Archive for the 'Card of the Week' Category

(images courtesy of Cardboard Junkie, click for larger versions)

National Chicle is one of a bunch of different sets that Topps is producing this year. As you can deduce from above, the cards are all painted. They also have varying backgrounds, some of which are abstract designs such as on Bumgarner's card. Others are more realistic depictions of baseball stadiums and fields, such as on the Duke Snider card. Overall the set contains many of today's players as well as many stars from the past.

This set has created a lot of buzz and controversy. The buzz is over the fantastic colors and players in the set, as well as the vat majority of the excellent art. The controversy has come over some of the art as well as a Chipper Jones card that looks suspiciously like Babe Ruth.

Cardboard Junkie, written by dayf, has posted a lot of cards from this set as well as a lot of the original art and some discussions with one of the artists. Check out his back catalog of 2010 National Chicle posts to learn all about this set.

If you ask me, this set is incredible. Here are a few more cards from the set, all taken from Carboard Junkie's posts:

These are Jimmie Foxx, Rogers Hornsby, Derrek Lee, and Thurman Munson. To see the full-size images, click on that link to Cardboard Junkie's catalog of posts on 2010 National Chicle.

So what about Madison Bumgarner? He was the youngest player to appear in the majors last year. (The second youngest guy, Fernando Martinez, is almost a year older.)

Bumgarner came up last year to make a spot start in place of Tim Lincecum and he pitched well. In AAA this year, his numbers haven't been great so far, but certainly not bad. It seems likely that he will join the Giants' rotation at some point in 2010 or 2011.

(Images courtesy of Great Sports Names Hall of Fame)

I love Fred McGriff. I rarely write about him on this blog but he ranks as one of my all-time favorite players, due mainly to his incredible consistency over a long period of time. I also love his transaction history:

• He was stolen by the Blue Jays from the Yankees in 1982 and put Toronto on the map.
• He was the centerpiece in a blockbuster 1990 trade with San Diego, bringing the Jays some key players (Roberto Alomar and Mr. All-time Overrated) for their two-time championship teams in 1992 and 1993.
• He was traded to the Braves in 1993, played extremely well for them, and helped them win their only World Series during their epic playoff streak.
• Then he went to Tampa Bay in 1997 to give that team respectability. McGriff is a Tampa native and was that team's first truly legitimate power hitter.
• Then he got traded to the Cubs and played extremely well for them.

This 1997 set came during the twilight of Score's run, with the last baseball set coming out in 1998. This set is a far cry from Score's debut in 1988, which featured colorful cards with two photographs and extensive biographies. (See the 1988 Score Tom Glavine card I wrote about a while back as an example.) In the 1997 set, we see just a single photo on the front and a more traditional back with lots of stats and a shorter bio.

Well, hold on one second...that photo on the front may be the only one, but what a great photo. Sure, it's a posed shot, but it's an awesome shot of Crime Dog with an interesting background. I'm not sure if McGriff was photographed against that backdrop or if his image was superimposed onto it, but either way it's interesting and gives the card a dark, ominous feel. I like it. And as for the back being traditional...well it's actually pretty strange.

First of all, nearly every bit of text on the card is in italics. The only thing not italicized is the card number 172. (Incidentally, for both images in this post, you can click on them to get a larger version.) Secondly, this card actually reports OBP! It's called OB%, but I was shocked to see this on a card from 13 years ago. I'm not sure about the history of OBP reporting on baseball cards, but I'd think this is one of the earliest examples. Amazing. On the right side of the card, they give breakdowns of McGriff's 1996 stats in different situations. Splits on a baseball card? That's new to me too. Pretty revolutionary stuff for 1997.

One other neat thing about the back of the card that is easy to miss is the subtle Braves logo appearing behind the stats. It doesn't add all that much to the card except that it prevents it from being purely black text on a stark white background. That was a smart move on Score's part.

Anyway, I should mention the baseball card blog that brought this card to my attention. It's Great Sports Name Hall of Fame, and the writer is a collector of Fred McGriff cards. If you click through to the site, you can see that he's compiled lists of great sports names, and there are some real gems there. (Click on the links on the sidebar to see all the names.) This blog is a good example of one of the main types of card blog that exists today. The author writes a lot of posts about cards he's received in trades but also puts a lot of effort into some specific segments of the hobby that interest him. It's good stuff, and when you get a good writer these blogs can be a lot of fun to follow.

McGriff was a remarkably consistent hitter over virtually his entire career. He was actually hurt by the fact that he didn't have the peaks and valleys that most other players have. Had he sprinkled in a couple of seasons with an OPS+ of 95-100 along with a couple at 170, he might be better remembered. Why? Because in that 170 season he probably would have hit 40 HR, something he never actually did.

But check out the all-time leaders for most seasons with 22 to 36 HR:

There's McGriff on a list with 5 HOFers who all finished with more HR than he did. But let's focus on the #1 guy on the list, Eddie Murray. Murray had a very similar career to McGriff, with very close BA and OPS+, plus Murray never topped 33 HR in any one season despite finishing with 504 (essentially the same as McGriff's 493.) The biggest difference between the two guys was better longevity for Murray, who went to plate over 2,500 times more that McGriff. Give McGriff 2,500 more plate appearances at a 90 OPS+, he finishes with essentially identical numbers to Murray and he's in the HOF next year. As it stands, though, I don't see McGriff making it. (He'd have my vote if I had one.)

Further reading:

Ben Henry of The Baseball Card Blog, one of the granddaddy card blogs, did a feature called The Tao of Fred McGriff. He's posted lots of Crime Dog card images and culled a lot of statistics about the guy too. His entire blog is very much worth the read.

The 1974 Topps design was enjoyed by many folks. It had a simple but colorful approach, using clean name banners such as the one seen here. This design is the predecessor to the 1980 pennant design, better-remembered but not necessarily an actual better design.

I love and hate team cards. I'd certainly rather have them in a set than not, but sometimes they leave a lot to be desired. Team photo cards like this one were included in most sets in the 1960s and 1980s but largely disappeared in the 1980s and 1990s. Fairly recently they have been re-introduced in some sets in the 2000s.

I love these cards because it's a very baseball moment. Posing for the team photo is something that every team does every year and it's nice to get a card featuring the entire team, plus manager, plus (in this case) trainers and batboy. It's nice to see all the players standing together to get a better sense of who is taller and who is shorter, etc.

What do I hate? Simply not being able to identify the players. This particular card is a really good example. The Royals of 1973 didn't have uniform numbers on the front, so the only thing you can judge the identity of these players by is their appearance. There isn't even a team checklist on the back. In many other sets, the backs of the card included a roster of players on the team (and maybe even their card numbers in that year's set.) This set instead contains a list of franchise records and previous years' records. If there had been a player checklist, you might at least be able to narrow down which guy was which.

Back in 1974, this sort of thing could be a real problem. Today, it's easy to find photos of any player past or present. Plus, it's easy to get the 1973 Royals roster to help you figure out who is in that photo. Back in 1974, neither was easy for the casual fan.

Check out the teams to get the most triples in a game since 1952:

Three of those games involved Kansas City teams (one by the Athletics) but that 1974 Royals squad managed to score only 5 runs despite 5 triples. I would think that is extremely difficult to do, since any runners on base will score on most any triple and a runner on third often scores himself later in the inning.

If you click on the date above, you can see the box score. Jom Wohlford, the second batter of the game for the Royals, tripled home Freddie Patek and then scored on a sacrifice fly. Later in the game, George Brett and Frank White hit back-t0-back triples, each scoring one run. White was stranded at third. So that's 4 runs from the first 3 triples. In the next inning, Amis Otis tripled to lead off and scored on a double by Hal McRae. There are the 5 runs. Later, George Brett tripled with two outs and was stranded when Frank White struck out. It all makes perfect sense but it's definitely unusual.

Further reading

1974 Topps cards on:

The Baseball Card Blog

Night Owl Cards

Cardboard Junkie

Flair was the high-end version of Fleer. When Fleer started producing these cards in the mid 1990s, they were awesome. They were printed on high-quality glossy stock, included foil stamping, and utilized unorthodox colors and designs. By today's standards these cards don't look like anything special. And even by the time the 2002 set came out, they were nothing special. But in the mid 1990s, Flair cards were something special. They weren't mass-produced and were much higher quality than the average cards on the market, including Fleer's main release.

Regarding the design, I especially like the including of the uniform number so prominently on the front, as well as the use of dual photos on one side. Among the negatives are duplication of one photo on the front and back, needless use of multiple wacky fonts, and a fairly sparse back with no commentary and a limited set of stats.

Here are the most starts in a season in the 2000s (defined here as 2000-2009) where the starter threw at least 70% strikes.

We see some of the usual suspects among guys who didn't walk very many batters--David Wells, Paul Byrd, Greg Maddux, Brad Radke, and Schilling. This list is a follow-on to an earlier post I made about Roy Halladay where I noted his high strike percentage but some readers pointed out that this doesn't necessarily mean the game was so great.

This is evident when you scan the list above. There are no bad pitchers on there but some of the sets of games, such as Jon Lieber's 2004 performance, are not particularly special. Note too that for all of 2002, Schilling had a 3.23 ERA, meaning that games in which he threw fewer strikes than 70% he had a lower ERA than in the 22 games above when he had a 3.31 ERA.

What does it mean? Well it means the same as a lot of other statistics. Strike percentage is a fairly good indicator of the quality of the game but alone doesn't mean all that much.

More reading:

For a short summary of Flair, see Wax Heaven's post about them. This includes a series of Ken Griffey cards produced in the line.

Oh, so very much to say about this card and the 1987 Donruss set. Let's talk about the set first and the specific card I chose second.

For all three major baseball card manufacturers active at the time (Topps, Fleer, and Donruss) 1987 was a big year due to the many excellent rookies that came out of the set. Among many others, the 1987 Donruss set has the first regular-issue Donruss cards for Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Greg Maddux, Bo Jackson, Kevin Brown, Barry Larkin, Will Clark, David Cone, Wally Joyner, Bobby Bonilla, Ruben Sierra, Jamie Moyer, Randy Myers, Terry Steinbach, Kevin Mitchell, Mike Greenwell, and many others. That's quite a few HOF-caliber players, All-Stars, Rookies of the Year, Cy Young winners, etc.

The set itself was pretty good, fairly on par with the Donruss sets of 1984 and 1985. Among the negatives, however, were:

• As you can see from the example card above, the design lent itself to "showing off" miscut cards. The little baseball designs on either side made it quite obvious when a card had poor left-to-right centering.
• The black border all around, again, showed off any dings or chips
• Most of the photos were either headshots or closely-cropped action shots. There weren't very many true action shots, which Topps still did the best with at this time.

Many people wouldn't say the first two bullet points above were marks against the set. In fact, it meant that cards were easier to inspect and made obtaining high-quality examples more of a challenge. This (plus the fact that the set was produced in smaller quantities) has always been reflected in the pricing, as 1987 Donruss cards have always been more valuable than Topps cards of the same year and player.

I'll talk more about the specific card above after a brief interlude to discuss stats.

As has been well-documented, 1987 was a strange year in baseball as home runs flew out at a record pace. Many people have maintained that the baseball was different this year but MLB denied it. Something was definitely going on, though.

Check out the table below showing seasons with the most players with 20+ homers but no more than 60 RBI.

The Steroid Era, when everybody and his grandma has been hitting homers, is well-represented. But then there's 1987 stuck right in at the top. There's really no good explanation for this other than the theory about the baseballs changing for that one season. In 1988, MLB changed the balk rule so as to focus attention away from HRs going back to normal and onto something completely opposite.

Take a quick look at the back of the card below and read the first sentence. Don't you just love grammatical errors on baseball cards? Of course, they should have just used the correct adverb form and said there's just one way Lynn plays baseball: hardly. After 1985 the guy never appeared in as many as 120 games per season.

The Diamond King was a long-standing tradition for Donruss. They first started it in their second set in 1982. The overall style remained very similar for many year, which is nice. Diamond Kings continued into the 1990s and 2000s although the style did eventually change a little. They were always portraits of players, which I think was a very nice addition to the sets. Many of the issues (especially the 1980s ones) included both a portrait and a mini action shot, such as a mid-swing Lynn as seen above.

Some of the Diamond Kings left a little to be desired. Sometimes the portraits were not very good and sometimes the choices were just odd. It was a little like the All-Star game in that each selection process required one player from every team. So sometimes bad teams with no really good players still got a guy represented in the Diamond King set. I'd like to write a separate article about that and I'll post it here sometime later.

Lynn was a pretty good choice, however, for the 1987 set based on his 1986 performance. The 1986 Orioles had been a last-place team and the only really good offensive players were Eddie Murray, Cal Ripken, Larry Sheets, and Lynn, who led the team in OPS+ at 137. He tacked on a few more decent years before retiring in 1990. I'm glad he got this Diamond King honor.

Ahh, the 1967 Topps set. This isn't one of the better sets, thanks to a lot of photos like this one. Don't get me wrong--a closeup of a player is not a bad thing, but this guy isn't wearing his cap and the set is full of too many shots of this type. The back of the card is similar to others from this general time period. But let me ask you this--if you pitched 8 complete games, why on earth would you draw a big number 8 on a chalkboard?

Here's the long story as to why I picked the Brunet card.

Now that WPA is widely available on Baseball-Reference.com, it's time to start using it. I feel it is perhaps the most useful stat around today. If you're not familiar with the stat, check out Sean's post announcing this addition.

I used a series of Game Finder searches to find out the average WPA for starting pitchers in 2009 in their wins, losses, and no-decisions. (Actually I looked a the first 300 of each to occur in the season.) Winning starters had an average WPA of 0.24, while losing starters had an average WPA of -.12. Starters with no-decisions averaged 0.11. Those numbers make sense. A really solid win by a starting pitcher usually scores in the range of 0.20-0.40 WPA. Dominant performances ae usually around 0.50 while a few games creep up in the range of 0.60-0.80. These games are usually shutouts where the winning team scored only 1 run and the starter went the distance. Late in such games, situations with runners on base have extremely high leverage and pitchers who prevent scoring rack up the WPA.

Anyway, across the years covered currently by the Streak Finder (say it with me now...1920-1929 and 1952-present) here are the longest streaks of game starts where the pitcher registered at least 0.24 WPA but didn't get the win:

There's our man Brunet in 1967. What a tough year for the guy. He led all of baseball in losses with 19, despite having an overall positive WPA for the season.

As promised here is the first Donruss card featured on this blog. Unfortunately, it's not a great example, as the 1992 set was pretty lousy. Perhaps the worst aspect is the large "DONRUSS 1992" banner running across the top, taking up way more space than necessary, especially given that it was on every card.

Note that Kyle Abbott was a Rated Rookie in 1992, as denoted by the logo of that name. Card collectors will recognize this logo as Donruss used it starting in 1985 (replacing an earlier style logo from 1984.) In 1993 the logo was similar but with new coloring and in 1995 the logo changed entirely.

If I can digress a little further with regards to the Rated Rookie logo, it's interesting to look up the trademark registration for that mark. According to that record, the mark was first used in December of 1983, which I assume would be the regular-issue 1984 Donruss cards, even though the logo was different on the cards that year. (To be clear, the trademark is on the term "rated rookie" and not on any of the specific logo variations.) The registrant was Leaf, Inc., the company that produced the Donruss brand of baseball cards. The application was filed in 1985 and after being granted the mark was eventually canceled in late 2006, almost certainly due to abandonment by Leaf. Since the company no longer produces baseball cards, it makes sense that they didn't want to continue to pay maintenance fees on a trademark they weren't going to use anymore.

Anyway, back to baseball:

Kyle Abbott comes to you today as a member of the following group of pitchers since 1901 to pitch enough to qualify for that season's W-L% title but finish with only 1 win. Nobody has ever pitched enough to qualify without winning a single game.

Anthony Young's appearance here is quite memorable as most of it was part of his record-setting performance of consecutive games without a win. As you can see from his pitching line, he was incredibly unlucky. He pitched well with an above average ERA and still could barely win a game. The same can be said for Zane Smith.

Abbott, whose performance came with the Phillies in 1992, was far more deserving of his bad record, earning an ERA over 5.00 during an era when that was fairly uncommon. He didn't make it back to the majors until 1995 and didn't pitch much more but did have some success including picking up2 wins in relief. An interesting note on how Abbott moved from the Angels to the Phillies:

December 8, 1991: Traded by the California Angels with Ruben Amaro to the Philadelphia Phillies for Von Hayes.

That's current Phillies GM Ruben Amaro who joined the Phillies' organization on that day.

1986 Topps is generally regarded as one of the worst sets of all time. This Sanchez card is pretty representative in demonstrating the following negative attributes:

• uninspired design that was outdated the day it was released
• black edges that chipped easily
• bad photographs such as this boring "action" shot
• blurry photographs
• lots of dark backgrounds even with dark uniforms
• bad left-to-right centering made obvious by the design

What's more, this set has few good rookie cards, unlike the loaded 1985 Topps and 1986 Topps Traded sets. The best rookie cards in the base set are, in no particular order, Cecil Fielder, Lenny Dykstra, Ozzie Guillen, Vince Coleman, Darren Daulton, and, umm, Kirk McCaskill? Ivan Calderon?

The next year, 1987 would be the beginning of a new era for Topps. That set was loaded with good rookies and was also made in much larger quantities than past Topps sets. To many, it was the beginning of "modern" card collecting with mass production being the main theme. It's too bad that the 1986 Topps set marked the end of an era with a fuzzy, off-center whimper.

Anyway, I chose Alejandro Sanchez's card from this set for a couple of reasons. Firstly, he's a player of whom I had actually never heard. He had a short career in the 1980s, splitting time with 5 teams over parts of 6 seasons and totaling only 109 games. Secondly, he comes up very high on the following list of most plate appearances in a season without drawing a single walk (pitchers excluded):

Yup, those are some bad seasons. At least Sanchez had a respectable batting average and hit 6 homers in just 133 plate appearances.

There are a number of interesting seasons on there but probably none more amusing than #23, achieved by current Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane. As the best-selling book (and now movie) Moneyball chronicled, walking was one of the things that Beane emphasized in players he sought as GM. How ironic that it was one of the things that he himself was not very good at as a player in the major leagues.

Further reading:

Raphy recently pointed me to this article about how the Reds have incorporated baseball cards into their tickets, including a 1986 Topps Mario Soto.

We return from a one week hiatus to bring you a new card of the week!

The 1976 Topps set was a sort of antidote for their 1975 offering. That 1975 is better remembered by collectors due to its brash colors as well as large borders, not to mention some big rookie cards for players including George Brett, Robin Yount, Jim Rice, Gary Carter, and Keith Hernandez. (The 1976 set, in comparison, has Dennis Eckersley as its best rookie card followed by a slew of second-tier stars.)

Anyway, at the time, that 1976 set seemed quite tame by comparison and this Woodie Fryman card is a particularly good example. The color scheme is great, with the red, white, and blue card colors matching the Expos' uniform colors nicely, not to mention the blue sky and stadium background. Fryman has a classic pitcher's pose for a baseball card, which I both love and hate. I love being able to clearly see a guy's face but in general I much prefer action shots on cards. This is why I love sets that feature action photos on the front and then posed head shots on the back (such as 1988 Score.)

The back of the card is very 1970s Topps, with attempts to integrate simplistic baseball imagery into the design. (Note the ball, bat, and pennant-shaped name banner.)

Also check out the comment at the bottom, noting that Fryman hurled in the 1972 playoffs. He pitched pretty well, starting 2 games and earning a 3.65 ERA while allowing only 11 hits and 2 walks in 12.1 innings. However, he got the loss in both games. So perhaps when Topps says he "hurled" in the playoffs, perhaps they mean to say that he vomited.

Turns out that Fryman holds an obscure record of sorts. He and Jerry Reuss are the last 2 guys to have a save in every single relief appearance they made in a season (minimum 2 relief appearances):

I showed as far back as 1960 but recall that the save wasn't an official stat until 1969 and was modified a couple of times thereafter.

Overall Fryman had a pretty good career. Yes his career W-L record was just 141-155 with an ERA+ of 96 but he got a late start in the majors, not coming up until age 26 and he was good enough to continue pitching through age 43. He was twice an All-Star, including in 1976.

Further reading:

• To see lots more on the 1976 Topps set, including many card images, check out Cardboard Junkie, one of the best baseball card blogs around. The author has a post on the similarity of 1976 Topps and 2009 O-Pee-Chee (an Upper Deck product) right here.
• For a refresher on the 1975 Topps set, check out 1975 Topps (it's far out, man) a card-by-card look at that set by another one of the best card bloggers around.

A few years ago, this might have been a more interesting post for many readers. In 2008, Topps released a "Heritage" set that recycled the design of the 1960 set and included an all-time All-Star Rookie set using the above design. Before Topps and the other card manufacturers went crazy reproducing old designs, these classic cards were really something special.

I love photos like the one used of Fairly. Although it's not an action shot, I like being able to see the stadium and crowd in the background. Fairly must have been out toward the outfield since everyone in the stands in looking to the right, presumably toward the infield. I do wonder a bit about the coloring of this card, as that Dodger blue isn't looking all that blue. This might be due to the age of the card or the fact that print quality wasn't nearly as good back then as it is today.

I'm not sure why Fairly received the honor of an All-Star Rookie card. He didn't hit all that well in 1959, garnering a 74 OPS+ over 284 plate appearances. He came in as a defensive replacement during the 1959 World Series and was part of the winning team but I am still surprised that he made the cut for the honor. This list of outfielders in their 1st or 2nd years in 1959 with at least 100 PAs shows some possible better choices.

In 1960, Fairly got into only 16 games and, since they were all late in the season I assume he had been relegated back to the minors and only got called up in September. He ended up doing something statistically odd, becoming the only guy since 1901 to hit 3 triples in a season without any singles:

These guys all had more triples than singles and, as such, either had poor batting averages or played in a vanishingly small number of games.

In the end, Fairly had a very solid major-league playing career including a series of good years with the Expos and a very nice season towards the end of his career with the first-year expansion Toronto Blue Jays.

I had the opportunity to hear Fairly call numerous TV games as a broadcaster for the Seattle Mariners and, I have to say--I found him to be an awful broadcaster. He had a long career on TV so I bet my opinion is in the minority but I always found him to be the master of saying the plainly obvious. I was also bugged by the fact that despite having a long and successful playing career, he seemed to rarely offer any insight about the game from the perspective of a former player.