Swaggy

Some shiny things.

Tomorrow is the last day of baseball's so-called winter meetings, and it looks like the Cardinals have already spent most of their Christmas shopping money. There's still time and, presumably, room in the payroll to pick up some shiny new things for next season, but the team lacks any serious holes to fill right now and already spent a good chunk of change on the man with the unfortunate name spelling (Jhonny Peralta). They also picked up some shiny speed in the name of Peter Bourjos. All we're really left with at this point are the various roster-filling moves that are usually pretty under the radar.

I'm sitting on some new shiny things of my own and thought I'd show off a few of them here. These cards were sent by The Junior Junkie, who is seriously threatening longtime blog pals Play at the Plate and Night Owl Cards for most pieces of mail sent to this blog in a calendar year. The scan of Jordan Swagerty's shiny card virtually robbed the Xfractor of its "X"s. Weird. Swagerty seems to be having trouble escaping the low minors currently, but if he ever makes the bigs I'm going to have a really hard time not calling him "Swag" or thinking of the ridiculous "Turn My Swag On" song.

Here's a guy who has actually made it. Since the trade of hometown hero David Freese, Wong's prospects are certainly looking up. The organization made it a priority to put him on the big league roster this season even though he mostly sat. Glaring baserunning errors notwithstanding, Wong appears to have the upper hand on a starting 2B job in 2014 with All-Star Matt Carpenter moving back to his natural 3B position.

There was a time, of course, that the Cardinals farm system wasn't all that prosperous. In fact, in the Jocketty era, it flat out stank. That's not John Gall's fault. I mean, an infinitesimal percent of baseball players actually get to wear a MLB uniform at any point in their life. It's just such a glaring shift in philosophy, where back in the "ought" years the minor league system was completely gutted at time where the team on the field was smacking fools around. I like that there are players coming up to be excited about now, and it's not like the Big League Cardinals have suffered at the expense of building up young talent.

Another thing I don't miss? Short printed rookie cards. Well, I didn't collect cards in 2004, so it's kind of hard for me to say that I missed that. As much as I like serial-numbered cards, I would hate it if every Trevor Rosenthal card this year came with a little stamp on the back to remind you that it's harder to find one of him than it is to find a Matt Holliday.

Home Field Advantage

With a win over the Giants tonight, the Cardinals have now won 12 of their last 13 at home. They're also fortunate enough to be in the middle of a stretch that sees them play 16 of 19 games at Busch. It's nice to see the club finally taking advantage of some home cooking, especially after they struggled earlier this season.

Cards in this post came to my hands from a JABO's group break. If it wasn't for group breaks and trades, the number of cards entering my house lately would be pretty close to zero.

I know a lot of people complained about all the seemingly unnecessary peripheral sets that were around when there were actually more licensed cards companies beyond Topps, and sometimes I agreed. When I see something like this Jim Edmonds 2006 Artifacts card, however, I really miss those other card companies.

I'm going to come out and say that I like these Opening Day blue parallels better than those glittery golden ones from the flagship set.

Where have you gone, John Gall? This serial numbered card makes me think about taking back everything I said above in regards to the Edmonds card.

I wish Topps would do more stuff like this, although with less border perhaps. I feel like they might have worked with an outside graphics designer on this project, as it looks nothing like anything else they've released that I can recall.

I scanned this card twice and it still chopped off what was left of the border. Sure, it's off-center, but it's not that off-center. Yeesh. This wasn't part of the group break, but it's cool to get a needed McGee rookie.

I know people are tired of Ginter. I'm not tired of Ginter. I'm tired of people being tired of Ginter. That's what. So there.

A number of former Cardinals from the teams between the championships (2007 through 2010) have surprisingly turned up on major league clubs this season, with pretty dismal results. P.J. Walters made 7 starts with the Twins this season at a 5.40 ERA clip. He was actually part of the Rasmus trade last season, so he probably earned himself at least a partial share of last year's World Series cheddar.