Swag from Nachos Grande

In January Chris from Nachos Grande ran a group break involving a bunch of boxes from the early 2000s.  If you're a Phils Fan the early aughts is a pretty quiet time - typically this means a lot of Scott Rolen and Bobby Abreu - neither of which is a fan favorite.  Despite this the Nachos Grande break was a fun one and provided us with a bunch of nice cards.  Here are some of the highlights:

 A couple of Phils from my childhood.   These are from the UD Vintage set.  These are the cards that mimic 1975 Topps.

Fleer Vintage cards that homage 1954 Topps.

Topps Finest Bobby Abreu and Todd Helton - The NG break featured one random team, Team Phungo got the Rockies.  Not a great one if you like classic cards, I mean who are they going to put in the Vintage sets Larry Walker?   

 Fleer Inserts of Pat Burrell and Die Cut of Phungo Favorite Randy Wolf

1986 Topps Yu Darvish

Another one of those 1986 Topps Fantasy Cards

Faux 1986 Topps Yu Darvish

Did 2012 Topps Sandbag Stars out of Series One?

While reading reviews and opinions associated with 2012 Topps I notices a handful of bloggers commenting that their packs and breaks lacked star power. 

2012 Topps #319 AL LL Wins Verlander, Sabathia, Weaver 

Indeed 2 of the 3 players on the AL Wins League Leaders Card were not honored with Series 1 base cards.

This poses the following Question:

Did Topps Sandbag Series One in 2012 in an attempt to Backload the Stars into Series 2?

This is an odd assumption.  I have thought that Series 1 was a little more star laden in the past few years, but maybe I am just jaded by the time Series 2 hits the streets.

To look into whether Series 1 is Star Deffered I had to find a way to measure Stardom.  Depending on what the researcher values this can be measured a number of ways.  Baseball-Reference has an incredible warehouse of information easily accesible.  In the end I decided to use something that is pretty unscientific, yet I believe highly fitting -  The MVP Voting.  The MVP voting is definitely a subjective excercise - but so is Superstardom.  Chances are unless your a fantasy geek you first learned about a star player from outside your club via word of mouth, not analyzing their OPS in the Internation League.

Between the 2 leagues there were 72 Players who recieved either an MVP or Cy Young vote for the 2011 season.  Of those 72, 10 were duplicated pitchers who also were on MVP Ballots (ie. Justin Verlander).  I removed 4 players that were either FAs or we expected to move teams during the off-season (Pujols. Fielder, Reyes, Beltran) although in the end 2 of them were sort of issued cards :)

That left us with 58 "Stars" In theory half of these players (29) should have been issued Cards in Series 1 while the other 29 would get into Series 2.  Let see how they fared

In each column pair, the player name is preceded by their series 1 card number.  If no number is given that indicates that the player was not in 2012 Series 1.  Pardon the weird psuedo-alphabetical order.    

Card	Player		Card	Player		Card	Player
213	A Avila		290	Grandrson		288	Montero
130	A Cabrera		150	Halladay		165	Morse
50	A Gonzalez		190	Hamels		120	Pence
294	Axford		300	Hamilton			R Cano
100	Bautista		280	Howard			Romero
	Beckett		76	I Kennedy		117	Ruiz
310	Beltre			I Kinsler			Sabathia
	Berkman			J Shields		185	Sandoval
1	Braun			J Upton			Stanton
103	Bumgarner		250	Jer Weaver		110	Teixeira
155	Cain		330	Kemp		140	Tulowitzk
270	Castro			Kershaw			V Martinez
	CJ Wilson		20	Kimbrel			Valverde
	D Haren		105	Konerko			Verlander
	D Pedroia			Lee			Victorino
206	D Robertson			Lincecum			Vogelsong
	E Longoria		200	M Cabrera			Votto
	Ellsbury		180	M Rivera		195	Zobrist
	Gallardo		55	M Young
	Gordon		174	Molina

From the chart we see that 33 of the 58 stars received S1 cards.  that is 4 more than half, or 57% to be more specific.  Even if you add Fielder and Beltran as misses, Topps was above the 50% threshold. 

This doesn't necessary mean 2012 Topps contains as many stars as years past - it only means that cards were issued for over half of the "stars" in our pool.  There is typically some overlap of some cards between S1 and S2 so that may account for the extra 7%.  In years past this number may have been greater - if I get the energy we will look at 2011 Topps to compare and cotrast. 

There may be some other factors at play - I am only investigating Stars, there may just be more unkown or little known players this year - this adds to the perception of less stars.  The 2011 release calendar may have hampered getting some rookies into 2011 Series 3 and Topps added them to the inaugural 2012 set. 

I also think that there are less know stars in the post-steroid era.  Stars stick around less time and age out sooner.  There is more new talent and we are less likely to know who they are.  Also there is the agism factor - the older I get, the harder these things are to track.

Sources:

2012 Topps Series 1 Checker - Baseball-Cardpedia

2011 MVP and Cy Young Award Voting - Baseball-Reference

 

 

 

1986 Topps Yoenis Cespedes Card Surfaces

As part of their Fantasy preview MLB.coms 1986ish Topps Cards includes this one of Yoenis Cespedes.  I had to photoshop the team name a bit, as MLB.com had ran the T off the end of the card.

Faux 1986 Topps Yoenis Cespedes

For the earliar Phungo post on Yoenis click here.   Note that the spelling change on the first name.

MLB.com fantasy report feartures 1986 Topps knock offs

MLB.com publishes a fantasy baseball preview profiling the leagues players, In a nice nod to baseball cards of the past MLB creates custom cards of each players to accompany their player summaries. 

This year they sort of used 1986 topps.  While the 1986 Topps design is somewhat minimalist, due to the sheer volume of 1986 cards it is quite memorable.  I am not as enthralled with this years sample as past years, but they are interesting to check out.  

Every year these cards sort of appear like UD Vintage or OPC cards where they try to recycle an old Topps Design, but change it just enough that it isn't really "stealing".  Not sure why MLB.com chooses to do this.  They are already in cahoots w/ Topps, so why not just use the design or build it into the partnership.  You would think Topps would be all for the idea. 

Faux 1986 Topps Cole Hamels

You can tell they are going for 86 topps, but right away you can tell that things are a bit askew.  The Fonts on both the team and player names are way out of whack - A subtler difference is the position is in a box while in 1986 Topps it was in a circle. 

For a more detailed look at 86 Topps - check out the 1986topps blog. 

New Phils

Faux 1986 Topps Jonathan Papelbon

I think this is the first card of the closer as a Phil!

Faux 1986 Topps Dontrelle Willis

And dare I say Super Short Print #333??

Faux 1986 Topps Prince Fielder  

Previous Previews

2011 (1983 Topps)

2010 (1987 Topps)

2012 Topps Hanger Pack All-Stars

This set of cards isn't really a set of all-stars, it is more of an all-star team made up of favorite players or favorite photos from the Hanger Pack.

The Battery

LHP - Mike Minor
RHP - Edwin Jackson
C - Bryan Pena
LHP - Tom Gorzelanny

The hanger was pretty soft on pitchers, but the shots of Gorzelanny and Jackson are interesting.  I have no idea who Bryan Pena is, but it is hard to go wrong with actions shots of catchers behind the plate. 


Infield

2B - Jeff Keppinger
SS - Ian Desmond
1B - Michael Morse
3B - Brent Morel

Wow 2 Nats make the Hanger All-Star Infield and neither of them is Ryan Zimmerman.  Brent Morel card has been documented elsewhere - once again a relatively novel photo - a third baseman handling a bunt.  happens all the time, but rarely on card.

Outfield

 LF - Delmon Young
CF - Marlon Byrd
RF - Jose Bautista
CF - Grady Sizemore

Bautista was the sole 00 hero number in the Hanger.  Sizemore always has been a Phungo favorite, despite is declining numbers.  The top two shots are pretty cool fielding pictures with interesting backgrounds. 

Looking Back

2012 Topps First Card
2012 Topps Phillies Cards

2012 Topps Hanger Pack - The Phillies

Warning - Team Phungo will be piling on the 2012 Topps this week.

Apparently these are referred to as Hanger Packs, not Kindle Packs, or Nook Packs as I wanted to call them.  Just for the record at my local big box the packs were not on Hangers.  They were instead in a box on the bottom shelf in the card aisle.

Today we will look at the 3+ Phillies cards that I got in the pack.

2012 Topps
NL League Leaders HR - Kemp, Prince, Ryan Howard
1987 mini Shane Victorino
Red Target parallel Antonio Bastardo 
Base Vance Worley

Good mix of cards here.  Getting two inserts of Phils more than makes up for getting only one base card.  One reason to pick up at Target rather than Walmart is that the retail specifc red insert works better for the Phils then the blue from Wal Mart.

I am with Night Owl regarding League Leaders cards.  The format doesn't work and now they have added the rather odd AL and NL active leaders cards to the mix.  And hey Topps lets put the LL cards back together rather than scattering them throughout the set. 

There was one other noteworthy sort of Phillies card in the Hanger, that was the Jim Thome Checklist card which commemorates his 600th Home Run.  Thome is pictured as a Twin on the card, as that was the uni he was wearing the day of the Milestone homer.