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.

A Care Package from Too Many Verlanders

Late last week, I needed a pick-me-up. I've been working a ton, leaving very little time for me to do anything hobby related.  So, it was great to see a yellow envelope in my mailbox from Dennis at Too Many Verlanders.  The note that Dennis sent me was that he went to a recent card show and found a few Brewers to send my way.

Starting off, there was what has to be an authentic Steve Woodard autographed 1998 Score.  It has to be authentic because the only three people I can think of who would even want a Steve Woodard autograph are Jaybarkerfan, Thorzul, and me.

The vast majority of the Brewers cards that Dennis found were from 2014. First, there were a couple of those Bowman "top prospects" mini refractors from last year's Bowman offering.

Last year, Jimmy Nelson was the Brewers' top prospect and Taylor Jungmann was the number 5 prospect according to the list on the back of the cards. This year, they are both in the starting rotation at this point of the season.  Both are still young, but both may appear to be questionable choices.

Both were the types of draft picks that Doug Melvin tended to prefer -- college pitchers with slightly more limited ceilings but with a higher floor than, say, a high school pitcher. Jungmann was selected 12th overall in the 2011 draft out of the University of Texas. Disappointingly from a personal perspective, Melvin chose Jungmann 6 picks before Vanderbilt pitcher and current Oakland A's starter Sonny Gray. Well, that's not as disappointing as selecting Jed Bradley (who really doesn't look to be a prospect at this point) out of Georgia Tech four picks before Gray. 

It proves that you should never take a Yellow Jacket. 

Nelson was selected from the University of Alabama in the second round in 2010 -- 4 picks before Rays starter Drew Smyly (out of the University of Arkansas) and 6 picks before the Braves selected Andrelton Simmons.

Again, there's still a lot of time left in their careers to show that they were good selections. Perhaps they will mature into quality starters in time for the next Brewers playoff team in 2018 or 2019.

Dennis also sent me two Jean Segura cards from last year. Jean Segura is the reason that I'm taking a wait-and-see approach on adding any new player collections at this point. Segura came out like a house-of-fire his first year in the majors, making the All-Star team on the strength of that first half: he hit .326/.363/.487 before the All-Star break in 2013. 

Over the last two seasons -- 2014 and 2015 -- however, his line is .251/.287/.324, "good" enough for an OPS+ of 69 (a stat which places league average at 100 and takes the player's home ballpark into account).  In other words, he's been pretty damn awful -- basically barely above replacement level according to WAR on Baseball Reference (last year, 0.6 WAR; this year, 0.1 WAR).  Now, he's still young -- just 25 years old. But, Orlando Arcia is getting closer and closer to ready in the minors. If Segura wants to be anything more than a platoon partner for Scooter Gennett at second, Segura will need to show a LOT next year.

Okay, let's move on to some cards of guys no longer with Milwaukee.

Alcides Escobar spent parts of three seasons in Milwaukee before being traded to the Kansas City Royals with Lorenzo Cain, Jeremy Jeffress, and Jake Odorizzi in exchange for Yuniesky Betancourt and Zack Greinke.  The Brewers got two years of Greinke (well, a year-and-a-half, before the Brewers traded him to the Angels for, in part, Segura).  The Royals got two All-Stars and trade bait (with Wil Myers) for Wade Davis and James Shields. Can't complain too much about that.

One last card:

This card was definitely the highlight of the package. A Rickie Weeks/Bill Hall dual autograph card from UD Premier in 2007 serial numbered 12 of 25 -- and sorry Gavin, you're not getting this Christmas card!  It's a great addition to the Rickie Weeks player collection for me.

Dennis, thank you for thinking of me while perusing the cards at your baseball card show!

Christmas Cards from Too Many Verlanders

Dennis at Too Many Verlanders is one of the most generous bloggers around. I've gotten several envelopes from him over the past several months, and each one has great cards in them.  What did the Christmas package hold, other than the incredibly nice handwritten Christmas wish?

First off, a 2010 Topps George Kottaras card. Kottaras is Canadian -- from Ontario -- and got the opportunity last September finally to play for his hometown Blue Jays.  Here's his tweet about that. And here's the card.

The next card? Another catcher who got to fulfill his dream, perhaps, of playing for his hometown team. But for Damian Miller, the team he wanted to play for was the Milwaukee Brewers. Interestingly, Miller was not a member of the players' union because he was a strike breaker back in 1994. As a result, Wikipedia claims (without attribution...but it could be true) that his name was left off 2001 Arizona Diamondbacks memorabilia celebrating their World Series win.

Those union guys...sometimes they hold a grudge.

Next up, two lefty starters who bounced around the leagues a bit. Randy Wolf, who pitched 25 innings for the Marlins last season, appears on a 2011 Topps base set card.  And Doug Davis is pictured here on a 2010 Topps Update Gold card in his second tour of duty in Milwaukee.

Next, we come across two current Brewers.

First off, there is fourth/fifth starter -- and late season ace -- Mike Fiers. Everyone who talks about Fiers mentions that his stuff just isn't that great and that they are always waiting for the other shoe to drop when it comes to his pitching. I look at his results, and, outside of a tater-induced disaster in 2013, he has put up some impressive numbers in 200 innings of big-league work. Especially look at his K/BB ratio -- 3.75 in 2012 and 4.47 in 2014. Maybe that's a fluke, but he's always had good control and struck out a ton of guys at every stop in the minors. Something's working.

The other current Brewer is a Wal-Mart parallel of Jean Segura from the 2013 Topps Update set. It's always nice to add a card to a player collection, and my adding to my current player collections other than Ryan Braun has been slow this first year collecting again.

The final card from TMV was definitely the highlight. I mentioned a few months ago that Gorman Thomas was a guy who really never hung around to sign autographs after games. As a result, I never was able to add his autograph to my collection on anything. Either Dennis remembered that, or he just figured I would love this card because Gorman's a Brewer and a player collection. In any case, it was absolutely a fantastic Christmas gift to get!

Thank you so very much, Dennis, for the excellent cards and the holiday wishes.

Mailday Post: Too Many Verlanders Giveaway

A couple of weeks ago over at Too Many Verlanders, Dennis ran a contest which was based around him giving away a bunch of cards.  In other words, he gave away cards and those giveaways led to entries in a contest to get more cards.  

Never one to miss an opportunity to fill a gap or two in my collection, I claimed two different items -- the Prince Fielder collection, in the hopes of getting a couple of cards of him on the Brewers that I didn't have, and the 1999 Topps Series Two set.  Since 1999 was right in the middle of my non-collecting years, those cards had escaped me entirely.

Those items got me a total of five entries into Dennis's contest.  I was lucky enough to top off claiming those previous items with finished third in the contest giveaway.  My selection: I took a blaster of 2008 Upper Deck Series 1 and 2 off Dennis's hands as well.  

Last week, the box with all those cards showed up -- it must have had a total of 500 or 600 cards in it.  Here are the highlights.  

As I mentioned, I knew I was getting Prince Fielders -- most of which now are listed up in my team trade bait section under "Tigers."  Three of those cards, however, were Brewers:

I really like this MLB Artifacts card (pardon the screwy scanning I did there).  Yeah, we've gotten tons of nostalgia-type cards in the past 15 years, but that one is a classy looking card.  

The 1999 Topps Series 2 had several Brewers, of course, and all of these were needed either for my player collections or the team set:

I don't know why I'm surprised when I get a Marquis Grissom card with Milwaukee, but I always seem to forget that he played with the Brewers.

After going through those items I claimed, I then cracked open the blaster box of Upper Deck.  I've opened quite a few packs of the Upper Deck First Edition set in repack boxes, so the card design was familiar to me.  The glossy finish and the silver foil on these cards was not.  I know I sound like a fan boy and I know that a significant portion of collectors don't like the full-bleed photos on cards, but, well, I love the full-bleed photos on cards.  It makes them feel cooler and more expensive, I guess.  Anyway, here are the cards I got from the blaster that I really liked:

I even got a Prince Fielder "Infield Power" insert.  And I think I'm collecting all Carlos Gomez and Jean Segura cards at this point.  Lucroy's too, of course -- I mean, who wouldn't collect the best player in the National League (oh God, please don't let there be an SI website curse)?

Finally, I believe Dennis was using some football cards as filler simply to keep the other cards from moving around.  While I'm not exactly a football collector, I didn't mind getting college football cards for my Georgia Bulldogs!

The NCAA would have you believe that the number 8 here is just generic and has nothing to do with A.J. Green.  Nothing whatsoever.

Dennis, thanks for the cards, the giveaway, and even for the Georgia Bulldogs cards.  I'm starting to contemplate whether I should try to collect college football cards of the Dawgs at this point!

Free Cards, and a Contest for More Free Cards

Dennis at Too Many Verlanders is having a contest/giveaway to clean out his card boxes some and to entice more folks to trade with him as well.

Click over, take a look, claim something you like, and hope for the big prizes!