Rating the Rookie Cups 2.0 - 2012

 

This week has been pretty busy for me which is why I have posted more sporadically.  I guess when you spend eleven days trapped indoors the errands you need to run your day to day life really pile up on you.  Nevertheless, I do not intend to ever skip my Friday posts because I like writing these Rating the Rookie Cups posts more than anything.  I hope you enjoy reading them as much.

Today's team is the most modern team that I have ever reviewed, the 2011 Topps Rookie All Star team as shown on the 2012 Topps set.  There are several interesting notations about this particular team.  The biggest is that this is the only time in history that Topps did not choose both a right handed and a left handed pitcher to the team.  They switched things up and chose a starting pitcher and a relief pitcher only.  I believe it was a way to wedge Craig Kimbrel onto the team.  This was not as blatant as the previous year's wedging in of Stephen Strasburg, but it was still fairly obvious. 

Another point of interest with this team is that it included a second generation rookie cup winner in Dee Gordon (I'm not using his new hyphenated name).  Tom Gordon, Dee's father, was the RHP on the 1989 Topps Rookie All Star Team shown on 1990 Topps.  I have not researched the total number of father/son combos on RASTs, but I know for a fact there is at least one more along with at least one set of siblings.  I'll do the research and let you all know next week.

The third interesting aspect of this team is the inclusion of so many rookies that did not play full seasons.  Four of the eight position players played less than 90 games in 2011.  I can't remember another instance of that many short term rookies taking a place on an All Star team.  We'll have to see if Topps made the right call on those choices.

The cards are on the 2012 Topps design, which is not one of their better ones.  It's not horrible, but the rookie cup cards suffer the same fate as a lot of the other cards in the set, photos that are zoomed in way too much.  It gives you good detail on faces, but it removes the context of the photo in most cases.  Background imagery is almost as important to me as the main focus of the photos.  The "surfboard" name plate is not horrible, but not one of my favorites either.  Some of the RAST players also suffer from Topps using the rookie cups as short prints, including one where Josh Reddick is photoshopped into an Oakland uniform.  I do not count those SP cards as part of a rookie cup collection, so I am using the regular base card sans cup for a couple of players.  Overall, this set is by far my least favorite of the 2011-2015 era. 

Let's take a look at the 2011 Topps Rookie All Star Team.

 

J.P Arencibia - C - Blue Jays - Season Rank (23 of 61) - Career Rank (45 of 61)

Mark Trumbo - 1B - Angels - Season Rank (15 of 61) - Career Rank (35 of 61)

Danny Espinosa - 2B - Nationals - Season Rank (12 of 61) - Career Rank (35 of 61)

 

Brett Lawrie - 3B - Blue Jays - Season Rank (41 of 61) - Career Rank (43 of 61)

 

Dee Gordon - SS - Dodgers - Season Rank (51 of 61) - Career Rank (27 of 60)

 

 

Desmond Jennings - OF - Rays - Season Rank (157 of 184) - Career Rank (141 of 184)

Ben Revere - OF - Twins - Season Rank (158 of 184) - Career Rank (123 of 184)

Josh Reddick - OF - Red Sox - Season Rank (169 of 184) - Career Rank (91 of 184)

 

Jeremy Hellickson - RHP - Rays - Season Rank (31 of 50) - Career Rank (27 of 50)

Craig Kimbrel - RP - Braves - Season Rank (3 of 34) - Career Rank (2 of 34)

 

 

WOULDA, COULDA, SHOULDA

Here are the players I feel should have made the team.  This is based solely on rookie years stats and is a straight up "battle of the stats" with my opinion not factoring into the decision.  I give a chance to all rookies from that season that either played in 100 games, started 15 games, or had at least 10 saves.  If there happen to be less than 2 rookies that meet those qualifications at a position, then I will just compare the top two that don't meet parameters.  In this case, and all cases before 2011, I am retroactively adding a relief pitcher spot to the team.

Catcher - Wilson Ramos - Nationals

Here we had a simple one on one battle between the only two players to meet the qualifications in 2012, Topps' choice Arencibia and Wilson Ramos of the Nationals.  It was close, but according to my data, Ramos should have been the choice. 

First Base - Freddie Freeman - Braves

First base was one of the two most competitive positions in 2012.  There were four strong candidates for this spot in original pick Trumbo, Freddie Freeman of the Braves, Eric Hosmer of the Royals, and Lucas Duda of the Mets.  When was all was said and done, Freeman should have been the winner over second best Trumbo.  The only thing Trumbo really had over Freeman were the power numbers, Freeman was better in every other facet.

Second Base - Danny Espinosa - Nationals

Of all the 2011 battles, second base was probably the easiest to decide.  There were 2 challengers for Danny Espinosa's spot in Darwin Barney of the Cubs and Justin Turner of the Mets.  Turner eventually shifted to third for the Dodgers, but in his rookie year he was exclusively at second.  Regardless, Espinosa's strong rookie year easily dispatched his two competitors.

Third Base - Brent Morel - White Sox

Here we come to the first original winner that would not even meet qualifications by my standards as Lawrie only played 43 games.  In this instance I did include Lawrie in the competition with the other two players that met qualifications, Brent Morel of the White Sox and Daniel Descalso of the Cardinals.  Despite his limited games, Lawrie did hold his own.  But in the end, the career year of Brent Morel proved to just a little better than the other two.

Shortstop - Eduardo Nunez - Yankees

This would be the second spot where the original winner did not meet parameters as Gordon only played 56 games.  Unlike third base, only one player had over 100 games so I lowered the bar to 80 games and still included Gordon.  I ended up with 4 players in Eduardo Nunez of the Yankees, Mike McCoy of the Blue Jays, Dee Gordon of the Dodgers, and Trevor Plouffe of the Twins.  Nunez ended up winning the battle over Plouffe and Gordon came in third.

Outfield - John Mayberry Jr. - Phillies, Eric Thames - Blue Jays, Ben Revere - Twins

Two outfield spots were also awarded by Topps to players appearing in fewer than 100 games in Desmond Jennings and Josh Reddick.  In this unusually weak year for outfielders, only three players met the 100 game criteria so I lowered the bar to 75 games and still included Jennings and his 63 games.  The two that stood out above the rest were not chosen by Topps in John Mayberry Jr of the Phillies and Eric Thames of the Blue Jays.  That left the final spot to be decided between the original three choices by Topps along with 4 others including Jason Pridie of the Mets and Allen Craig of the Cardinals.  Ben Revere rose to the top and justified his selection.

RH Starter - Alexi Ogando - Rangers

This was the second of the two most competitive positions in 2011.  There were a ton of qualifying starters among rookies, so I upper the bar to 21 starts and was still left with 10 guys.  Best among the bottom 6 that weren't in contention were Josh Collmenter of the Diamondbacks and Ivan Nova of the Yankees.  There was a very close race between the top 4 in Alexi Ogando of the Rangers, 2011 AL ROY Jeremy Hellickson of the Rays, Michael Pineda of the Mariners, and Vance Worley of the Phillies, The underrated Ogando, who didn't even receive a ROY vote, surprisingly beat out Hellickson with walks being the major difference between the two. 

LH Starter - Cory Luebke - Padres

For some stupid reason, Topps decided to eliminate the LHP in 2011.  This was not a strong class of LHPs, but there have been weaker ones in the past.  But I will right the wrong now.  There are only three candidates in Zack Britton of the Orioles, Danny Duffy of the Royals, and hybrid starter/reliever Cory Luebke of the Padres.  Going into this I figured Britton, who began as a starter, with 11 wins would be the easy winner.  But it was Luebke with his high strikeout, low ERA season that pulled ahead.

Relief Pitcher - Craig Kimbrel - Braves

The easiest battle of the year was relief pitcher.  2011 NL ROY Craig Kimbrel had one of the better seasons of all time for a rookie reliever.  Even so, there was some tough competition among Jordan Walden of the Angels, Fernando Salas of the Cardinals, Javy Guerra of the Dodgers, and Mark Melancon of the Astros.  The real strength of this rookie class was in the non-qualifying relievers.  Future formidable closers Aroldis Chapman of the Reds, Kenley Jansen of the Dodgers, Greg Holland of the Royals, along with future ace starter Chris Sale of the White Sox each began their careers as middle relievers in 2011.

 

HOW'D TOPPS DO?

100% - Perfect, 80-90% - Great, 60-70% - Good, 40-50% - Poor, < 40% - Utter Failure

UTTER FAILURE

Well, I guess Topps's streak of perfection had to end at 1.  I didn't choose this team because they were poorly selected, it really was just coincidental.  But it ended up being a pretty cool coincidence.  That being said, there is really no putting a good face on only getting 3 out of 10 correct, and if they chose a LHP it likely would have been Zack Britton and made this 3 out of 11.  But I can't really fault them for a decision they didn't make.  Besides, there is plenty of fault for the decisions they did make.

 

Some of the choices were close, but in most cases Topps ignored full season players over flashy shorter term rookies and it just didn't work out.  In my opinion, it is almost always preferable to go with the full season guy over the half season guy because the full guy had to deal with the rookie wall.  A player that has a season ending injury at the end of May is never in contention for awards, but for some reason rookie that don't come up until August are.  Two months is two months and these awards are for the best of the year. 

Final Thoughts on the Team

Strongest Team Members (rookie) - Craig Kimbrel, Danny Espinosa, Mark Trumbo

 
Strongest Team Members (career) - Craig Kimbrel, Jeremy Hellickson, Dee Gordon

 
Weakest Team Members (rookie) - Josh Reddick, Ben Revere, Desmond Jennings

 
Weakest Team Members (career) - Desmond Jennings, J.P. Arencibia, Brett Lawrie

 
Rockies on the team (Present and future) - 0 (although Kimbrel seems like he could be an end of the career Rockie)

 
Best Card (IMHO) - J.P. Arencibia (no cup, but the best of a bland lot of photos)

 
Worst Card (IMHO) - Josh Reddick (no cup + he isn't the player in focus)

 

This team is likely to go down as one of the weakest Rookie All Star Teams of all time.  Seven of the ten members of the team were out of the league as of right now.  Gordon is on a minor league deal and Reddick remains a free agent.  Only Kimbrel is currently on a big league deal and his past two years have been awful, so who knows how much longer he will last.  If Kimbrel has a comeback and another 4-5 years as a solid closer, he might have an argument for the Hall of Fame.  But no one else on this team is getting into the Cooperstown museum without a ticket.  That being said, Trumbo and Hellickson did have decent, albeit shortened, careers.  As have Gordon and Reddick.  Regardless, right now I would rate this team as a bottom 5 team of all time. 

 

. 

NEXT WEEK'S PREVIEW

The 1981 team pictured on 1982 Topps cards.

Thanx for reading.

Monday's Mailbag #2 Part 2: eBay Boogaloo

Yesterday I showed off the blogger portion of Monday's Mailbag, today is eBay's turn.  I mentioned how my cabin fever led to shopping on eBay more than usual which led to some questionable purchases.  One of those purchases continues to be questionable at this moment, but it could still turn out okay.  The other 3 that arrived on Monday ranged from a strong leadoff double to 3 run walk off dinger in the bottom of the 10th.  Let's take a look at the eBay gamble lots for this week. 

First up is what I would consider the weakest of the four by far.  This is a lot of 24 2020 Bowman Platinum cards.  In reality it was likely the content of one person's hanger box.  I don't know what I was thinking with this buy because I almost always look for value when buying lots, even if it is just for sale or trade.  This just doesn't have the value that I paid.  Of the 24 cards, 20 were regular base cards.  Two more were the above ice parallels, which are the most common parallel.  I did get a couple of serial numbered parallels, a pink vet out of 199 and a gold prospect of out 50, but both were smaller names.  They will show up on future Sunday PWE Trade Bait posts.  If I had to do it over again, I would not purchase this lot, but that is precisely why I call them gamble lots.  You don't always win.  Although I may just build this set because I do like the design.

 

 

 

Next up we have what a consider a good buy.  This is a lot of 2009 Topps Sterling cards.  This purchase was a case of the seller being new and me getting lucky and spotting the auction.  This auction was a random allotment of 5 base Sterling cards and 1 lower numbered card out of the 30 cards he had pictured.  The most important thing about an eBay auction is the title and this lot was listed as "Baseball cards lot."  That's it.  No mention of Mantle or Clemente or Sterling or anything else.  That helped me get the lot for the opening bid.  However, after I paid, I reached out to the seller and offered him advice on how to sell his cards in the future such as losing the random lot aspect and being more descriptive in the title.  He was appreciative of the advice and as a reward, he let me choose whichever cards I wanted in the lot.  There were some nice ones including 2 different Mantles and a Stan Musial #'d to 14.  I didn't want to get greedy so I just asked for 1 of the 2 Mantles and the Clemente.  I got them along the Musial and Schmidt pictured along with a Barry Bonds not pictured.  My special card ended up being Johan Santana, probably the worst of the good cards, but for 5 dollars, I am not complaining one bit.

 

The other thing I didn't mention was that the seller threw in 3 serial numbered Hall of Famers from 2007 Topps Triple Threads.  I had no idea they would be included.  When was the last time you heard of a serial numbered Nolan Ryan being included as filler?  And I got all of this for around the price of a retail fat pack.  Buys like this, along with the lack of retail product available, is making want to give up retail altogether and just buy lots.  I won't get the big "mojo," but I don't really want that anyway.

 

The third lot is another one that was incorrectly listed.  The title of the auction was "2020 Donruss lot."  I found it looking for parallels for my rainbow set, but once I looked I couldn't resist putting an opening 99 cent bid and leaving.  Never did I think I would win at that price, but I did.  What was in the "2020 Donruss lot" you ask?  Well that would be 130 short prints and inserts from 2020 Panini Diamond Kings.  There were 13 dupes, but 58 cards of Hall of Famers were a part of the lot.  Including shipping, I paid a grand total $12.13 including shipping and taxes for this lot, or less than a dime per card.  That's about the cost of 3 hobby packs of 2021 Topps.  I'm just going to showcase one card for each insert set and then the card numbers that I have from that set to trade.  I figured this would a perfect way for me to have a good supply of inserts to trade for my 1986 Topps insert project.  

Keep in mind that these are the cards I have to trade.

 

Gallery of Stars - 4, 5, 14

In the Zone - 1, 2, 5, 5, 6, 6, 8, 8, 8, 11, 11, 13, 13, 14, 14, 15, 15

Artist's Palette - 4, 4, 7, 10

DK 206 - 2, 5, 7, 10, 12, 13, 15, 15, 18

Aficionado - 1, 2, 3, 5, 9, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15

All Time Diamond Kings - 1, 2, 4, 6, 12, 15, 22, 25, 27, 29, 30

DK Originals - 2, 5, 6, 7, 8

The 3000 - 1, 4, 8, 9, 12, 13

Base & SP - 82, 116, 117, 123, 125, 142, 143, 148, 149

Framed Blue - 39

Artist Proof Blue - 19, 42, 61

Framed Red (from the 2019 DK set) - 81

A lot to take in there.  I probably should have dedicated a single post to just this buy.  There is just so much here.  But hey some of you can trade me some 86s (or other cards I collect) and then write about this set as much as you want to. 

The final lot for today was one of my mystery Colorado Rockies gamble lots.  I go into these purchase knowing that I will end up with far more cards that I don't need than cards that I need.  When you have a nearly 25,000 card Rockies collection, it's hard to get large lots that hit needed areas.  I picked up this 132 card lot for the cost of a fat pack at $5.82.  Of that 132 cards, 107 were dupes including 11 inserts and parallels.  Even if I threw those cards in the garbage (which I am not doing BTW), that still leaves me with 25 new Rockies at a cost of about 23 cents per card including shipping.  I'll take that all day every day.  Here's a sampling of my new Rockies.

Most of the cards in this lot came from late season Topps products.  The Topps Fire Gold Minted Kyle Freeland was one of 2 for that parallel set I got.  Topps Fire has never been that big with me mainly because it is a Target exclusive and the closest Target to me is over 50 miles away.  The Topps Chrome German Marquez is a purple refractor #'d to 299.  In recent years these #'d color parallels in Chrome have become increasingly expensive to obtain.  Just another by-product of the boom that I really hope ends soon.  The Sam Hilliard is a black foil parallel from 2020 Stadium Club.  I actually overlooked it the first two time I went through the cards.  It wasn't until I was organizing the dupes to put into the Sportlots box that I spotted the black foil.  I often wonder how many parallels or photo variations I have just flat out missed over the years.

The best thing about this lot is that it gave me complete team sets for both 2020 Topps/Holiday and 2021 Topps Series 1.  Now I probably have the entire 2021 Series 1 set of 9 cards in the hands of Nachos Grande since I am in his first Breakers Club group break.  But they haven't been mailed yet, so I used this lot to check them off the list.  A surprise inclusion was the relic of Nolan Arenado from 2020 Topps Holiday.  It is only the 6th relic I have of the now former Rockies great.  It's a surprisingly small number considering I have over 50 of Todd Helton.  But relics have never really been a big part of my collection.  Lastly, I want to talk about the Arenado photo from 2021 Topps.  The design is awful.  It looks like a giant is picking him up by the head with an oversized pair of tweezers.  Who thought that looked good?  Ugh.

Without a doubt the strangest inclusion in the set was this 2017 Topps Purple Nick Hundley graded 10 from BCCG.  So many questions here.  Why would anyone send this card to be graded?  Do you think the original owner that sent the card in was just giddy when he saw the 10 on there?  Why are 10s called Mint or Better?  What is better than mint?  No seriously, why would anyone send this card in to be graded?  Anyway I was going to keep this on a shelf as a lark just to remind me of how silly some "collectors" are when it comes to graded cards.  Then I noticed that this card was on my wantlist.  Since I don't collect plastic blocks (no offense Lego collectors), I decided to break this guy out.  I watched a quick Youtube on how to do it safely and it worked like a charm.

Here is Nick free from his plastic prison with no damage whatsoever.  I know there are some people out there that will just gasp and get angry over me "ruining" a 10, but I am keeping the card.  And it's not like there are a ton of Nick Hundley collectors clamoring for the 10 in order to make their PC just a little better than all the rest.  Although if there is a Hundley collecting contest, this one is my 33rd in the Rockies binder. 

I have really started enjoying these gamble lots, although I can see space becoming an issue before too long.  Regardless for a gambler, getting 3 wins out of 4 attempts is definitely a day worth remembering.  Even the loss may lead to a new set collection, so it may turn out well also. 

Thanx for reading.

Monday's Mailbag #2 (Part 1)

 

Welcome to the second edition of Monday's Mailbag, but the first that actually is posted on a Monday.  The weather seems to have turned in a good way.  Most of the ice has melted and it has revealed all of the tree damage that will need to be cleaned up.  It's not too bad, some of my neighbors got it much worse, so all in all it could have been much worse.  Everyone has their health and for now according to the forecast it appears that spring is coming early.   But no one came here to read about the weather, let's talk cards.

Before I start showing the first half of the large mail day that I got today, I would like to let everyone know that I was able to get packages and PWEs mailed today.  Between Sportlots purchases and blogger trades, I mailed out 8 PWEs and 2 yellow pads today.  And those are just last week's stuff.  I still have a few more PWEs to get ready later this week.  But that's later, let's look at some of the stuff that is now part of my collection.

We'll start this week with a visit from madding from Cards on Cards.  That PWE was actually delivered on Sunday.  Mail was only delivered on Wednesday last week, so they worked on their usual day off.  Kerry have traded many times on my original blogging run, but this is the first since my return.  I sent him some Cardinals that he claimed on the Sunday PWE Trade Bait posts along with a #'d Trail Blazer and in return I got these.

 

We'll start off with the Rockies portion of the swap.  First up is the 2020 Topps/Update Royal Blue parallel for reliever Phillip Diehl.  Those Royal Blues are incredibly overpriced on the secondary market, especially since 2020 Update was among the worst sets ever, so it is nice to knock one off the want list.  The Chuck Nazty is from 2020 Stadium Club Chrome.  I like the set, but so many sets came out in October and November that it was just hard to keep up with everything.  I still need around half of just the Rockies base cards from that set.  Next we come to a Trevor Story from 2020 Topps/206.  That was an online only set that I was debating on even including on my checklists.  I do not include most online-only sets at all.  I'm just not a fan of the practice.  I do have a couple of exceptions to that rule, but if it say "Now" or "On Demand" it is probably not something I am looking for.

The rest of the cards from Kerry hit other parts of my collection.  He and I are among the few bloggers that also collect basketball cards.  He is a big Portland Trailblazers and Oregon Ducks collector, whereas I collect Kentucky Wildcats alumni regardless of team.  Kerry sent this pair of needed Donruss Rated Rookies.  The Hamidou Diallo is a parallel from the 2018 Donruss set.  Diallo seems like he is in the midst of a breakout year, which means I need to pick up his rookies before prices go up.  Speaking of prices, we come to Tyler Herro.  It took me nearly a year to get this simple base card from 2019 Donruss.  Herro is just overpriced and has been since the Heat went to the Finals last year.  Hopefully he gets traded to a bad team soon so his prices will start to fall.  Finally we come to the first 86 insert in hand for me.  I don't even mind that it is a Giant because I just love the set.

 

Next up we are joined the now full grown adult Nick from Dime Boxes.  Nick just celebrated his 29th birthday which just stuns me.  I first traded with Nick when he was still in high school and I guess I still think of him as a teenager.  Okay, I'm old.  Nick claimed a Ben Zobrist Rays refractor of mine which I sent along with a few set needs.  The cards Nick sent have a lot in common with the cards I got from Kerry.  Up first is Phillip Diehl again except this one is from 2020 Topps/Update Chrome.  Nick also sent me a tobacco card from 2020 206.  He sent the now former Rockie David Dahl.  Just like that, I now have 40% of the Rockies team set.  I guess I will go ahead and make 206 an exception set.  They do look pretty good in hand.  Nick also sent me an 86 insert from an NL West team.  I don't like Clevinger at all, but part of set collecting is getting cards of guys you don't like. And the Padres team name plate was always one of my favorites in the original set.

Let's pause for a moment to take a look at the 86 inserts back.  The fronts are nearly identical to the original 86s except for the 35th anniversary stamp, but the back has changed a bit and I am not a fan of the changes.  The first is the card "number."  Is it really necessary to have the "86B-" as part of the card number?  It is too long and looks squished in the base.  But I am kind of used to Topps' weird numbering system.  The second change is the omission of the player's city of birth and their current city of residence.  I mentioned before that I used to look up the birth cities on the originals in an atlas and it helped me immensely in geography.  I have no idea why that info was left off.  Third, the font and spacing of the stats is off.  The spacing is not as bad on other cards as on the Clevinger.  Not horrible, but not good either.  Lastly, the worst change is the completely unnecessary addition of the team name above the "Major League Pitching Record" line.  It just looks so weird there.  The good part is that they got the font of the player name perfect.  So there's that.

 

 

Next up is a new trading partner for me, Matt from Cards over Coffee.  I really like his writing style on the blog.  It really does make you feel like you are just casually talking cards with someone over coffee.  Whereas the other trades were offered to me via my trade bait posts, I initiated this deal when I spotted some 86 inserts.  After a couple of getting to know you emails, I sent Matt a serial numbered Eli Manning insert and (I kid you not) 3 Beach Boys inserts for the above 86s.  The Bregman is my first parallel, this one being black /199, and I gotta say that I LOVE the way the name pops.  I also knocking Carlson off the want list because he is one of the overpriced rookies of the year.  The rookie thing is just so bad.  When you pay the price as if a rookie is going to have an All Star career, where is the upside?  These guys would have to have Mike Trout's career arc in order for anyone to profit at these prices.  The chromes feature two teams with a color change.  The Rangers had a red team name in 1986, but I like the blue much better.  The Rangers have always been more blue than red to me.  The White Sox is much more subtle.  The originals were solid white as opposed to the light gray of the new ones.  I prefer the original colors.  I mean they aren't called the Light Gray Sox after all.  Thanks Matt and I am sure we will trade a lot more in the future.

 

Those of you with sharp eyes will notice that this post is titled "Part 1" which usually implies that "Part 2" is coming soon.  That is the case here as well.  I got in so much on Sunday and Monday that I needed to break things up between blogger trades and eBay hauls.  One of the downsides (or upsides depending on your perspective) to the bad weather was that I had a lot of time on my hands to look through eBay.  Well the results of that are starting to come in.  With Part 2 tomorrow I will show off 4 of my gamble lots They ranged from "meh" all the way to "are you freaking kidding me" so I hope you join me tomorrow to check out the goods.  

Thanx for reading.