A Midweek PWE Round-Up

Envelopes spanning many months including @brian_d_oneal and @nightowlcards swaps.

 

I've surpassed 70 trades on TCDB this summer (55 completed and 16 in progress so far), which has pushed blog catch-up time even further to the side for the time being. One of these envelopes has been sitting in a box since February, which is shameful! Let's quit wasting time and take a look at these.

First up is that oldest of envelopes from Brian of Highly Subjective and Completely Arbitrary. Brian sent an eclectic group of Cardinals cards, including this Matt Adams "fish-fractor" from an older Topps Finest set. At last check, Matt Adams had caught on with an independent league team. Good for him.

1980's hero Tom Herr and his signature make an appearance on this 1987 Donruss Opening Day boxed set card. There was a kid who used to live up the street from me who got ahold of this set back when it was new, and I was pretty jealous. That fancy box with the clear plastic lid was the perfect thing for people who liked to show-off.

This one was certainly new to me. It's some sort of stamps insert from the 2014 Panini Golden Age set. I wish Panini focused more on these weird / historic items than the stuff they've been churning out lately.

It's always a thrill to pick up a vintage/throwback parallel card. This one is numbered to 99. It's unfortunate that Yadi has to share this card with the other guy, but I don't make the cards.

Next up is an envelope from All Cardinals All the Time, which featured some nice Chrome-style Bowman cards. One of my future projects is to get all of my Cardinals doubles properly logged in TCDB, so maybe I can start pulling off more Cardinals-for-Cardinals trades with fellow collectors of the Birds on the Bat. (The Herrera card on the right is a refractor!)

Here's a few Altuves for Erin's collection.

I wonder if the one-per-pack retail insert will return in future years. I was a big fan of the Turkey Red cards in 2020, but have been less excited about the rest.

I rarely say anything good about Bowman, so I will say this: it's really fun to look back on the Talent Pipeline inserts and see which players panned out and which didn't. All three of these guys have seen MLB time this year, and it's only been a year.

Here's a stray Heritage short print. Mike looks a little less than thrilled.

All that's missing here is the "Presented by Camping World" ad.

The last envelope of the day comes to us from the venerable Night Owl, who is once again pawning off his unwanted Dodgers on me. At least the Bazooka blue border parallels are a good "color match" for his team.

I'm doing a nice job, relative to most years, completing the latest Topps Heritage set. It does feel like I was granted an extension with the High Series getting pushed back repeatedly. Here's a few more for the big set build.

The Cardinals must have been playing a road game in Cincinnati or Philadelphia here, because Paul DeJong is wearing a navy blue helmet. Supposedly they were to wear navy blue against other similarly colored "red teams", but I think they only bring them out against those two teams for some reason.

Ah, it's another Dodger. The prospect portion of the old Bowman sets is a laundry list of who's not who, like Jamie Hoffmann, who did apparently see a few at-bats with the big league club in 2009 and 2011. They misspelled his name on the back, sadly.

Someone from Panini must have slipped this insert name in a suggestion box anonymous at Topps HQ, because this honestly makes no sense, like most of their ideas.

We end things with a black bordered parallel from the one-and-done (in baseball) O-Pee-Chee revival. This was the set with the Topps Total vibes and the wacky (and sometimes off-putting) photos that represented some of the last years when baseball cards were still mostly fun... you know, before that whole monopoly became a thing.

Cardinals! Blazers! Football Guys!

Three PWEs from @collec_sport run the gamut of the big three sports. 

 

I'm back from an unplanned layoff... nah, let's just call it a short period of inactivity for the blog. I hadn't intended to take the entire holiday week off, but that's how things played out. I may have had a different title for this post if life had gone differently (I'm Thankful for PWEs?) Tonight I'm taking a look at three envelopes of the plain and white kind sent from The Coffee Card Guy (aka Sport Card Collectors aka Cards Over Coffee.) These were some seriously loaded envelopes as you'll see shortly.

If 2019 was a lost season for Jordan Hicks, 2020 was... well, it was kind of lost for everyone. Hicks was one of the first names to officially opt out of the season, but he was unlikely to pitch regardless of his status considering the combination of factors including his young age, his incredible velocity, and his long road to recovery from Tommy John surgery. I sincerely hope we're talking about him a lot in coming springtime, because he was fun to watch.

I do not have many (if any?) gold Chrome refractors, so it was really cool to land this Marcell Ozuna version from the 2018 Topps Chrome Update set. I haven't heard anything about there being a Chrome Update set for 2020, but considering how underwhelming the regular Update set is, that's probably for the best.

It's Big City time! I actually really like the way these Stat Line parallels scan, compared to some card that have a primarily foil finish.

Closing out the run of Cardinals cards is this Trevor Rosenthal gold parallel from 2015 Topps, the last year that Topps truly created a gold bordered parallel. These parallels have looked pretty unimpressive lately.
 

Each envelope had a theme, and the second one featured Trail Blazers cards. I really like some of the basketball designs that Panini used in the years where they were still figuring things out before they settled in to the mess that they are today. (Granted, it's a mess that clearly makes them tons and tons of cash.)

LaMarcus Aldridge went full Beast Mode in the first two games of the 2014 NBA Playoffs opening round, setting a tone for the Blazers to pull off their first series win in fourteen years. I owned the card from Game 2 of that series against the Rockets and now have a copy of Game 1. Even if we hate how Aldridge left the team, Blazers fans will always have fond memories of him for this.

Ah, more Aldridge. I think I said my piece already. Moving on...

It's back to one of the present stars of the team with this CJ McCollum "Lord" parallel from the 2016-17 Panini Excalibur set. It wasn't too long ago that you could find stuff from this set cheaply, including repack packs. Now, of course, you can't find anything basketball card-related cheaply anymore. (If you can, please tell me about it... and don't tell anyone else! Shh!)

This is a nice card of Sabas, one of my all-time favorites. It's a blue parallel from the 2017-18 Donruss Optic set (powered by Panini!)

Last up is the envelope from the Eagles/football guys envelope. De'Anthony Thomas was never an Eagle, of course, but he is a big part of my Oregon Ducks collection. In case you wondered about my football collecting hierarchy, it goes something like this: 

Oregon Ducks cards ---> Oregon Ducks alums in pro football uniforms ---> pineapple on pizza* ---> certain Eagles cards ---> getting run over by a bus ---> Michael Vick Eagles cards

I'm actually finally organizing my Eagles cards and adding them to my collection on TCDB, so I will have an updated Eagles trading page here shortly. I'm going to keep all of the cards in boxes, though, but at least they will be in some sort of order with the dupes filtered out. Speaking of dupes, let me know if someone out there wants any of my excess Eagles cards. I really don't have room for a lot of football cards in my life.

And speaking of uninspiring Topps gold parallels (I did... really, I did!), these football gold parallels from 2014 are sort of oddly colored. They strike me as more of a yellow/beige than a true gold. Both of these numbered cards are of players (Ertz and Foles) from the Super Bowl winning team, though, so that's a big positive for me. Again, watch this space for more on my NFL collecting quirks if you're interested.

If you had asked me who led the Eagles in rushing in 2018, I would have said, "who?" And if you had said "Jordan Howard", I would have said, "oh, that's weird, I forgot about him." But you would have been wrong, because he didn't lead the Eagles in rushing in 2018. He led the Bears in rushing that year. And now I still don't know who led the Eagles in rushing in 2018. It probably wasn't Darren Sproles because he was a myth.

Kenjon Barner was actually an Eagle for several seasons, but this holds a loftier place in my collection because it's a Ducks card. In fact, it's a Ducks card featuring a throwback uniform from the '90s, giving it several more cool points. Cool points are all that matters in cards. They're way more important to me than "slabs" and "grades" and "pop" and all that nonsense.

I may seem pretty ambivalent about Eagles cards at times, but I definitely need to get my hands on all of the The Champ Is Here inserts from that Super Bowl winning team. That was a fun team and a fun game.

In Free! (No Pay)

Hitting up the @padrographs free box. 

There's been a big rush of Free Stuff Day posts happening around the blogs, which is great to see. I found a couple of things that Rod of Padrographs posted about in his recent string of "Free Stuff" posts, and along with those cards came a few more bonus needs.

Full disclosure - nothing in life is truly free, especially my conscience, so I definitely need to find some stuff to send back to Rod soon.

Panini is ridiculous in their endless amounts of color parallels for nearly every set they produce. This green and yellow look is pretty flashy, but would look even better with some Oregon Ducks involved instead of this former Trail Blazer.

Topps Holiday is never something I really seek out, but it's been fun to sort of "slow collect" these for my team needs. Lane Thomas has recovered from that broken wrist he suffered late last season and is probably itching to play baseball... like pretty much everyone.

Here's one of those cards I claimed - a pesky Target parallel from the recent Opening Day set.

One of my favorite cards from 2019 is back in gold form. Nice!

I'll probably get in on the "Free Stuff" parade at some point, probably long after it's cool. Like most things.

Baseball is Back Again

Enjoying the weekend's slate of spring training games with some @Nachos_Grande cards. 

To me, there is absolutely nothing more calming in the world than putting on a baseball game on the TV set, even a random or meaningless exhibition. This weekend officially saw the 2020 MLB season kick off in earnest with a full slate of Grapefruit and Cactus League games, which also means it's time to wrap up some trades from late last year.

Nachos Grande set along a wonderful holiday gift that included some Cardinals goodies and a heaping helping of set filler needs. Let's check out a few of these.

Here's one of those Donruss parallels that's tied to a player's stat line. It's going to be really frustrating if Carlos Martinez doesn't secure one of the spots in the rotation this year, especially with Miles Mikolas missing some significant time.

This is a nice flashback to the past with a card for my DK PC.

Another numbered 2018 Donruss card, this sees Marcell wearing his old Marlins uniform with his (then) new team name.

I'm sure there does exist a scanner that does better justice to foil-based cards like these, but I don't own that scanner.

Here's a few good guys from the aforementioned heaping helping, in the form of 2019 Allen & Ginter.

Great stuff, as always, from Nachos Grande!

NLCS Series Preview

The Nationals/Cardinals series at a glance.

10-run first innings aside, the Divisional round more or less played out exactly how I predicted it would for the Cardinals. It was a closely matched series, but the Cardinals found a way to pull it off in five games, meaning that they had to clinch in Atlanta. Fortunately, the field wasn't littered with trash this time around. It was a nice catharsis for a fan who had witnessed the horrorshow that was the 1996 NLCS, but few players on the current roster are even old enough to remember it.

St. Louis faces the Washington Nationals for the pennant. By virtue of being a division winner, the Cardinals actually gained the home field advantage over the Nationals even though Washington had a better regular season record. It sucks to be a Wild Card team. Although the Cardinals were markedly better at home versus on the road in 2019, they showed a better ability to win away from St. Louis down the stretch (e.g. the four game sweep at Wrigley) and against Atlanta in the playoffs.

Once again, rosters are not finalized at present, so this is all based on shared speculation.

2019 Season Series: Cardinals won 5-2
The Cardinals took 3 of 4 at Nationals Park (boring name, but huge points for no corporate naming rights) back in late April/early May, and also took 2 of 3 at Busch in a crucial mid-September clash. As usual, the season series results tend to be overemphasized this time of year, especially between teams that don't see each other as often as division rivals do. Managers have tendencies to make different decisions at this time of year, there are different players involved, and there's the whole "playoff pressure" factor. (I'm not just talking about Clayton Kershaw here.) We can probably put a little more weight on the more recent series, with both teams at the time fighting for a playoff spot. Of note, Dakota Hudson, Adam Wainwright and Patrick Corbin all had strong outings in the series while Max Scherzer was roughed up by the Cards.

Starting Pitching: Anibal Sanchez / Max Scherzer / Stephen Strasburg / Patrick Corbin vs. Miles Mikolas / Adam Wainwright / Jack Flaherty / Dakota Hudson
Sanchez will take the first turn for the Nationals in this series, and with the increased number of games you would expect to see Scherzer and Strasburg stick to regular starts instead of working out of the bullpen at times. As mentioned above, the Cardinals had recent success against the St. Louis native Scherzer, but historically this has not always been the case. Stasburg looked a bit fatigured in the finale vs. LA while Corbin allowed 7 ER in just 8 IP in 3 appearances in these playoffs. Something might be up with him. On the Cardinals side, the starters for the first two games (Mikolas, Wainwright) are set, with Waino trying to build on his successful last outing with another home start in game 2. Flaherty is the ace, but will be held back until game 3 due to his start on Wednesday. Dakota Hudson's defense crumbled around him in his first playoff start. His second will likely come on the road. ADVANTAGE: NATIONALS

Bullpen: Daniel Hudson vs. Carlos Martinez
Daniel Hudson took over the closer role late in the season and has pitched well, while Carlos Martinez did nearly all he could do to send the Cardinals home early this season with some rough work against Atlanta. The rest of the Nats pen features the closer-until-recently Sean Doolittle, the oldest active player in baseball (Fernando Rodney) and the shaky Hunter Strickland. St. Louis has better options than Martinez in John Brebbia, Tyler Webb, Giovanny Gallegos and occasionally Andrew Miller. Martinez is one of the longest tenured Cardinals not named Adam or Yadier, so perhaps manager Mike Shildt feels pressure not to make a change here. ADVANTAGE: PUSH

Catcher: Kurt Suzuki vs. Yadier Molina
There are long time veteran catchers on both sides. Suzuki was injured and left the field in the last game after being hit by a pitch on his wrist that also ricocheted off his helmet, so it's not a given that he starts the series in the lineup. Either way, Yan Gomes will do some catching as well. Molina has relegated his more than capable backup Matt Wieters to pinch-hit duty for the last month and a half. Both Nationals catchers are a bit more offensive minded than the defensive wizard Molina, though Yadi proved he could win with his bat in game 4 of the previous series. ADVANTAGE: CARDINALS

First Base: Ryan Zimmerman vs. Paul Goldschmidt
For the Nats, Howie Kendrick also logged some time at 1st, but there were questions about his defense. If Zimmerman hits, he stays in the lineup. It also happens to be Kendrick's bat that has kept him in the lineup no matter what position he's in, as proven by his series-winning grand slam against the Dodgers. On the Cardinals side, the only guy you're going to see at 1st is Paul Goldschmidt, whose bat seems to be heating up at the best time. ADVANTAGE: CARDINALS

Second Base: Howie Kendrick vs. Kolten Wong
Kendrick hit very well late in the season, as did Kolten Wong before his hamstring injury. Wong was able to start every game showing no ill effects of the injury, and his defense is miles above most at the position. ADVANTAGE: CARDINALS

Third Base: Anthony Rendon vs. Matt Carpenter
Rendon is having a mammoth offensive season, the best of his career so far and one worthy of MVP consideration. Carpenter was inserted back into the lineup to generate offense early on in the previous series, but his speed and defense are becoming a bit of a liability. He was hilariously removed for defensive purposes in the final game of the Divisional series before ever taking the field. We would see Edman back here if Bader is in the lineup for his glove. ADVANTAGE: NATIONALS

Shortstop: Trea Turner vs. Paul DeJong
Turner is one of the better base thieves in the league as well as one of the game's most well-rounded players. He has all of the tools as they say. DeJong is more of a power bat at this stage in his career than anything else, but his defense has improved. His pitch selection could use work. ADVANTAGE: NATIONALS

Right Field: Adam Eaton vs. Tommy Edman
To a somewhat lesser extent than Turner, Eaton is another Swiss Army knife of baseball. Edman moved to the outfield, somewhere he had never played professionally before this season, after Carpenter was slotted in at 3rd for his bat. So far, Edman has stood tall under the brightest lights of the season. ADVANTAGE: CARDINALS

Center Field: Michael Taylor vs. Dexter Fowler
Taylor was somewhat of a bit player for Washington this season and seems to be in the lineup for his glove more than anything else. If Victor Robles is healthy, this outfield improves substantially. Fowler manned center after the mid-series lineup change for the Cardinals, and he's solid there if not elite. ADVANTAGE: CARDINALS

Left Field: Juan Soto vs. Marcell Ozuna
Soto is one of the brightest young stars of the game, while Marcell Ozuna has caught fire at the right time, providing one of the scariest two-pronged attacks when he follows Paul Goldschmidt. ADVANTAGE: PUSH

Bench: Brian Dozier / Matt Adams / Yan Gomes / Victor Robles vs. Jose Martinez / Matt Wieters / Harrison Bader / Randy Arozarena
Whether it's due to matchups or injuries, the Nationals bench just seems very deep here. Actually, both teams should have plenty of capable hands on deck, although it remains to be seen if there will be roster changes for this round. The Nats may have the bigger bats, but the Cardinals have a couple of speed weapons they could deploy late in games. If Bader isn't starting his skills might be duplicated in Arozarena. ADVANTAGE: NATIONALS

Manager: Dave Martinez vs. Mike Shildt
Martinez was a journeyman player through much of the '80s and all of the '90s and tookover managing duties in 2018 with the Nationals after other coaching stints. He survived the Bryce Harper exodus and seems to have his club heading in the right direction. The not-former-player Shildt also seems to be heading in the same direction with his career, although questions about his bullpen usage will persist if this Carlos Martinez thing isn't straightened out once and for all. ADVANTAGE: PUSH

Prediction: CARDINALS IN 7

Game 1 is set for 7:00 PM CDT (local time) tomorrow on the Utz Network TBS. Go Cardinals!

Cardinals vs. Mariners: Game 1

The Cards face Seattle tonight without their would-be All-Star. 

It was brutal timing when Marcell Ozuna went down after sliding into a base and jamming (i.e. breaking) some fingers the other day. It wasn't just brutal for me, personally, knowing I had tickets to tonight's game, but for the team as well. Ozuna has nearly twice as many RBI as his next most successful teammate, and despite his fairly pedestrian batting average, was being lobbied for as the Cardinals lone All-Star selection.

The nod, instead, goes to Paul DeJong, who will likely be on the field tonight (please don't, like, also jam your fingers!) with the rest of the Redbirds as they take the field and try to improve on their .500 June. The losses and overall lifelessness of the offense have been more than frustrating, but there is still a full half-season to play with and no real obvious signs of things that should be corrected or set ablaze.

Come on, guys, let's get some hits! I will be rocking the Ozzie Smith '80s practice jersey tonight.

Breakin' Series 2: Electric Boogaloo

This #CrackinWaxMailday is rated G for Gold. 

Topps has been doing this phased rollout of its flagship set for quite a few years now, but the second series always seems to fall short of the initial excitement of the first. We already know the design, and we already know what most of the inserts are going to look like. Still, we need the rest of the set, don't we? Or, in my case, we need the rest of the team set, which is why I've been signing up for pick-your-team group breaks of late. Here are some of the highlights of my stash of Series 2 Cardinals, which came from another Crackin' Wax case break.

Dexter Fowler's photo is heavily zoomed in and laser focused on the player, which has been one of my chief complaints of recent years. I tend to like a variety of photos, okay? Fowler's arm seems to be in a weird position here.

Did I mention I snagged a small handful of gold parallels? John Gant has been one of the Cards most valuable pitchers since he was called up last season, and his success has translated well to the bullpen for this year (just don't look at last night's box score, please.)

Marcell Ozuna is putting up MVP type offensive numbers right now after an injury-weakened debut season in St. Louis. Maybe it's actually because he ditched this horrible neon compression sleeve.

Yairo Munoz has been a replacement level utility guy since he joined the big league club last year. I think that's about where you need a utility guy to be, to be fair. You get the feeling that he might string together a solid stretch of games if he just got consistent playing time, but nah, it's not gonna happen.

Speaking of not happening... RIP Jordan Hicks's maximum pitch speed. He was diagnosed with a torn UCL today, which means he's headed towards the dreaded Tommy John surgery that is so popular with the kids these days. While most pitchers seem to regain their original velocity after this surgery, it seems super doubtful that anyone will tell Hicks that it makes sense to try to throw 105 with some random replacement tendon in his elbow. Also, RIP my fantasy team. The Cardinals bullpen will probably be okay, though, with Gant in there along with Carlos Martinez and John Brebbia. (And sort of Andrew Miller.) It's the rotation that I'm worried about.

Anyway, this is a cool black parallel of an insert that is numbered to 299. Of course, I still need the base insert and probably a whole host of other color versions.

Like the Hicks card above, I missed noticing that this Big Mac 150 G-g-g-greaaaatest Moments is a black parallel numbered to 299 until I had taken at least a couple of passes through the stack of cards. Once again, I need the normal version of this and many other inserts from Series 1 and 2.

Crackin' Wax is super cool about including the extra hobby bonus packs in their breaks, which meant that I was able to add a couple more "silver pack" Chrome 1984 style cards to my collection. Daniel Ponce de Leon may actually be one of the answers to the rotation problem, but it seems like the team doesn't want to ruffle the feathers of the broken Wacha (or the ghost of Wainwright, or whatever's gotten into Mikolas...) and actually do something about it.