Taking Stock for 2018

Men of philosophy often contemplate important questions of life: What is the optimum governmental system for humans to organize themselves? If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent, why does he allow human suffering? What is the natural state for human economics? 

Some of us are nearly equally philosophical about questions that to outside observers seem less important: should there be more than one official MLB licensee for baseball cards? Is Topps evil or simply horribly incompetent? What card sets should be issued every year? Or even this one:

Noted philosopher W. Axl Rose's oft-repeated question is what is on my mind at this point: where do I go now with my collection? 

My answer to that question is not as easy as it was in the past. When I first got back into collecting about four years ago, I was incredibly naive and thought I would try to build a Brewers collection that would be as complete as possible. 

In those early days, much of my time was spent tracking down checklists, figuring out want lists, chasing stuff on eBay, and ripping open pack after pack. Even then, frustration was beginning to seep in as I catalogued stupid parallel after stupid parallel in dozens of Topps-issued products. 

In the past two years, my time for collecting fell as I became much more involved with work-related efforts with the American Bar Association and, particularly during 2017, as Georgia football took more of my in-person time going to games and my mental time seeking out information about upcoming opponents and the like. This is why I have blogged much less in the past two years than I did in my first two years blogging too.

At the same time, my frustration with Topps grew and grew. Topps Now became an excuse to issue as many cards for the "major market" teams at the expense of teams like the Twins, the Brewers, and the Blue Jays. Even in 2017 as Milwaukee was the final team eliminated from playoff contention in the final week of the season, Topps Now nearly ignored Milwaukee. 

The Brewers had thirteen Topps Now cards issued last season. In contrast, including multiple relic and autograph cards, Aaron Judge by himself had 65 Topps Now cards. Add in the 43 postseason and offseason cards and autographs and relics for him, and Judge had 108 Topps Now cards of the 220 Yankees Topps Now cards this past season. Heck, including autographs and relics, Team Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic had 22 cards issued. 

I'm not going to turn this into a "Topps sucks" rant, though, because whether I like Topps or not is irrelevant. If I am going to collect baseball cards, my only choice is Topps for licensed, current cards of major league baseball players. One can agitate for change, but when the agitator is ignored by the powers that be, continuing to rage into the ether is a fruitless exercise -- particularly when one is talking about a hobby and not something very important in life like things going on with one's national government.

So, I'm done with beating my head into a wall where it comes to complaining about too many parallels, or too many Yankees, or too many high-end releases, or simply ugly cards. It's just not worth my limited time. Instead, I'm ignoring that stuff. Going forward, I'm collecting player collections -- which, yes, will include parallels -- and I'm collecting team sets of the base cards for the products that I choose to collect. 

For example, I got this card from Dennis from Too Many Verlanders/Manninghams just before the end of 2017:

I will still try to collect these cards because Ryan Braun is a player collection. Another card I'll seek out:

Again, any Younts that I can add to my collection will be added when I can find them.

But, it means that I will change other things. It means no more tracking and chasing every damn parallel for every card release. It means no more buying Topps Now cards unless it is a player collection for me. It means no more involvement with case breaks, because I don't need 11 copies of Topps Flagship's Will Middlebrooks.

Instead, I'm going to spend more time going into the archives, so to speak, and I don't mean Topps Archives. I mean finding cool oddballs, interesting schedules, magazines, programs, autographed photos, and other memorabilia that I like. Two more examples from Dennis of things I really like and will chase:

I will always collect magazines that have Brewers on the cover. 

I will still try to blog this coming year as well. I still enjoy the Meet the Brewers posts, and I should be doing more of them. I will probably try to mix in more posts about what is in my collection already. And, I will thank people for their kindness when they send me cards. 

Also, I will still try to keep putting music into my blogs. I love music. 

In other words, I will stop trying to do everything and collect everything. I'll stop being my own worst collecting enemy.

Thanks go out to Dennis for the cards and magazines in this post. And thanks go out to all of you who read this.

Finding Lots on an eBay Kick

I have not been going to card shows lately, so I've spent a little time here and there on eBay looking for potential bargains. I've been lucky enough to find a few, so here's the result of my shopping binges.

I'm in the mood for some new music, so let's take a look at what's on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart. Let's start with what I envision might be the very essence of a Heatseeker album: an album by an under-30 millennial guy with a man-bun.

I'm guessing that Avriel & The Sequoias are so high on the chart because Avriel is the soon-to-be-former member of the a cappella band Pentatonix. The song "Sweet Adeline" is the most upbeat song on the EP called Sage And Stone. It's not a bad song. It is a folksy sound -- very much along the whole "Americana" sound championed (ironically) by Mumford & Sons, among others. 

Apropos of nothing, here's four Ryan Braun cards I picked up. The Silver 2016 Archives parallel is serial numbered 13 of 199 and the 2017 Topps Gypsy Queen Green Fortune Teller Parallel Insert is numbered 40 of 99. 

I started talking last time I posted about how I created rules for my player collections that have been a bit difficult to live up to. It's okay that they are, to be fair -- I mean, what's the fun in making the chase simple? But I'm not in any hurry to come up with a new player to collect of this current bunch of new talent. 

Part of me really likes Brett Phillips because he's just a cool, laid-back kid. The downside there is that he is just as likely to end up traded as he is on the Brewers. I've considered Orlando Arcia as well. He might have a career based around his glove alone if recent evidence is anything to rely on. 

But the real point here is that everyone on the current team other than Braun and Jimmy Nelson have barely spent much time on the Brewers. To wit: of position players, the most appearances after Braun's 1384 games over 11 seasons belongs to Hernán Pérez, who has appeared in 280 games in his Milwaukee Career. The pitcher with the most appearances on the team is Wily Peralta with 130, followed by Corey Knebel with 120, and the starter with the most appearances is Nelson with 94. 

So, again, I'm in no hurry for that very reason -- there are the cautionary tales of both Jean Segura and Wily Peralta -- and, frankly, I kind of like being able to cross a set off my list after getting a single team set.

The Number 2 album on the Heatseekers chart is from a Canadian band that's hardly a new artist. The band is called The Birthday Massacre, and they have been around since 1999. They were formed in London, Ontario, and are now based in Toronto. According to their Wikipedia page, they have "utilized the internet throughout their career and are an example of a musical group that has evolved alongside file sharing, and advancements in audio streaming capabilities."

Their whole story is pretty interesting. They even refer to themselves as the "black sheep" of the Canadian music scene. Their music is pretty cool. It's got a goth feel to it. I get a lot of a feel from the music that is similar to New Order or Depeche Mode, but only if they had a female singer and added more of an industrial feel to the music. 

I like it.

 

The Braun 2016 Bowman's Best above came in a four-card lot of 2016 Bowman's Best that included these three cards: Josh Hader a/k/a Haderade, Corey Ray, and Orlando Arcia. These are all guys I could see becoming possible PCs down the road. Ray made the Southern League (High-A) All-Star team as a Carolina Mudcat, along with Isan Diaz, Jake Gatewood, Nate Griep, Freddy Peralta, and Cody Ponce. Of that group, only Diaz (trade with the D-backs) and Peralta (trade with Seattle for Adam Lind) came over in trades. 

Number 3 on the Heatseekers chart comes from a pair of sisters from Muscle Shoals, Alabama called The Secret Sisters. While some sources compare them to the Everly Brothers, their sound to me -- the way they harmonize in particular and especially in this song -- reminds me more of old school sound like The Andrews Sisters rather than anything more recent. 

Other songs on this album, such as "Mississippi," sound much more like a demo tape for Miranda Lambert. By this, I mean there is an earthier sound than on "Tennessee River," but it never reaches that overproduced sound common in Nashville these days. I prefer this sound to the first song. Definitely.

These two cards are enough for tonight. On the left, I was able to find a really good price on the short-print photo variation of Jonathan Lucroy's 2016 Topps card, so I snapped it up for my team collection. On the right, we have Robin Yount in his Dodgers' softball uniform in the 1983 Donruss-style cards. At least Panini got the size of the "D" right this year. I still can't stand how discolored they have to make the cards to avoid getting sued, though.

Thanks for stopping by to read this, and let me know what you think of these three heatseekers!

The 30-Day Baseball Card Challenge

As I mentioned in my post about the cards from Night Owl, a lot of us on Twitter have been engaging in the 30-Day music challenge. It's a list of categories that you're supposed to run through on a fairly daily basis to identify various songs that come to mind. Day 1, for example is "A song you like with a color in the title." Others get more personal, like, "A song that breaks your heart."

Since I threw the idea out at the end of that post, I thought I'd take a first cut at putting together a similar list for baseball cards. I personally am going to use this list as blog fodder when I am lacking in trade posts -- which will come soon, based on my own lack of time lately to put packages together -- and when I'm not feeling up to a full research post for "Meet the Brewers." The Meet the Brewers posts will begin again soon, but it may be a month or so before I start them up again, so I need a little bit of other stuff to post about.

So, here goes -- here's the list.

For what it's worth, I gave it a background of a photo found through a Google Image Search of the old Milwaukee County Stadium -- the stadium against which all others are measured in my book.

Feel free to share it on Twitter, use it in your blog posts (with or without attribution -- I don't care), tweak it further to improve it, change categories to fit your sport -- whatever makes you happy. If you do decide to use it on your blog, would you be so kind as to leave a message below, though? I'm thinking that there are, again, a whole host of new blogs that I'm missing out on so any new ones I can add to my list will be appreciated.

In some respects, I hope that this encourages more interaction via the blogs than at least I have had in recent months. Much of that is my own fault -- being too busy does that. But I have seen folks lament the old days of the "blog bat arounds" and thought this might be an idea to that end as well.

Day 1

Day 1 on the list is "A card from the current year with a photo you like."

Because I have only really seen a very limited number of cards -- the Brewers cards from Series 1 Flagship and from Heritage in particular -- I have a limited number to choose from at this point. As I said on Twitter, I went with the future.

This is the 2017 Topps Gold Orlando Arcia card, serial numbered and all. I'm itching to start another player collection soon, and Arcia is in the mix for that "honor." As he continues to develop this year, we will see if he starts to solidify a position in that mix or if, instead, he needs to start looking over his shoulder for Mauricio Dubon and Isan Diaz.

For what it's worth, the guys I view as possible new player collections for me are:

1. Brett Phillips

2. Orlando Arcia

3. Jonathan Villar

4. Lewis Brinson

5. Isan Diaz

6. Josh Hader

7. Wily Peralta (he's still hanging around, after all)

8. Zach Davies

9. Lucas Erceg

Erceg, in particular, is a guy who I think could move up quickly through the Brewers system and make an impact in the major leagues sooner than might otherwise be expected. Not that I'm a prospect guru, mind you, but as long as he can avoid trouble and adjust as needed, he just looks the part.

At any rate, I hope y'all will take part at your leisure in the 30-Day baseball challenge. Thanks for stopping by.

Monster #1 Vanquished: The Highlights from the Loose Cards

The biggest benefit to the Bipping effects of the first Monster from Wes a/k/a Jaybarkerfan was that it did make it easier to sort through the cards I needed versus the cards I did not need for my team collections and player collections. Today, though, is the day I will highlight the cards I needed and the cards I found cool.

Let's start with player collection guys.  Like, say, Ryan Braun die-cut X card from Upper Deck:

Or a Yovani Gallardo serial numbered to 99 Finest Refractor:

Now, most of the cards were not serial numbered or inserts.  Most of them were just base cards that I needed, like these Prince Fielders:

Nobody does/did a full bleed card quite as well as Upper Deck. 

A lot of 1990s cards came in that monster, so I added to the Surhoff and Vaughn collections as well:

Even some old-school guys like Jim Gantner and Ted Higuera had cards added to their binders:

Now, it's Iowa Hawkeye time, as in Cal Eldred:

Next, pairing a couple of guys who played together on the 1994 and 1995 Milwaukee Brewers teams, here is a junk wax Bill Wegman that I had only in autographed form before and a Jeff Cirillo 1997 Fleer team checklist.  

Yes, that's right.  I still have a ton of junk wax needs, and the mini-Bippings actually cleared a lot of those up.  

Finally, whenever I get Brewers cards from people, I tend to be able to knock a few cards off my want list for my team collection.  This time, though, I'm only highlighting cards from one guy.  It's like this guy had a machine head kept in a razor-blade suitcase, but he was so calm and collected that everything seemed pretty zen in his world.  About that, his pal Gavin has no doubt.

For some reason, those last two sentences seemed like a much better idea when I conceived them last night after several gin-and-ginger-ale drinks (with a lemon, of course, to keep things refreshing).

Well, that's one monster fought off...and yet, a note of caution came in the mail in the guise of a postcard:

The message on the front of the postcard, though, was ominous.

JBF, Gus Gus and I are ready!

A New Player/Manager Collection: Harvey Kuenn

In the midst of a Cardboard Border War with Jaybarkerfan, I was lucky to hit the weekend where my monthly card show I attend popped up.  I took good care of my Tider friend at the show -- just check out the first package I sent to him (and, to be clear, that's not all that's coming to North Alabama) -- but I also found the time to buy cards for myself too.  I mean, why not, right?

Especially when there are deals to be had.  By that, I mean I went back to the seller from whom I bought the Aaron, Mathews, and Spahn cards last time.  He had a ton of more "common" vintage priced at $1 a card.  I bought enough from him that he made it something closer to about 75 cents a card.  

It was well worth it, because two of those cards go immediately into my newest player collection: West Allis, Wisconsin's own Harvey Kuenn.  As his SABR Biography mentions, Kuenn was a star player at UW-Madison before signing with the Tigers.  He grew up not far from where Milwaukee County Stadium stood and now Miller Park stands.  As the biography puts it, "[t]he Kuenns were the typical German-American blue-collar family that so heavily populated Milwaukee.  Both of Harvey's parents worked for a paper and packaging processing firm in Milwaukee. Harvey Sr. worked on the dock as a shipping clerk while Dorothy ran the company's credit union."

He also married a former Miss Wisconsin, Dixie Sarchet.  

He signed for the Tigers for $55,000. He took some of that money and bought his parents a new house.

Kuenn was the 1953 Rookie of the Year, an 8-time All-Star, won the Batting Title in 1959 with a .353 batting average, led the American League in Hits in 1953, 1954, 1956, and 1959, and led the AL in Doubles in 1955, 1958, and 1959.  After the 1959 season and in a trade despised in Cleveland to this day, Harvey left Detroit and the Tigers received reigning AL HR champion Rocky Colavito -- both of whom had been holding out for better contracts.

Here's his pre-batting title 1959 Topps card.  With Detroit from 1952 through 1959, Harvey hit 53 HRs, drove in 423, walked 322 times, and struck out just 205 times in 4749 plate appearances with a .314/.360/.426 slash line and 1372 hits.  

It was not as if he was terrible in Cleveland, though.  In his one season there, he hit .308/.379/.416 and was an All-Star.  But, he became the scapegoat for Frank "Trader" Lane's player moves in the offseason and for the Indians' decline from 89-65 in 1959 to 76-78 in 1960.  

So the Indians rid themselves of Kuenn -- though the alleged "Curse of Rocky Colavito" may be continuing to undermine Cleveland to this day, if you believe in such things as curses -- and traded Kuenn to the San Francisco Giants, where he was in 1964 for Topps to release this card:

Kuenn finished up his career by splitting 1965 between the Giants and Chicago Cubs and splitting 1966 between the Cubs (just 3 games) and the Philadelphia Phillies.  For his career, Kuenn finished with 2092 hits, 97 HR, and a slash line of .303/.357/.408.  He remained on the Hall of Fame Ballot for the entire 15-year run, never gaining more than 39.3% of the vote (accomplished in 1988, shortly after he passed away) nor less than 14.9% (in his first season of eligibility).  

Again going back to his SABR biography, Kuenn sounds to me like your typical Wisconsin German.  During the 1950s, he and Al Kaline were the Tigers two big names but they were very different people.  Kaline was shy and quiet.  On the other hand, Kuenn almost always had a mouthful of tobacco and "was known to like his beer."  There's one Wisconsin thing.

As an aside, in most photos you see of Harvey, he has his tobacco.

The other Milwaukee point: in his off-seasons as a baseball player, he stayed in shape "by bowling. Kuenn maintained good winter conditioning by bowling three times a week."  Yeah, I don't know how much exercise one gets by walking four steps and launching a sixteen-pound ball down a lane then sitting down and drinking beer while your teammates do the same, but apparently, it worked for him.

He retired as a player in 1967 to return to Milwaukee and serve as the sports anchor at WVTV in Milwaukee for two years.  Now, I recall WVTV was a UHF station with no news department, so that should tell you why Kuenn left there -- they dropped the programming and didn't need a sports anchor.

He went on to join the coaching staff of the Milwaukee Brewers in 1971 as the Brewers hitting coach.  He was activated as a player in September of 1971 to give him additional service time to improve his pension, but he never played.  But he stayed with the team as the batting coach for many years.  He got divorced in 1971 and, three years later, remarried to Audrey Cesar.  Bob Uecker was his best man at that wedding.

He served as the interim manager for 1 game in 1975 (which he won).  He hoped to be the Brewers manager permanently at that point, but the team went a different direction and hired Alex Grammas.  That was a good thing, in the end, because Harvey underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 1976 (at the age of 46...must have been the beer-and-bratwurst Wisconsin diet).  Kuenn then spent four months in the hospital in 1977 due to Crohn's Disease.  Finally, he suffered from a blood clot in his leg in 1980 that required amputation of Kuenn's right leg below the knee.  It's why when Harvey was the manager for the team, relievers always got a few extra warm up pitches in -- it took Harvey longer to get to the mound!

After going through all of that, Kuenn grew close to then-owner Bud Selig due to Selig's sticking with Harvey and keeping him on the payroll despite all the health issues.  When Buck Rodgers became manager in 1981 after George Bamberger left the team, Harvey rejoined the team as well.  When Rodgers was fired in May of 1982 after a 23-24 start, Harvey took over and presided over a season that led his hometown Brewers to the 1982 World Series.

The guy was as Wisconsin as it gets -- owning a bar (Cesar's) that his second wife's parents had owned and living next to it and, even while managing the team, coming out to the bar to hang out with the patrons, sign autographs, and tell stories.  

Harvey passed away on February 28, 1988 at the age of 57. That season, the Brewers wore a commemorative patch on their left sleeves to honor their former manager.

I'm still in the process of pulling cards together for his PC.  I have four listed currently, but I know I have more.  It's a horrible omission that I didn't include him initially as a player collection, so I have now rectified that.

Celebrating the 2014 Brewers, Card Style

Coming into this season, I did not know what to expect of the Milwaukee Brewers. After a 74-88 season, some changes seemed to be called for in terms of the playing staff. The only thing resembling a "big splash" was signing Matt Garza to a 4-year contract. It was not a bad move -- just not a "wow" move.

The team started out incredibly well and spent an amazing 133 games in first place during the season. The high water mark for the year came on June 28, when the Brewers reached 19 games over .500 -- or on July 1, with a 6.5 game lead over second.  

The team fell apart in August and thereafter. That month of September...well...it brings to mind a song about a volcano.

In all seriousness, the year closed with tons of negatives. Mark Reynolds and Lyle Overbay at first base were not good at all. Despite 22 HR, Reynolds put up a SLG of just .394. That's what happens when you get 378 AB with 74 hits (.196 AVG). Overbay's SLG was .333. Soak that in for a second. That's your first basemen, where you stash a hitter who isn't the best fielder.

While Khris Davis showed that he can play left field well enough to stick, his OBP was a paltry .299 (though he slugged .457 to make up for it). 

As the song says, "How am I gonna be an optimist about this?"

Let's talk about some of the good:

Rickie Weeks played reasonably well in a platoon/pinch hitting role in what will almost certainly be his final season in a Milwaukee Brewers uniform. He stayed healthy the entire year, and got on base at a .357 clip in 286 plate appearances. 

The bad with Weeks? His refusal to play anywhere but 2nd base -- certainly driven by his desire to be a starter somewhere else this coming year -- meant that the team had little flexibility on its bench and had to carry guys like Elian Herrera because Herrera could play literally everywhere on the field.

But, with Weeks leaving, here are a few of the cards I picked up at the card show earlier this month.

Yovani Gallardo -- and the pitching staff in general -- had a solid season. Even when Marco Estrada turned into a batting practice pitcher, guys like Jimmy Nelson and Mike Fiers filled in admirably. Gallardo, Kyle Lohse, and Wily Peralta each threw over 190 but less than 200 innings this past year. That's an excellent record. 

While it seems like Gallardo has been in Milwaukee forever, he was only 28 years old. Studies by sabermetricians interested in the issue for fantasy baseball purposes have shown that age 30 tends to be the peak for pitchers -- when physical ability catches up with mental acuity. Brewers fans can hope that Gallardo will pitch well this coming year in the option year of his contract and then resign with the Brewers. Okay, I hope he does that. I wouldn't be surprised if bigger money came in and swiped him, though.

One of the clearest bright spots for Milwaukee this past season was the play of catcher Jonathan Lucroy. He and Carlos Gomez were by and far the best hitters on the team -- with Lucroy winning the OPS race .837 to .833.  Both play key defensive positions, though Lucroy's is certainly more difficult. Add in the fact that Lucroy just signed a very team-friendly contract in which he will be paid just $3 million in 2015 and $4 million in 2016 before a $5.25 million option for 2017 (when Luc is 31 years old), and he quickly becomes a favorite.

So, there's at least one point about which I can be an optimist.

Here's the other guy about whom I can be optimistic. The Twins whiffed on Carlos Gomez's potential when they traded him to Milwaukee, though certainly the Brewers wouldn't mind having JJ Hardy at shortstop too.

Gomez is 2 years into a 4-year, $28.3 million deal. His agent is Scott Boras, which usually means testing the water in free agency at the end of a contract, but, Gomez did sign that deal and give back some of his arbitration and early free agency years. 

Anyway, I'm glad he is on my team. I'd probably not like him too much otherwise.

Okay, back to doom and gloom.  Jean Segura was avert-your-eyes bad in the middle of the year as well -- certainly with good reason in light of his baby son's death -- but that .246/.289/.326 line looks more like an anchor on the offense than anchoring the middle infield.  

I hope he continues to develop. He'll only be 25 at the start of next season, and he finished the season strongly. That may mean that he made some adaptations and changes at the plate, or it may mean that he got lucky.  But, his first half dragged things down after the second half of his season last year was the drag. You never know what is going on in a player's head, but there's at least a glimmer of hope here.

Then, there is the PED man.  

Ryan Braun couldn't hit his way out of a paper bag after the All-Star break due to thumb trouble. The snarky among us might cite karma being a bitch and all for that, but fans expected more than a .266/.324/.453 line.

There is talk that Braun might be shifted positions yet again, this time to first base, in the offseason. It's possible, I suppose, but it will be tough to do that if he is hurt or struggling with potential nerve damage in his thumb that makes hitting painful.  He had a procedure to try to fix that immediately after the season, and we will not know whether that was successful honestly until he swings again in anger next spring.

So, what do the Brewers need to do to rebound next year?

1.  Fix First Base: that means getting a real player who isn't the reincarnation of Rob Deer to play there.

2.  Shore up the Bullpen: at least one and possibly two or three good middle relievers are needed. The Wei-Chung Wang Rule 5 draftee experiment taxed the bullpen greatly in trying to hide a kid with a ton of potential but no experience above A-ball in the bullpen. It meant working with a 24-man roster.

3.  Hope that Segura & Braun Rebound: With the money (Braun) and time (Segura) invested in them, that's really the only option.

In reality, this was always a flawed team. That they did as well as they did for as long as they did was a good result, generally. It just would have been easier to take if the bad month was in April.

2014 is in the books for the Brewers -- on to the next episode.

Thanks again for reading, and note that the links above take you to the player collection page for each of these guys.