Gem Mint - tales of cards & players

Remember when I made fun of this guy and his pendulum-like weeks, one week putting up great numbers, the next (maybe the next 2 or 3, in my defense) being the worst in the Leagues?

Well, get this: this week, Adam Dunn posted a .389/.455/1.111 triple line, good for a 1.566 ops, with 4 homeruns and 8 rbis.
Matt Joyce and Evan Longoria (who were both in my team 8 days ago, before I traded away Longo and released Joyce to make room for Puig, who has not had an homerun since) had 4 homers, too, probably delaying the arrival in the Majors of Wil Myers.
Brandon Phillips had a strange week, producing 10 rbis while batting only .219, Carlos Gonzalez had another MVP week, with 9 rbis and a 1.367 ops. Giancarlo Stanton is finally healthy and beginning to smash homeruns: he had 2, with 7 rbis and an ops above 1.200.

The quest for another triple crown by Miguel Cabrera got complicated by Yadier Molina, now batting .352, just 2 points shy of Miggy, and by Chris Davis, leading the Leagues with 22 dingers.

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Unless you spent last week trekking on the Himalayan peaks, you should have heard the name Yasiel Puig:

The cuban prospect finally got his call in the big show, and boy, did he shine under the spotlight: 4 homeruns, 10 rbis, .435 avg., 1.458 ops in his first 6 games with the Dodgers, and an energetic boost to Dodgers nation that you could say all Dodgers fans were on something this week (oh, wait.. no, that’s anothery story..). Anyway, I don’t think Puig will be sent back to the minors anytime soon..

BUT, he wasn’t the fantasy hero of the week, because Domonic Brown started June the way he finished May, crushing the ball:

.462/.517/1.077, good for 1.594 ops, with 4 homers and 11 rbis: this is how the new Phillies sensation started the new month. He is obviously due for some regression, but he is joining the ride as much as his fantasy managers.

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The second month of the season is in the books, the first one third of games has been played, and while some are playing great baseball, other players are terribly broken. So, let’s crown the best and cut some slack to the worst, at least for this monthly review.

Really, it was closer than one would think, but Miguel Cabrera has to get the prize:

The guy is having a legendary season, en route to another triple crown. His numbers in may say .372/.445/.761, but he gets the upper hand on the next guy because of his 12 homeruns and 32 rbis.

And “the next guy” would be Chris Davis:

His triple slash is actually better than Cabrera’s (.375/.450/.792), but he has less homeruns (10) and rbis (22) in the month. He’s having, anyway, a monster season, first in the Leagues in homeruns (19) and second to Cabrera in avg. and rbis.

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Are you ready for another trip into memory lane?
Good for you, because this week Topps Archives hits the card shops and the internet, with its mix of new faces on vintage card designs.
The sets picked for the second installment of this product are Topps 1982, 1985, 1990 and an all time fan favorite, 1972.

Speaking of fan favorites, each box will have two autographs of baseball greats of the past, mostly 70’s and 80’s players: the preliminar checklist has the names of Don Baylor, Mookie Wilson, Dave Parker, Otis Nixon and Matt Williams among others.

Much more collectable will be two insert sets, the Framed autographs 1973 minis, with players like David Wright, Nolan Ryan, Mike Schmidt and Bob Gibson signing on card on the classic 1973 design, mini version, and the 1983 All stars autographs.

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With many teams reaching 50 games played, and the first third of the season around the corner, the sample data are not so much little anymore, and the signals are emerging from the noise of informations.
Bottom line: if your team is 30 games behind first place, it’s time to switch to fantasy football already.
With that in mind, it’s time to celebrate the winners and losers of this week in baseball.

Say you are the MVP AND triple crown winner of the past season, but someone is doubting your accolades.. what are you gonna do to convince them?
Well, what about hitting almost .400 and being in line for 45 homeruns, 180 rbis and 125 runs? Would it be enough or you should begin to steal bases, too?

In line with what may be an historic season, Miguel Cabrera batted .478 this week, with 6 homeruns, 15 rbis and 9 runs. His triple stash was an astounding .478/.571/1.304, good for an ops of 1.876.. The only way of pitching at Cabrera this year seems.. not pitching at him, giving him an intentional walk.

It may not be random that in this week of Cabrerian dominance, Mike Trout had his first “Mike Trout 2012” level of production.

The 2012 AL rookie of the year batted .440 and had an obp of .880, stealing 4 bases and scoring 10 runs. He is the driving force behind the Angels’ resurgence of lately.
Other big names had a great week: Jose Bautista (.522 avg), Joey Votto (.538 obp), Buster Posey (.429 avg), Carlos Gonzalez (1.364 ops), Andrew McCutchen (1.050 ops) were brilliant, while Chris Davis (4 homeruns, 1.393 ops) demonstrated he is not a fluke, and now leads the Majors with 16 homeruns and an ops of 1.141 (tied with Cabrera).

WAR has catched up with classic stats, and Miguel Cabrera is now leading that ranking, too, with 3.2 wins above replacement already.
WPA (win probability added), a number that basically summarizes the “clutchiness” of a hitter, or his ability to help his team win games, has Brandon Phillips leading the pack, with 2.65. More on WPA here.

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Everybody knew he was good, but THIS good?
Paul Goldschmidt is having a fantastic sophomore season, and he capped it with an out of this world week:

“Goldie” had a triple slash of .524/.524/1.190, for an ops of 1.714, with 3 homeruns, 5 doubles and 5 rbis. You can already make the case for him being the best first baseman in the big leagues.
Or.. you may say that the honor still belongs to Joey Votto, who is raking bases by the dozens: .542/.621/.875 for him this week, .473 on base for the season. If you are in an obp league, he is almost illegal.
“Big papi” David Ortiz had a more than productive week with 12 rbis, Raul Ibanez smashed 5 long balls for 11 rbis, Robinson Cano, Billy Butler, Jason Kipnis had 10, and so did Adam Dunn: the “rollercoaster guy” was clearly in an “up” week. Everth Cabrera and Jean Segura are in an arm wrest match for the stolen bases title.
Carlos Gomez is still the WAR king, with 2.7 wins above replacement so far.

Chris Sale is right now the most dominant pitcher in baseball: he dismantled the Angels twice this week, first by going a hit short of a perfect game, then overwhelming their lineup with 12 strikeouts.

He has become the ace many predicted he would be, and he is one of the front runners for the Cy Young award. Bronson Arroyo is not a Cy Young candidate, but he had a really solid, 2 wins week, and had the same ERA (0.00) of the dominant Sale.

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Well, I guess, given the name, you shouldn’t expect great changes in this product, but the lack of new ideas is kind of depressing, here.
So, here it is, Topps Museum 2012 2013, with the same hits, the same parallels, the same inserts Topps gave us last year, and once again, in my opinion, it’s the artistic side of this product the real winner.

Basically, on the relics side you have a big chunk of jersey and a single player, quad jersey card or four player, quad jersey card in each box. If you are lucky, you can spot some colors or get a patch on the quad relics:

If you are REALLY lucky, there are great patches to be found:

On the autographs side, there is a basic auto and an autograph with two or three relics in each box.

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Three pitchers took center stage with masterful performances this week: first, it was Matt Harvey, who retired the first 20 White Sox batters he faced, taking a perfect game into the 7th inning. Then his no-hit bid ended with two outs on an infield single by Alex Rios, and though he worked nine innings and allowed just one of 28 batters to reach base, he couldn’t get his deserved win. The game ended in the 10th inning, in fact.

Then, Shelby Miller entered the stage:

The young gun of the Cardinals threw a one-hit wonder: against the Rockies, he allowed a leadoff single to Eric Young, and then retired the next 27 hitters in order. He struck out a career-high 13, improving to 5-2 with a 1.58 ERA in the process. He was truly amazing.
And his rotation partner Adam Wainwright was not about to be outdone by his rookie teammate the following night: he retired the first 13 batters faced and carried a no-hitter into the eighth inning, before Nolan Arenado hit a one-out line drive to center. Wainwright ended his game with a 2-hit shutout win.

Seven pitchers had a 2-win week, only 4 of them starters: Cliff Lee, Matt Cain and Ubaldo Jimenez pitched brilliantly, while Mat Latos was helped by his bats, with a 7.36 ERA. Yu Darvish had his usual monster week with 22 strikeouts in 2 outings, and looks the clear front runner for the Cy Young award.

Evan Longoria had an MVP week:

His 12 hit-3 homerun-11 rbi week resulted in a triple slash of .414/.485/.862: he is right now the second best at his role behind only the unreal Miguel Cabrera. Joe Mauer had a great week, reminiscent of his MVP past.

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The week had 2 main actors: sunday through friday, Carlos Gomez was on fire, adding a new dimension of power to his proven speed. Then, saturday came and Miguel Cabrera trashed the Houston Astros with about 2,000 hits.

With a game for the week, if not for the ages, the reigning AL MVP ended the week with a triple slash of .462/.563/1.038, good for an ops of 1.601(!!), with 4 homeruns and 13 rbis. The “new CarGo”, though, was not far, with an ops of 1.552 to go along with his usual speed (5 stolen bases). He is one of the biggest steals of the fantasy draft so far.

Ryan Raburn was on fire for the Indians, while the new dynamic duo McCutchen-Marte has Pittsbugh dreaming. Buster Posey was clutch for the Giants, while Manny Machado is becoming a real force in the Majors, both with his glove and his bat.

Max Scherzer is the number 2 pitcher of his team’s staff only because the ace is a guy by the name of Justin Verlander. With the only exception of the Dodgers and the Rangers, today he would be the ace of any other majors’ staff.

He was brilliant in his 2 wins, with 18 strikeouts and only 2 walks, a whip of 0.72 and an avg. against of .170.
Jeremy Guthrie, with less fireworks (8 so, 4 bb) was, anyway, as effective: he didn’t allow an earned run and improved to 4-0 for the season. Patrick Corbin and Jason Marquis were the other starters with 2 wins, Jerry Blevins and Boone Logan earned 2 in relief.
Clay Bucholz was almost too good to be true in his win in Toronto, according to Jack Morris and other commentators.

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The first month of fantasy baseball is gone (yes, also that strange sport that produces the stats for the game) and it’s time to celebrate the best and the worst of April, with some numbers that may or may not corroborate what your players have done so far (spoiler alert: Justin Upton’s managers won’t be happy..).

Justin Upton has put together some ridiculous numbers, smashing the ball all across America and was the best player of April.

His 12 homeruns lead the Majors, though he has not many rbis (19, almost all his homers were solo shots). His triple stash is .298/.402/.734, good for an ops of 1.136.
But when the adjectives to describe a player’s performance are “unreal”, “crazy”, “unsustainable”, you know the guy is ready for regression: in April, Justin had a fly ball rate of almost 48%, and he converted over 38% of those balls in homeruns. Both numbers are, well, unreal, and can’t be possibly sustained throughout the season.
Many of those fly balls will become ground balls, and his power production will slow down.

Chris Davis was close second to Upton for player of the month: he showed he wasn’t a fluke of the first week and continued to smash the ball, one could say with better numbers than Justin. He has 9 homeruns, leads the Majors with 28 rbis, and his triple line is .348/.442/.728, with an ops of 1.170. His fly balls and homerun per fly ball rates are similar to those of Upton, and with a batting average of balls in play close to .400, he is due for some regression.

Advanced metrics say that this guy was the player of the month:

Dexter Fowler leads the Majors with a WAR of 2.0, a tenth of a point better than Upton. He had gaudy numbers all across the board, with advanced metrics that corrobate his power spike (though he also has a 38% in homerun per fly ball). He gained his WAR with his defense, too bad you don’t need it in fantasy leagues.

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After a great rookie season, Topps Museum is coming back, with 4 guaranteed hits in each of this medium-high end product’s box.
Four-pack boxes, in fact, deliver an on-card autograph, an autographed memorabilia card, a jumbo relic and a quad memorabilia card. Case hits include an autographed jumbo relic and a Framed Museum Collection Autograph, with a metallic frame, signed directly on-card in metallic ink.

Momentous Materials come with a jumbo memorabilia piece and an autograph. Numbered to 10, there are more than 100 players in the set.
Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, Stan Musial and Carlton Fisk are among those with cards in the set.
Primary Pieces are book cards with over 50 players, featured with 4 pieces of game-used memorabilia.

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For all the hype and fanfare surrounding Panini’s big shot National treasures, almost nothing was said for a Leaf product that, within its limits, has a good potential at an affordable price. A multi-sport release, Champions of sport pack 3 autographs in a box priced at about 120$.
The checklist is super deep: Barry Sanders, Mike Tyson, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Joe Montana, Jack Nicklaus, RG3 and many olympians are among the notables non baseball higlights, while Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken, Rickey Henderson, Tony Gwynn, Frank Thomas, Frank Robinson and Bob Gibson are just a few of many hall of fame superstars in baseball.

Ichiro and Albert Pujols, also paired in an unreal dual auto, are the hihlight among actual superstars.

This product has its flaws, obviously: there is no official license, so logos are all airbrushed, and autographs are on stickers, probably from previous years’ stocks acquired by Leaf. Anyway, Leaf tried to work around these limitations, putting the autos in old style frames, and mostly the pictures are in action shots, not “high school yearbook” photos like Panini did for “Century collection” (though I liked that product, too).

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An old acquaintance of the hit list had a torrid week with the bat, while a young gun outdueled a not so old sheriff in a fastballs’ competition. These are the good guys of week 3 in fantasy baseball:

Joe Mauer seems to have found his stride and hit the ball like the batting champion he is: .714 avg. with a ridicolous 1.750 ops.

Lorenzo Cain had a super hero afternoon in Boston, Carlos Gomez was solid through all the week, Mike Trout is back in track with his rookie season numbers, hitting a grand slam. Evan Longoria was the homerun king of the week, with 4.
Still, Chris Davis has not cooled down like many predicted, and he remains the beast of the first 3 weeks, with 7 homeruns, 21 rbis and an ops above 1.300. Travis Hafner(!) and Vernon Wells(!!) are making Brian Cashman look like a clairvoyant, with unreal numbers at the plate.

Matt Harvey is officially the hottest sensation of the season so far: he outduled Stephen Strasburg, making him look almost washed out, with a fastball that can reach triple digits and terrific control on his secondary pitches. He was the first to 4 wins, with a whip of 0.66 and a batting average against of .108. He will have to regress, won’t he?

A new sheriff is in town, but the good old Doc Halladay is not ready to leave, not after a great week, with 2 wins, in which he almost looked like his old self. Clay Bucholz also had 2 wins this week, making him the second pitcher to 4. He was resilient in saturday’s game, winning a game that really mattered for all the city of Boston, after the insane tragedy of the marathon. Yu Darvish, anyway, is looking more and more the next monster come from the Far East.

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You know the saying, “The third time is a charm”?
Well, with Gypsy queen, it may be “The third time is the last”..
After a great rookie season and a not so great encore, the third installment of this product has not struck any cords with me, and the 2 boxes I have recently opened were pretty much disappointing.

Nothing new here, you can make the case that they changed just the number of the year from 2012, the cards are almost identical. Oh, wait, the backs are yellow.. and they changed the decoration of the border..

The highlight of the product, but not as good as the 2 previous releases. “Collisions at the plate” is in my opinion the best insert, and “No hitters” is good, too. There is only one blue framed parallel, limited to 499, per box.. seriously, Topps, how many cases of this product you made to limit these cards to one per box?…
The white framed cards are much better, but can only be found in retail packs. Then you have the classical minis, with 2 black parallels numbered to 199 and a green parallel numbered to 99. Angel Pagan and Chase Headley were my 2 greens.

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The second week of baseball (and of course, fantasy baseball) is gone, and new faces sit atop the rankings, two unlikely heroes many had not considered in their first lineups. Meanwhile, a guy may have already secured for himself the award for “idiot of the year”.

Unknown to most fantasy managers, John Buck has climbed the ranks with an incredible explosion of power:

Chris Carter had an outstanding week, too, but if you add up the numbers of the first 2 weeks, there is an early favorite for the triple crown in Detroit, and he’s not Miguel Cabrera:

Prince Fielder is batting .436 (first in the majors), with 4 homeruns (4th in the AL) and 18 Rbis (2nd in the AL), with an ops of 1.366 (2nd in the AL). He has already catched up with the unreal first week of Chris Davis, and threats to do much better.
Justin Upton has slightly slown down from his torrid first week, while Bryce Harper is having way better numbers than Trout had last year.
Dexter Fowler is in line to have a breakout season.

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With the first week of the season gone, we have now some numbers to crunch, stats to analyze, players to blame and a first understanding of whether the real season for our team and the fantasy season for our teams will be one to remember or to forget.

There is no better picture to describe the first week of fantasy baseball than this one:

Meet Chris Davis, human wrecking ball, who posted this unreal line for the first week of action: .556, .591, 1.389, 1.980: those would be his batting average, on base percentage, slugging pct. and ops, while smashing 4 homeruns and batting home 17 rbis.
He may easily have won the week in many head to head leagues all by himself, or better yet, if paired with the guy you see from the back in the above card, Adam Jones, who hitted .522, with 12 hits and 7 rbis.
Justin Upton started his new career in great style, smashing 5 homeruns, one more than Michael Morse did in Seattle, 2 more than Shin-Soo Choo did in Cincinnati. Bryce Harper had a great start, too, with 3 homeruns, 2 in the opening day. And no catcher was better than John Buck, who had a 1.199 ops for the Mets, with 2 homeruns and 9 rbis.

No surprise here, this is the best pitcher of the week:

Clayton Kershaw was totally lights-out in his 2 outings, striking out 16 in 16 innings pitched, allowing just 6 hits and 1 bb, but no earned runs (yes, is ERA is 0.00, with a whip of 0.44).
Yu Darvish was also brilliant in his only performance on the mound, fanning 14 batters and missing a perfect games by inches. Matt Harvey was impressive in his major leagues debut, with 10 ks, Dan Straily and Alexi Ogando also had double digits in strikeouts.
Rafael Betancourt, Addison Reed and Sergio Romo converted all the 3 saves opportunities for their teams, Aroldis Chapman was not less impressive, with 7 strikeouts in 4 innings pitched and a .083 avg against.

For every success, there is a failure, especially if you picked these guys with one of your first 2 picks: Josh Hamilton had a hit (a single) in 20 at bats (that would be a .050 avg..), Matt Kemp was 1 of 18 (but his hit was a double..), while Ichiro was 1 of 14, but at least he was not a first or second round pick.
Six pitchers ended the week with a ERA above 10.00, while Carlos Marmol has a ERA of 27.00, already a blown save and his spot as a closer almost lost.
But at least in head to head leagues, tomorrow is already a new season..

Everybody has run into one of these obnoxious ebay auctions, sooner or later.. here, let me show you:

Last time I checked, a card is not a one of one unless:
a) the numerator matches the denominator;
b) both said numbers are 1.
SO, THERE IS NOT SUCH A THING CALLED “EBAY 1 OF 1”, have you understood, you people out there flooding the market with your idiotic ads?

Now that we are clear, I think that every collector who would like to enrich his/her (who am I fooling here?, there is no her on this hobby..) collection is tempted, sooner or later, to add a coveted one of one card.
With a growing number of products on the market and new marketing ideas by the producers, there is not shortage of these cards, so here are my three “real” one of one (hey, I have plenty of “ebay one of one”, too..)

This is one of the newest “gimmicks” invented by the guys at the creative ideas bureau of Topps and co.: recycle the printing plates used to make the cards, once the production has ended. Since you need 4 printing plates to print a colored picture (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), you could say that this is not a true one of one.

In my excuse, this card was pretty cheap, and this is the printing plate of the card #353 of the set, a mini exclusive which was embedded inside a rip card, so it is likely that this plate was used only a handful of times, making it more valuable.

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With the new season just under way, Topps is about to release its first high-end product of 2013, Tribute. The new formula, with a hit in each of the 6 packs of a hobby box, all inside a holder sealed with the Topps seal of authenticity, was very succesful and should be return to highlight some really sensational hits.
Bat knobs are not exclusive to this product, but boy do they look spectacular:

Autographs are on every release, nowadays, so you have to appreciate new ideas to highlight them in a different way. Inside Tribute, collectors will find Tribute to the best of the best, autographed cards of top retired and active stars who were or are among the best at their respective positions, with the front of each card made by a material associated with their specialty: so pitchers cards’ fronts will be a baseball with seams showing, for great hitters the fron will be wood, base stealers will have base materials and great fielders will be leather glove material.

Numbered to only 5, these cards really rock.

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Finally, we are a week away from opening day, when baseball begins a new year and the owner/gm/manager inside us fans takes over for a new season of excitement, joy, anger, frustration, discoveries of new phenoms, cursing versus old busts, unbalanced trades, waiver gambling.. everything, for the joy of having the right to brag about your knowledge of the game towards 11, maybe 13 or 15 guys that you don’t even know, and in my instance, live thousands of miles away.

Yes, fantasy season is baackk!

I had this (crazy?) idea, this year, to join only one league, to stay focused on only a team and its players, making them MY TEAM with capital letters. Well, guess what? No way I could make it ‘til today, when my first league drafted: I was tired of joining mock drafts and coming up empty handed, I had to draft “real” players for “real” teams.
So, I ended up joining a total of 5 leagues, all on yahoo fantasy baseball, and for the first time I also joined leagues with head to head systems, I have always been a “rotisserie league” guy.

What follows is a piece about the process to get here, a week away from starting my domination of the fantasy baseball world..

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We are 2 weeks away from the launch of the third installment of Gypsy Queen, the vintage set focused on baseball that was a huge success in its first release and a little less exciting last year.
This year, Topps decided to make it more desirable even to big hits chasers, hoping to expand its base, and with this effort very few lucky collectors will get their hands on truly unique cards that are generally found in more expensive products.
The new highlights are buttons and barrels:

Buttons will be found inside hobby exclusive mini boxes and will be numbered to only 3, while bat barrels are true one of one cards.

In the big hits department we have also mini autograph relic cards, numbered to only 5:

So, while many of us will find the usual, not so exciting guaranteed 2 autographs and 2 relics, some will feast on these beauties.

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