Gem Mint - tales of cards & players

Roto baseball - week 7: winners and losers

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:03:00 +0200

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.

Kings of the hill

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.
Hirodi Kuroda and Jorge de la Rosa also got 2 wins as starters, Justin De Fratus and Justin Wilson had 2 in relief.
Edward Mujica and Addison Reed were a perfect 3 of 3 in saves.
Clayton Kershaw shone in his win, with 11 k’s and just a walk issued.
Adam Wainwright is still the WAR hero, with 2.4 wins above replacement.

This is just a bad dream, ain’t it?

Ike Davis had a nightmare week, going 1 for 28, MIke Moustakas was slightly less awful, 1 for 24. Danny Espinosa was also 1 for 24, with 12 strikeouts.
B.J. Upton is mirroring his brother’s MVP season with another awful week, going 1 for 17 (.059 avg). Carlos Santana (.130) and Carlos Gomez (.200) had uncharacteristic bad weeks.

You wouldn’t expect him here, but get this: Justin Verlander is 4-4 for the season, and lasted only 2.2. innings in his matchup against Yu Darvish, allowing 8 earned runs in the process. His weekly ERA is 27.00, bad for 361st. Phil Hughes, though, almost reached 100.00 in his loss, Ryan Vogelsong and Madison Bumgarner were almost twins with their awful 13.50.
Jim Johnson blew his 2 saves opportunities, allowing 7 hits and 7 earned runs in 1.1 innings of work. His seat may be hot, now.

A year later, Museum has not changed

Sat, 18 May 2013 12:05:00 +0200

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.

The hits

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.
The relics’ autographs are on stickers, and this is a major concern:

There are some huge hits on this side, too:

Parallels and inserts

The basic parallels have a copper border and are numbered to 424(??). Green parallels are numbered to 199, blue to 99. And finally, for the inserts, Canvas collection is back, and looks beautiful this year, too.

The artists selected by Topps have done a great job again, and this is definitely the set I will chase this year: there are 35 subjects, with a good balance between active players (15) and retired greats (20).
While I am still waiting for the last card of last year’s set to reach my mail box, I have already started this year’s set, and I have something going that would be huge if realized. I’ll keep you posted with this “secret thing”.

Bottom line

There are enough reasons why Topps Museum 2013 will be successful, and while I won’t spend 200 dollars for a box, I will definitely bid for some autographs and relics, and try to complete the canvas collection set.

Roto baseball - week 6: winners and losers

Sun, 12 May 2013 10:55:35 +0200

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.

Hitters on the rise

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.
He had 15 hits, a .517 avg. and a 1.428 ops.
Paul Goldschmidt belted 4 homeruns on his way to become “the next big thing” at first base.

According to Fangraphs’ WAR, Carlos Gomez has been the most valuable player of the season so far, with a 2.6 WAR. Anibal Sanchez, Adam Wainwright and Clay Buchholz are the best pitchers, with 2.2.

No, really, thanks for your time

It’s that time of the year, when “regression to the mean” spreads in the leagues like a virus, recalling on Earth fast starters with no so great background. So, for the “Thank you for the ride, guys, but we really have to leave, now”, here are a first bunch of players who carried your teams until now, but who are done with the fireworks.
Dexter Fowler is walking among us humans again, after hitting 1 for 21 (or .048), Joe Buck was just a little less horrible, 1 for 19. Michael Morse was 1 for 15, but he had an rbi..
Yuneski Betancourt still found the time to hit an homerun, but he was awful with 3 for 20. Also comfortably under the “Mendoza line”: Big Papi Ortiz, CarGo, Ellsbury, Ryan Howard, Cespedes, Brett Lawrie, Billy Butler, Encarnacion and your old man Adam Dunn, now leading the season rankings with a .137 avg.

Pitching their way into the blemish league, were Phil Humber (2 losses, 19.50 ERA) and Jon Niese (2 losses, 16.20 ERA), but also the aforementioned Mat Latos and Tim Hudson (both 7.36 ERA, but with 2 and 1 win, respectively.

“The Tim Lincecum swing season” was in negative territory, this week, with a loss and a 6.43 ERA. Bartolo Colon was roughed up by the Indians, for 6 runs in 4 innings.

Roto baseball - week 5: winners and losers

Sun, 05 May 2013 10:02:00 +0200

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.

Aces on the mound

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.

Edward Mujica won the closer spot in St.Louis with a 4 saves week, while Aroldis Chapman was not his usual self, forcing his manager to relieve him after a bad inning. Sergio Romo was lights out, with 3 saves AND a win, to go along with a 0.00 ERA.

Thank God, this week is ended

Josh Reddick continues to shatter negative records, going 1 for 16 in the week. Only Brandon Crawford was worse (1/17), while Bryce Harper had an uncharacteristic bad week, with 3 hits in 25 at bats, and so did Joe Mauer (3/21). Josh Hamilton, on the contrary, is steady in his misery, 4 of 29.
Jacoby Ellsbury was not his self on the bases, with a stolen bases but 2 caught stealing.
Nobody, though, had a worse week than Giancarlo Stanton: after an awful start, he had just started mashing homeruns again, when he strained his right hamstring. He will be sorely missed by his team, and by those fantasy managers who invested in a breakout season for him.

Almost the entire Rays pitching staff was awful, with Price, Moore and Hellickson over 7 points of ERA, Ryan Vogelsong did worse with 11.17.
For R.A. Dickey, 2012 is officially gone, while for Justin Masterson and Tim Lincecum, sadly, it is back. After a week of resurgence, Roy Halladay (19.64 ERA) is again in dire straits.
Mitchell Boggs had another awful outing, and with that he was demoted to the minors. John Axford was again the scapegoat in the terrible Brewers’ bullpen situation.

Roto baseball - the players of the month

Wed, 01 May 2013 16:31:00 +0200

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..).

Player of the month

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.

Notable producers

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.
Remember those who said no one could possibly duplicate Mike Trout’s 20 years campaign in the foreseeable future? Well, they forgot to pass the memo to this guy:

Bryce Harper is having a trout-esque season (.344/.430/.720), and he plays the game with a desire, a need for being the best, that you can’t resist but gaze at him in awe.

Team of the month

A caveat, first: you need production all across the board to win your league, so I’d rather have Carlos Santana at catcher (5 hrs, 13rbis, but .389/.476/.722, and yes, these are actual numbers he produced) than Joe Buck (9 hrs, 25 rbis, but .241/.269/.575).
First base is obviously Chris Davis, even though Prince Fielder was a monster. Second base is Robinson Cano, and his peripherics show he can actually sustain the gaudy numbers he had (7 homeruns, close to 1.000 ops).
Miguel Cabrera is quietly putting together another MVP campaign at third base, but the power numbers of Evan Longoria are legit, and if he stays healthy, this could be his breakthrough season.
At shortstop, if you don’t want the power of Tulowitzki (really, are you kidding?), you could do very well with Jean Segura:

The young shortstop found his perfect place in the Brewers’ lineup, and he showed some pop (3 homeruns), paired with an excellent batting eye (.367/.418/.567) and a great istinct on the bases (7 stolen bases).
Upton, Fowler and Harper are the ideal trio in the outfield, but I’d like to mention also Shin Soo-Choo and Carlos Gomez (both with a 1.031 ops), Torii Hunter (37 hits, .370 avg), Nate McLouth (22 runs, 8 stolen bases), Adam Jones (37 hits, 10 doubles, 20 rbis) and Starling Marte (35 hits, 7 stolen bases).
And finally, if you need some power at the utility spot, Travis Hafner (yes, THAT Travis Hafner) is your man with 6 homeruns and 17 rbis.

Pitcher of the month

Matt Moore was a sensation when he appeared on the big stage in the 2011 postseason, so much that his rookie season was seen as a sort of a disappointment, when after all it was, well, his rookie season.

Now, get this for the first month of his “sophomore year”: 5 wins, 0 losses, 38k/15bb, 1.13 ERA, 0.88 whip, .121 batting average against. The kid is showing all the flashes of an ace.

Notable producers

Clay Bucholz is 5-0, too, with just a tick worse resume than Moore: 39k/13bb, 1.19 ERA, 1.01 whip, .192 batting average against. He was one of the main reasons behind the great start of season for Boston.
In the long run, though, they may relinquish their Cy Young dreams to this guy:

Yu Darvish is showing that the hype that surrounded his first year in the Majors could be an understatement, after all: he went 5-1, with 58 strikeouts and only 13 walks and was an out shy of a perfect game. He is totally delivering on his promises.
With all the excitment for these young guns, Matt Harvey looks almost yesterday’s news because he didn’t win his last 2 outings: well, he didn’t lose, too, and he is 4-0, with the best whip (0.82) among qualified starters. John Lester and Lance Lynn are also 4-0, like Hiroki Kuroda. Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw are 3-2, but there is no need to worry, judging from their last games.

Jason Grilli, Jim Johnson and the forever king of closers Mariano Rivera are a perfect 10 in saves, with the Pirates’ reliever having the upper hand for his better stats (17k, 0.82 whip, .132 avg.)

Sergio Romo is not far, with 10 saves out of 11 chances, and Craig Kimbrel is there, too, 9 out of 10. He has a stellar 0.84 whip, but the cuban missile Aroldis Chapman made better, with 0.60 and 21 strikeouts. He had few saves opportunities, 6, all converted, but he added 2 wins to his resume.

And this is it for the first month of baseball (the game, of course, much more important than the sport..)

Coming up next: 2013 Topps Museum

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 10:31:00 +0200

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.

Adding to the hit chase frenzy, Topps Museum features 100 Jumbo Lumber Bat Nameplate Relics, each one-of-one with the name from the player’s bat. Momentous Materials Laundry Tags include the premium piece of a game-used jersey.

So you have the autographs, the premium relics, the nameplates.. then what does separate Museum from the other high-end products such as Tribute, Triple Threads, Five Star?
Well, Canvas Collection, my friend, here is what: the beautiful artist sketches that were the highlight of last year are back, and judging from these previews I found on the facebook page of one of the artists involved in the project, they are awesome even this year:

I put together all the 48 cards of the 2012 release (crossing my fingers, the last 2 cards are on the way..) and am seriously thinking of going for the complete set even this year, so please, buy this product, keep your swatches but sell on ebay these drawn cards, I am ready to buy!

Discovering potential in Leaf Champions of sport

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 16:49:00 +0200

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).
Besides regular base cards, there are also several parallel versions numbered to 10 or less, and several inserts. AKA Autographs feature the athlete’s nickname incorporated into the design of the card:

We are the champions celebrate the championship’s seasons of the player:

Numeration autographs are about highlighting the jersey number of the player:

Signature Swatches adds a jersey, uniform or clothing swatch to the autograph mix, and Dual signatures put together, of course, two superstars, with the Ichiro - Pujols combo leading the way.

So, if you are ready to look beyond the flaws and the stickers, this product can be your chance to finally display that elusive autograph that you couldn’t afford until now. I AM ready, and I will start with my first ever Cal Ripken auto!

The fantasy week in review - week 3

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 10:52:00 +0200

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:

Player of the week

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.

Pitcher of the week

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.

The “come on man” guys walk among us

Aaron Hicks is 2 of 48 hitting, that would be a .042 avg. if you do the math, while Adam Dunn is officially in a down year, going below .100.

Jason Heyward, though, is still the highest preseason player below the “Mendoza line” (7 of 58, .121), with Asdrubal Cabrera doing just a little less worse. Omar Infante was “in a roll” this week, hitless in 20 at bats, while Josh Reddick’s beard is the only thing going up for him, as he went 1 of 16 at the plate. Matt Cain and Gio Gonzalez were among the starters with an ERA above 10.00 this week, Erik Bedard got one out but gave away 6 runs in a third of a inning (162.00 ERA), Rick Porcello was much better, with 9 earned runs in 2 thirds of an inning.

Box break - 2013 Topps Gypsy queen

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 11:28:00 +0200

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.

Design (2.5 out of 5)

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..

Inserts/parallels (3.5 out of 5)

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.

Memorabilia (2 out of 5)

For almost 100 dollars a box, I would like to find something better than these useless pieces of monochromatic jerseys. I would suggest they cut the relics from 2 to 1 per box, but with a better outcome, and a vague chance to spot some color..
This Dan Haren is the best of the 4 relics I found inside my 2 boxes:

Autographs (3.5 out of 5)

The good news is that there were no redemptions in my boxes (I am still waiting for the Hosmer autograph I found inside last year’s product..), and the four players I found, though no sensational, are quite good: David Freese, Billy Butler, Wally Joyner and Nelson Cruz. The autos are on card and they are pretty neat.

Box value (2.5 out of 5)

This product is not in the “high end section” of the market, but still is quite expensive, and while the autographs are quite good, the poor quality of the relics and the astronomic chances of getting one of the super cool hits advertised make a poor grade for this third installment of Gypsy queen.

Bottom line

I was a fan of the first year’s design of GQ, but after this break, I think Allen and Ginter will be the only “retro” product I will purchase from now on. The relics need to be seriously upgraded.
Final score: 55 out of 100.

The fantasy week in review - week 2

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 08:46:00 +0200

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”.

Player of the week

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.

Pitcher of the week

With Kershaw losing his first decision of the year, Justin Masterson was the first to 3 wins:

He also has an unreal ERA of 0.41, a lively slider to match his patented sinker and a fastball that reaches 97mph. He is showing signs of greatness that some observers found in his Red sox early days.
Also to 3 wins, Madison Bumgarner, and this guy:

Once in a while, you step into a prospect that is good as advertised: it is rarer to find one that actually exceeds the hype.
Meet Matt Harvey, 3 wins, 0.82 ERA, 0.55 whip, .088 average against, and striking out 25 batters in 22 innings pitched. On this pace, he is looking at a Cy young award, not just a rookie of the year.
Matt Moore is living up to the expectations and is one of 4 pitchers with an ERA of 0.00 after 2 decisions (Maholm, Westbrook and Zito his partners).
Craig Kimbrel was perfect in his first 6 save opportunities and has reached Sergio Romo, who has blown his first save chance.

“Come on man” players

With 2 weeks gone, these fine players are really beginning to hurt their teams expectations: Jason Heyward is batting (?) .086 (3 of 35), overtaking his fellow outfield partner B.J. Upton, who reached .105 during the week. Edwin Encarnacion, Josh Reddick, Jason Kipnis and Giancarlo Stanton are other notables well under the “Mendoza line”, Hamilton and Kemp are about to reach it after a “productive” week.
Edison Volquez reached 3 losses, while mantaining his ERA well over 10.00.
Hanrahan in Boston and Fujikawa in Chicago blew a save opportunity, making their closer spots the last ones in a long series of jobs in jeopardy.

And finally, for the idiot of the year, everybody has seen the video, and there is no need to point you there: carlos quentin (no need for capital letters for such a gentleman) caused at least 2 months of stop to Zack Greinke, breaking his left clavicle with a bully reaction to what was clearly an unintenional hit by pitch.
It’s time for the league to take in serious considerations the clear flaws in the so called “unwritten rules” of baseball, stopping bullies in the game like we teach our children to do in their everyday’s lives.
We don’t want you in our game, quentin, and all the gunslingers like you, and I hope that karma comes biting at you with a much worse retaliation than a beanball.

The fantasy week in review - week 1

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 09:35:00 +0200

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.

Player of the week

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.

Pitcher of the week

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.

The “come on man” players of the week

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..

One of one.. do you really need.. one?

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 17:42:00 +0200

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..)

Ryan Zimmerman - 2012 Topps Allen & Ginter black printing plate

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.

Ryan Braun - 2012 Topps triple threads multi patch

I have already said that I don’t like how Topps won’t stand behind the genuinity of their relics (the statement “this relic is not from any specific game, event or season” can bother you..), but that said, I loved this card, and yes, Ryan Braun is innocent until proven otherwise (I have also a great ebay one of one of his, from 2012 Tier one, an autograph and multicolored jersey numbered 8/99..;).

Lou Gehrig - 2007 SP Legendary cuts Reel history

Let’s start saying that there are other 472 cards that match this one.
So, what makes of them a one of one, then?
Well, embedded in each of these 473 cards there is a unique frame from a historic video clip of Gehrig rounding the bases (I saw it once on youtube, but can’t find it anymore): mine is not particularly impressive, you could see his neck if I had a good scanner, but anyway, it is a great memento of one of the greatest of all times, and since I could never afford a bat knob of his, I am fine with this card..
Speaking of affordable cards..

This Roberto Clemente cut autograph-jersey card (it is a booklet and there is a right panel, too) from National Treasures was recently sold on ebay for thousands of dollars (listed at 4.000, but sold to a best offer, I think not far from 3.000). For the thorough respect I have for this man, If I was so wealthy that I could afford it, I would have bought it on the spot.
A true gem of a one of one.

Coming up next: 2013 Topps Tribute

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:04:00 +0200

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.
Relic cards will showcase something new, too, with batting gloves really a new, exciting highlight:

Tribute transitions will have relic cards of active and retired stars, showing images of two of the teams they have played on, while prime patches really look amazing:

With the great success of Panini National Treasures in the high-end market, Topps has to deliver a solid hit to maintain its stronglehold its primacy: whether they will succeed or not depends on the rate at which truly sensational cards will pop up from the expensive boxes.
I will try to get some cards in the secondary market, like I did last year.

The fantasy season is upon us

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 17:47:15 +0100

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..

Knowing the battleground

Preparation is everything, so before I embarked in this mission, I did my homework. I started reading a really fun book on the matter, Fantasyland

It’s the chronicle of the season spent by the author in the most competitive fantasy baseball league in the world, “Tout wars”, a league that can be joined only by well known fantasy experts.
Walker spent thousands of dollars to stay in par with his colleagues, hiring a NASA whiz to track the stats and a guy who acted as a general manager to have insights on trades and waivers.

If he spent thousands, I figured I could spend some bucks on having a little inside knowledge not available on public sites, so I joined Fangraphs+ for their articles and projected stats, Baseball Prospectus to have a grasp of their patented PECOTA projections, and TheFantasyFix, to have another angle on players and projections.

I absorbed all this knowledge, studied their electronic sheets and formed my initial ideas on players to get and others to avoid at the draft, then I began testing my picks.

Mock drafts are a necessary evil

Among the many “urban legends” surrounding fantasy baseball (wait on your pitchers, don’t overreach on closers, trust “regression to the mean”, stay away from rookies not named Trout..), there is a pearl of wisdom: “Test your strategy in mock drafts”.
It could seem an unnecessary, frustrating task, spending hours on drafts that will leave you with nothing, but as my mock drafts piled up, I began to understand that they truly are a necessary evil.
In mock drafts, you can realize where your projected players are actually going to be picked, whether you should really wait or not on starting pitchers, if you need to pull the trigger a round earlier than you expected on your catcher, and so on.
It’s like fine tuning a race car, you have to test it on the road before the race, you can’t just just trust the readings on the computers..

What’s your poison, dude?

So you made your homework, highlighted your picks and tested your strategy on mock drafts. Now where do you bring your talents, auction leagues or “snake draft” leagues?
“Purists” of the game say there is only one kind of fantasy baseball, and it’s “Head to head auction style”: after all, it is how the game was first thought and played, while the “New breed” of players prefer “Rotisserie style”.

Both have their upside and downsize: auctions are more exciting on draft day, when you can build your lineup of dreams player by player.. or maybe not, since if you get Pujols, Cabrera and Trout on your team, then good luck on finding 22 players with the 90$ you saved (the average sum you have to make your team is 270$, and those 3 players are easily going for 60$ each). In head to head leagues, you play against a single opponent each week, and you gain wins against him, and while this is funnier, you can end the week with zero points if you happen to step into the guy who has a perfect week.
Also, auction drafts can last 3-4, even 5 hours, depending on the number of teams, and I can’t really go through all that process.

So, I am more a “roto guy”: I think the snake draft, where everybody picks anyone they like when it’s up to them (called snakes because the selection goes up-down and then in reverse, so if you pick 5th in a 12 teams drafts, your next pick is number 20) is fairer and rewards prepared managers, who can pick real bargains in the late rounds, where players that will win or lose your league are.
I mean, everybody can pick their first 3 players, but after that is preparation that really sets apart “students of the game” from “casual players”.
The downsize of roto leagues is that they require more dedication than auction leagues, you have to be on the loop all season, tweaking your roster with trades, waiver acquisitions and cuts. And if you fall in a bad month, you are out of contention long before the season enters its final stretch.

Auction leagues, in fact, have a playoff system, so you just need to survive through the regular season, make the playoffs and then have a stretch at the end of the season to win your league (and roto guys don’t like it, because this process will not reward people who dominated the regular season, since a single bad week will ruin their championship).

I joined 2 rotisserie leagues, 2 head to head leagues and a head to league rewarding just one win a week (in regular head to head, you get as many wins as the categories you win against your opponent).

And from the league you are in, it depends whether you can use that subtle technique called “punting”.

Punting is not for faints of heart

In fantasy baseball, “punting” is the act of not taking into account players that can help your team in only a statistical category, the two most obvious ones being steals and saves.
So, if you decide to punt saves or steals, you can easily step away from closers and speedy guys who can only run, but can’t hit, let alone hit for power (you could call it “The Dee Gordon strategy”..).
In my opinion, you can punt in head to head leagues, but you should not do it in rotisserie leagues, and limit your punting to a category, the most obvious being saves: in head to head, in fact, you would only grant your opponent one win (better yet, just a fraction in one win leagues), but you would have wisely used a couple of the important middle picks to select players that can make your team better across the board, in more than a single stat.

On the other hand, you can’t punt in rotisserie leagues, where if you end up being last in a category, you have to do extremely well in many others to compensate. The good take is that saves can be cheapily bought throughout the season, it’s a fact that almost 40% of the first day closers will not mantain their jobs through october, and you can always trade your additional bats to managers who “had to” get their closers on draft day.

Flexibility is the name of the game

“Leagues are not won on draft day, but they can easily be lost” is another pearl of wisdom I trust: the first day of the league is worth maybe 70% of your season. You can end up picking from waivers the next Trout, 20 wins pitcher or 30 saves closer, but for most of the season you are stuck with the guys you select on draft day, so while you have a master plan to adhere to, you have to be ready to change it on the spot.

The best value available is what should address your picks, so if, say you want a starter with your third pick, but there is still Dustin Pedroia on the table, you should go for The Laser show, he is by far the second best second baseman of the draft, he can help your team in all the offensive categories, and the pluses he brings your team over the next best guy available in his role are much more valuable than the minuses you have getting Chris Sale in the fourth round instead of Cliff Lee in the third, like you intented to do.

I also think that there is no reason to hurry on pitching, power is much more needed and rare, but if you are 11th in a 12 teams league, it is not a bad idea to get Strasburg with the 14th pick instead than waiting for Cain with the 35th. The guys on the infield corners are the most important to be picked early, while shortshop is such a shallow position that you either spend your first pick on Tulowitzki and pray for his health, or you can sit and enjoy the draft ‘til the 14th round, before picking some speed in Everth Cabrera, or even better, platooning him with Jean Segura, your 20th pick.

And even if you despise closers, if there is a Romo still available in the 15th round and your team is pretty much complete, go for him.

Best case scenarios, “I can live with it” scenarios

You can’t possibly think that all your first selections will end up in your team, so here are, position by position, the really best players and the ones you can live with on draft day:

First Base:
Top tier: Pujols, Votto, Fielder.
You can’t possibly be wrong here, even if Pujols and Fielder have more power, while Votto is a hitting machine and if your league uses obp, almost illegal to get.
If you are late on them or think you have more value picking Stanton or Cargo instead, Gonzalez, Encarnacion and Butler have pretty much the same power and value. Goldschmidt is the next big thing at the position, Rizzo is the new sensation and an healthy Ryan Howard can be the steal of the draft.
Who I got: Votto (2), Pujols (1), Butler (1), Howard (1).

Second Base:
Top tier: Cano, Pedroia.
This is a shallow position, you could even say that not even Pedroia should be here. But I am not willing to spend my first overall pick on Cano, so I can wait for Kinsler, Hill, Kipnis, Altuve or Phillips. Ben Zobrist is a fantasy freak machine, but I won’t get him before the 5th round. If he’s available there, he is the Joey Votto of the infield. Chase Utley is the Ryan Howard of second basemen, if he is healthy he can be a bargain.
Who I got: Pedroia (2), Altuve (1), Utley (1), Kipnis (1).

Third Base:
Top tier: Miguel Cabrera.
This is really a one man show, but relax: unless you have the first or second pick overall, you can’t have Mr. triple crown.
But you can have good value with the next guys, Beltre, Longoria, Wright and Zimmerman, or have pretty decent picks with Ramirez (that would be Aramis, Hanley is out for couple of months), Sandoval, Lawrie or Headley (though he is out for a month).
The position is pretty loaded, but you should not sleep on it.
Who I got: A.Ramirez (1), Wright (1), Zimmerman (1), Longoria (1).

Catcher:
Top tier: Posey, Mauer, Santana.
The NL MVP is the top prize, but he is going in the first 2 rounds, too high for me, considering you have two very viable alternatives in Joe Mauer, mister dependable, and Santana, who could enter beast mode overnight.
You are also well covered with the likes of Miguel Montero, Wieters and Yadier Molina, and Victor Martinez is such an intriguing option, after a year of injuries.
Who I got: Mauer (2), M.Montero (1), Santana (1), Wieters (1).

Shortstop:
Top tier: Tulowitzki, Reyes.
With Hanley Ramirez out for at least one month, there are only two players in this role, but they will be both gone at the end of the first two rounds. After that, anything goes in the most shallow position of them all. I’d go with some speed here, though.
Who I got: E.Cabrera (2), Segura-Cozart platoon (1), A.Escobar (1), Y.Escobar (1).

Oufielders:
Top tier: Trout, Braun, McCutchen, Matt Kemp, Carlos Gonzalez, Stanton, Bautista.
You want to mix power and speed here, but not got stuck on monodimensional players. Trout and Braun are basically gone after the first 3 picks, so you have to go with the other guys, with Cutch; Kemp and CarGo providing a balanced mix of power and speed, Stanton and Bautista racking up homeruns and rbis. Josh Hamilton is next on line, right before the new dynamic duo of Atlanta, Heyward and Justin Upton, Shin Soo-Choo is a good alternative, and so is his new teammate Jay Bruce. Bryce Harper can be the dark horse, here, provided he can match his sensational rookie season.
Alex Gordon has a season to prove he has become a superstar.
And I know I said I don’t want monodimensional guys, but Bourn can basically win you the stolen bases category all by himself.
Who I got: Stanton (2), Willingham (3), Span (3), Revere (3).

Utilities
This is where you get creative, experiment with platoons (two players who are so terribly bad on one side of the plate, they can almost become good when used alternatively only on their right side), stock your bench with substitute players and also with players you don’t really need, but that could become useful in trades. Matt Joyce, Dayan Viciedo, Garrett Jones, Josh Reddick, Adam Dunn were my men, here.

Starting pitchers:
Top tier: Verlander, Kershaw, Strasburg.
If you skip them with your first selection, they’re gone, but frankly I can’t see all this added value they bring, considering also how pitchers are so injury prone. I would be more than satisfied landing Price, King Felix, Lee or Hamels. Yu Darvish is projected as the pitcher with the highest warp of the season, according to Baseball Prospectus, Wainwright, Cain, Sabathia, Greinke and Weaver are legitimate aces, Chris Sale could be your next Cy Young award winner, Max Scherzer is number 2 on the Tigers rotation only because you know who number 1 is, Matt Moore could become a superstar and KC basically sold their souls to the devil to get Shields. Oh, R.A. Dickey and Gio Gonzalez are 20 game winners, in case you forgot, and Doc Halladay may have a last hurrah on him. The position is loaded, so there is no need to hurry.
Who I got: Darvish (2), Sale (2), Teheran (2), Latos (2), Peavy (2).

Relief pitchers
Unless you are in a league where holds count as a statistical category, you must draft only closers. The problem is, the only untouchables, Kimbrel, Papelbon, and Chapman, now that he has been demoted to the bullpen, are going in the 5th-6th round in a 12 teams league. That is insane, even in rotisserie leagues, so I’d rather sit and wait my 2 closers in the 12th-14th round, and get the likes of Motte, Joe Nathan, Romo, Putz, maybe Rivera, if his stock falls after the injury. But there is no other role in which so much action will occur while the season is under way (while I was drafting this piece, Mitchell Boggs entered the stage and many fantasy rosters as Jason Motte was placed in DL).

Believe the hype.. or not?

What are you going to do with rookies? Pull the trigger hoping for the next Trout or remain conservative and go with established, less exciting dudes? It’s human nature, I guess, to be thrilled by the new and the unknown, so yes, I believe the hype, but with a grain of salt: if my roster is well balanced and I can spot a Wil Myers, or a Billy Hamilton, maybe an Oscar Taveras still on the table around the 20th round, I will go for them, or I will go for the sensation du jour, cuban slugger Puig, who took preseason by the storm.

Relax and have fun

After all the talking, the studying, the preparation, this is still a silly little game, as the Espn documentary said, where a great part is played by luck, so you’d better just relax and have fun, thinking of it as a nice complement to your passion for the real game.
Oh, anyway, if I won’t end with AT LEAST two championships, I will be very angry…

Coming up next: 2013 Topps Gypsy Queen

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 12:18:00 +0100

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.
They may also find the new black parallel relics, both in standard and mini size:

Hometown currency parallel cards will feature a U.S. State Quarter or foreign currency from where the player was born, numbered to only 5:

Parallels are a feature of this product, and they will be back, of course, with Sliding stars featuring base stealers, Collisions at the plate depicting several of the most spectacular and memorable home-plate collisions, and Glove stories dedicated to great defensive plays:

Pitchers will be honored with no-hitters parallel cards and with dealing aces, where the top hurlers will be featured in all 4 suits of a card deck: Heart, Club, Spade, and Diamond.

Finally, thanks to the facebook account of Monty Sheldon, the famous baseball artist who painted them, we can have a look at those gorgeous, impossible to find 1 of 1 beauties called original art patch cards:

Feast your eyes on these images, because I doubt you will see them live., and see you next for a review of what I’ll have in the 2 boxes I intend to get.

Box break - 2013 Topps Heritage

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 16:16:00 +0100

I have received the 2 boxes of Heritage I ordered from cardsinfinity.com, so I dug into this product: after an hour of ripping packs, I ended with a couple of oddities, no “white whales”, but a good amount of fun.
Let’s start with the 2 originals:

Not your average hall of famers, still I like the real cards from the original set, only.. please Topps, try to find cards in a better state, I have always got cards with dinged corners, and these are also pretty bad stained in the back, I would grade them not better than a “4”.
Chromes are really nice, this year, they are numbered to 999 and not 1964 like you could guess from previous years, I found just 2 of them, though, a pair of Phillies rookies and Michael Bourn in his old uniform:

Chrome refractors, short printed to 564, are not so cool, I found just one of those:

Now, with the oddities: first, I found this strange card:

It has a black back, and after some searches, I found out it is the “venezuelan” parallel, short printed but not with this huge market: what is really strange is that I found the same card on each box, pitcher Tommy Milone.

Then, it rained purple: I found not one, not two, not three… well, I found 23 purple refractors in a single box:

I found out there are these “hot boxes”, where each pack has a purple refractor (actually, I was shorted one..): they are not as nice as the chromes, but still, since I am almost a quarter through the set, I could think about completing it.

Then I found this card:

It is an original 1964 stamp, with a reproduction of a work by C.M. Russell, a well known artist of the american frontier. It is short printed to 50, and there is only one of these cards every 4,800 packs, or 200 boxes.. sadly, though being so hard to find, these cards are selling for less than 20 dollars.

I had the purples, I had the stamp, but still, no relics or autographs, so I contacted Topps to ask them whether I was entitled to my “guaranteed hits”. The short answer is yes, the long one is that I should send them a scan of the barcode of my box, plus a scan of a pack, plus a receipt for the purchase of the box… all this… for a 2 dollars jersey?
I’d rather end it here, without bothering too much.

So.. it was fun, it was worth the money I spent for it, but still, this year’ s release of Heritage is not the top of the class, the design is quite boring and I don’t like the orange theme on the back of the cards, I think next year it will be better, with the iconic “waving banner” set to celebrate:

Look, ma, it's a Griffey autograph!

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 12:34:00 +0100

Finally, IT IS HERE:

The redemption card I bought a few months ago has finally turned into this beautiful card, my first ever Junior’s autograph. I couldn’t afford to buy a whole box of Five Star, so I waited for an opening on ebay and could get it. I paid quite a steep price for it, but now that the autograph has been signed, the card is selling for double that price.
Not that I am planning to sell it, though: it is the best card of my collection, and I love that the autograph is on card, if I had been a little luckier with the number (it’s 26, his jersey was 23..), it would be the perfect card.

Speaking of Five Star, this card isn’t bad, either:

This is not a redemption: I bought a spot on a case break made by Chris at cardsinfinity.com, and the 30 dollars I “invested” turned into a C.J. Wilson jumbo jersey and this autograph.
Finally, I had 2 other silver autographs from this product, this Cy Young award winner:

and this rookie of the year:

Sure, almost nothing can match what I found this morning in my mailbox. So, for once, thanks Topps! (but you still owe me a Eric Hosmer autograph AND a Giancarlo Stanton autograph..)

Some insane hits highlight National treasures

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 13:06:00 +0100

When the other day I ranted about National Treasures, it was for the poor rate of hits that a so expensive product delivered: for over 400$ a box, you MUST give AT LEAST an astounding hit in each box.
Well, here are some examples of really beautiful, desirable cards that recently sold for big money: the trouble is, they are so hard to find, it is not fair:

The famous button card, here from hall of famer Appling.

Speaking of hall of famers, a relic from “The big train”, it looks like a baseball, but I am not sure.
Then we have a truly unique relic of Satchel Paige, a laundry tag:

And this piece of flannel uniform of Ted Williams is a thing of beauty:

What about a button AND an autograph of Mariano:

Even the last AL rookie of the year has a pretty good looking card:

Make no mistake, these cards sold for some real money, but are among the few that really scream for the greatness of a product that couldn’t deliver all its promises.

Going Chrome with Heritage

Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:02:00 +0100

It’s the day of the official release of Topps Heritage, but cards from retail packs are already flooding ebay since yesterday. From what I saw until now, I must say this product looks better than I thought, and there is a specific subset that struck me:

Chromes are really beautiful this year, the white border is so enhanced by the chrome effect (on the other hand, I don’t like purple so much).
I had no intention of hunting for a complete set, but when I saw these cards I changed my mind, I think they are affordable, the complete subset is not so huge (100 cards), and this year, they are numbered to 999, not 1964 as I expected.

I am looking forward to getting my 2 boxes and dig some chrome from Heritage, I’ll keep you posted when I have them.

National treasures swings for the fences... and comes out short

Fri, 01 Mar 2013 16:58:00 +0100

Another high end set from Panini hit the market, delivering some good and much more bad: here are my thoughts on National treasures.
First thing: a box containing 7 cards and 1 booklet is priced at… wait for it… 400 dollars! And for this insane amount of dough, Panini made one thing really well: the rookie auto jumbo patch cards.

These cards are insanely nice, you forget there is no logo on this product.
Several veteran and retired players have been treated well by Panini, too..There is nothing wrong with this card, even though the auto is not on card:

It is a nice composition, the patch, though very little, fits well.
But from here on, it is total annihilation, when you consider this pricey set is full of card like this:

What is this piece of jersey worth, 2 dollars? 3? Consider that, from what I got watching many boxes busted on youtube, these cards are not the exception, but the rule, together with those horrible manupatch rookie autos (yes, also in THIS product) and with 9 out of 10 boxes having this kind of card as a booklet:

No autographs, no color, no logos… what is the point of having this card as a booklet?
That’s all, then? No, in fact there are insane hits to be found:

But you know, every week someone wins the lottery, but not with 400$ tickets..What I expected from this product were many more colors and significant autographs, and at least one huge hit per box, not these cheap jersey cards and manupatches, and so in the end, Panini flies out in its attempt to hit a homerun, and mind you, the ball was not even deep..