Bargain Bowman

Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects is a set I don't completely understand. It seems to pair together the current year's "Rookie Card" eligible using the base 2008 Bowman design with "draft picks" who did not have MLB service time. I expected all of the players to be 2008 draft picks, but there seems to be no real criteria for these cards. A lot of them actually are 2008 draft picks, but I also found undraft free agents who had been in the minor league system since the early part of the decade. Anyway, this isn't really the type of thing I usually get into, but at the right price ($1 per pack) I was tempted. Here are the 4 packs that I purchased from the retail guy at the card show about a month ago.

Pack 1:

BDP4 - Burke Badenhop

BDP46 - Warner Madrigal (A madrigal sounds like some sort of animal, but I'm way off base here.)

BDPP79 - Wes Hodges

BDPP95 - Luke Hughes (Here's the undrafted free agent from 2002. Really, I have no idea who most of these guys are. This guy has a Twins logo.)

BDPP37 - Logan Schafer Chrome

BDPP73 - Greg Golson Chrome Refractors (There's two chrome cards in each pack, either of the base-looking "prospects" - BDP prefix - cards or the "draft pick" cards - BDPP prefix. Confused yet? Good. But this one is a refractor parallel, or a parallel of a parallel.)

- Checklist (This card is relic thick. It's not numbered, so perhaps there's only one checklist for this set?)

BDPP44 - Bryan Shaw Gold (And then there's the whole one-per-pack gold parallel, which is another matter in and of itself.)

Pack 2:

BDP48 - David Robertson (Not to be confused with David Robinson. I think this is the reliever that was on the playoff roster for the Yankees this year, but for some reason I thought his name was Kevin.)

BDPP91 - Scott Campbell

BDPP84 - Pablo Sandoval (Yeah, this is the guy that was christened Kung Fu Panda. It probably didn't help that he fell over on the basepath like some sort of confused large mammal last season.)

BDP12 - Chris Carter Blue 135 / 399 (No, not the X-Files guy.)

BDP55 - Jeff Samardzija Chrome

BDPP63 - Matt Cerda

BDP53 - Joe Mather Gold (Assuming Mather is fully healed, he could compete for the 3B job next season with the Cards as was the plan last season before he got hurt. David Freese seems to have the inside track, though, which is fine. If he's right, Mather could be a good bench bat at the very least.)

Pack 3:

BDP21 - Micah Hoffpauir (Now that there's no longer a Hoffpauir in the Cardinals system, I can go back to completely ignoring this guy instead of pondering a reality series in which Micah is reunited with his long lost "distant cousin" Jarrett. Oddly enough, The Internet really has no definitive answer as to whether or not the two are really related, but I found it amusing that their respective wikipedia pages consider them to be related now all of a sudden.)

BDP5 - Wladimir Balentien (If Balentien ever starts up a hip-hop career, his stage name should definitely be Wlad-I-Am.)

BDPP99 - Gorkys Hernandez

BDPP70 - Shairon Martis (I scanned him for the sole reason that he was someone that I'd actually heard of playing in the majors this past season.)

BDP33 - Max Scherzer Chrome (I swear I must have at least 20 Scherzer cards for some reason.)

BDPP27 - Trey Watten Chrome (Never trust anyone named Trey.)

BDP14 - Chris Davis Gold (He likes to strike out a lot, or so I'm told.)

Pack 4:

BDP42 - Jamie D'Antona

BDPP37 - Greg Golson (Back again in non-chrome, non-refractor form.)

BDPP69 - Andrew McCutchen (Yes, we've heard of this guy. He seems to be one of the few guys in this set... er... subset(?)... that has actually progressed to a key role already.)

SOF-OP - Omar Poveda Signs of the Future (Not bad... an autographed card in a $1 pack. I have no idea who this guy is, but perhaps a certain Rangers fan could use this one.)

BDP29 - Chris Perez Chrome (Former... Cardinal. That's difficult to say. I'm not sure how good Perez might be in the long run, but it's always difficult to say goodbye to a young player that was at one time full of promise.)

BDPP64 - Bobby Lanigan Chrome

BDPP35 - Tim Federowicz Gold (Okay, I give in. Who are these guys?)

Most of these cards are going into the trading stacks. You guys have been warned.