Fun Friday Entry 1

It's the weekend!!!

Things are supposed to be fun!!!

Baseball is fun, right?
Baseball cards are fun, right?

Most kids these days will disagree with those statements, but card manufacturers are trying to draw interest from the younger crowd.

My Fun Friday entries will look at how card manufacturers are trying to capture a younger audience.

2013 Panini Triple Play was a complete failure for the company to create a budget friendly set to attract kids 10 and under and get them to collect cards.

The set features cartoon looking images of players with some degree of likeness, but entirely stylized to the artist's rendition.    There are no team logos as expected by an unlicensed company.

The back has some facts about the player (although Cutch didn't win the MLBPAA Rookie of Year in 2009, he did win the Baseball America Rookie of Year award) but nothing too interesting.

Today packs of this set can be found for about a quarter a pack.  Upon release they had a SRP of 99 cents. 

If I was a kid, I wouldn't have any interest in this set.

Friday Fun Factor?

FAIL!!!!

TEKnically I Could Have Waited

I wasn't collecting cards when the first run of Topps Tek (and it's many parallels) came out in the late 90s.

When the line relaunched in 2014 I thought it was so fun and wild, especially the color difractors.  Unfortunately Andrew McCutchen only appeared in the insert set.

Then 2015 came out and that checklist included Cutch.

I showed off my Tek collection a little over 3 years ago.  At the time I had nearly completed the entire rainbow of Cutch except pattern 6.  Pattern 7 is "tek"nically the tougher pull as they aren't guaranteed per case.  Pattern 6 falls only 1 per case and is estimated that it has a print run of only 25 copies.

Fast forward almost three years later from that post and I am finally talking about having gotten pattern 6 for my collection.

I look for new McCutchen cards probably 3-5 times a week on eBay, COMC, and sportlots.  When I saw pattern 6 pop up for the first time in nearly 4 years I knew I needed it for my collection.

Here's the thing though.
1)It was being sold by COMC so the s&h was going to be a dollar plus more than the actual cost to ship the item
2)Because it was COMC and only a few weeks away from their annual Black Friday sale I knew if I held out for a few more weeks I could get FREE SHIPPING
3)You can't negotiate offers with COMC via eBay

I ultimately decided to pay the near $17 for the card as I wasn't sure when (or if) another "pattern 6" would pop back up for sale.

It was delivered to my address over 70 days ago as you can see in the screenshot below.

I am just now writing about it.

It joins these others to complete the rainbow

Have you felt that you overpaid for a parallel because you didn't want to wait for a cheaper one to show up due to it's scarcity?

Just A Random Rainbow: Entry 1

I am falling into some writer's block trying to come up with good content for the blog.  Once the baseball season gets started I am certain I will have plenty to talk about, but with spring training still a month away I am looking for some inspiration.

I think I will do a new style of posts where I show off some of the rainbows I have for certain sets. 

With nearly 2,700 unique cards of Cutch in my collection now I have LOTS of rainbows started. 

This will give me a chance to show and talk about my favorite parallel of the rainbow, any needs I may have for the set and also talk about any unique stories relating to the rainbow.

I am going to start with 2016 Diamond Kings as the inaugural Random Rainbow. 
2016 Diamond Kings is my favorite design from the Diamond Kings line.  The product release began in 2015 and offered collectors a chance to get artisticly designed cards that Topps was doing with their Gypsy Queen line and take it a new level.

The product offered multiple parallels to chase from Artist's Proofs (base/99, silver/25, and black /1) and Framed Parallels (base framed/unnumbered, red/99, blue/99, green/5, and black/1). 

Of the standard issued cards there were 9 parallels to chase in total.

I currently have 5 of the 9.  I still need the following:
Silver artist proof/25
Black artist proof/1
Green Frame /5
Black Frame/1

Obviously needing 2 1 of 1s will be tough to complete the rainbow.  The green/5 is going to be difficult as well and the silver artist proof is a tough find due to the foil not being very obvious on the card to highlight being a low numbered parallel.

Among all the parallels that I do have, there is one clear cut favorite and that is...

I am a sucker for bright red parallels (I also like blacks and pinks too though).  The bright red frame on the artistic canvas looking image screams a museum quality baseball card.  If Panini ever decides to make larger format cards I hope they do Diamond Kings as one of the initial releases.  This diamond king is truly king of my parallels for this set.

What do you think about me showing off some random rainbows in the future?  

A Plethora of Pops

With the Hall of Fame voting revealed tomorrow I thought I should finally show off this pair of McCutchen cards with one of the greatest Pirates of All-Time and Hall of Famer, Willie "Pops" Stargell.

Stargell was a first ballot Hall of Famer getting 82% of the vote in 1988.  He finished his career with 57.5 WAR according to baseball reference.

There are 13 players on this year's ballot with career WAR greater than 57.5 WAR.
In terms of position players with outfield or 1st base experiience the following players have more WAR than Pops: Barry Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Todd Helton, Andruw Jones, Manny Ramirez, Sammy Sosa, and Bobby Abreau.

This quad patch relic features the runPMC crew (Polanco, Marte, Cutch) with the Pirates legend.  Some people were really impressed by it a few days ago, but I never gave it the proper spotlight it deserved.

I grabbed it using an eBay bucks promo late in 2018.

I have had it as a saved draft for literally a year to the date.

I tend to scan cards and use the keywords tags to help locate cards to assist when I am ready to finally share the cards online.

Here is another low numbered Heritage relic featuring Pops, Marte, and Cutch.

I have a couple different variants of this 2015 Clubhouse Collection design with Cutch.  Others include
Cutch with Clemente
Cutch with Stargell
Cutch with Stargell and Clemente
Cutch with Stargell, Polanco, and Marte

I showed a lot of these off in the past.

And here is a card that regretably doesnt feature Cutch with Stargell and Clemente.

2 Pirates Hall of Fame Legends with a pair of recent Pirates Joshes.

I'm curious if there will be any Pirates Clubhouse Collection cards this year.  The Heritage set is based on 1971 Topps.  The Pirates were World Series Champions that year on an unbelievable performance by Roberto Clemente.

I was surprised that Topps didn't make a McCutchen Giants card in 2018 with McCovey, Mays, or Marichal last year.

Maybe there will be some Cutch Heritage relics in Phillies uniforms this year to chase.

Sign Stealing!?

The Astros sign stealing scandal going through baseball is going to leave a bad mark on the sport for many many years to come.  With early rumors of video surveillance to garbage can hitting to buzzers on players shoulders, there are now more questions than ever about how far teams will go to try and win.

With that being said, the 2017 World Series Champions Houston Astros won on the road where they didn't have an advantage.

The 2019 Champions, Washington Nationals, won 4 games on the road where the Astros supposedly had a homefield advantage. 

I believe that cheaters should be punished and I believe that the appropriate disciplines have been set in motion.  3 managers lost their jobs.  1 GM lost their job.  4 future draft picks were removed from potentially joining the corrupt organization. 

George Springer is still a Sports Illustrated Hero.

The city of Houston, which had suffered so much during the summer of 2017 due to a hurricane that is still impacting people's lives in and around the city, used the surging Astros to rally their entire city around.

There is no need for asterisks.  There is no need to remove an MVP from Jose Altuve. 

The only need that should be implemented is changing the way the game is viewed going forward and having MLB more involved in what goes on in the clubhouse. 

Make every game of a 162 season feel like an NFL game.  Make the games viewership feel interactive.

Baseball has the strongest amount of history and tradition of any of the 4 major sports.  And that is what is hurting the sport.

You want to make the game more enjoyable and accessible to the viewer?  Put a camera BEHIND the catcher.  Let viewers see what the look of a Clayton Kershaw curveball looks like compared to his fastball.  Try hotting a Michael Kopech fastball.  Or a Gerrit Cole slider. 

All the best video games relating to baseball have a view where "you're in the box".  Let the fans see that famous Willie Stargell quote truly makes "hitting a round ball with a round bat square on" is one of the most difficult things in sports.

Then let's see how many signs are stolen. 

I miss the Pirates Zoltan symbol of celebration when they did something good in a game.  It was unique to the city and helped the fan base interact with the players.  It's the same thing the Nationals did this year with the Baby Shark celebration or the Cubs and the magic hands celebration. 

Steal those signs baseball.

Don't steal the signs of the catcher!

History Lesson: Rewriting History

Now that Crisis Week is over and some history has been rewritten in the DC Comics Television Universe, I am going to show a post I accidently published for a few hours back on Tuesday before realizing I had to get the Arrow Crisis post out prior to 8pm.

With the decade of the 2010s officially over, I thought it would be kind of cool to hop in the way back machine and look at an Andrew McCutchen card from 2010 that offered a prediction of Cutch heading into 2020.

The 2010 insert set had a small set size of 20 cards and the back discusses Topps prediction for how certain players will develop into the 2020 season.

The checklist is extensive in young upcoming stars.  It doesn't feature any prospects, only players who made their MLB debut prior to 2010.

Of the 20 players a few have already retired (Ryan Howard, Joe Mauer, David Wright, Andre Ethier, Ubaldo Jimenez), one has passed away (Tommy Hanson), and a few are currently free agents that may not appear in the majors in 2020 (Hunter Pence, Gordon Beckham, Matt Kemp).  Chris Coghlan appears in the set also but hasn't officially retired despite not appearing in a major league game since 2017.

The back of Cutch's card makes mention that he could have the most RBI and Home Runs by a Pirate Outfielder in a calendar decade if he surpassed Roberto Clemente's marks of 177HR and 862RBI set by Clemente in the 60s.

A few things about that jumped out to me as I normally don't think of Clemente as a big bopper RBI and HR machine.  I think of guys like Willie Stargell, Ralph Kiner, and Dave Parker.  Brian Giles and Jason Bay in recent memory also stand out, but neither of them had the longevity for a decade long run.

Stargell played a full calendar decade with the Pirates in the 70s, but the majority of that decade he was already transitioning to a full time first baseman.

Ralph Kiner mashed the baseball in his very brief career but that career lasted only from April 1946 to September 1955.  From his debut season in 1946 until 1952, Kiner lead the National League in HRs seven consecutive years (a feat that no other player in history has done).

Parker suffered a fate of not playing a calendar decade much the same way that many other players felt.  His prime in the late 70s rode into the early 80s and wasn't enough to match what Clemente did for the entire decade of the 60s.

Cutch played with the Pirates from 2009 to 2017, having been traded prior to the 2018 season.  That gives Clemente an edge in that he had 2 more full seasons to accumulate stats.

With that being said, Cutch outpaced Clemente in the Home Run department with 191 over 8 seasons versus Clemente's 177 over 10.  Clemente did have more RBIs though accumulating 862 RBI compared to Cutch's 671.

Those numbers look pretty drastic, but how would Cutch's numbers looked if he kept playing in Pittsburgh (and assuming healthy in 2019)?

Cutch averaged 84 RBI over his Pirates career along with 24 HR in the 2010s.  Those numbers are comparable with his "decline years" in 2016 and 2017.  Had he stayed healthy and finished out the 2019 season with the Pirates he likely would have hit 239 Home Runs for the 2010s along with 839 RBI.

To say that it would surprise no one that he would compare to an All Time Pirates Legend like Clemente is accurate, but what Topps didn't take into account was the Pirates financial situation of being a small market club.

Ultimately Cutch was traded and is on his third team since leaving the Steel City despite playing just 214 games since the close of the 2017 season. Much like so many other Pirates fan favorites before like Jason Bay, Cutch may not be a forever Pirate, but he will forever be remembered as a Pirate.

The Pirates three straight Wild Card finishes may not be on the same level as the Jim Kelly/Thurman Thomas/Bruce Smith Buffalo Bills, but for a very brief window the Pirates with one of the smallest payrolls in baseball was a legit World Series contender for three consecutive years.  They also lost three straight Win or Go Home games much like the Never Dynasty of the Bills.

Many people forget this because of Mike Trout's quick rise, but Cutch became a face of baseball and was a top 3 player for four consecutive years.

He still lives in Pittsburgh and is an active member of the community.

Crisis Week: Legends of Tomorrow

Picking up where the first three episodes left off in December for the five part miniseries, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Arrow delivered a great way to kickstart the climatic conclusion last night.

It all comes to an end tonight at 8pm on Legends of Tomorrow.

In 2018 Topps had an insert series called Legends in the Making.

Andrew appeared in the insert series as both a member of the San Francisco Giants

And a Pittsburgh Pirate

I've managed to grab a few of the parallel cards but still need a lot of them which can be listed below

LTM-AM (Pirates)
Red /10
Gold /50

LITM-20 (Giants)
Base
Blue
Black
Red /10