'd still be sad if they weren't producing cards. 

Which is why yesterday's news, that Fanatics would be buying Topps, its facilities and its employees, as a total absorption of the brand and the company, came as something of a relief.

I mean, yes, any sort of corporate takeover is bad. Corporations becoming too big and too powerful is something that's already spelled doom for the film industry, and I have opinions on the weight of corporations vs. the weight of the average worker that I'm clearly not gonna get into here for fear of alienating even more of the fanbase [hey, remember the guy who called me a shit writer during the month where I was afraid I wouldn't be making any more customs?]. It's kinda similar to the Rob Manfred conundrum, with the big people with money having too much leverage over the players. 

But...Topps has enough people on the inside who know what they're doing. Enough products, like Stadium Club, Heritage, Big League and Archives, prove that there's some level of creativity, knowledge of past successes, and design smarts. And hopefully with the collaboration with Fanatics's main idea men, there will be some modicum of collaboration and improving current concepts. Fanatics can use Topps' people to figure out how to make good baseball products, Topps can use Fanatics' people to make better new ideas and to get products in hands faster. 

The other bit of this that people have rightfully gotten excited over is the return of the football and basketball licenses to Topps, and the potential return of Topps Football and Topps Basketball. As flawed as both licenses became in Topps' hands, they have the potential to try again in a more lucrative card market. As sad as it was that Topps didn't get to produce rookies of Pat Mahomes, Joe Burrow and Devonta Smith, imagine the big rookies yet to come that Topps will be able to make cards of. 

There is obviously the potential for drawbacks. The continued lack of a licensed competitor could make for even more diminishing returns. There could be a lot more of the same behaviors, like the continued stagnation of printing deadlines, pushing back product release dates, and harebrained creative decisions. The only thing this acquisition could change is just who holds the money bag. 

And there's always the lingering question of 'what kind of collector will Fanatics be marketing to?' This is still a hobby ruled by eBay flippers and mojo sellers who use cards like cryptocurrency. And while I do think there is merit in selling big money cards [I need to figure out eBay, I have a ton of stuff I could make good money off of], it can't be the whole hobby. Topps, and Fanatics, needs to remember the collectors who are just team collectors, or player collectors, or, if you're me, even more specific types of collecting. 

I sincerely hope that this acquisition deal leads to a long and prosperous run, that revitalizes the hobby, levels things back to equilibrium, and makes a majority of collectors happy. I know there's not a high probability of that happening, but it's nice to dream. 

Can The Astros Have a Redemption Arc?

 We're 4 years since the cheating scandal. The majority of the Astros' core has stuck around. There have been minor losses, like Josh Reddick, George Springer and, well, A.J. Hinch, but where big pieces have left, new, equally detestable pieces have grown in their place.

Just look at Yordan Alvarez. He wasn't on the team in 2017. Does that mean I don't want him to befall horrendous consequences? No. Yordan Alvarez, a lot like Kyle Tucker, Jose Urquidy and Cristian Javier, could have brought in a new wave of different, non-infuriating Astros, and could have strayed from Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve and Yuli Gurriel by taking over the team and making a new name for it. But, instead, Alvarez jumped right into the core and acted like he'd been there for years, becoming a major force for power in 2019 and continuing that in 2021.

And to add to that, the Astros are still GOOD. The newer, homegrown pitchers have augmented the aging rotation and are revitalizing the team. Correa, Gurriel and Bregman are all having great seasons. Dusty Baker is working with this roster, and they're creeping up towards the A's more and more. And even if the Astros run the risk of losing Carlos Correa, Zack Greinke, Justin Verlander, Ryan Pressly at the end of the year, I can't confidently say that the dynasty could end there. There's a chance that it won't. There's a chance that Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez and Cristian Javier could make this team a completely new threat on the same values and make them competitors over the next few years, just reformed like the Yankees, Cardinals and Dodgers have done.

So...do the Astros have any chance of NOT being the villains of the MLB this decade?

I don't see it. I don't see this team completely shedding any of its guilt from 2017 by the end of the 2029 season. Why should they be ashamed? They won! By the end of 2029, they're gonna have Altuve's, Springer's and Bregman's faces on wall murals. Whatever version of the team exists in 2029 is still gonna have some foundational piece that was jumpstarted by the 2017 team. They'll never apologize, they'll never come out and say that they cheated, they're just gonna nod and not address anything, and nobody will have seen any consequences, and that's what's gonna happen. Like steroids, ball-juicing and the civil war, it's just gonna be something that happened in the past and everyone is supposed to move on from despite genuine consequences emanating from it.

The Astros may still be good in 2029. But will anyone want to root for them? 

Coming Tonight- One of the last survivors of the mid-2010s Diamondbacks teams...just trying to at least earn his worth.

Why I Started Following Football Again

 

I don't think I need to clarify when I say that 2020 has been a soul-crushingly awful year. 

It's been a year of many adjustments. A lot of dormancy. A lot of things being changed around and altered and made frustratingly off. Sports has mostly remained intact, but the way we as a public absorb sports, especially now, has changed. No more bar gatherings, no more friends huddled around a couch, just...sitting at home, watching solo. 

And once the MLB season ended, and NFL was the only sport around...with not much else to exert time and attention to, I started watching football again.

I'll make it clear that I was always a passing Eagles and Packers fan, even when I wasn't absolutely watching games, but in college, and in the last few years, I would just walk into a room, see a score, and walk out. I didn't follow games, I didn't keep track of who was good for whom, and most of all I stopped collecting football cards because I barely knew anybody in them. Obviously I was excited when my hometown Eagles won a Super Bowl in 2018, but that was the extent of it. Patriots-Falcons in 2017 was odd because I couldn't name most of the highlights on Atlanta that weren't named Ryan or Jones. 

The one key variable this year on Sundays was that my dad was home for them. With his NFL-related job, he's usually traveling Sundays, on location Mondays, home Tuesdays. So it'd be a rarity if I ever got to truly watch NFL games with him. But, this year he obviously wasn't doing much flying, and he got to be home with the remote usually tuned to RedZone on Sundays, and so I was there with him. Even if my teams weren't on til 4, I'd take it in, and I'd see who was surging, who was relevant, and how the game was looking.

This not only restored the usually-active pastime of watching football between a father and son to my household, but it got me back into football. Yes, the Packers were winning and the Eagles had to start Jalen Hurts in order to win themselves, but the Steelers were cruising on an easy schedule, the Pats were on the cusp of a losing season, the Cardinals, Seahawks and Rams were wrestling for dominance and the Cleveland Browns were better than they'd been since 1994. A lot to keep track of, but a lot to enjoy.

With this in mind, I got to making some of my first football customs since 2014. I made 32 to start, one for each team, starting with Pittsburgh's rookie standout Chase Claypool, and will attempt to pepper them throughout the next two months, despite finishing up Year by Year for the rest of this one. My goal is to not have many leftovers by the time the football season ends, and get all of these, plus subsequent playoff ones, out of my system. 

I dunno if this is gonna eventually lead to me collecting football cards, cause I already have enough to collect already, but this is a nice distraction in a year where I've needed several. 

Why I Collect (ft. 2004 Fleer products)

What makes something stand out?

For me, it's newness. The feeling that  these variables and elements haven't been brought together in this way to my knowledge. Something I've never seen before and looks cool. This is why I've always loved players in new uniforms. Gerrit Cole as a Yankee? Zack Wheeler as a Phillie? Amazing! It's new to me on a card, and therefore it stands out.

How odd, how new, must it have been in 2004 to see cards of Vladimir Guerrero as an Anaheim Angel? A man who'd worn the same Expos uniform since 1996, made a career as an  Expos hero...now playing for the Angels. Done up in a red warmup jacket, like the one above.

Something like that, in 2004 or even now, has the power to stand out to the average collector. Fleer knew this would be one of their first Vlad Angels cards. This looks the part.

To me, to want to collect  something means that it looks new to me, and that it sticks in my mind. 2004 Fleer Classic Clippings has stuck in my mind for 14 years, but it has nothing to do with Vladimir Guerrero.

In 2006, I was in fifth grade. I had not yet begun to collect baseball cards. My dad had his collection 'round  the house, and when  I was bored I would sort his old 70s and 80s cards by team, by year, by position at times. The players meant nothing to me. I was amused by the colors, the designs, the contrasts. They were cool enough even if I'd run by them a million times.

My fifth grade classroom had a sort of device where if you did good things, impressed the teacher in some way, you get a ticket with  your name in the fishbowl. If your name gets called, you  pick from the prize bucket. Lots of assorted cool stuff in there. Appealed to many different people.

But sprinkled throughout that  prize bucket were...packs of baseball cards. But not usual packs, like sealed, retail packs. These were cello-wrapped selections from 2004 Fleer products. Apparently my  fifth grade teacher knew a guy who worked for Fleer who, when the company was bought by Upper Deck in 2005, had a number of leftover cello-pack samplers from 2004 products. So this was his way of getting rid of them.

The cello packs contained one  card each from:
-2004 Flair
-2004 Fleer Classic Clippings
-2004 Skybox LE
-2004 Skybox Autographics
-2004 Fleer Patchworks
-2004 Fleer Showcase

I didn't win in fishbowl very often, because a lot of probability went into that...but when I did, I remember going for those grab-packs of baseball cards. They spoke to me just from their contrast to the baseball cards I was familiar with from my dad's collection.

My initial quest was to chase the names I knew. From a childhood of playing 2003 Backyard Baseball, certain names were familiar to me. Todd Helton. Nomar Garciaparra. Andruw Jones. And seeing them in  packs appealed to my young sensibilities as a collector.

What I didn't yet understand was that I was looking at a picture of an MLB that didn't exist  anymore. The Expos were dead in 2007. The Red Sox had won a World Series, and would soon win another. Shawn Green and Richie Sexson were calming down. Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Alex Rodriguez wouldn't rule the MLB for much longer.

Nomar and Vlad were outdated in these uniforms by the time this set came out. Not that I'd have known or cared. They were stars, right out of the video game. And they belonged in my now burgeoning collection.

Eventually, the people I began pulling cards of began to exceed my  grasp. Who was this big guy, Bartolo Colon, throwing smoke? Why was it such a big deal that Billy Wagner was pitching for my hometown Phillies? And who was this Josh Beckett guy, whose face I'd seen on the top of a pack, from Flair? Why was he so special?

It turned into me going through these packs with my dad. 'Is he good? Is he good?' And him rationalizing and saying that Reggie Sanders was DHing in Kansas City, not in St. Louis, and that Angel Berroa was slumping in KC, and that Doug Mientkiewicz was a backup at best. But that Mark Teixeira one might be good to hold onto.

I won a bunch of these. Stole a few and got caught. By the end of the year, a bunch were left in wrappers that were new to me, unknown to me, and I never got to see what was in them.

That might have been where the addiction began.

There were other factors as well. My friend from down the road getting a complete set of 2005 Topps, with  even more newness and shared collaboration with the 2004 universe. Then around this time, I kept getting invited to Little League end of the year parties, and everyone would go home with a pack of Topps from 2007. And that  turned into me wanting  to expand the universe further and buy more packs, which led to me going crazy on 2007 Topps and Opening Day and Upper Deck and...cannonballing headfirst into the hobby.

But the 2004 packs were always my first, and they always stuck out to me. I wondered what the rest of them  that I didn't get looked like. How Carlos Delgado and Lance Berkman looked on 2004 Showcase. How the other Skybox Autographics portraits looked.

JustCommons finally uploaded some of them to their mega-catalog. So I figured, what the hell.

The results yielded some players I didn't recognize in these designs. Juan Pierre on  Classic Clippings? I only knew the Patchworks one.

The faces were the same as I remembered. Kerry Wood at his peak, Jeff Bagwell winding down, Eric Chavez healthy.

These were even more jarring. Thome, Halladay and Burrell in this set? Had I finally gotten those? And how could then even do a photo like Teixeira's on Classic Clippings.

The newness, and the cool detail, still got to me 14 years later. The set still lived and breathed like it did in  those packs from Fleer.

They had less of the Patchworks ones I needed, but seeing Kerry Wood and Eric Chavez in this set made it feel better. The finality, the closure of a lot of this...that helped immensely.

The Showcase ones really impressed me. Not only  because this  set looks and scans the best of the 3, but a lot of these players just look awesome in  this set. Alomar as a White Sox is in  this set. Final-year Edgar Martinez is in this set. All of this meant so much to me.

But not as much as these two.

In 2004, even in an MLB where Derek Jeter existed, Jim Thome was my favorite player. We'd been to Citizens Bank Park a few times after it opened, and Thome was undeniably the star, hitting like hell, and making it worthwhile. Thome was so much fun to watch, and he was an easy pick to collect in  this era.

In 2008, my last year of little league, due to my lack of hitting against 12-year-old pitching, my coach decided to use me as a pinch-hitter, a bunt-over kind of guy. My dad pointed me towards Juan Pierre, then with the Dodgers, just as a source of speed and bunting. Pierre quickly became one of my  favorites, even after his wonderful year in Philadelphia, and I realized I needed to collect him as well.

These two players were  benchmarks in  my  collection, and among  the many  reasons, along with 2004 Fleer Showcase, that I collect. To have  them finally felt right. It felt new, and special, and it felt right.

I've still got a few more singles left to track down for my collection from these sets, not even mentioning the 3 or 4 that weren't on there, but I'm optimistic. These took 14 years. Collecting takes time. Some cards, some collections, take more energy than others.

But almost all of them are worth it if you believe in them.

On the Retro-Uniform Trend in Milwaukee and San Diego

Hollywood has a trend that really sums up the state of all of society right now: if it works, remake it, rehash it, re-release it, keep it fresh in people's minds so it never feels old to them. And when that doesn't work, remake something else and make them forget about the other thing. Did the new Terminator or Charlie's Angels movies fail BECAUSE they'd been redone several times, or because, as the studios now want you to believe, the franchise isn't as cool as the next new thing that's being remade or reimagined?

There's a point to this.

In the past week, the Milwaukee Brewers and San Diego Padres have unveiled two very similar uniform rebranding strategies. With the Padres, I thought it was a singular event, but now that I see the Brewers one, as well as taking past moves by other clubs into perspective, I realize it's a universal mindset.

So let's examine the Brewers' new uniforms:

Toldja this post would have more pictures...

Now, let's really think about these.

A cream base for a home uniform isn't new, as it was last used in 1977. That Brewers font is also a 70s import, one that even carried into the much-maligned 90s uniforms. The pinstripe is definitely an 80s import. The glove-and-ball insignia is back in full force, which means the M-and-wheat is officially dead. The only truly new element here is the all-navy alternates Brent Suter is wearing here, but those are still ROAD alts.

Still, these uniforms are a chance of pace from the dull, one-note navy-based uniforms of the last decade and a half. But the main takeaway is that instead of bringing in new elements, and unveiling a fresh new look, sort of like what the Marlins did last year to some success, the Brewers decided to look backward in order to go forward, and rely on nostalgia for past teams in order to grow support for future teams.

The new ideas, as it seems, don't work. So let's try something old, and see if people go for it. And people online HAVE been going for it.

Now, let's look at the new Padres uniforms that were announced last week:

These are a little different from the Brewers ones, and quite honestly I like them better because of the execution.

What does this evoke initially? Well...brown is back! Not since the year 1999 have sports fans been inexplicably happy about Brown(s) being back. Not only that, but Brown will be back on more days than just Thursday home games. The Padres have OFFICIALLY replaced navy with brown in their uniform structure, and have gone back to pinstriped home uniforms for the first time since 2001, and to BROWN pinstripes home uniforms since 1990.

But, instead of solely being the 1980s-era Padres logo across the chest, we have a variant of the 2017-era Padres nameplate being used, as a way of tying into the recent eras of Padres baseball. It's not completely old, and while several ideas are based in old concepts (such as grey-and-brown pinstripes for roadwear), it's not completely nostalgic.

The Padres new uniforms are taking concepts from previous, nostalgic uniforms, and using them to create a new, striking uniform era for the team. It's not just a carbon copy of the 80s brown uniforms- it's a variation on the brown uniforms, but for a new generation of fans. By comparison, the Brewers' new uniforms are glorified throwback uniforms.

Getting new, younger fans into these new uniforms will be tough, because they'll be trying to attract younger fans with a uniform idea that doesn't exactly speak to them as much as it speaks to older generations of fans. That's not really a problem these Padres uniforms have- sure, they're brown, but brown-and-yellow is a heck of a lot more interesting than the navy-and-grey base we've been dealing with for the past decade and a half.

And this isn't to say that appealing to new generations of fans with uniforms always works. Look at the Arizona Diamondbacks. In 2016, they unveil a new design, with a black-and-red fade on the shoulders, and blocky letter, and an emphasis on grey, in an effort to bring a cooler, more mod texture to their uniforms. It didn't work. It confused people. So for 2020, they're going back to the early-2010s color scheme (maroon/cream bases), but with a slightly fine-tuned nomenclature on the logo. Plus, the uniforms are emphasizing black, like they should have been all along. This is a sign that the Diamondbacks knew what didn't work, and fine-tuned it in order to get their goodwill back. Granted, it's a smaller change, but it was one that needed to be made.

So that's three teams that have altered, in one way or another, their uniforms for 2020. Will it stop at three? Will the Braves decide to emphasize cherry red after their friday promotions went well? Will the Phillies emphasize baby blue after their throwback promotions worked? Will the Reds placate me and go back to the black vests?

Or will new ideas arise from uniform design people? Maybe a team will come up with a fresh reimagining that will sweep the leagues over the course of the next decade.

For now...nostalgia seems to work. So if the Brewers, Padres and D-Backs want to keep mining it, I guess we can't stop them.

The Prolonged Death of the Rookie Card: A Somber Essay

Here is an old custom card, because people tend to like posts with pictures in them

To quote a disgraced comedian in a comedy sketch about sectional couches, "this is going to be long."

By now, enough of a big deal has been made of the Astros' Yordan Alvarez not having a Topps card in 2019, his Rookie-of-the-Year-winning season. To briefly sum up the argument, the fact that someone who debuted in June being held off for a set that caps a checklist in mid-July, solely because they want to overproduce his rookies the following year, is the kind of capitalist thinking that gave us Disney+ giving us the Mighty Ducks sequels before coughing up the original.

It'd be too much to just say 'why overexpose Pete Alonso in every set and not do the same thing to Alvarez because he came up later', but ranting doesn't work on its own. So I did some research. I went back and looked at every year's Rookie of the Years, and their Topps cards, or lack thereof. It was illuminating.

This voyage eventually turned into a fascinating look back at the emasculation of the 'rookie card'. Starting in 2006, Topps defined the term a bit more closely, and tried to gauge players that would make their debuts during the season as rookies in flagship, while filling Update with players they missed that had made debuts. Around 2015, the flagship rookies just became 'guys that debuted really late last year that'll probably be in the mix this year', and Update rookies just became 'guys that debuted during the year'. And that's devolved even further to what we have now, where a lot of Update rookies are people that were forecast to make big splashes in April or May (Jon Duplantier! Elvis Luciano!), and occasional bullseyes (PETE ALONSO), while completely negating rookies that debuted later who actually had substantial rookie years, like...Yordan Alvarez.

The last ROY to not have their own rookie card in a flagship/update set is Bobby Crosby, who was on a combo rookie card in 2004 with Rich Harden. This was also the case for both 2002 Rookies of the Year. This also illuminates Topps' strategy from 1999 until 2005, which was to predict, as much as they can, the rookies that would succeed during the year, and give them combination rookie cards in flagship and, if they were lucky, solo base cards in Update.

So, really, the last player to not have a Topps flagship/Update card of their own in the year they won the Rookie of the Year is Jason Jennings, the Rockies strikeout artist who won the award in 2002. However, it's interesting to note that Jennings had cards in Topps Total that year, as well as Topps 206, and plenty of Fleer and Upper Deck products.

A few signs of the times here:

• Topps produces a card of a rookie in supplemental sets, but not in Flagship. Nowadays, this doesn't exactly happen this specific way. True, players like Max Muncy will be featured in subsets, but not with their own base card, in sets like Update. And yes, players will be featured in different uniforms in inserts than they will be on base cards (Josh Donaldson or Andrew McCutchen in this year's flagship is a good example). But Topps not including a player in flagship but including them in an extraneous set like Gallery? Rare, but unheard of. Even the rookies in a set like Gallery, like Lewis Brinson in 2017, manage to wind up in Update anyway. The checklists are congruent. But in 2002, they weren't.
• Other companies produce rookie cards of a player when you don't. This sort of thing happens to Topps all the time- they have a wider view of the rookie class than other card makers, especially 2000s Upper Deck and 2010s Panini. But for Upper Deck and Fleer flagship to have a player when Topps flagship doesn't? Very curious. And it's not a licensing thing, where someone's signed an exclusive contract with a company that isn't Topps, like Matt Wieters until 2015 or Ichiro from 2013 to 2014. Topps could have made a 2002 Topps card of Jason Jennings. They just...didn't. Which is alarming. 
• Jason Jennings didn't exactly leap onto the scene in 2002. He'd been sitting in the Rockies' farm system for a few years, and was touted to make a gradual splash in 2002. It's not like Jennings' come-up caught Topps off-guard. It certainly didn't catch Fleer or UD off guard. You can say the same thing about Yordan Alvarez this year- Alvarez was a winning DH prospect, the Astros had no options at DH, Alvarez started the season in AAA. Topps has done math like this before, but to completely miscalculate like this, perhaps deliberately, is appalling. 

From then back, you get more mixtures, like players showing up on multi-person cards, or in prospect subsets, or in Major League Debut sets, to showing up in the low-seeded Traded set (hello Cal!), to eventually...the practice of not beating printing schedules and releasing the rookie's card the following year, like Eddie Murray not getting his rookie card until 1978. 

So Topps has lapped themselves, deliberately. Instead of not having the time and feasible means to produce a Yordan Alvarez card, they've completely put off releasing a card of him in 2019 so that they can overproduce his cards in 2020, and pepper every single set with rookie-logo emblazoned Yordan Alvarez cards, even if the point is very moot and he is no longer a rookie. 

Topps flagship rookie cards have ceased to mean anything other than an obligation. You can find a Yordan Alvarez rookie that Topps has produced, but in a set like Pro Debut, Heritage Minor Leagues, or Bowman. Those are the rookies that mean something, and...most of the time, most of them aren't even worth anything because they don't all count as actual rookie cards because Topps produces so many of them, both in quantity and in variety. 

Last week, I pulled a card of Casey Mize, the Tigers' premier prospect, out of a pack of Heritage Minor Leagues. It's not my first Mize card, as he had a card in Pro Debut. It's not the first-ever Mize card, as he had cards in last year's Bowman Draft, as well as Bowman Best and Panini products. It will not be the last Mize issue as a minor leaguer, as Mize will be in Pro Debut and HML, and Bowman, until he makes his Tigers debut. 

In 20 years, someone is going to find a Mize rookie card, one of the DOZENS I just delineated, and think it's worth something, and because it's not the complete, city-upon-a-hill rookie card that Topps produced before all the other ones, it won't be worth anything at all. Even if Mize does make it. Topps has now made its own rules as to which cards are 'real' rookie cards, and yet have continued to produce subsequent rookie cards that follow those rules, but are not the supreme, actual 'rookie card'.

This does not make sense to me because I'm not wealthy.

In summation, rookie cards don't mean anything anymore. Game used cards don't mean anything either. Collect the way you want to, not because of added value or stuff that might make money, but because if a million dollar company can control the exact way you collect cards, they've won.

I promise my next post will be a lot happier and have a lot more pictures.

On Mental Health, Baseball Cards, and Holding On

Right. In honor of the drought in between playoff games, let's get serious.

I've been blogging for ten years, going on eleven. When I got into writing this blog, I was 13. And I'll admit it was very odd for a little while to be a young kid interacting with a lot of older collectors. Cause, you know, a kid's perspective can only get you so far, and you only know so much about the world when you're a kid.

I'm 23 now. I feel as though I'm still one of the younger members of this community (though I've seen people my age, like Drew from drewscards, come and go), but I definitely know a lot more about how the world works. Since starting the blog, I've graduated from high school and college, started my first professional job, and come to terms with my own anxiety and depression. Now, one year post-college, and in arguably the toughest stage of my life, it's been harder to keep everything stable. This is the first time in my life where I'm bowling without bumpers, in a sense- I've been on a track for most of my life, and now I'm figuring things out on my own, though still living at home, and it's a lot tougher.

I'd like to say that collecting cards helps, but...I look at where everything is now, and I compare it to where it was when I started collecting in 2007. And I ask myself, very plainly- would I start collecting if I got into it now, rather than in '07? And look, say what you want about the 2007 Topps flagship design, or gimmicked rookies or whatever, but there was more variety then, and there was more risk-taking then, than there is in current baseball card products. Now everything feels more homogenized, safer, and less genuine.

I'm not saying I'm done collecting. Far from it. It's one of the safest addictions a person can have, and it's still one of the few constants in my life. But, I'll admit that with current cardboard, it gets harder and harder to find things to write about, or something solid to say. I contemplated doing a post this year about how broken Update Series is, but that's a post I've written before. I don't wanna go in circles with the blog.

Perhaps there's more to say about older cards? I might do more Nostalgic Box Breaks in the future, but even then it takes energy to label every photo and space the posts out so they get the right traffic.

But, in a year when I've seen good friends alienate each other, and in a year when I've tried very hard to keep optimistic while working a job that's clearly not my end goal, it's very hard to just be satisfied doing the same custom posts, or breaking the same uninspired boxes of current Topps products.

There's a point to this, I swear to God.


In case nobody's told you this before, it's not a sign of weakness to ask for help. In any capacity. I struggled with this for years, because of some weird, misplaced pride kind of thing, and I still struggle, but...I'm learning. I see a therapist, as one does. I've been working with the guy for a few years, and it's one of those things where my old one left the practice so this one got assigned to me, and it's still a little fresh, but...he understands. He works with a lot of people who deal with a lot of other things, and as someone with a high-functioning neurological disorder, I'm probably a bit of a relief for him. Not to gloat or anything.

Anyway, we're talking today. And he asks me what I do to relax. And I bring up the fact that most of my house is lined with baseball cards, and I collect those and organize them. And as I bring up something else, he holds up a finger. "Hold on."

And he went to get a large, shoebox-type thing, and I'm already going "you're kidding me."

Don't worry, the whole box wasn't baseball cards. I can guess that some of the other people he works with need tactile enforcement or something like that, because the box had a disorganized mess of trading cards. But not like Pokemon or anything current. This was stuff my therapist must have grown up with. Old Batman cards, or picture cards, or one or two basketball stickers, or a rare Michael Jordan Hanes oddball set that came out in the 2000s. And he leafed through, saying "I think there's a few baseball ones in here."

There were.

Yeah. I had a similar reaction.

Of all places to find 1972 Topps cards, you don't expect to find them in a therapist's office. There were only a few baseball ones in there, and they were all 1972 Topps. I clarified, and asked if he actually meant that I should take them, and he said 'of course'.

Better in someone's collection than sitting in a box to be handled by people that don't appreciate them, I guess.

Looking through all these, I noticed how...atypical, ironically, these cards were, especially as specimens of the 1972 set. This one, for instance, is the only team-photo card from this set that isn't a posed shot, due to stadium concern issues I believe. I can only imagine people looking through this box unfamiliar with baseball, looking at the floating heads of the 1971 Chicago Cubs looking back at them, including Joe Pepitone, Billy Williams, Ken Holtzman, Ron Santo and Ernie Banks.

Perhaps this was the point. Perhaps these cards weren't meant to be normal cards, or base models of anything. Perhaps they were meant to spark interest in people who were doing their best to grasp concepts.

The rest of these cards were all from the infamous Boyhood Photos subset from 1972. Which I also found interesting. Maybe they were thrown in because younger clients could see something tactile, something about growth. See this young kid in a button up? One day he turned into a 4-time 20-game winner and World Series hero. It can happen to you too.

 Fregosi's better known for being the piece that got Nolan Ryan out of Queens. I honestly think he should be better known for this card. We need more cards with accordions on them. Get Flansburgh & Linnell to do a designer-set like Christie Brinkley and VJ Lovero did, and have 'em all carry accordions.

Maybe my therapist was trying to convey to people that some people don't change completely. Look at Wilbur Wood. By 1972, I imagine he was no longer a master fisherman, and I imagine he had a different sense of pants fashion, but he still has the same face. He's still the same person, no matter what exteriors, or interiors, have changed. 

Willie Horton falls into the category of 'team hero that never gets enough credit outside of his one city'. That city is Detroit, and they love him there, as he's a Tiger HOFer, and I believe his number might have been retired. But you don't see many sportswriters talking about Willie Horton these days.

Sometimes you just find your circles, I guess. You look for the people that love you and want to hear from you. Horton's is Detroit. The blogosphere might be mine.

You wouldn't think it, but these cards aren't in the worst condition, either. Granted, some are kinda bent, and some corners are kinda dinged, but compared to other more loved cards I've seen (there was a 75 mini in this box with a HUGE tear through its middle), they're fine. With 45+ year old cards, you take what you can, and if these were lying in a vintage dollar box at a card show, I'd certainly pick them up. Especially considering how rarely I see these subset cards, or just Sal Bando cards in general.

There were a few draws in this, as if I cared about those. Like Joe Torre's snazzy little suit here. Not sure what aged worse, the suit or the sideburns. Of course, the story is clear from '72- Torre bobs around for a few more years, becomes a player-manager with the Mets, gets bit managing jobs here and there, then gets the Yankees gig and becomes a Hall of Famer by winning 4 titles in 6 seasons.

A lesson I could take from that? Not every great opportunity happens early in life. Frank Langella has the story of seeing a fortune teller when he was in his 20s, and the fortune teller saying that he'd achieve his greatest success late in life, and Langella admitting "I thought she meant 40". True success comes to those who are patient, and those who are determined to achieve it themselves. I realize I might have to wait a little longer for my success, but...I'll be here for a while, I reckon.

This was the shock to me. It made sense, but it was a shock.

It made sense because it wasn't the first time I'd seen a Stargell vintage card in the wild. Years ago, looking through my friend's brother's binders, mostly from 2000, 2001, that era...I looked into one and I saw what was clearly a Willie Stargell 1966 Topps issue, which probably came from his Cleveland-sports-loving father. It seemed odd that someone so junk-wax based would just have one vintage HOFer in there.

It also made sense because another therapist I'd had at this practice, who'd also since retired, was a Pittsburgh Pirates lifer, and told me about first-hand memories of the 1960 team, and going back to meet members of the team for the 50th anniversary and meeting Bill Mazeroski and everybody. And talked about Three Rivers Stadium, especially in comparison to PNC Park.

So of course Willie Stargell was hiding amidst these other cards, waiting for someone who'd appreciate him. Which is an odd concept- Stargell, one of the nicest players to walk the fields, waiting for appreciation.

I also find it weird that, out of all of these, Stargell's old photo is the only one where he's holding a bat, in full baseball regalia. Yes, Bando's got a glove, but his is static. This is, while posed, an active shot of a future legend in action. Sometimes ability like that can be apparent from the beginning.


I don't know how many fingerprints are on these cards, or how long they've been in a therapist's office, or if the other people who'd seen those cards are any better or any happier than they were before, but...it's not my place to wonder that. All I can control is where I go from here, and how I cope with this...admittedly dormant stage of my life.

Things aren't going to get much easier, especially as I work towards getting a job in my field, but...the bottom line is I know when to ask for help, and I know when to tell someone how I'm feeling. Not because someone will see me as vulnerable, but because someone will see me as human. And I can't help but be human.


Once the World Series ends, I'm gonna try to do more basic posts about cards. Nostalgic Box Breaks, card prompts, custom subsets, or just...looking at some cards, and talking about them. I wanna write more clear, thought-out stuff on the blog, rather than just saying 'hey, here's some pictures and mediocre analysis, have at 'em'.

A post I intend on writing soon is another one involving anxiety, about the general anxiety behind trading through the mail. If you liked this one, you'll probably enjoy that one as well.

If you've made it this far, not just in this post but also from when you started reading my blog in general, thank you. I really appreciate it. I hope you like where I'm going with the blog next.

Nothing Goldy Can Stay

Up until last week, a lot of people were saying that the Bryce Harper contract may have been the most disappointing one of the offseason. Because the hip thing is bagging on Harper, and nobody wants to be un-hip.

Of course, Harper's having an amazing week and is finally turning into an offensive threat in Philly, so now people are having to rethink this. If Harper's not the big, disappointing free agent signing pre-2019, then...who can it be?

It's..it's Paul Goldschmidt. This isn't hard, it's Goldschmidt.

Now, I know what you're thinking. The Cardinals are in first place right now, they've edged the Cubs out of first, and are in the process of controlling the division. But...the Goldschmidt signing was the umpteenth move in a series of moves that had begun to shift the team's priorities in the wrong way.

Let's look at the 2011 team for a second. The offensive standout was Albert Pujols, and the team was built around him. Then protecting him you had heavy-hitters like Lance Berkman, Matt Holliday and Yadier Molina, and then around them you had more specific, sneakier guys like David Freese, Rafael Furcal and Skip Schumaker, and clutch guys like Jon Jay and Colby Rasmus. That is a solid lineup, but its also one whose centerpiece is obvious, and whose lineup is built around that centerpiece.

Now, let's look at the 2019 lineup. And let's ask...who is the centerpiece of this lineup?

It's hard to say.

Before the season, I would have said Matt Carpenter. After a few seasons of being bopped around the infield, he went wild during the second half of last year, finishing with 36 home runs, a career high. Now, Carpenter's batting .214 with 10 homers and some time on the IL. Aside from him, the centerpiece might be Yadier Molina, which would make sense from a veteran leadership aspect, but Yadi's had a down year statistically, and has spent a bit of time on the IL. Same with Marcell Ozuna, the guy signed to hit for power, and has in spurts, but...he's only hitting .259. All three of these guys are sort of being used in supporting roles this year.

So...when Goldschmidt was signed, you had to think he'd be used as a centerpiece, a sort of filler of the hole that Pujols filled for 10 years that had been open since. Goldy at his best is a .300 hitter who can hit for power and contact, and do a solid job at first. But since last year, his numbers have been down, and he's been a bit more human. And yes, a .290 average is human for Paul Goldschmidt.

And now we flash to this season, where Goldschmidt is batting .258, with 127 strikeouts, only 27 home runs and 66 RBIs, and some of his lowest general statistics to date. The first half of the 2018 season prepared us for this season, and this may be the new normal for Goldschmidt. He's having a very okay year, and he's, at 31, just phasing out of his prime. And this is what the Cardinals have signed up for.

Goldy's not the centerpiece, because he's not playing like it's his team yet. He doesn't seem as comfortable as he did in Phoenix. He's not what he was, and...it may be poetic justice to see the Cardinals handed their own Ryan Howard, but it does raise the question...if it's not Goldschmidt, or Carpenter, or Molina...who is the centerpiece of the Cardinals?

Well...it's looking like it's Paul de Jong. After years of building teams around a statistical and clubhouse giant, like Albert Pujols, the Cardinals have chosen the sabermetrically-sound contact hitter who keeps to himself and quietly sneaks along. It'd be like if the 2011 team built themselves around David Freese (which would've made me even angrier at them than I am now).

Is this what baseball is now? Or are the Cardinals just lucky? And is this luck about to run out?

Coming Tomorrow- The red-haired bearded slugger in LA. No, not that one, the other one.

Charlie Blackmon vs. Statistics

Stats are weird, man.

Yes, that's how I'm starting what might me one of my more thought-out posts of the year so far. With something that might be a Lebowski-ism.

I'm not one of those guys that's studied Bill James, and gone into detail about mathematical possibilities and sabermetric outcomes and such, but...I have seen Moneyball. It is a great movie. I didn't understand it all, but I really liked it.

We're living in an era of baseball where the most important statistic is not batting average, or ERA, or home runs...but WAR. Wins Above Replacement. A statistic that seems simple to any mathematician or general manager, but...still baffles a lot of modern baseball fans. People will go 'wait, I don't understand, this player's only batting .260 with 3 home runs, why does he have a 1.3 WAR?', not accounting for fielding percentages, contact hitting, and on-base percentage (to use the immortal line from Moneyball, "does he get on base?").

The average baseball fan accounts more for power-hitting than he does for fielding...which is the exact opposite of the average baseball statistician, who argues that fielding is half the equation, and any overpowered batting number must be complemented by a fielding number, regardless of whether or not that fielding number is atrocious.

And that is where Charlie Blackmon comes into play.

Charlie Blackmon has remained one of the most consistent and likable hitters in the game, regardless of the fact that most of his work is done in a hitter's park. He can hit for contact, he can hit home runs, and he's never had a truly awful season.

...but according to stats, his 2018 was atrocious. Now, looking at it from one dimension, it doesn't seem so bad: he batted .291 with 29 home runs and a league-leading 119 runs scored. That's a solid season right there, especially for a pennant-contender like the 2018 Rockies.

On the WAR equation charts, his Runs Batting figure was a 14. Not as good as his 44 from 2017, but not bad. His Runs FIELDING figure on the other hand...was -28. Because he is a very slow outfielder, and not a very accurate outfielder. And because...he plays most of his games in a hitter's park, all the balls are coming his way and he can't always run to get there.

...which is a problem.

I'd like to tell you his 2019 WAR splits are better, but...not by much. He's currently got a zero Runs Batting, which is odd for a guy with a .287 average, and a -1 Runs Fielding. So...not a lot going on there, even if we are talking about a perennial all-star power-hitting team hero.

Hell, it doesn't even work for David Dahl either. Dahl's batting .315, he's doing great...and he has a -3 Runs Fielding variable. So THAT's screwing him over. At this point, I'm legitimately not sure if it's player skill or just the outfield in Coors Field in general that's dooming these two players. Because they're both great. Seriously. And these numbers, which are widely listened to in this sport, are stopping them from greatness.

Now granted, they're not the most important numbers in Denver right now (those would be 15 and 18, and also #28), but they're the ones that stood out for me.

And if you do think that stats like these are ruining the game, and that players like Charlie Blackmon should be allowed to get higher acclaim despite bad fielding numbers...well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

Coming Tonight- Okay, that was a weighty, educated post. So tonight, let's talk about the Orioles.

Abandoned Outfielder Demands Answers

It's become apparent that the Marlins aren't going to win many games in 2018. New owner Derek Jeter has unwittingly taken the approach of his predecessor in taking everything good about the Marlins and trading it all away. This happened after the World Series, it happened after 2005, it happened after the dealing didn't work in 2012, and it's happening now.

The main problem is that, with emphasis on other luxuries, the Marlins can never afford to be too good. They may have a fancy stadium, they may have funky uniforms, and they may have two W.S. titles in their short...[sigh] 25-year history, but nobody's coming to games, the payroll is small, and the big stars aren't amounting to wins. So this purge is happening, and it's not even entirely Jeter's fault (though I'm not gonna lie and say he has nothing to do with it).

It can be argued that the only reason we're at this point NOW is because the pitching dried up (and the only reason that's happened, as I brace myself for the death threats, involves a boating accident). Once the pitching staff completely bottomed-up, regardless of how well the offense was doing, the Marlins were DOA. As of now, Giancarlo Stanton, Dee Gordon, Edinson Volquez and Marcell Ozuna, some of the most important vets on the squad, have all been dealt.

What's more, the people still left on the Marlins have realized that it'd make no sense for them to stay as well. J.T. Realmuto has openly asked to be traded, and the Marlins are listening to offers. Christian Yelich, who would have to be the team's flagship star if he sticks around, has openly stated that he'd like some answers, and that he's a little hurt by all of his teammates being traded.

I really don't know what else the Marlins can do. If Yelich, Realmuto and Bour go, they'll have no stars left, and it'll be very tricky for them to do the whole 'there's youth in waiting' thing that got them through the 2006 season. This is a team that is damned if they try to compete, and damned if they play to lose. And I really wish it hasn't have gotten to this point.

Is Ned Yost's ASG Ideology the Right Way?

I talked about this briefly in my ASG-Rosters-Reaction post, but I'll devote a whole post to it because at least here I can be objective and not just yell 'THIS IS WRONG WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS'.

So, Ned Yost was in charge of devising the AL All Star roster for the 2nd year in a row. Now, Ned Yost is a smart guy, knows his stuff, and I have nothing wrong with him, but he has a different idea of how the All Star Game should work. He used his pitching staff a lot more factually than a lot of recent All Star teams have used them. Instead of putting a solid pick of some of the best starters in baseball, and a couple closers, he picked 5 starters, around 5 middle relievers, and around 4 closers. And most of these middle relievers, like Will Harris and Brad Brach, while good, weren't really deserving of an All Star Game stint.

And yes, I'm fine with some of the starters Yost selected, like Chris Sale, Steven Wright and Danny Salazar, but there were a few guys I would have wanted to see on that pitching staff, like Rich Hill, and Chris Tillman, the man above the post. Plus, I'm honestly doubting people like Brach and Harris are even going to get much playing time at all.

Look, this is definitely the more realistic approach to roster-compiling, because it's more like an actual pitching staff in use, with more variance and more spare-part guys that you don't always see, so with that viewpoint, I can kind of see where Yost is coming from. Even putting Kelvin Herrera, his beloved set-up man, into the mix for the 2nd year in a row, even if it's a bit selfish, is still admirable- he's giving the guy a chance to be seen, especially since he doesn't get the spotlight very often.

There's two sides to it, and I can see both. I would have preferred to see a little more of a taste of the better starters in the AL, and I would have sacrificed Harris and Brach for them, but I'm not complaining too much.

Coming Tomorrow- The longtime NL catcher who's FINALLY, and I mean FINALLY, having an impressive season at the plate as WELL as behind it.

It's Impolite to say 'Bunt': Why Topps Bunt is the Wrong Future of Collecting

I pulled this in one of my packs of 2016 Topps yesterday. It appalled me for a few reasons.

1. If people are saying the photoshop jobs are obvious in the 16T flagship, then they should get a load of these, especially the Correa insert. No effort to dial it back.
2. This brings forward an especially horrifying notion, one I'm going to talk about in this post.

2016 Topps has been criticized by literally everyone on the blogosphere, and for good reason. One of the most frequent criticisms is that the base design looks WAY too simple. Like, smog notwithstanding, it's just an MLB crawl and some shiny. There's not a ton to it.

And, as some people have pointed out, there's a reason toward this. Topps has realized that their business is coming less from people buying actual, physical packs of their products (you know, the way it should be), and is coming more from people using their digital app, Topps Bunt. So, in order to remedy this new direction of sales, Topps has made their base design simple enough that it can be reproduced for Bunt. Matter of fact, 2016 Topps is the first Topps Baseball Card set designed for the sole purpose...of NOT being collected as baseball cards.

It's painstakingly obvious. The lack of foil. The lack of originality. The zooming in of all of the photos. The even-more-boring inserts. The indistinguishable parallels. Topps has mass-produced and collated this set merely as an afterthought, knowing that they're only doing it for the older generation. Topps, who were so focused on attracting the younger demographic five years ago, through physical cards, have given up entirely, and have gone to just winning over that demographic by becoming something they very clearly are not.

Oh, sure. I talk so much shit about Topps Bunt, how it's detrimental to old-school collectors, and how it's ruining how Topps produces its cards. But I haven't even talked about how the app is from the inside, how it works, what it does. So I'm certainly one to talk.

(Clears Throat)

I was an avid user of Topps Bunt for approximately one month. I joined around January 2015, and deleted the app sometime around the middle of February 2015. I wanted to see what the fuss was about, so to speak.

Topps Bunt nearly derailed my savings account and damn near ended my blogging career. So yes, I am one to talk. And talk I will. Until my lungs freaking burst.



Like I said, I joined in January 2015, during the offseason. I had no choice but to start accumulating as many packs as I could, but there was no easy way about it. In-app credit was generated on a day-to-day basis, with a special bonus every Wednesday, and that was no way keep nabbing packs regularly. So, more in-app credit could be purchased with actual money. Now, Topps got this from other apps, I assume, as Temple Run or Angry Birds would sell things like hints, or more saves, or little extra items, for a couple actual dollars. But they weren't things that were invaluable to the game, like...all of the cards you were supposed to collect.

If Topps wanted people to actually collect the set without breaking the bank, they would go for the 1970's route, and put 20 or 30 cards into a 99 cent pack, or put 12 cards into a 3 dollar pack with parallels in it. But the Topps people, obviously, are not fools. They know that kids aren't buying physical packs, and they want money. So what they do here, which is genius and infuriating, is they stock packs at 5,000 coins, or 10,000 coins, or even 15 or 25,000, which is the equivalent of 25 bucks, so that the only way that kids can keep collecting the ultra-rare inserts is if they constantly have to borrow from their mom or dad's debit card, and keep feeding money into the cash cow that is Topps Bunt.

Now, replace mom and dad's account with a newly bolstered debit account, that I was saving for textbooks, and replace a 10-12 year old kid with a 19 year old kid who hadn't realized anything was wrong yet, and you have the makings of a disaster.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I had developed a small-scale gambling addiction. I would feed money into my Bunt account, at the promise of being 'with the times' and ripping digital packs just to have the latest insert sets completed, and then keep trading the rarer ones away for newer stuff, while keeping the autographs I would pull (on occasion) ultra-safe and locked. This process kept going on. I'd stomach the younger (or even older) kids who would ridicule me for "not knowing how to trade", even when I was trading my unwanted goods for their unwanted goods, which was, by Webster's definition, exactly what a trade means. I just kept going, kept getting more cards, and keeping in the bubble.

The problem was I didn't have time for many other things around that time. My blogging around that February slipped (just as bad as this February, only this February my excuses are "there was nothing worth blogging about" and "class fatigue"), because I had no real interest in writing, or picking myself out of BuntWorld. I collected some physical Topps, and I loved the 2015 set, but part of me was secretly wondering what it would look like in the Bunt app.

I honestly forget what caused me to delete the app, but I imagine it was a sudden realization of what it had done to me (and, more importantly, my bank account). I had allowed Bunt to scrounge itself into my brain and stay lodged their until I had no choice but to claw it out from the inside.



The main problem with Topps Bunt is that there's no moderation. There's no limit. A person can feed a lot of money into the app every day, and get more cards for themselves everyday, because there is nothing stopping them. There are packs available to buy everyday, with new and exciting bonus packs appearing at some times, and special, more expensive packs showing up randomly.

In real, physical life, there is a limit to how much Topps cards you can buy, because getting Topps cards involves going to a card shop, or a Target, and getting some cards, in moderation, and paying for them at the register. Topps Bunt didn't have that. There wasn't a register to pay for everything at once. You just pay whenever you want something, and there was nothing to stop you from wanting to buy the packs, because there was no geographical difficulty to getting more packs every day.

If I went to Target every day and bought $50 dollars worth of baseball cards, not only would it render me bankrupt very quickly, but there would be a social stigma about it. Because eventually someone would see me going to Target every day, and getting a lot of cards, and comment about it. In some semi-concerned-but-mostly-observant way, someone would say 'this isn't the first time I've seen you here', or 'welcome back', or 'that's a lot of baseball cards for one week'.

There's no social stigma in Topps Bunt because there are not other people around you when you buy packs. Nobody else in Topps Bunt can see how much you spend, how many coins you have. No one is there to stigmatize you for what you are doing except, eventually, you. And you don't realize it until you have to pull yourself away from the picture for a second, examine everything, and realize how wrong this is. Which is what I did.

Part of the problem is that I've never gambled, or had anything like this, so I didn't know going in that I needed to control what I put in. But, if I remember correctly, there is no disclaimer ANYWHERE in Topps Bunt that says 'remember to spend responsibly', or 'you should probably control how much money you put in.' Because anything that would end in Topps getting less money is bad for Topps.

So, in a way, Topps is promoting gambling, for their own personal gain, without a real care for what happens to people who put too much money into the app, especially if they're young kids spending their parents' money. They do not put thought into this, which is a horrible thing to grasp.

That somebody could go 'Yes, people are losing money, yes, kids are being conditioned to gamble at a young age, but on the plus side, we're finally winning the child demographic, so what's there to worry about?' This breaks my heart.



All of this in mind, Topps is restructuring their organization so that it's more geared toward things like Topps Bunt, and less towards actual, physical packs of Topps, which uses moderation, and is a lot safer for younger kids to get into than Topps Bunt. And yet Topps doesn't understand that it's got the exact wrong priorities, and that putting more emphasis on Topps Bunt is a mistake unless Bunt is restructured to be less of a cash cow and more of a direct simulation of actually buying packs of cards.

Topps Bunt cannot be 'the future of collecting', as Topps is leading us to believe, because if so, the next generations of card collectors are going to learn the lesson I learned eventually, and not want to collect cards at all, be it digital or physical. If this process, the one that I succumbed to, keeps going on unaddressed, Topps is going to lose a ton of prospective collectors, future and current, physical and digital.

They damn near lost me as a customer, and it took some overwhelming response from a grand majority of their products last year to keep me buying. But Topps needs to seriously rethink its priorities, or at least do something about this problem as soon as possible. I know it took me a year to report on this, but I wanted to wait until it would be relevant. It's relevant now, because Topps wants you to believe that Topps Bunt is the future.

Well, if that's the future, I think I'd be better off living in the past.

Yes, but did the Nats really NEED Daniel Murphy??

Your Newest Nationals 2nd Baseman...just, uh, just go with it...

We knew the Mets weren't gonna re-sign Daniel Murphy. No, the additions of Neil Walker, Alejandro de Aza and Asdrubal Cabrera kind of made that part obvious. We just knew Daniel Murphy was going to go SOMEWHERE...

And yet, the one team that DID grab Murphy...I don't really think that was the greatest move for them. That may have, actually, been a step in the opposite direction.

You see, the Nationals have had this name for having a young, quick, homegrown infield, and they did a lot to make sure that all of the pieces fit. For a while it was Zimmerman-Espinoza-Desmond-Rendon in some kind of combination. Whenever one piece was injured, they would add a short term piece like Yunel Escobar or Asdrubal Cabrera, and get someone (usually Rendon or Espinoza) to float or play backups on some days.

So they made it clear that they weren't going to re-sign Yunel Escobar, so he's gone, and now they have a solid formation for a Zim-Espinoza-Dez-Rendon infield. This works because they've already been playing around each other, and now that there aren't options, it can be a very speedy, defense-driven yet still offensively-sharp infield. The only snag is that Ian Desmond is a Free Agent this season.

I really don't see why getting Daniel Murphy, for more money, was a better idea than just getting Desmond back and keeping everyone together. It's kind of baffling to me, because, yes, it allows for more flexibility, as Espinosa can play short or second, Zim can play first or third, Murphy can play 2nd or third, and Rendon can play 2nd or third...but also, it sort of ruins the dynamic that the Nats have been trying to build for the last five or so seasons. They've had the pieces in place for a truly great infield...and then they go and screw it up by getting a guy who can hit very well, but might not be able to fit into that infield. It's a Dan Uggla situation. You're fitting a guy who's not especially known for defense into a defensively-driven infield. I'm not sure if that's going to work.

A lot of people see this as an upgrade, as, yes, a bat is a bat, and Murphy could hit a ton of home runs, and possibly improve that output in the infield, but...infield bats were not really the problem. We're going into a season with only one real locked-down outfielder, Jayson Werth, a guy who's looking like he's on the decline, and your other big outfield bat, Denard Span, looks like he's heading somewhere else. You didn't need a lot of offensive help in the infield is what I'm saying.

So yes, it's great that the Nationals got Daniel Murphy. Great hitter, great 2nd-3rd baseman, gonna hit 30 homers next year. But don't be shocked if the Nationals fail to clinch yet again. I mean, I'm not denying the fact that if they do get to October, they'd get farther than they would if they DIDN'T have Murphy on the roster. I'm just saying that because they're emphasizing the wrong parts of the lineup in terms of what they need...they're not gonna do well at all. It's gonna be another year of a stacked infield and a piss-poor outfield BA-wise.

Wish I had better Christmas news, Nats fans. Who knows, there are still some FA outfielders out there. However, thanks to this Murphy deal, I'm not sure which ones you can afford...