Starting in 1982 and ending in 2012, the Brewers had 41 years of giving away cards to kids through local police departments and sponsors. These cards have been a boon to Brewer collectors, especially for the Brewer teams at their nadir, because the main card companies pretty much ignored the Brewers.
After 12 seasons away, the Brewers brought police cards back for the current generation. Last year's set is damn near impossible for me to find--I didn't see any of them at a Milwaukee card show a couple of weeks ago (and yes, that's another story).
This season, the team went a different direction by all appearances. Instead of giving out a full team set, it looks like this year that the team is only giving out 6 cards:
The Brewers kicked this year's giveaway off like they always did--with a stadium giveway of the cards at Miller Park. Rather than just giving the cards away in cellophane packages, however, the team went all out this year--harkening back to the days of our youth with actual wax packs like those below.
These cards are pretty expensive on eBay right now, but I think they will come down in price over time. This is because the team has printed more than just the ones given out at the park to distribute to various police departments across the state to give out.
They only gave 1000 packs to each department, but unlike past years, these cards are not carrying designations for the individual departments. They all look the same--just like the ones you see here.
And, another reason that the cards will go down is that the giveaways have proven very popular--so popular, in fact, that the team printed MORE packs to distribute to 20 different police departments across the state--1,000 went to Wausau, from one news report.
So, perhaps I should have waited for this year's set price to come down, but I couldn't do it after getting shut out on last year's cards so far. I bought two packs and opened one at a price that felt just a bit extortionate.
Watching card content on social media and YouTube these days, I feel like a total Old Guy. So many folks got back into collecting during COVID--at the same time as I was sitting it out and trying not to get sick--that my having gotten back into the hobby initially in 2014 makes me feel like a veteran.
But I find myself now questioning how I organized things back in 2014. Perhaps that is because Topps started to issue so many sets, or more pointedly, so many parallels that trying to collect anything more than a few things is a fool's game. Or maybe I just want a new reason/excuse to go through my Brewers collection again.
Either way, I am thinking about reorganzing my Topps binders in particular as follows:
1. The "Flagship" binder: for use with the base Topps set and the Traded/Update set and perhaps other similar use of the flagship design (like 1st Edition or the 1994 Bilingual set).
2012 Update Ryan Braun All-Star SP
2. The "Tobacco" Binder: This one is for Topps 206, A&G, Gypsy Queen (RIP), Turkey Red, and other similar sets.
3. The 1990s Originals: An excuse to put Finest and Stadium Club (and their spinoffs) into their own binder together.
4. Chrome: For Chrome and its many, many variants.
Garrett Mitchell's 2023 Logofractor
5. Kid-Oriented: A place to put Topps Kids, Big League, Big, Fire, Holiday, Bunt, and Opening Day (RIP), among others
Some numbered to 99 Fire Variant from 2018
6. On Demand: Everything from Topps Now to Throwback Thursdays to the oversized moneygrabs to the Steve Aoki collaborations
7. Higher End: Things like Museum Collection, Tribute, Triple Threads, Sterling, Five Star, Inception, etc.
I couldn't leave this Aramis Ramirez Museum Collection Copper behind at a recent card show
8. Archives: The binder for recycled Designs and the mixed retired player/current player sets of that ilk, like Heritage, Archives, Archives Signature Series, All-Time Fan Favorites, Cracker Jack, and anything similar
9. Regularly Revisited: Stuff like Gallery, Pristine, maybe Rookie Cup, maybe Topps Total, maybe High Tek--the sets that get issued maybe three or four years in a row, then go away, then return again in five or six years.
10. The One-Offs/Limited Runs: A parking lot to put the Yugos of Topps's history, like DIII, Embossed, Bazooka, Co-Signers, Ticket to Stardom, Unique, Attax, Legacy, American Pie, HD, Stars--things that were out for maybe 3-4 years at the most, perhaps consecutively, which are out there.
11. Oddballs/Food Sets/Promo Sets: Everything from Supers in the early 1970s to Scratchoffs in 1981 to the Drake's sets to the Post Cereal sets of the early 2000s to those bubble packed Team sets to the recent Baseball Card Day stadium giveaways.
This set helped set socks in 2019.
The obvious point is that I can organize my cards in any way that I feel like organizing them. But I feel like I want the parallels and inserts to be with the base set from each year instead of being in different binders--that it would be easier to organize my collection in that way.
My question to you all--especially you team collectors--is this:
How do you have your cards organized? Binders? Boxes? By Player? By Manufacturer?
When I originally got back into collecting in 2014, there was one local card show in a hotel conference room. It would happen maybe once a month, and usually I'd end up at the same one or two tables digging through dime boxes of cards looking for stuff I needed to backfill my collection.
Over time, that show moved to another location. That was for two reasons. The original promoter passed away, removing the tie to the original place. Also, the banquet room next door to the show started being booked by some sort of very upbeat, very loud, very contemporary church service, which meant that the card show room was nearly uninhabitable because it was so loud.
When I got back into collecting in the past year or so, the show had become one held in two locations depending on the weekend. The banquet halls grew in size, as did the number of tables.
Now, the show has moved full-time to a location less than 3 miles from my house. It's great. The downside is that the person who used to have the dime boxes is no longer around--no idea what happened to her. I also have no idea what happened to the dime boxes, as every box now is at least a quarter and most "value" boxes are 50 cents or one dollar.
Today, I stopped over at the show and was gone literally for an hour. There are two vendors that I tend to hang out by the most that have started pulling Brewers for me so I don't even have to dig through the boxes to try to find the cards I want--which is both great and bad. It's great to have that kind of service, but it's bad because the chase is sometimes more fun than the purchase!
In any event, one of those guys kept aside just a fantastic card for me.
This is a 2023 Topps Cosmic Chrome Autograph Variation Card (the back even says so). It's serial numbered 32 out of 50. I really like how all the yellow is something of a nice color match to the yellow front panel on Yelich's batting helmet and to his arm guard.
I got a few other cards as well. One of them is the 2024 Topps Lids 1963 Chrome card that first came out at Fanatics Fest in New York in August of last year:
I also got two Juan Baez 2024 Bowman Draft Chrome cards numbered to 75 each. While I'm not actively seeking out cards that are numbered for my team collection or under 99 for any collection other than Yount, Molitor, and Yelich, I also hate to leave these great cards behind to fend for themselves in the cold wilderness.
Hope y'all have had a good weekend. I spent a lot of my weekend in furniture stores, as my wife and I are taking the opportunity to try to make our house look like adults live here.
I was going to go to a card show today, but I'm fighting a cold and don't want to subject everyone at the show to that. Instead, here I am organizing and writing a blog post.
Over the past few months, I've started buying a LOT of Brewers cards. Part of that has just been backfilling the many holes in my collection through Sportlots, eBay, and COMC.
For example, one hole in my collection came with buying Nelson Cruz cards. In 2006, Doug Melvin decided that he wanted a "Proven Closer" and traded away 30-year-old Carlos Lee and 24-year-old Nelson Cruz for Francisco Cordero, Kevin Mench, Laynce Nix, and a minor leader (Julian Cordero). The Brewers got two years of good relief pitching from F-Cordero, 30 total games from Laynce Nix, and 141 games of a 0.1 WAR from Kevin Mench. Lee still had 8.4 WAR and 137 HRs left in his bat, and Cruz--who'd been marooned in the minors by the Brewers for reasons that escape me--had 18 seasons and 42.1 WAR yet to come.
I guess that career is why this card was nearly $20.
I've also loaded up on a lot of Christian Yelich cards. I think I have added at least 350 Yelich cards since the end of the season--and probably more. His back surgery this past season probably helped lead to the sell off by others, and it probably also did not help the Brewers not having him at the top of the order in the playoffs. Here are just a few:
When it comes to music or information in general, I tend to be very omnivorous. I read a ton, whether that includes reading for work or for pleasure. I watch tons of documentaries on Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon Prime on my Roku as well as trying to find ones being shown on PBS or elsewhere that sound interesting. I also listen to about any music under the sun that comes my way at least once to see if I like it. Of course, this love of knowledge tends to get in the way of my blogging, because I'm more likely to say, "that documentary about Oasis on Netflix sounds interesting" and start watching that instead of sitting down and blogging. So, it's been a couple of weeks since the ever awesome Kenny a/k/a Zippy Zappy sent me a zippy zapping accompanied by his massive "What I've Been Listening To" post. Kenny is a 20-something whose tastes in music are all over the place, and I think he likes trying to find stuff for me to consider that might either offend or otherwise fall outside the realm of my tastes as a Gen-X'er. Because Kenny posted 14 songs, I'm going to break this into two posts. It's just a lot to type and listen to all at once! As always, to highlight the great cards Kenny sent and the (we'll see what an appropriate adjective is) music Kenny is listening to, here's my response post. Music first, followed by the card. Now, Now: "SGL"
Kenny's post said this song is his favorite of the 14 songs that he posted, and after listening to this song twice *and* looking up the lyrics, I can see why. As Kenny noted, the band Now, Now is a two-person indie band from Minneapolis comprised of Cacie (or KC) Dalager and Bradley Hale. They met in high school in marching band -- something I can relate to, having been a marching band geek myself all the way through college.
This song is a really catchy poppy indie rock song. NPR featured it in November 2017 as one of the "Songs We Love." "SGL" stands for "shotgun lover," which in this context seems to be simply that she is a quick hookup for her lover. The rest of the lyrics of the song seem to provide feelings of unhappiness about that arrangement.
But I'll leave all the interpretation to you. YMMV.
Since we're going with favorites up front, I will go with a card of Christian Yelich from Series 1 Topps. There's nothing more I can say about Yelich that hasn't already been said, really.
Okay, one thing. If Yelich gets one homer between now and the All-Star break, he will set a Brewers record for most homers before the All-Star break. Yelich currently has 29 Homers in 70 games; Prince Fielder set the record in 2007 when he had 29 Homers in 87 games. Fielder finished 2007 with 50 homers.
Lit, "My Own Worst Enemy"
I didn't need to listen to this song specifically for this post because this has been a personal favorite song since its release in 1999. It was kind of a joke between me and one of my friends that this song was sort of my theme song because I enjoyed going out, smoked cigarettes like a chimney when I drank, and generally I had a tendency to undermine myself at that point in my career.
So that's why it was kind of a joke and kind of just sad, really.
Even sadder is the fact that this song is now 20 years old. Which means Kenny was like 4 when it was released.
1989 Bowman pairs well with a 1999 song. Indeed, Dale Sveum pairs well with a song about being one's own worst enemy too.
Sveum's baseball career was essentially derailed in 1988 when, while playing shortstop, he went back into left field to chase a blooper. Left fielder Darryl Hamilton was charging in hard for the ball. A terrible collision resulted, and Sveum's left tibia and fibula were snapped. It was ugly. Even worse, the bone did not heal properly and a second surgery to re-break the bones to allow them to heal correctly resulted in 1989.
He missed the entire 1989 season, and the promise that he showed during his 25-homer season in 1987 was gone. His missing 1989 led the Brewers to calling up a petulant youngster named Gary Sheffield even earlier than Sheffield's abilities and maturity should have allowed.
You can read Kenny's intro and discussion on how he was introduced to this song by the Metal Attorney, the Red Sox Fan in Nebraska.
I am not terribly impressed by this song, in large part because it is really repetitive and to my ears, quite boring. I used to use black metal/death metal/speed metal to fall asleep on international flights because it was like active white noise. More than once, I would set up a playlist of nothing but the song "Master of Puppets" played 4 times in a row to help me fall asleep. And it worked too.
One of the things that Kenny sent me was this Clay Matthews sticker from Panini. My Packers fandom has been waning over the past eight years -- since the Super Bowl win, really. This entirely coincides with my no longer playing fantasy football.
I will admit that I don't miss the NFL at all. My football watching is all on Saturdays these days -- watching Georgia play along with paying attention to the other SEC games is usually enough for me.
Gypsy and the Cat, "Sorry"
A generally innocuous indie rock song. It's something that I would listen to again if it came on, but I'm not sure I'd actively seek it out.
Interestingly, the band seemed to fall apart due to its own former record label, Sony, screwing them over in some respects. According to this article from April 2016, when SoundCloud became a monetized streaming service in 2016, Sony Australia locked down their artists' songs to make sure that the songs were not freely streamable -- that people had to be paying for the right to stream the songs.
Before that time, music bloggers often embedded SoundCloud files for songs in their blogs. Blog embeds are tracked by a service called Hype Machine, and it has its own charts. Prior to the Sony lockdown, Gypsy & The Cat had a song called "Inside Your Mind" that reached number 2 on Hype Machine. The next week, after the lockdown, the song was no longer on the chart.
Frustratingly for the band, Gypsy & The Cat had not been a Sony artist for over five years at that point. Yet, Sony's actions effectively derailed their efforts on the 2016 album. One can't help but think that bullshit must have played a role in their breakup.
As a side note, band member Xavier Bacash has a new EP out under the name "Sonny". I haven't listened to it yet.
I feel like this "Top Shelf" chrome of Ryan Braun fits well here. I sometimes forget that Braun is still with the Brewers -- he's almost like a name of a bygone era at this point. He's a solid player at this point in his career. He's never been a great on-base guy -- his value is tied heavily into his batting average, which happens when you walk only 17 times in 266 plate appearances as Braun has this year through June 23 -- so he's basically a replacement-level player even with his 12 HRs and 40 RBI this year. At least that is what bWAR says -- 0.1 WAR and a 94 OPS+ is pretty much replacement level, right?
I Set My Friends On Fire, "Life Hertz"
A catchy song. I've never heard of this band before, apparently because they come from the genre of "screamo" -- where they scream everything they sing. It's a decent song, but based on what Kenny's post said, I'm not seeking out anything else by them.
A relatively interesting card visually, though the colors behind Rogers look like some sort of rainbow fingerprint. I'll take this opportunity to note that these all-white uniforms look terrible to me. In fact, pretty much all of the color rush uniforms look awful to me.
This card is decent, but I'm not seeking out anything else from Panini here.
DECO*27 - 妄想感傷代償連盟 (Feat. 初音ミク)
That "featuring" portion reads "Hatsune Miku" in Japanese. Kenny points out that Hatsune Miku is a "vocaloid icon," which means that she is a completely fictional CGI anime girl. People go to concerts to seek Hatsune Miku sing these songs, so it's sort of like gathering to watch a TV show.
The song is pretty catchy, as you'd expect from computer-generated vocals. I wonder what the words are.
Appropriately, in the cards that Kenny sent, there is a computer-generated Taylor Jungmann to go with Hatsune Miku. Also appropriately, Jungmann has been pitching in Japan for Yomiuri Giants for the past two years. Gucci Mane f/Migos, "I Get the Bag"
Thank you, Kenny, for giving me some music from Georgia to talk about. Gucci Mane was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and moved to Atlanta in 1989. Gucci's Wikipedia article notes that he was actually a good student in high school (he's a DeKalb County kid, having attended McNair High School), but that he also got started with dealing drugs in school too. He's been in and out of prison for gun charges and drugs. Hopefully he's gotten cleaned up.
Migos is comprised of three guys -- Takeoff, Offset, and Quavo -- and are managed by Coach K, who used to manage Gucci Mane. The three all grew up in Gwinnett County, the county due east of DeKalb County. Parts of Gwinnett are quite urban, while other parts are very country. I like these guys because Quavo in particular is a huge Georgia Bulldogs fan.
The song is pretty good too, by the way.
Kenny sent me several of these 2011 Minor League Heritage cards, including one of Jimmy Nelson. Nelson attended high school in Florida and then went to college at the University of Alabama.
His overcoming injury to come back and pitch this year has been a great story at the same time as it has been sad. Before his injury, he was verging on being a true #1 starter, finishing 9th in the Cy Young voting. Since his return, he has been terrible -- 3 games started, 12 innings pitched, 10 walks, an ERA of 9.75 and a WHIP of 2.167 pretty much says it all. He is being moved to the bullpen. That's the end of Part I. Any comments from y'all as to which one of these songs is your favorite? How about the cards -- anyone like any of these cards more than the others? Why?
Across the country, the changing seasons often have milestones peculiar to the area. For example, here in the South, spring does not begin in March, or February, or April, or when you might otherwise thing it does. Nope, it only lasts about 30 to 45 minutes after the pollen dies down from yellow hellfury to mere annoyance, as this video explains.
One of the most certain ways that Wisconsinites can tell it is summer is when all the Catholic churches bring in two or three beer trucks, attach taps to the outside, put up a stage, and have a festival in their parking lot. This happens literally only during the months of July and August, but it keeps tons of cover bands, polka bands, and random polka-rock fusion bands busy every weekend. Yes, polka-rock fusion. You'd be surprised how many of these exist. And, it seems, Matt Prigge of the Summer of '74 blog and, recently, a man who picked up his second master's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, is apparently an aficionado of Wisconsin-famous band Happy Schnapps Combo. Matt sent me a bunch of Brewers cards mostly from 2018 and some from 2019. Rather than write all about those, I'll show some (with a little commentary) but focus here on the Happy Schnapps Combo. While you do, remember that people in Wisconsin follow bands like this around. No lie. Here's the stack I won't get to:
Like I said, he sent a bunch. To cover this bunch appropriately, let's go to the first Happy Schnapps Combo song I came across on YouTube. It's called "Fleet Farm (A Love Song)."
Appropriately, this video appears to have been shot in a parking lot during a summer festival sponsored at least in part by the Port Washington Lions Club. Lions Clubs, in case you're not aware, are service organizations found in chapters around the world who apparently try to help with everything from childhood blindness to disaster relief.
Fleet Farm (not to be confused with Farm and Fleet, by the way) is store that would result if Walmart and Home Depot had a bastard child and, for good measure, they had a mutation that incorporated a Pet Smart. No kidding. Look at the website for it -- everything from guns and tree stands to lawn mowers to tires to Cookie Monster toys to dog beds.
Of course, making things confusing is the fact that Farm and Fleet does basically the same thing on a slightly smaller scale. I never could tell those places apart. Guess that's why I had to leave Wisconsin.
Why am I highlighting a Neil Walker card? Because I'd completely forgotten that he spent 38 games with the team in 2017. He was a Yankee last year, and he's a Marlin this year. Which all makes sense, I think.
I can't imagine a more Wisconsin YouTube clip than this song. First, it's a polka. Second, you've got the random drunk guy in front of the band (is that you, Matt) in gas station sunglasses and a cut-off t-shirt and jeans dancing and singing the whole song along with the band. Third, it's a polka about Blatz beer and sauerkraut. Fourth, the guy says you can get your "Boone's Farm" by the "bubbler."
Y'all know what a bubbler is? It's a drinking fountain or a water fountain in pretty much the rest of the country, but not in southeastern Wisconsin.
Last year just after spring training ended, I noted that Yovani Gallardo was trying to make the Brewers, failed, and ended up as cannon fodder for the Rangers for a little while. I was hoping he'd make the team so I'd get more Brewers cards of him. Then I stopped paying attention and didn't realize that he did not need to make the team to get a Topps card in Series 2.
This Happy Schnapps song might be the official state song. Wisconsin is well known for its drinking, after all, and there have been a number of times when I'm there that I have wanted to yell this at someone.
It's also what Topps's set production people yell at Wisconsin fans when we complain about the questionable player selection for Brewers players -- like, for example, putting a guy who didn't even make the team in Series 2 instead of people who actually played.
This may be one of the worst looking cards of 2018. Is Domingo Santana Thor? Look at the size of his hand next to the very small bat that appears over his shoulder. I mean, I get and understand perspective, but that bat is all wrong. It's terrible looking. And his head looks like it's the size of its own solar system.
I gotta stop looking at these new cards. They're getting me pissed off all over again!
An appropriately shitty song for a shitty card.
Okay, it's time for the MVP portion of the package. First off, we have a 2019 version of the 1984 Topps for Robin Yount. It's been said before but I'll say it again -- it's cool to see these old designs being reused, but I'd much prefer having the designs used for players who did not appear on the cards the first time around.
Of course, since Yount is about the only former Brewer that Topps has an agreement with at this point (he and Molitor, thanks to the Cooperstown agreements), I'll take what I can get.
You might be noticing a theme here from the Happy Schnapps Combo. I had never heard of them before Matt tweeted about them in passing a couple of days ago. Their whole catalog is either about the Packers or about smelling bad and toilets, it seems.
Granted, with all the beer and brandy old-fashioneds and bratwurst and sauerkraut that get consumed in Wisconsin, it makes sense to sing about "what you know."
Another Brewer MVP in Ryan Braun. I guess this was an insert last year.
I'm still trying to figure out where I go with my collecting at this point. I've decided once again to start over on Trading Card Database and catalog all my Brewers cards. I cleaned out what was there previously, though, so it appears right now that I have nothing. That's probably as good a place to start as any. I'm not sure what I'll try to collect going forward -- but Braun, Yount, and the next guy will be part of it.
Wisconsin football fans have long hated the Dallas Cowboys in a full-on, irrational way. There are good reasons for that, dating all the way back to the Ice Bowl in the 1960s, to Dallas's claims to be "America's Team" in the 1970s and 1980s, to the playoff battles between the teams in the 1990s, and then to the present with again meeting in the playoffs and the whining that came about with the Dez Bryant catch/no-catch controversy.
It's a different hate than that reserved for the traditional NFC North rivals, but it's a hatred nonetheless. So, of course a truly emblematic Wisconsin band like the Happy Schnapps Combo had to write a song making fun of all the criminals on the Cowboys.
The final MVP to feature in the envelope Matt sent to me is, of course, Christian Yelich. I had a feeling he would take well to Miller Park last year, and it turned out beyond my wildest expectations.
This year has been an odd start to the year for him, though. He hits at Miller Park at a home-field-advantage level not seen since the days of Dante Bichette at Coors Field pre-humidor. On the road, he looks like 2017 Christian Yelich -- a bit of pop, good average, decent slugging, but just a solid player. At home, though, he looks like peak steroid Barry Bonds or peak hotdog eating Babe Ruth -- crushing homer after homer.
Like I said above, the vitriol reserved for the NFC North rivals -- the Vikings and the Bears -- is on a special and different level than that held for other teams. These two songs prove that some. Of course, that Vikings song needs to be updated since it still refers to the Metrodome as the Vikings home field, but I'm sure they can come up with something.
Matt, thanks greatly for the cards, and I hope you have enjoyed the musical stylings of what must be one of your favorite bands of all time.
We all have times in our lives where we just don't have time for ourselves. That's where I've been the past year. Many nights after work, it was all I could do just to stay awake long enough so I wouldn't wake up at 3 AM. Yet, I also could have made time for cards from time to time. I just didn't have it in me. I didn't feel like spending time and money on every new card to come around the corner from Topps or Panini or anyone else. The same thing happened with blogging. I was having more fun -- and it took less energy -- to spout out a one-liner on Twitter or get into a deep discussion with the guys doing season sets like Matt Prigge and Marc Brubaker and Nick Vossbrink about how they went about selecting photos, making the cards, getting them printed (or not), etc. It was a lot of fun checking out Mark Hoyle's daily 4:30 AM post of some crazy rare and extremely cool Boston Red Sox item. The great thing is that it still is fun to do all those things. But I guess I missed blogging a bit. I missed finding random songs on YouTube to put into posts. I missed Meeting the Brewers. So I came back now. As I told some folks on Twitter, I'm back to write when I feel like it about what I feel like writing about. Sometimes, though, it will be just a good old-fashioned "Look what I got in the Mail today" post -- like today. Today, I got mail from Bru at Remember the Astrodome -- who himself has gotten busy with other things in life now. He'd built up a few cards that he said he wanted to send me, so let's roll them out!
Let's start with the flying hair of Josh Hader. Hader went from being the prospect lefty who came over with Domingo Santana, Adrian Hauser, and Brett Phillips from the Astros in exchange for Carlos Gomez and Mike Fiers (I think the Brewers won that trade -- that's a gut instinct though) to being *THE* guy out of the bullpen who teams have to plan for on a regular basis. I like how the Brewers use him in many respects, though I'd rather have Knebel in the 9th and move Hader around some. P.S. Josh Hader's entrance music, according to this 2019 Bowman card, is "Renegade" by Styx. Yes, I must post this classic rock saw.
I think that songs been on classic rock radio since I was in middle school.
Next up is Jacob Barnes from the 2018 Heritage High Numbers. Due to the fact that Barnes has been scuffling some during this first month of the year and due to him having one minor league option year left, I have a feeling that Barnes will be on the San Antonio Shuttle pretty regularly once the Brewers get Jimmy Nelson back to as good as he'll get sometime late this month or in June. He's been walking too many guys so far this year, but he's a solid bullpen arm.
Speaking of the San Antonio Shuttle and also from the 2018 Heritage High Numbers, here's Jacob Nottingham. He was the return for Khris Davis. The thinking at the time was that a catching prospect is worth much more than a ragarm outfielder with suboptimal on-base skills.
It was probably the right move in many respects because if Davis is still in Milwaukee, does the team still go after Lorenzo Cain and Christian Yelich?
We're still waiting for Nottingham to emerge, though. He is still 24, but he has to hit more than he has in Triple-A to prove he belongs in the majors. Here's hoping he develops this year with Yasmani Grandal and Manny Piña in front of him and can be a big leaguer next year.
A throwback here. It feels like so long ago that Jonathan Villar was with the Brewers. It feels like so long ago that Honus Bonus thought people would buy cards of guys in black and white and without logos and try to play fantasy baseball online with them.
At least Villar had one big year for Milwaukee. Of course, Jonathan Schoop was a massive bust last year down the stretch, but it was worth a try to see if he could be the answer at second for a year as we wait patiently for Keston Hiura.
Bru sent me two 2019 Orlando Arcia cards. 2018 was a year to forget for Arcia, whose batting was such a black hole that his defensive contributions were cancelled out in the whole WAR equation on Baseball Reference. He's doing a little better this year in two respects. First, he's already hit more homeruns this year in a month (129 PA) than he did last year over 119 games (366 PA) -- 4 to 3. He's also walking at a better clip -- 9 walks in those 129 PA versus just 15 all year last year.
He's still not great at the plate, but at least he's not an embarrassing negative.
I was hoping that Chase Anderson can help stabilize the rotation, but then he went out and had his callouses on his middle pitching finger -- you know, the one you use to throw a curveball -- bust open. Anderson is a serviceable 4th/5th/6th starter so long as he can keep the ball in the park or limit how many people are on base when he gives up his standard HR every 6-7 innings.
Brent Suter is quickly becoming one of my favorite players on the Brewers. It's too bad he had to have Tommy John surgery last year. He's becoming a favorite for a couple of reasons. First, he's smart -- a Harvard grad who actually played baseball there I'm told and did not use that as an excuse to get in the backdoor through parental bribes. Second, the guy is a glue guy. He keeps guys loose, brings guys together, makes people laugh -- the team is better with him around.
Plus, he follows me on Twitter.
When Christian Yelich was traded to Milwaukee last year, I knew he would have a good year. His swing seemed tailor made for Miller Park's cozier dimensions than the Miami Mausoleum, and all indications were that he was a good "makeup" guy -- someone who would fit in with teammates. That was a big part of why I said I was going to collect his cards.
I had no idea he would become the MVP and turn into the monster he has become. I'm excited to see how good he can become in Milwaukee. He's still only 27 years old this year, after all, which might be his peak but it could be a peak that is sustainable for three or four more years easily. He's signed through 2021 at a reasonable salary ($9.75 million this year, $12.5MM in 2020, $14MM in 2021) with a team option in 2022 at $15 million.
Many thanks go out to Bru for the cards. Bru, just stick with us on Twitter. We'll be around when you get time again.
