So, you're a Trade-er?

Today is the trade deadline so I thought it would be appropriate to discuss one of the more surprising trades that has happened.  The Scherzer/Turner to LA is a topic for another day, but I really want to discuss Anthony Rizzo, long time face of the Cubs and the player who owns the ball which ended the 100+ year World Series drought has been traded to the New York Yankees.  This came just one day after Joey Gallo was traded to the Yankees.  Rizzo has the face and personality to win over New York Yankees fans immediately, but I am sad to see him leave Chicago.  I know he was drafted by the Red Sox and played briefly as a rookie for the Padres, but I will always associate Rizzo with the Cubs and their complete rebuild which ultimately lead to a championship.  Rizzo was the Cubs, through and through.  

I've shown off some of my Cutch and Rizzo cards in the past including the one in today's post.

One of my favorite booklet cards I own is a quad patch card of Nolan Arenado, Anthony Rizzo, Andrew McCutchen, and Giancarlo Stanton.  

It's an impressive piece of oversized cardboard, containing massive chunky jersey cards from

Nolan Arenado

3xTop5 NL MVP

6x All Star

4x Silver Slugger

8x Gold Glove

43.1 WAR (career)

⚾ ⚾ ⚾ ⚾

Anthony Rizzo

1x World Series Champion (2016)

2x Top 5MVP

3x All Star

1x Silver Slugger

3x Gold Glove

36.6 WAR (career)

⚾ ⚾ ⚾ ⚾

Andrew McCutchen

2013 NL MVP (4xTop5 MVP)

5xAll Star

4xSilver Slugger

1xGold Glove

46.1 WAR (career)

⚾ ⚾ ⚾ ⚾

Giancarlo Stanton

2017 NL MVP (2x Top 5)

4x All Star

2x Silver Slugger

42.1 WAR (career)

All players on this card have been traded since they signed their contract extensions.

3 of these players have been traded to the Yankees (McCutchen, Rizzo, Stanton).

All four players signed contract extensions for 6-10+ years with the teams depicted on this massive booklet.  

Many fans of these franchises were hoping these players would all finish their careers with the Rockies, Cubs, Pirates, and Marlins respectively.

It seems that 1 team franchise players will long be a thing of the past.  The days of Cal Ripken Jr, Derek Jeter, Chipper Jones, and Todd Helton type players appear to be gone.  I love the extensions given to Tatis and Acuna, but feel they will one day be traded as well.  

What active player do you think has a chance at staying with one franchise for his entire career?  Can you see Clayton Kershaw or Jacob Degrom pitching for another team?  Will Freddie Freeman test free agency next year and sign with another team? 

#tbt other designs

Topps has been digging into their old designs on cards for many many decades.  In 1975 collectors got images of cards featuring MVP winners from previous seasons using the cards from their MVP season.  In 1987 Topps used the Turn Back the Clock design to highlight some more older designed cards from their vault of designs.  

With that it shouldn't be a surprise that Topps has used some of their non baseball card designs to highlight baseball players in their online exclusive sets #TBT Throwback Thursday releases.

Unfortunately despite appearing in three of these #TBT sets, Cutch has only gotten the treatment of 1 non baseball card set design.  

I will look at each of these 3 #TBT sets over the course of the next three Thursdays and evaluate what could have been done differently based on the previous set homage and following set homage.

Today we are looking at

2017 #TBT card #112

This set was based on the Player Nickname Weekend event and included The Machine (Albert Pujols), All Rise (Aaron Judge), Cutch, Buster (Posey), Chuck Nasty (Charlie Blackmon), and Mookie (Betts)

The set used the 1984 Topps design which has been produced in several other reprint themed sets over the years.  The players nickname is featured going down the side of the card where the traditional team name would go.  The images used all feature the Player Weekend jerseys shown.

When the online exclusive set was first released I enjoyed it as it gave me a Cutch card using the 1984 design, but now that Topps has used the 1984 set in Archives, #TBT, an insert set, and Project 2020 and Project 70 I am kind of over seeing this set.

The next set began with card number #116 and was based on the 1984 football design

It was meant to look at players who may have excelled on the gridiron had they not chosen baseball as their career choice.  Cutch was originally a high school star wide receiver before injuring his ACL which made him focus on baseball.  He is a Steelers fan and has been seen attending the Steelers games at Heinz Field.  

The set preceding the Player Nicknames #TBT based on the 1984 design was the 1991 Beverly Hills 90210 set

The set featured the hottest hitters of the summer

This would have been a fun set for player's weekend.  Similar to what was done with the Arenado card above Topps could have used the player's nickname instead of their first name on the cards.  

Are there any Topps designs you want to see get used?

I'm holding out hope that Topps produces a #TBT set based on the Dick Tracy stickers at the trade deadline based on the criminals of the film.  

Keep the WANTED poster idea

Replace the villain with a player like Trevor Story (or any other trade candidate)

Replace the crime with what they could provide to the new team (Home Runs, Stolen Bases, Strikeouts, Leadership, etc etc etc)

And last you can replace the sticker number with either the player's number or position abbreviation

I'm back

5 days without a post?

That is the longest stretch I've had on the blog without a post.

Things have been wild and crazy as I worked 73.5 hours this week and that doesn't count the 2 hours driving to and from daily. 

But things should start to settle down.

With news breaking yesterday that Nolan Arenado had been acquired by the Cardinals, I thought it was a good time to show off this behemoth of a booklet.  

Talk about an impressive group of players.

17 All Star Games

1,019 HR

13 Gold Gloves

13 Silver Sluggers

2 MVP

2 Roberto Clemente Award Winners

Three members of 2017 Team USA gold medalists (only Rizzo wasn't on team)

Nolan Arenado is a future Hall of Famer with the projection of his career.  

In his still short career of only 8 seasons, he has finished in top 10 MVP 5 times.  He has gotten the gold glove in every year of his career.  He is also a 4 time Silver Slugger and has lead the National League in Home Runs three years.  

He is signed through the 2026 season and looks to be a problem the Pirates pitching staff will have to face more often for many years to come.

Congrats Cardinals fans!

Rizzo Remembers

Anthony Rizzo is an absolute class act.

He has won the Roberto Clemente award for his role in the community.

Last year around this time, Parkland High School had a tragic incident where 17 people were murdered by gunfire in a school shooting.

A year ago to this day, Anthony Rizzo made an appearance for the vigil the community had.  Details can be found here.

I have shown all but one of my Anthony Rizzo cards on this blog before.

Here is a card I got last summer that I never got around to showing off.  It's too big for my scanner bed to pick up the entire card.

It goes nicely with the other quad booklet I have featuring Rizzo, Arenado, Cutch, and Stanton.  The patch version is numbered to 5 where as the jumbo jersey is numbered to 15.

To see my other Rizzo cards click here.

Did something happen yesterday?

Yesterday news broke that the Yankees had acquired Giancarlo Stanton from Derek Jeter's Miami Marlins.

I completely understand what Jeter and company are trying to do by shedding the massive contract.  I think that Marlins fans that are upset by the deal should recognize that the organization can't be sustainable over the course of time unless they build a winning foundation beginning in the minors and it transcends to the major league level.

As great as Stanton can be perceived as being here's some fun facts about the quarter billion dollars the Marlins got rid of from their payroll over the next 10 years.
He has only appeared in 150 games TWICE in his career. (2011 and 2017)
His strikeout to walk rate is 2.34:1 over his 8 year career.
He has never played for a winning team since his 2010 debut.

Having 267 career homeruns by age 27 season and then joining the Yankees for 10 years should put him on the Hall of Fame path.

Stanton is a great player, but he's not great for a new ownership in Miami.  He needed to be traded for the Marlins ownership to move forward with their plan and vision.

What are your thoughts on the Stanton to Yankees move?

Happy for the player to finally join a winning culture?
Mad at the Marlins front office for trading the face of the franchise?

I will leave you with all my Cutch and Giancarlo pairings (many of which I showed off during the 2017 WBC).

First though I will show off the two cards that haven't been featured on here yet.

I made a post about Probstein last week and how some of their auctions get shilled and go for more than what they should because they are a consigner.

This card was won for what I consider a fair price.  It's a triple relic of three members of the World Baseball Classic 2017 Team USA gold medalist (Adam Jones, Andrew McCutchen, and Giancarlo Stanton).  I have added quite a number of green Triple Threads cards this year so I am looking forward to showing them off next Saint Patrick's Day.

I don't know how many of you watched that tournament, but I had a blast rooting for Team USA.  Of course it helped that my favorite player was playing right field during the tournament.

Here's the rarer and "patchier" Gold version numbered to 9.

And here are the cards I have previously shown
This National Treasures quad booklet is awesome!  It features 3 of my favorite current big leaguers (Arenado, Rizzo, and Cutch)

 There's a few different parallels to chase for Immaculate.  I just have the standard bat relic for Stanton.  There is a patch version of both players available too which I believe is numbered to 10.

 The game's best pitcher (Kershaw) and the game's best hitter (Trout) are featured with the Stanton Cutch partnership.

 That bum who always sticks his tongue out, Yasiel Puig, joins Cutch and Bigfoot

 This card is just ridiculous.  It has 9 of the best players at each position from 2014 on it.  All patches or bat relics.  I only showed the back below, but the front also has Clayton Kershaw, Buster Posey, Jose Abreu, Robinson Cano, and Miguel Cabrera (he was playing 3B because of the Prince Fielder signing).

Players I Should Hate but Can't: Rizzo my nizzle

Here's another new segment I came up with as I am trying different ways to show off Cutch cardboard.

Anthony Rizzo plays on a division rival team and in the normal sports fandom world I should hate him simply for that reason.

But I can't!  The guy hits homeruns for children with cancer.

I love me some Anthony Rizzo (he's been on every fantasy league team I have since 2013) even when he's getting a walk in the 9th inning of a tie game and being the reason why the Cubs beat the Pirates.

I should hate him, but I can't.   He helps with marriage proposals.

He has a career slash line of .312/.403/.591 with 23 HR and 78 RBI in 99 career games versus Pittsburgh.

I should hate him, but I can't.  He's just too likable to hate.

Over the next few months I will highlight more Players I Should Hate.

What players on division rivals do you actually root for?

Giancarlo can't be stopped

Is it possible to see Giancarlo Stanton homer in every game going forward?  It seems that way!!!

Fortunately for my fantasy baseball team, Giancarlo is playing out of his mind.  He has set a Marlins single season home run record, homered in 5 straight games, and has 251 career home runs in his age 27 season.  Only 12 players in MLB history have accomplished that.  Eight are in the Hall of Fame.  The four that aren't are Albert Pujols, Alex Rodriguez, Juan Gonzalez, and Andruw Jones.  

I have shown off all these cards before when the World Baseball Classic was going on, but with the way Stanton has been playing of late, I thought I could show them all off again.

I have seen a dual patch of the below card instead of dual bat, but am content just having the Stanton bat (for now)

One of the coolest booklets I own is this quad jumbo jersey booklet.  Not only does it feature my 4 favorite NL players, it also has 3 team mates of Team USA who won the 2017 WBC.

Another really awesome card is this 9 player patch card.  This thing is massive and features incredible patches for each player.  The front features Buster Posey, Clayton Kershaw, Jose Abreau, Miguel Cabrera, and Robinson Cano.

Can't go wrong with Stanton, Cutch, Trout, and Kershaw.

Ugh...Yasiel Puig

I'm not sure if Topps just doesn't want to produce more cards of Cutch and Stanton or they don't see the pairing as being compatible on cardboard the same way Panini does.

I would love to see a decapatch card made of the 10 players who won the decisive World Baseball Classic game against Puerto Rico.  That would be awesome!!!

Anyone know any custom card makers who could make such a card?

A massive addition to the PC

I promised yesterday that I would show off a massive card today and I intend to keep that promise.

Each year, National Treasures tends to be one of my favorite releases due to the quality they put in the product.

2016 NT was no different.  I've already shown some of my cards from this year's release.  This one however is by far, my biggest one yet.  It's so big in fact that when unfolded it didn't fit entirely on my scanner.

It's not as low numbered as other NT cards I have shown, but this card does feature some of my other favorite players in MLB.  Jumbo jersey relics of Anthony Rizzo, Nolan Arenado, and Giancarlo Stanton all join Cutch in this Quad Relics Booklet.

This is my first Arenado relic I have.  I would like to add more in the near future.

I missed out on the two previous ones listed on eBay and when this hit, the seller and I negotiated a deal to get this in my hands for a price what my two missed opportunities went for.

I am grateful that I can cross this off the list now.  The trouble is displaying it.  I just ordered a custom case from hardball34 to get this thing properly displayed.

Three of these Superstars will be on Team USA.  Stanton looks to be starting in Right Field and Arenado will likely be the team's starting 3B.

Tomorrow I will show off my other Stanton cards that I have paired up with Cutch.

It's finally here!!!!

To us baseball fans, there are few better phrases than "pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training".  Of course hearing Opening Day, Home Run Derby, Postseason, and World Series Champions are pretty good too.

But for me, I get so happy when Spring Training starts.  The Pirates amongst many other teams are expecting pitchers and catchers to report today.

Everything is officially reset.

Someone who I have really enjoyed watching the past few years is Nolan Arenado.  I have considered going after a Nolan PC.  This card was part of a lot with the Cutch you see above.  Maybe it was destiny as this manurelic represents my first "hit" of the reigning 3B Silver Slugger and 3B gold glove winner.

The card backs are featured below.

If anyone wants to send me some Nolan Arenado cards I will gladly accept them.

Please don't forget about my contest.
It will run until Opening Day 2017