Let the Kids Play and All of That

The final @CrackinWaxMailday of 2019 is all about the kids. 

There was one product left on the release calendar in the Bowman subscription I purchased from Crackin' Wax way back near the beginning of this year. It's the hobby-only Bowman Draft. I'm probably not as excited about this set as most, because it's strictly for the prospects. However, these cards are always fun to look at several years down the road, where you can play games like "Whatever Happened to That Guy?" and "Wow, That's What He Used to Look Like!"

While there wasn't a big hit to be found for my team, I did manage to get two full sets of Chrome refractors, which is pretty cool. Conner Capel is a guy I've been hearing more about lately. He was one of the players acquired in the much maligned Oscar Mercado deal. Only time will tell with these guys.

There's probably a good case to be made for not going after some of the big 3B names on the free agent and potential trade markets when you have Nolan Gorman waiting in the wings.

Luken Baker was also one of the prospects in the Bowman set at the beginning of the year.

I believe this is one of my first Mateo Gil cards. I have no idea who he is.

Now we're on to the "1st" Bowman guys, which guarantees that I won't know anything about them right now. Pallante is probably not actually wearing a Cardinals uniform here.

Fletcher looks like a little kid.

Hey, here's a guy. Cool.

I've actually heard of Zack Thompson, who was the Cards' top pick this year.

As a bonus, I also managed to snag a "sky blue" paper parallel numbered to 499 of Thompson.

And finally, the best card of the bunch is this green parallel of the team's Draft Progression insert, which is numbered to 99. I am not sure how Zach Kirtley ended up in this group as the representative from the 2017 draft, but it looks like that was probably the year the Cardinals were penalized for the guy who logged into an Astros guy's account and stole some draft and scouting information from the team (which is kind of funny to think about in light of more recent Astros developments). They didn't have a pick until round 3 (Scott Hurst?) and it kind of feels like Kirtley's name was drawn out of a hat.

Thus concludes a fun year of breaks. I'm currently considering my card buying strategy for next year. Does anyone want to bust open some older stuff?