Deuce

Series Two: It's the next series after One. 

Peter from Baseball Every Night just hosted what was essentially a free group break, with the participants just covering the shipping. This is a very generous thing to do. I have done a couple of free group breaks in the past and have something new in the works for this summer, but it won't be anything brand new like this.

As I've mentioned numerous times, I am not a fan of the flagship Topps set and have sworn off opening paying for any packs for the second consecutive year. However, that doesn't mean I don't feel the need to get as many Cardinals as I can get my hands on, and I was able to get nearly the entire base team set out of this. This is fantastic. I think I'm just missing Jose Martinez now.

Even though these are brand new cards, a couple of players have already been jettisoned from the roster, including big ol' Broxton here. This wouldn't be a bad landscape card if it wasn't for the gigantic graphical interference, cutting off Broxton's legs.

In keeping with tradition, Series Two cards are Photoshopped for your pleasure. Fowler is wearing a home jersey, supposedly, but there's a lot of blue in the blurry background.

It's been a pretty disappointing season for the Cardinals so far, and Gyorko's name has already been floated in trade rumors. Of course, the thing that makes Jedd an attractive trade piece is the same thing that makes it make sensible to keep him around: he's on an incredibly team-friendly contract for the production they are getting from him.

Peralta is the other roster casualty. He never seemed to recover after the huge chunk of time he missed at the start of last season.

Topps is paying a lot of attention to their 1987 set year (30 years!), which is probably one of their most recognizable sets. There are multiple reasons for this, but one of them is certainly the abundance in which it was produced.

Bonus Matt.

Oh looks like he's asleep here. Did they seriously not have a better photo available of the Cardinals closer?

This is also using the ubiquitous '87 design, of course, but it's a from hobby continuity pack. I think that's a fancy way of saying that Topps is thanking the consumer for spending exorbitant amounts of money on stuff when you don't really have to. This one was very shiny with a fancy background pattern.

Here's Piscotty again on a Topps Salute insert, which is a dull look at an otherwise interesting concept. I like that this commemorates a particular moment in a game when everything else about the flagship set these days seems to take the player out of the game altogether. The design isn't great, though.

More pitchers getting cut off below the waist.

We only get half a Wong.

Another closely cropped shot. Yadi deserves better than this. Perhaps they didn't want us to notice that hardly anyone was at this game.

Huge thanks again to Peter! I'm off to update my want list.