Breaking Donruss

Probably about a week and a half ago, I got an envelope in the mail from Gavin at Baseball Card Breakdown.  It was an interesting envelope. I mean, I sort of wish that he had sent the envelope earlier so I could have taken advantage of this great deal!

It's not like I was anywhere near Louisville to go to the Louisville Slugger Museum, but seeing the art of Warner Bros. Cartoons at the Museum might have spurred me on to find a reason to head that way.

The envelope Gavin sent included nothing but Donruss 2014 cards. In honor of that, I got out my plagiaristic artistic skills and made a banner just for this post:

It's "Breaking Donruss", live here on Off Hiatus.

Gavin knows I'm a team collector -- though he couldn't have known that everyone in the blogosphere who opened Donruss was sending them to me -- so he sent me two Ryan Brauns:

The card isn't a bad-looking one for being an unlicensed card. I am starting to wonder if MLB and its constituent teams threatened Panini with litigation if Panini were to be so bold as to use the proper jersey/pant color combinations. I've complained in the past about how the Hometown Heroes set from last year put uniforms on the Brewers that did not look anything remotely like anything Milwaukee has ever worn.

Now these colors, at least, appear to be one of the alternate combinations that the Brewers wore this year.  But, why are all the cards in those colors?

Okay, enough analysis of uniforms.  Here are the other four cards that Gavin sent:

Davis has proven the eyes of the scouts wrong so far in his career -- those scouts who said that he wouldn't hit enough to be a major leaguer. In fairness, he's awful at getting on base and/or taking a walk. His OBP is .299. Ugh.

Then again, that's pretty much the story of the Brewers offense this year. The only guys who play regularly who have an OBP over .340 are Diamond King Carlos Gomez (.355), catcher Jonathan Lucroy (.369), and Rickie Weeks (.351). 

One final "word of defense" though -- the league OBP this year is just .312, and the team OBP is .310. So, it's a pretty close to league average team in that regard.  

Finally, I've talked a lot here about whether the Brewers will pick up the option for Yovani Gallardo for next year. Well, according to Jon Heyman, that's a done deal -- and to most observers, it's not a surprise. I guess it's been so long since I pondered such thing that Milwaukee spending any money seems to surprise me.

Many thanks, Gavin, for these great cards. I needed a couple of them, and anytime I can add more to my Brewers I appreciate it.