30 Teams in 30 Posts: #5

I have a few "trade bait" type cards that Erin has charged me with finding suitable homes for, and some of these may be featured in a future post if I work up the ambition to do so. I also may just start sending out some emails to find trade partners. In any case, the one thing I would like to ask anyone that trades with me from now going forward is to at least pay some consideration to the players on Erin's player collection list. (See the sidebar if you have no idea what I'm talking about.) We're still working on coming up with a complete list of what she has for each player she is going after (and I plan on doing that for my PC lists as well), but for now I know a good final resting place for any of your extra Yadier Molina and Tim Lincecum cards - for example.

Tonight I'm supposed to talk about the Blue Jays. I actually just sent most of my Blue Jays cards (aside from the surplus stashes of stuff like 1991 Donruss) out in a package last month, so I don't have a lot to show. I have been fond of Toronto's since I was a kid, seeing them as both a strange bird as now the only Canadian team left in the league and some sort of blue kindred spirit to the red Cardinals club. Also, a lot of my more liked early '90s non-Cardinals players (Dave Stewart, Dave Winfield, Joe Carter, Rickey Henderson, etc.) ended up in Toronto at some point.

Favorite current Blue Jays player: Omar Vizquel. I know this is kind of a cop out. I just can really appreciate the existence of a 45 year old major league shortstop, even one that's been relegated to spot duty.

Least favorite current Blue Jays player: Edwin Encarnacion. I don't really have anything against him personally. He was just a lousy fantasy player for me, year after year. Oh, did you think I was going to say Colby Rasmus? Nah...

Favorite Blue Jays player of all-time: Fred McGriff. Man, who didn't like the Crime Dog? My only regret is not having any McGriff cards at hand for this post. Dave Winfield gets honorable mention here, but that's only because I think I picked him for several other teams in this series of posts.

Least favorite Blue Jays player of all-time: Juan Guzman. Like with Encarnacion, I don't really have anything terrible to say about Guzman. He got me all excited about his career (and consequently, his baseball cards) with his terrific 1992 season only to fade in notoriety. He worked really slowly on the mound. I thought he was going to be one of the all-time greats, and then I just kind of forgot about him.

The Toronto Blue Jays merely exist at #5 in my reverse-ranking of favorite teams as of the moment I picked them a long, long time ago on October 4th, 2010. All of these cards are very much up for trade, so please contact me if you're interested.

Capewood's Summer Clearance Cards

Here's a reminder... I've got an All-Star Contest going on right now. It is dependent upon the result of the game, so the deadline is right before game time. It takes very little to win and, shockingly, you can win some cards!

Capewood's Collections has been doing a "Summer Clearance" feature for the past several weeks. Regular housecleaning is always a good idea, and I've taken it upon myself (albeit it in a different way) to do a bit of the same. If you're reading this, don't be surprised if I hit you up with an offer of cards soon.

This is a happy card if you ask me... not that you did.

Oh, ToppsTown, how I've missed you! Well, not really, but a funny thing happened on the way to these cards demise. By year four, the inserts actually managed to go from a horrible design to a somewhat passable one, at least for something that looks like it's from the '90s.

I'm hoping Jaime Garcia can come back soon and contribute something in the second half. Geez, it seems like I've been saying things like this a lot lately.

Don't forget to enter the contest... and good luck!

All-Star Contest!

Hey guys. I'm doing a quick All-Star Game contest here at the very blog which you are reading. The winner will receive a random relic card from his/her team of choice and a random stack-o'-cards from his/her team(s) of choice, free and postage free.

Five St. Louis Cardinals players are set to appear, at former manager Tony La Russa's discretion, in the big game tomorrow night. Your mission is to predict which Cardinals player is, in essence, the most valuable.

Win Probability Added (WPA) is a stat used to measure "value" on a game-by-game basis. I'll be using this metric to pick a winner for this contest. In order to enter the contest, you must choose both the player and your total WPA prediction. All players' WPA totals will be fractions of one whole number as a score of 1.000 would mean that a player was 100% responsible for the victory.

For batters, I will add the WPA+ (Win Probability Added) to the WPA- (Win Probability Subtracted) to arrive at the final total. For pitchers, I will simply use the WPA. If a pitcher ends up becoming a batter somehow, Tony La Russa should be fired on the spot. Oh, wait...

For example, last year's MVP by WPA was Prince Fielder with 0.231, while @str8edgeracer was the big goat at -0.347. I suggest you check out B-R's All-Star Game Index for past box scores to get an indication of what WPA looks like as I will be using this as the basis for judging the contest.

(Please note that Yadier Molina will not be appearing in the game as he is on bereavement leave and was replaced by Matt Holliday on the roster.)

OKAY, I AM YELLING NOW FOR THE SHORT ATTENTION SPAN PEOPLE. JUST PICK A CARDINAL ALL-STAR, A DECIMAL NUMBER SOMEWHERE BETWEEN -1 AND 1, AND LEAVE A COMMENT ON THIS BLOG.

Contest entries close at 4:59 PM PDT on Tuesday, July 10th. Good luck. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Quick Hits From Smed's

I'm still in "purge mode", so I'm grateful that guys like Smed's Baseball Card Blog are around with want lists and such. I have cards that you need, so you should take them. Thanks, everyone!

Meanwhile, here are a few cards that I needed, courtesy of that same Smed's guy. These red bordered Target wonders look fantastic when they're featuring the Birds on the Bat. I would be a lot more excited about the 2012 Topps set if they all looked like these cards (and only featured Cardinals, I suppose.)

I don't know why "Fleer" decided to do this with their usual gold Ultra parallels in 2005. The whole "one rounded corner" thing looks like garbage.

As I've mentioned previously, I liked the black retail Heritage cards better last year. This year it just doesn't have the same effect.

On the other hand, I'm usually not excited about Chrome'd out Heritage cards at all, but I think this year's versions look pretty terrific. Maybe it's because I'm not totally sick of them yet.

Scott Rolen. SCOTT ROLEN!

Airbrushed Fridays: 2007 Topps #549

David Freese was selected to the All-Star team yesterday as the National League's "Final Vote" selection, to make him the fifth member of this year's team to make the squad. I can't complain about that.

Who is this week's victim, and why do we care? Horacio Ramirez is a subpar left-handed starting pitcher who came up with the Braves. Seattle traded away talented reliever Rafael Soriano straight up for Ramirez. Soriano became a valuable closer and this season is Mariano Rivera's stand-in. Ramirez is playing baseball for the Korean Baseball Organization.

Why does this card exist? Because Topps released a black bordered set designed to showcase human greasy fingerprints in 2007. In this case, it was a Series 2 card, and Series 2 often includes heavy use of  Photoshop.

Airbrushed Fridays is a weekly feature as the name seems to imply. If you know of a card with an altered photograph that you'd like to see featured, please contact me. You probably won't win anything other than a hyperlink and a Kei Igawa rookie card, but you never know!

Discount Queen

I was doing so well. I was really proud of myself for managing to resist making a lot of bad card purchases this year, but last month at the monthly card show I was struggling to find packs to open to fulfill my need for random thrills when I happened upon a $15 Gypsy Queen blaster. I am not collecting this set nor am I keeping any of these cards, so I ended up with this with nothing to show for it but a few trade bait items and those aforementioned "thrills". All of these cards are available for trades/claims.

Pack 1:

100 - Derek Jeter
16 - Eric Hosmer

239 - Juan Marichal (There's a nice retired-to-active player ratio in this set, I've noticed.)

187 - Brandon Beachy Mini (My scanner still hates minis indiscriminately. As a reminder, any minis shown on this blog with ridiculously poor cropping issues probably don't look that way in person!)

135 - Clayton Kershaw Variation (Like last year's set, there are lots of photo variations. Does anyone need this? Night Owl, perhaps? Or maybe someone who is always getting the short end of the Kershaw stick?)


Pack 2:
131 - Domonic Brown
139 - James Shields

45 - Madison Bumgarner (That's some kind of face on him.)
210 - Justin Upton
47 - Derek Holland Mini

MS-CG - Curtis Granderson Moonshots (Gypsy Queen has a lot of nice looking inserts. Really, I have nothing against this set, I just can't add anything else to my list of things to collect for a long time.)

Pack 3:
78 - Sergio Santos
163 - Brandon Phillips (As they say, if you don't have anything nice to say...)

32 - Michael Pineda (It will be interesting to see if the Yankees ever end up with the better end of the trade that saw Pineda head across the country from Seattle. While Pineda will spend the entire 2012 season the DL, Montero and Noesi, the guys that Seattle received, have been pretty dreadful.)
215 - Lonnie Chisenhall

96 - Alexi Ogando Straight Cut Mini (I can't keep up with all of the mini variations.)

FS-CK - Craig Kimbrel Future Stars (Kimbrel has rebounded nicely this year from a September swoon that blemished an otherwise perfect rookie season.)

Pack 4:
250 - Ken Griffey Jr.

259 - Dave Winfield
270 - Roberto Clemente

SS-AM - Andrew McCutchen Sliding Stars (As ridiculous of an idea as "Sliding Stars" might be for an insert set, this is a really nice looking card.)
54 - Mariano Rivera Mini

HH-FR - Frank Robinson Hallmark Heroes

Pack 5:
5 - Russell Martin

202 - Jason Motte (Woo!)
82 - David Wright
198 - Lucas Duda

168 - Ricky Romero Gypsy Queen Mini (Wow, that TORONTO lettering is way too large to be convincing.)

40 - Ichiro Variation (Here's one for the trade bait pile.)

Pack 6:
77 - J.P. Arencibia
277 - Vance Worley
108 - Guillermo Moscoso
287 - Daniel Hudson

33 - Ben Zobrist Green Mini (These minis have "back" parallels, photo variations and color parallels, I guess.)

MS-WM - Willie Mays Moonshots

Pack 7:

294 - Reggie Jackson
251 - Gary Carter
247 - Paul Molitor
246 - Willie McCovey (Four retired guys in a row.)
176 - Howie Kendrick Mini

FS-MM - Matt Moore Future Stars

Pack 8:
46 - Chad Billingsley
187 - Brandon Beachy

64 - Jason Kipnis (Kipnis has been very good so far in his first full season.)
169 - B.J. Upton
23 - Phil Hughes Mini

HH-EB - Ernie Banks Hallmark Heroes

As always, trade inquiries are welcome.

Cardinals from the Backstop

Stacks of cards have been flying in and out of Cards on Cards Central in recent days. This latest incoming bunch was sent my way by Backstop Cards. If you've got Padres cards to rid yourself of, consider heading down "all the way to the backstop..." as the name suggests!

Fun bonus game: see if you can spot Ryan Theriot in the card above! It's easy.

Will Chris Carpenter be able to contribute anything in the second half of the season? I would love to see it. He pretty much gets a pass for the year just for all that he did to keep the Cardinals train on the tracks last year. You could make a pretty convincing argument that Carp was the most valuable player on the team overall when you consider how many innings he racked up and that amazing Divisional Series clincher over the Phillies.

Carlos Martinez is one of the team's top prospects, and it was nice to see his Chrome Bowman "rookie" card in this package. Martinez is only 20, but he's already been promoted to AA and has been doing well so far after a stint on the DL.

Here's a 2012 Adam Wainwright card from a 2010 (I assume) holiday game. Wainwright had a rough outing his last time on the mound, but I'm hoping it was just an aberration and not a sign of a return to his rough early season start.

Four Cardinals were announced as All-Stars this year, and Yadier Molina was one of them. With all due respect to Buster Posey's return to health, Yadi has been the best catcher in both halves of the innings this year. As a side note, it did seem strange to me that they announced the starters and bench/pitchers so close together this year. I thought we usually had to wait a week or more after the starters were announced before hearing who else made the team.