Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 39 : An Elbow Epidemic And Topps Heritage Release

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Ep. 39 : An Elbow Epidemic And Topps Heritage Release · Cards & Categories

• 0:15
  Hello, and welcome everybody to episode thirty nine of Cards and Categories. I'm
• 0:20
  Mike Coulard from Rasball, joined this evening by my very good friend Jeremy Brewer,
• 0:26
  also from Rasball. Jeremy, how you doing on this fine holiday?
• 0:32
  And I love the pun. You've been waiting for that one and I appreciate
• 0:37
  it. I'm doing just fine. I just got back from watching the Miami
• 0:42
  Marlins won their first game of the season this last weekend, so that was
• 0:48
  you know, I don't know what else to say about it. It's disappointed
• 0:53
  to lose to Miami. It's at any point in time, it feels like
• 0:57
  they've rightfully resumed their place and they fall lore where they belong. But yeah,
• 1:03
  doing great, ready to go, and to your point, is a
• 1:06
  great holiday. Yeah. We are recording this on April tenth in the evening
• 1:11
  when Jackson Holiday has been called up by the Orioles and made his debut for
• 1:17
  them at second base. So he just put up his first career RBI with
• 1:22
  a ground out against the Red Sox. So congrats to Jackson Holiday on making
• 1:26
  it up. And he didn't get sent down for very long. So the
• 1:30
  Orioles decided after ten games, they were ready to bring Holiday up and take
• 1:34
  the seasoning off at Triple A or whatever he needed in terms of getting used
• 1:41
  to second base. But he, as well as everybody else down in Norfolk
• 1:45
  for that Triple A Baltimore squad has been on fire to start the season,
• 1:49
  so they made the move as Ramon Urias and Jordan Westburg have struggled to provide
• 1:57
  much on the offensive side for the Orioles. So, I mean, if
• 2:00
  you drafted Jackson Holiday, he was certainly going pretty heavy or like pretty high
• 2:06
  in drafts, you know. I would say mostly around like tenth to twelfth
• 2:10
  round usually was where I was seeing him during draft season, but there were
• 2:14
  some where he was going earlier. So you're certainly excited if you had a
• 2:19
  Jackson Holiday draft share and are now getting to use him in the third week
• 2:23
  of the season. Yeah, I think this is the best outcome folks could
• 2:27
  have hoped for that we're drafting him, especially later later in the season,
• 2:30
  you know, or the draft season when people knew that he wasn't making the
• 2:35
  opening day roster. I think we all expected it would be long, but
• 2:38
  like to be confirmed, it were like just a basic barely even two weeks
• 2:43
  into the season and you know, he's he's getting called up and they're not
• 2:47
  calling him up to just you know, get every other day at bats.
• 2:51
  He's going to be in there, and he's going to be there for a
• 2:53
  long term. So it's exciting to see. You know. I don't know
• 2:58
  if you caught the the Buster Only tweet the people were dredging up from.
• 3:04
  I think it was like twenty thirteen when Only called out that Jackson Holiday was
• 3:07
  going to be an All Star just watching. I don't know what age Jackson
• 3:13
  Holiday was there, probably three years old, you know, eleven. Is
• 3:17
  he twenty? Yeah, I think he's twenty, so even like a nine
• 3:21
  year old at the time, nine ten year old and only you know,
• 3:23
  he only got so much bad press or say that's not a chance, you
• 3:27
  know what you're talking about? All this now people are jumping back on that
• 3:30
  thread on Twitter just trying to be like, well, but he's not an
• 3:35
  All Star yet. It's just like, come on, guy, It's like
• 3:39
  it's give the guy, give the guy a win here. He called that
• 3:43
  one a mile away, so yeah, exactly, And I mean, so
• 3:49
  are you putting Jackson Holiday in your top one hundred hitters, like where do
• 3:52
  you have him ranked in relation to other bats in the top one hundred and
• 3:57
  specifically at second base in middle infield. Yeah, I think he definitely jumps
• 4:01
  right into the top one hundred. You know, I don't think there's any
• 4:04
  question. I think said I believe actually had him already in the in the
• 4:08
  top one hundred just at the very you probably did I just at the very
• 4:11
  back. Yeah. Well I shouldn't say that I forgot as well, but
• 4:16
  yeah I did. I had him very much kind of at the I had
• 4:23
  him ninety seven, ninety eight, something like that, just to put it
• 4:27
  away, just to kind of give him the nod. But you know,
• 4:30
  he's my plan had been. I didn't think you need to call it this
• 4:33
  quickly. I was thinking that he was gonna be more of a maybe mid
• 4:36
  may, you know, if they were to put him down and actually do
• 4:40
  something. But I think he's probably gonna move up into the I'm gonna say
• 4:44
  sixty to seventy range. Without looking too closely, you know, I think
• 4:47
  he's gonna move That's gonna be pretty a pretty uh, a pretty reliable guy
• 4:54
  to have. At this point in time, he's still still a rookie still
• 4:58
  is gonna adjustment period things like that, But there's been enough early injuries and
• 5:02
  there's enough high upside here. But I feel pretty good about having him there,
• 5:06
  and I fully own I'm probably gonna be wrong and midway through the season,
• 5:11
  you know, I think he's gonna be one of those He's either gonna
• 5:14
  be like back eighty ninety or he's gonna be up at like thirty. He's
• 5:18
  you know, we really just have to see how he does he have an
• 5:21
  adjustment period or not getting called up here. And I think he's gonna have
• 5:27
  a little bit of an adjustment period, but I don't think it's gonna be
• 5:30
  too substantial. Yeah, I agree that he does seem like a very complete
• 5:33
  hitter. He looked amazing in spring training. I mean the strikeouts were a
• 5:38
  little high in spring training, but he went down to Triple A and righted
• 5:41
  that ship immediately. That he just seems to be I mean, almost somebody
• 5:47
  from like a different planet in terms of his ability to hit and make contact
• 5:54
  with the ball, hit it hard. Jackson Holidays. I mean, he's
• 5:57
  grown up with a complex of like baseball around him, as like his dad
• 6:01
  is has like a big like hitting training compound in Oklahoma that he grew up
• 6:08
  on, and so yeah, I think this is he's got the potential to
• 6:12
  be something really special. I mean this year, certainly if you drafted him,
• 6:16
  like, I think he's going to be a formidable second base, middle
• 6:21
  and field adoption. I don't know where the projections get his batting average from.
• 6:27
  I guess because previously in twenty twenty three, you know, he struck
• 6:31
  out quite a bit and only hit two sixty seven in his ninety one played
• 6:35
  appearances at Triple A. But Jackson Holliday seems like he should be a lock
• 6:41
  for like a two to eighty plus average, and then obviously you get the
• 6:45
  runs and RBI production from the bottom of the Baltimore lineup. And I think
• 6:49
  Holiday is going to run a little bit because I think he's going to struggle
• 6:51
  to get to his in game power he's only twenty, but I think he'll
• 6:56
  make up for it a little bit with some extra stolen bases. So I
• 6:59
  think you're looking at mid to upper teens and stolen bases. I think a
• 7:04
  little bit maybe like Bryson Stott with a little more power is what you're looking
• 7:09
  at. Probably for like a comp but certainly like in the future, I
• 7:14
  think the ceiling is unlimited. Yeah. I think that's the interesting thing though
• 7:18
  with Holiday this year, so redraft leagues only is my commentary is if there's
• 7:25
  somebody coming to you looking at him like he just got called up, he's
• 7:27
  the next best thing, he's gonna be Corbyn Carroll. I don't think that's
• 7:30
  the case. I do not think he's gonna be Corbyn Carroll. He's just
• 7:32
  twenty. He's gonna have an adjustment period. To your point, the power
• 7:38
  is not gonna be there. I'd be thrilled with you know, thirteen to
• 7:43
  fifteen homers. I think it'll be thrilled with that. And so if somebody
• 7:46
  comes to you just like I want Jackson Holiday, I want him and you're
• 7:49
  getting a you know, second third round hitter or something like that, you
• 7:56
  jump on that all day and don't look back to me. I you know,
• 8:01
  Dynasty leagues whole different discussion. Hold on keeping you're not moving him unless
• 8:07
  you're getting one of those like top five or six bats at that point.
• 8:11
  And you know, so if somebody comes to you offering Hulu Rodriguez, sure
• 8:16
  go for it. Fully support that. Uh, you know it's I always
• 8:20
  love those conversations like is that enough. It's like like that's like the ninetieth
• 8:24
  percentile outcome we're hoping for here, ex actually don't hold out for ninety five.
• 8:28
  Like, but redraft leagues, I think, you know, if there's
• 8:31
  somebody that's really hot after that hot new prospect something like that, and they're
• 8:35
  dangling some stuff, squeeze them and get some good stuff out of it and
• 8:39
  don't look back. Yeah, well, I mean you might also be trying
• 8:43
  to trade for some pitching in your fantasy leagues. After we had just an
• 8:46
  epidemic of arm injuries over the weekend, and specifically the elbow injuries are really
• 8:52
  blowing out across the league. Lots of torn UCLs right at the UCLs that
• 8:58
  the I think this kind of is gonna keep happening until there are fundamental changes
• 9:05
  in the game. Because of the way players train in the off season nowadays,
• 9:09
  and then the way that spring training ramps up, you can tell that
• 9:13
  they're putting pretty good effort in but they're not white kicking it into the maximum
• 9:18
  lever during spring. So when the season finally happens, I think it's almost
• 9:24
  gonna be almost you know, a tradition until things are figured out from a
• 9:28
  higher level that we're gonna just have a bevy of injured arms, injured pitchers
• 9:35
  coming through within the first couple weeks of the season. So certainly grimmer news
• 9:41
  that when we started with about Jackson Holliday. But I think we're gonna start
• 9:45
  with the big one, and that is Spencer Strider being out for it looks
• 9:50
  like he I mean, we're still waiting for that second opinion to come through
• 9:54
  at this point. So he it has been reported that he has a sprained
• 9:56
  UCL, has damaged to the UCL. I mean, all the words and
• 10:01
  the way that the fact patterns lining up, I'm pretty much expecting Spencer Strider
• 10:05
  to go under some sort of surgery and get a Tommy John. He's already
• 10:11
  had one in his career during college, so it could be an internal brace
• 10:16
  or you know, maybe it's a different type of tear. I'm obviously not
• 10:20
  the doctor looking at the medicals of Spencer Strider's MRIs, but he was by
• 10:26
  far the number one pitcher in our fantasy player pool, so certainly a huge
• 10:31
  blow and if you had him on your team, you would have had to
• 10:33
  use a first round pick on him. So Brew if you, I mean,
• 10:37
  I know you've got a few shares and in some of our leagues,
• 10:41
  So what are you trying to do to mitigate this loss? Yeah? I
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  mean it's there's two ways to look at it here. As one is everybody
• 10:50
  else is losing pictures too, so maybe it's not that bad. I will
• 10:54
  say, I honestly I didn't have any shares of these four guys somehow.
• 10:58
  I have no idea how. But before we're going to talk about, I
• 11:01
  didn't have one chair. I had one team that had to a the top
• 11:03
  two, and I luckily traded one away. Yeah, like this first week
• 11:07
  of the season, like that worked well. But yeah, if I you
• 11:11
  know Strider. The hard thing about Strider is that they're not saying what's going
• 11:16
  on? And I think you know, Uh they went and talked to uh
• 11:20
  Snitker and they basically said, like, what is this gonna gonna be?
• 11:24
  You know Tommy John And he was like, well, it won't be good,
• 11:28
  but I but we'll get fixed and he'll be back and better than every
• 11:31
  type thing. And so to me, that means he's definitely out for I
• 11:35
  mean, I'm gonna say I'm seventy eight percent. Sure, it's the whole
• 11:39
  season. I know, it's not like we're talking make it back for the
• 11:45
  last month or two. Uh So, you know, I'm not dropping right
• 11:48
  now just because you don't want to eat Crow later because you drop the number
• 11:52
  one pitcher in baseball and he felt you know, he ended up sleeping on
• 11:58
  it wrong or something. But I think at this point you are definitely going
• 12:03
  into the trade trade pool, and you're you're going into a little bit of
• 12:09
  the free agent pool and kind of just scoping out what what options you have
• 12:13
  for me. You know, I'm I'm looking at some of these young,
• 12:16
  upstart guys that made kind of changes in their pitching repertoire. I'm I'm all
• 12:22
  in and like the Tanner Hawks and Garrett with Locksover in Boston, and so
• 12:26
  I'm looking to throw just a few three or four darts at those kind of
• 12:33
  guys. Jared Jones, if he's still out there, you know, again,
• 12:37
  take that, take that type of gamble. I you know, I
• 12:39
  think there might be a few guys that are still lingering around because of injury
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  concerns, like a Nicolodolo, Kyle Bradish, like anything I can find that
• 12:48
  might, you know, get a chance to get back. I'm I'm looking
• 12:52
  at those guys. So yeah, it's disappointing, but I think you have
• 12:56
  to act like he's not going to be there, and you got to row
• 13:00
  three or four darts trying to find some stability in the rotation. And if
• 13:05
  you really anchored on him, you gotta look real quick to flip a hitter,
• 13:11
  because you can't go all season without that your ace, without an ace
• 13:16
  of some sort. So luckily for me, I'm pretty because the leagues that
• 13:20
  we were talking about were dynasty type leagues, and so I did not spend
• 13:24
  the first round pick on him, and he was I did not my rotation
• 13:28
  hurts, don't get me wrong, but I did not build my rotations around
• 13:33
  Spencer Strider. It just hopefully happened that he was a nice piece of it.
• 13:37
  And so at least I'm not hurting for Indians and I don't have to
• 13:41
  bring a lanceln and Kyle Gibson. So yeah, exactly, I mean,
• 13:45
  yeah, I think, honestly, I'm not even sure I've got like a
• 13:48
  great strategy to try to attack this, because you are trying to replace a
• 13:52
  guy who you had penciled in for like two hundred and seventy k's or something
• 13:56
  insane that at this point, if you do own Spencer Strider, you just
• 14:01
  have to scramble with. I think two start pitchers are your best friend in
• 14:07
  two in weekly leagues, so certainly going out to the waiver wire every week
• 14:11
  and checking who has two palatable starts and trying to stream your way to some
• 14:18
  volume there. Otherwise, I mean, Triple A just kicked off, like
• 14:22
  the minor leagues just kicked off, and I'm looking at the list of kind
• 14:26
  of starting pitchers leading k nines down there, and you know, Jack Lighter
• 14:31
  had a really great outing for Texas down in Triple A, and so some
• 14:37
  of these younger players that are really coming up when Priester has been good down
• 14:43
  there. But I don't know if I Joey Estes for Oakland in Triple A,
• 14:50
  it looks like he had a pretty solid outing in terms of k's.
• 14:54
  The era was rough, But that's what I'm starting to do, is starting
• 14:58
  to keep an eye on who coming through Triple A and maybe making some early
• 15:03
  moves and some some people who could end up being the breakout starters. So
• 15:09
  certainly it's where it's deeper than the pool that you're in right now. That
• 15:15
  like, it takes a little extra legwork to be able to try to identify
• 15:18
  these players in the minor leagues. But I think if you had Spencer Strider
• 15:22
  and you're trying to keep things competitive and move on, you're gonna have to
• 15:28
  come up with a few different strategies and also hit on a lottery ticket or
• 15:33
  to to be able to find some sort of luck. Yeah, and I
• 15:37
  wanna I want to go back to I said, you know, guys like
• 15:39
  Tom Tanner, Howe can Garrett Witlock throw a few other names out there,
• 15:43
  like a Brady Singer, I think another one of Shaan and Ayah, you
• 15:45
  know favorite yours. Yeah, it would be guys like guys that are on
• 15:48
  that border that that might still be on in a free agent pool, but
• 15:50
  they won't be for long. The other other way that I would look to
• 15:54
  attack this is go after a guy like a Max Scherzer, Like, Yeah,
• 15:58
  if you're I mean, at this point, you're you're throat, you're
• 16:02
  gambling already, right, you're playing with fire. If you're going off for
• 16:03
  two star pitchers and stuff like that. Yes, Max Suerzer is one of
• 16:07
  those guys that should be back before too long. And if there's one guy
• 16:11
  that might not be too expensive and could end up looking like Spencer Schrider,
• 16:15
  it's Max Scherzer. Do I believe it's gonna happen. No, but you
• 16:21
  know I don't. Also don't think uh investing in uh Ronel Blanco is going
• 16:26
  to give you Spencer Strider by by any means. So like you, you
• 16:32
  got to take gambles this point. So it hurts hurts losing Strider, But
• 16:37
  honestly, of the guys we're talking about, I'm not as torn up about
• 16:40
  Strider as I'm am about our next guy. Yeah, and the next guy
• 16:44
  is Shane Bieber from the Cleveland Guardians, who this one kind of came out
• 16:48
  nowhere. There was no indication in his last outing in terms of like any
• 16:53
  sort of fastball vlow drop, which was it was very evident with Spencer Strider
• 16:59
  that I was actually doing that game, covering it for a roto Wire that
• 17:03
  night, and I was looking through the Baseball Savant and I was like,
• 17:07
  huh, yeah, his like velocity was way down, and somebody had already
• 17:11
  gotten to the injury news before I had written the game cap for Spencer Strider.
• 17:18
  But yeah, Shane Bieber came out of nowhere Saturday morning that I just
• 17:22
  like woke up and our rasball discord was blowing up because everybody was discussing the
• 17:30
  Shane Bieber injury. That like I said, he didn't leave his outing,
• 17:33
  He didn't show a velocity drop. He had honestly been way up in terms
• 17:37
  of velocity. But if you do recall Shane Bieber was sidelined with a sprained
• 17:45
  UCL or some sort of other elbow injury, it was a balky elbow all
• 17:48
  of twenty twenty three in terms of like he was battling it in and out,
• 17:52
  and so he went to drive line in the off season and discovered It's
• 17:59
  kind of fun looking back on it now, but like when he was pitching
• 18:02
  well and spring training, Bieber credited the new like success to rechanging like his
• 18:11
  slider grip that driveline. One of the first things that they found was that
• 18:15
  his slider grip wasn't positioned on the ball the same way. But in retrospect,
• 18:19
  I wonder if he was gripping it differently because he was masking an injury
• 18:25
  underneath and in his elbow. So yeah, Shane Bieber is going to be
• 18:30
  down all this year. I would expect a decent amount of next year two.
• 18:36
  And he is a free agent this offseason, so he's likely to sign
• 18:40
  somewhere for like a two year pillow deal where you know, it's almost like
• 18:44
  what Tyler Mouley signed with the Rangers in terms of, you know, take
• 18:48
  some time to rehab and then come back on that second year and pitch and
• 18:52
  full. So, like I said, like you said, this one really
• 18:56
  hurt because especially where you were taking Shane Bieber, you were looking for some
• 19:00
  upside in drafts, and now you probably have lost your number two or three
• 19:04
  fantasy starter in your leagues. Yeah, and to Frank like, he looked
• 19:08
  like a one. Oh, he looked like an absolute one. You know
• 19:11
  you were hoping if you drafted early in the off season, you know you
• 19:15
  might have to share from him as like a fifth starter type thing. Like
• 19:18
  he was dropping all over the place. Nobody nobody believed maybe probably was injured,
• 19:23
  and they were right. But you know, I think that you know,
• 19:26
  he he struck out twenty guys in twelve innings and he had a four
• 19:33
  to seventeen baby in the in the two games, like he was unlucky and
• 19:37
  looked phenomenal, and so it's it's just unfortunate. And I think you hit
• 19:44
  the nail on the head there. Of he's a free agent and so this
• 19:48
  that that's a really interesting dynamic. You know. I feel like, if
• 19:52
  I'm Cleveland, I'm I'm offering him the pillow deal. I'm offering him like
• 19:56
  a three year deal or something like that, just to say, hey,
• 20:00
  get yourself back, you know, hit the hit the open market here at
• 20:03
  thirty two years old, after you've got a year and a half ofer your
• 20:06
  belt, something like that, because that's the only way that Cleveland, you
• 20:08
  know, retains the guy like this. But I mean it's really it knocks
• 20:11
  Shane Bieber out of your useful discussion for like two years. It's I mean,
• 20:15
  Walker Bueler is almost the perfect comp here to a degree of the guy
• 20:19
  that yeah, got hurt is good, you know, supposed to come back
• 20:22
  at the time. But is he gonna be back in time? Then?
• 20:25
  Are we talking mid season? What will the form be like? That's what
• 20:29
  we're gonna be talking about Shane Bieber in two years from now. And so
• 20:32
  even in dynasty leagues, right, I don't I don't think you can really
• 20:37
  hold on to him unless you know he's free and you can you have a
• 20:41
  spot to stash him, right. Uh, So that that's really gonna be
• 20:45
  gonna be tough. So this is unfortunate. I hate to say. I
• 20:48
  was looking at our ras ball picks. I lost my al and nl Cy
• 20:52
  Young, so I was wrong. I'm gonna I'm gonna say I had the
• 21:00
  two best pictures and as of today, I'm gonna say that I had the
• 21:06
  two weeks I Young's and tried to you even argue on that one, but
• 21:11
  I'm gonna I'm gonna lay into that and say that I was right after two
• 21:14
  weeks, just horribly wrong in in October. So I'll let you take that
• 21:19
  vigory lap. It's the little things in life for me. And uh.
• 21:26
  The other picture that we had go down with Tommy John this week is Uri
• 21:30
  Perez from the Marlins, and this one, also, I think is hurts
• 21:36
  just from a general overall vibes of like of major League Baseball, because the
• 21:41
  Marlins were really careful with Uri Prez in terms of treating him like a very
• 21:48
  fragile glass menagerie that he was, and it still didn't work that. You
• 21:52
  know, they worked on limiting his innings coming up last year, and even
• 21:57
  before that that, he just had such an incredible ceiling being, you know,
• 22:03
  like six' seven with a ninety eight mile on our fastball. It
• 22:07
  was poetry to watch, absolutely like fantastic to watch. But you could just
• 22:12
  tell it wasn't gonna last very long because it just it also was violent at
• 22:18
  the same time. And so eury Prez he started spring training with an elbow
• 22:22
  injury, and you know, I think this is what people were fearing,
• 22:26
  or I guess he didn't start spring training, but he went down with an
• 22:30
  elbow injury part way through spring training, and I think after that his draft
• 22:34
  stock really dropped really fast because people already saw the writing on the wall here
• 22:41
  as euri Prez joined Sandy Alcontra on the Marlins, with Shelved Hayes, with
• 22:47
  aces, with Tommy Don' surgery recovery going on, and so yeah, this
• 22:52
  one I think probably was a little bit less impactful on the whole because even
• 22:56
  if you're drafting Euriprez, you knew the innings cap was going to be in
• 23:03
  place this year, so you couldn't have counted on him for more than you
• 23:06
  know, maybe one hundred and forty innings. And on top of that,
• 23:10
  it just you were always waiting for the shoe to drop at the end of
• 23:15
  the day. And it's just unfortunate it's happened to Ury Prez so quickly.
• 23:19
  Who'd have thought that if you said Uri Press is gonna have time with John
• 23:23
  surgery, it would be the third worst news of starting pictures. Like that's
• 23:30
  really disappointing, uh, because you go down the list and it's like,
• 23:33
  oh, usually as we go through the transactions or injuries or something like that,
• 23:37
  like by the time he like the third or the fourth guy, you're
• 23:40
  just like, well, we're kind of scraping the bottom of barrel here.
• 23:42
  Two weeks in it went like the third guy is still like an ace,
• 23:45
  Like, yeah, I'm looking. I was looking at Uri stats and I'm
• 23:48
  like sitting here like you were talking like a who'sion replace at Spencer Strider.
• 23:52
  I'm like, man, it would be nice if there's a guy out there
• 23:53
  that you know, could strike out twelve or thirteen for nine and keep the
• 23:57
  walks under control and you know, throws ninety seven. I'm like, wait,
• 24:00
  that's Uri Perez. He's not he's not there either, So yeah,
• 24:06
  you're you're right, you're I think because that you know, lease, it's
• 24:10
  sound sound bad. I hate to say it that way. A bet least
• 24:11
  he saw it. There's a chance to see it coming. So most people
• 24:15
  didn't invest too heavily here. But you know, there's some dynasty team out
• 24:18
  there that had built a pitching dynasty between uh Spencer Streider and Shane Bieber and
• 24:22
  Uri Perez, And all I gotta say is, somebody's gotta check in on
• 24:26
  that guy, because man, that's that's that's a tough, tough way to
• 24:32
  tough way to go. Yeah. Absolutely, And the next picture injury that
• 24:37
  we have is it hasn't gotten to the point of Tommy John surgery yet like
• 24:41
  Spencer Strider, And honestly, this one follows I think a little bit more
• 24:44
  of the fact pattern of Garrett Cole. And we're discussing Houston's from ber Valdez
• 24:49
  who was scratched from his start this week with elbow soreness, and the current
• 24:55
  diagnosis on the elbow is just overall you know, sorting and inflammation. So
• 25:00
  much like Garrett Cole, we haven't heard any sort of news on structural damage
• 25:07
  but that doesn't necessarily mean there isn't any there. And so it looks like
• 25:12
  the timeline right now for Valdez returning is maybe like a month and kind of
• 25:18
  see where it goes. But like I said, I think it's going to
• 25:21
  follow a little bit of like the Garrett Cole timeline in terms of figuring out
• 25:26
  how it progresses and how it heals. And this one certainly was a large
• 25:33
  blow to the pitching pool as well, because I'm sure from Bravaldez was a
• 25:37
  number one pitcher on plenty of teams. I wasn't terribly interested because honestly,
• 25:42
  Valdez has been struggling mightily since about the All Star break last year. That
• 25:49
  last year he even he added velocity actually to his pitches, and it kind
• 25:56
  of hurt the movement of the overall pitches and him just a worse pitcher.
• 26:02
  Just he relied so much on that sinker that getting action on that sinker was
• 26:07
  his bread and butter. And so this injury I think was also in that
• 26:14
  mix as well as to why he wasn't so great down the stretch last year.
• 26:18
  And so I'm just really worried about where this ends for fild As just
• 26:22
  the way I kind of was a few weeks ago for Cole what about you,
• 26:26
  Yeah, I'm the same way. I was actually trying to look at
• 26:30
  you know, his his you know, did he lose velocity or anything like
• 26:33
  that. And you know, actually his velocity generally was kind of ticking up
• 26:37
  a little bit across the pitches, but he was actually losing the gap between
• 26:41
  like his his hard stuff and his soft stuff, which to me, he
• 26:45
  tells you a little that he was struggling to actually command he was what he
• 26:49
  was doing there. But yeah, I think Bell has already had a few
• 26:53
  warning signs, like he just you know, he doesn't jump off the page
• 26:59
  as much as some of the other guys you're talking about, Like number one,
• 27:03
  number two, he struggled with hard hit rate. His you know,
• 27:06
  his barrel rate was a little questionable. Excep velocity was hurt for him.
• 27:11
  Like there's a number of things that just weren't quite there. But like he
• 27:12
  was still a good enough picture that you're like, yeahe me, let me
• 27:15
  do something. But I just the the lack of kind of news. I
• 27:22
  just this one feels ominous to me, not as bad as the other ones,
• 27:26
  but I it does feel like, especially with pictures, like when you
• 27:29
  get to this, this no news type of thing, I think at best
• 27:33
  you say, well, it's gonna he's gonna be out at least probably two
• 27:34
  months, need a month month and a half of build up, and then
• 27:38
  you're not sure what you're gonna get when he gets back. Like when you
• 27:41
  in LANDA. In this type of scenario, you're pretty much done. It's
• 27:45
  just not it's just not good. Like this is the one where you rather
• 27:48
  know exactly what happens, like he broke his finger, he's got a blister
• 27:52
  issue, like like you much rather have the very clear, definitive oblique issue
• 28:00
  where you know that you know it's not ideal to come back from, but
• 28:03
  you kind of have that to find timeline. I'm almost more worried about these
• 28:07
  ones where you just don't know, and that ends up really messing with your
• 28:10
  fantasy plans because you're you're left in limbo, and that's almost worse than the
• 28:15
  Spencer Strider or you know, Shane Biebe or something like that, where you
• 28:19
  just know, move on, go figure out what you're gonna do with the
• 28:23
  team, where here you can't be defensitive. So I wasn't too excited about
• 28:29
  Vellas either. But again, another arm that's down, another one that we
• 28:32
  have to kind of assume is gonna be out for a while. So the
• 28:34
  starting pitching pools is standing out pretty gosh daring quickly. So you know,
• 28:41
  maybe in a future pod here we need to go through our favorite pickups because
• 28:45
  everybody needs somebody. Oh yeah, and I mean I'm writing about them every
• 28:48
  weekend, so we've certainly got that as well as I mean, certainly check
• 28:52
  out on the weekends. We have a two start pitcher piece that runs that
• 28:56
  is really helpful of going through and breaking down each projected pitching like line for
• 29:03
  those two start guys, and I leverage that all the time as well as
• 29:08
  Rudy's projections over the next week or seven days to be able to figure out
• 29:12
  pickups. But speaking of kind of pickups in the pitcher pool overall, I
• 29:18
  think we can skip Cleveland because I don't like any of the options there to
• 29:22
  pick up, but I think the other teams present a few interesting options.
• 29:27
  I guess we can start in Atlanta, where Bryce Elder probably gets that position
• 29:33
  of the in the rotation from Spencer Strider for now, but I think a
• 29:38
  J. Smith Shover might be in the mix, and I mean Herston and
• 29:41
  Waldrup is kind of creeping in the shadows there. You know, the their
• 29:45
  first round pick from last year. So any of those guys from the Braves
• 29:51
  interests do there? Yeah, I mean I think that Waldrop is definitely the
• 29:56
  most exciting of those guys. I don't think they're gonna go to I think
• 29:59
  they're gonna give a little one more time Bryce Elder. I am staying away
• 30:03
  with. I don't know how long of a poll you can have, but
• 30:06
  that's how far I'm staying away from from Elder and A. J. Smith's
• 30:10
  shavor is interesting, intriguing. You know, I actually think that the Braves
• 30:14
  as reading a few articles on the striter injurying it. You know, they
• 30:18
  might be actually looking outside the organization because they have such a strong team that
• 30:23
  they might actually make a move rather than bring up a young guy. And
• 30:27
  they don't. They like to kind of like commit to their development, like
• 30:30
  their their pattern. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be surprised to see
• 30:33
  Smith, Shovre or a. Walldrope up later in the year, but I
• 30:37
  don't think they're going to push them too much. Earlier, maybe uh Smith
• 30:44
  Shower, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them try to go outside the
• 30:48
  organization, look to kind of a team that is already looking a little shaky
• 30:52
  and say, hey, give us, give us a good veteran and plug
• 30:56
  him in there on kind of a short term basis, just to make sure
• 31:00
  that they've got the Indians with that lineup. So I like the guys,
• 31:03
  but I'm I don't think they're gonna make enough moves internally that's really gonna excite
• 31:10
  me, especially if they're gonna rely on Bryce Eller to start. Yeah,
• 31:12
  I agree, I'm out on Elder Smith Shover intrigues me, especially for a
• 31:18
  matchup stream and I mean the Washington Nationals player in their division. So that's
• 31:22
  really fantastic to try to find those matchups. And I would watch list personal
• 31:29
  Waldrip. Now, I think I agree that they're gonna the Braves are gonna
• 31:33
  give Waldrip a little more seasoning down the miners, but if he looks ready
• 31:37
  to go, I think you can see him come up within the next month
• 31:41
  or two, just the way they shot a J. Smith show up to
• 31:45
  the major leagues last year and then in Miami. I mean actually they were
• 31:52
  kind of running a six man rotation and it looks like they're just gonna pare
• 31:56
  it down to a five man rotation there. But I kind of open this
• 32:00
  up for discussion on well it also it keeps Aj Puck in the rotation par
• 32:05
  a lot longer as that experiment has really gone off the rails and should be
• 32:09
  honestly droppable in just about every league, I think, until you see some
• 32:14
  semblance of control out of Puck. But I've been really interested in Ryan Weathers
• 32:19
  in Max Meyer down in Miami that they're both intriguing. Weathers is twenty four
• 32:25
  years old. Meyer is twenty five, and any interest in any of those
• 32:30
  either of those players, yeah, a personally between the two. Meyer actually
• 32:34
  really really interests me. I think he's got a ton of potential. You
• 32:39
  know, he he was what a what third overall draft pick back a few
• 32:45
  years ago and the twenty twenty draft, but you know his stuff. I
• 32:52
  think he's one of those guys that you look at it and you know he's
• 32:55
  he's well, he's a big guy. I can't remember out tall he is.
• 33:00
  No, he's only six foot. I was thinking he's holier than that.
• 33:02
  He looks taller. He's intimidating, right, but he does. I
• 33:08
  know, I thought he was like six three or something like that, but
• 33:13
  now it just makes me feel even worse about my almost being six foot so.
• 33:16
  But he's one of those guys that just seems like he had you know,
• 33:20
  he's got some good velocity. He's a mid nineties guy. The control
• 33:23
  has always been really reasonable. He's he's always been a you know, ten
• 33:27
  eleven strikeout per nine kind of guy. You know me, he love his
• 33:30
  guys that keeps the ball on the ground. So he has a lot of
• 33:34
  things to like about him, and he does have a really solid pedigree.
• 33:37
  He's just really battled injuries and so he's missed time. So I feel like
• 33:42
  nothing. He's fallen out of favor, he's fallen out of a limelight,
• 33:45
  and people just kind of forgot about him. Whereas you know, you know,
• 33:49
  two years ago, when he was you know, barely through Triple A
• 33:52
  and he had a ten k for nine, uh walk per nine, just
• 33:57
  under three ground balls fifty percent of the time, and he was running with
• 34:00
  a mid three's era, everybody was like, yeah, when's this guy coming
• 34:04
  up? Was gonna be And yes, he got hurt and he was gone
• 34:07
  for a while, but he's he's back and he seems to be healthy.
• 34:10
  So I actually really write like Max Meyer Weather's I'm I'm lukewarm on Weathers.
• 34:17
  I need to see more there from him, and fuck, well then that's
• 34:23
  just unfortunate. So I mean, I I'll actually I do like Weathers better
• 34:30
  than Meyer personally. It is a little Myers did not look very or Weathers
• 34:36
  did not look very good today in his outing, as he pitched five innings
• 34:40
  and walked three and struck out only one. But before today he was looking
• 34:47
  pretty good in terms of the k rate was eleven, and it was ten
• 34:52
  and a half during spring as Weathers came over from the Padres in the offseason.
• 34:57
  He's actually a number seven for all pick himself a couple. I mean,
• 35:00
  that's nothing compared to Meyer. Yeah three, yeah, almost double.
• 35:07
  And so the Marlins know how to develop pitching nowadays. And I think it's
• 35:12
  really showing what Weathers. They added some velocity to his fastball, and I
• 35:19
  mean, you like you love ground ball, guys, it's it's actually it's
• 35:22
  a sinker that he's thrown as his main fastball, and that has led to
• 35:24
  like a fifty four percent and it was fifty percent today, so he'll be
• 35:29
  at fifty two percent ground ball rate on the season. I think that there
• 35:34
  is a pretty good chance that Ryan weather sticks in this rotation all year for
• 35:38
  Miami, and it's a great park to pitch in that I think, especially
• 35:44
  you know in fifteen teen leagues where you're super desperate for pitching. Ryan Weathers,
• 35:47
  I think is also going to get some decent volume this year. You
• 35:52
  know, last year he pitched in just about ninety innings across Triple A and
• 36:04
  the Majors for both Miami and San Diego. I guess he was traded at
• 36:07
  the deadline last year in my bad not in the off season. But Weather's
• 36:10
  his I think turned a little bit of a corner, and he's got the
• 36:15
  prospect pedigree. His dad was David Weather's former pitcher, former reliever, only
• 36:20
  twenty four so also I think an intriguing target for deeper dynasty leagues too.
• 36:25
  Yeah, I think he's one again. He's got the pedigree, he's got
• 36:30
  some talent. I'm there's enough red flags there with the control, in the
• 36:35
  in the in the strikeout ability. I'm like, I need to see it
• 36:37
  to believe it. But again, if you've lost Spencer Strider or a Shane
• 36:44
  Bieber or something like that, you look at the like that's a dark throw
• 36:46
  that like that, that's what you got to make at this point. So
• 36:50
  not not too too concerned if that's where you want to throw your dark because
• 36:53
  what's the worst that happens, You're You're released them in two weeks, right,
• 36:57
  Yeah, exactly. That is part of it, is like you got
• 36:59
  to be willing to cycle through these players a lot too. And in Houston
• 37:04
  it's a one in one out situation with fran Arvaldez as Spencer Arraghetty gets that
• 37:08
  rotation spot. I used to be into Spencer Araghetty last year, but I
• 37:14
  don't know what happened to his control halfway through the season last year that he
• 37:19
  was bringing strikeouts, he was bringing velocity, he was bringing a good slider
• 37:24
  and just had a really good pitch mix. And somewhere along the way in
• 37:30
  the summer of twenty twenty three, he forgot how to find the zone properly.
• 37:35
  And he also had trouble doing it in Triple A when he went there
• 37:42
  this to start the season for his first eight and the third innings. He
• 37:45
  actually like he had me intrigued a little bit in spring because the walks were
• 37:49
  cut in spring, And I guess that's why we also shouldn't be into spring
• 37:53
  training stats too much. But I know you've been into Spencer Ragedy in the
• 37:57
  past two Anything you see in the profile that interests you down in Houston,
• 38:02
  Yeah, I mean, first of all, I really hope it. As
• 38:05
  a child, his name was Spencer, his nickname is Spencer Spaghetti to be
• 38:08
  right, yeah, you have to be so. First of all, we
• 38:12
  had to get out of the way because why not. But yeah, I
• 38:15
  actually I have the same concerns as you. Like, he was always one
• 38:16
  of those guys you were looking at, like it looks like he might be
• 38:20
  getting to control under you know, in in line with what he needs to
• 38:23
  be, and if he can, then he could be really good and and
• 38:27
  you know, and bring a lot to like. But it seems like he
• 38:30
  has like he made progress between like twenty two twenty three, it looked like
• 38:35
  he was figuring things out, and then ever since he got promoted to Triple
• 38:38
  A, he's just been a disaster from a control perspective, and even this
• 38:45
  year, it's just like I'm a little leary of like why they're calling him
• 38:49
  up, like he hasn't been able to control it even at Triple A.
• 38:52
  I know he's only had two games things like that, but yeah, it's
• 38:55
  and maybe they're just saying, hey, you know, at this point,
• 38:58
  you know he's he's been a around the block for a while, so he's
• 39:01
  twenty four. You know, It's it's kind of at that time where you
• 39:06
  just have to throw him in the fire and see what you have. But
• 39:08
  I think that there's a he's one of those guys a wide range of outcomes,
• 39:14
  and you know, it wouldn't be surprised to see him like figure things
• 39:17
  out at the major league level and like really go into the pitches that work
• 39:22
  for him and stop messing around and trying things out. But it also could
• 39:25
  be he has no idea where the ball's going and he walks literally every guy.
• 39:30
  Like there's a wide range of outcomes with Eric Getti here, and I'm
• 39:36
  not like I worried if you pick him up, like you're going to see
• 39:38
  a juicy matchup and want to play him, And I think he's better best
• 39:43
  left for the waiver wire and see how things play and if all of a
• 39:46
  sudden, it seems like the control is better, or maybe the pitch mix
• 39:50
  that he's using is a little different than what he had because they're made adjustments
• 39:53
  and Houston will do that. Then you might want to jump in, but
• 39:57
  I don't think anybody's gonna be running to the wire for mister spaghetti. Yeah.
• 40:01
  Well, and I mean he actually he did get the start tonight against
• 40:04
  the Royals and got absolutely shelled and so pitched three innings, gave up seven
• 40:08
  hits, three walks for six earned runs and only three punch outs. So
• 40:16
  certainly is going to be left I think for a lot of waiver wires,
• 40:20
  and unless he turns it around in his next start against Atlana, I think
• 40:23
  he's going to be sent right back down to Triple A when Justin Ferlander is
• 40:28
  ready to enter that rotation down in Houston. Hey, if there's a silver
• 40:31
  lining, maybe he got Vinie Paesquentino off the sneine going from here, so
• 40:37
  got his season rolling. Okay, Well, I know you're tired of talking
• 40:42
  pitcher injuries, so let's talk a significant batter injury. As the Chicago White
• 40:46
  Sox Luis Robert Junior went down with a hip flexer strain, and it's similar
• 40:53
  to the one he had a few years ago that kept him ount for two
• 40:58
  or three months. And I even heard that like when he got this injury,
• 41:01
  James Vegan actually was reporting that like he didn't sleep the night after because
• 41:07
  he was so worried about whether or not he was going to play again this
• 41:10
  season because he just knew it was a significant injury. And it looks like
• 41:15
  it's going to keep him out six to eight weeks, like three ish months.
• 41:21
  I mean, I think you almost might be able to count him out.
• 41:25
  Obviously, if you drafted Luise Robert, you spent like a second round
• 41:30
  pick on him and are going to be stashing him. But certainly this hurts
• 41:36
  because you were really counting on a big power speed combo year out of Luis
• 41:43
  Robert, even if he was going to be the only bright spot in Chicago.
• 41:46
  Yeah, you're right, And I think that the hard part with this
• 41:49
  one is with it being a hip flexure. Like I'm not a biomechanics genius
• 41:55
  by any means, but I'm pretty sure when you have that rotational yeah,
• 42:00
  you kind of need that stability and that power coming from that hip flexer,
• 42:06
  and so I even that, like when he had a similar injury to your
• 42:08
  point a few years ago. When he came back, it took a while
• 42:12
  for him to kind of get back the power, even the even the running.
• 42:16
  It took him a while to do that, and it didn't feel until
• 42:19
  like last year that he truly was healthy and then he looked great. I
• 42:23
  think this is unfortunately one of those like testaments to what we talked about,
• 42:27
  and you know, the preseason with drafting, where there's some of these guys
• 42:31
  that are just injury prone, and like it's easy to like draft like Aaron
• 42:38
  Judge is another critic example right where you it's easy to look back and be
• 42:43
  like, man, I got Judge in the third round and he ended up
• 42:46
  having an MVP season hitting you know, seventy five home runs and like claim
• 42:52
  victory. But that's the like, that is not the likely outcome. More
• 42:58
  likely is you're gonna deal with injury. He's and a guy that you know
• 43:01
  has now five seasons in the majors and he has one season over one hundred
• 43:06
  games. Well one was the pandemic. I get, I know, I
• 43:12
  know, negative Nancy. There, I was waiting for you to jump on
• 43:15
  me and another one was his debut season, so but actually played fifty He
• 43:22
  played fifty six the sixty pandemic games. That's actually pretty good. That's pretty
• 43:25
  good. I mean, I guess the pandemic didn't take him down, was
• 43:29
  just his hips in hindsight, knowing knowing he was made of glass, you
• 43:34
  know, yeah, exactly, So yeah that this is really just pointing.
• 43:37
  But I also I'm just I'm not thrilled with his outlook the rest of the
• 43:39
  season, even when he does come back. And I don't know that you
• 43:44
  also can trade him either, Like the the I think the piece that you
• 43:47
  look for with a guy like this at this point is you gotta wait for
• 43:51
  him to get healthy and maybe you find a needy team at that point needs
• 43:53
  a star outfielder and you can flip him right as he's coming back. Like
• 43:59
  that's the best case scenario in my mind. But the problem is he might
• 44:02
  not come back to the trade deadline. Yeah. Absolutely, And it reminds
• 44:07
  me, honestly a lot of Yasiel Puig, where Quig I think had the
• 44:12
  same sort of problems in terms of just being a super athletic guy and almost
• 44:19
  just too much for like what a human body could handle, and so I
• 44:23
  think you're looking at it a little bit with Robert and Eloy and Menez too
• 44:28
  who's down and uh Eyan Moncatta as well. That as well as I don't
• 44:31
  think the White Sox training staff is any good that, knowing Jerry Reinsdorf's kind
• 44:38
  of history of hiring and also the injuries that the Chicago Bulls have dealt with
• 44:44
  over the years, that I don't think it's necessarily a coincidence, but certainly
• 44:47
  it doesn't help when it doesn't I think help injury prone players. Ever turn
• 44:52
  that corner when you're also working with a subpar training staff. So yeah,
• 44:59
  I'm I'm I'm bummed out now because he's this is a lot but has a
• 45:02
  lot of injuries to a lot of really fantastic and fun players. So let's
• 45:07
  turn it around a little bit and talk about something fun. Your boy,
• 45:10
  Sonny Gray came back yesterday and pitched for the Cardinals and looked fantastic. So
• 45:15
  I thought I would give you some time to do a victory lap on his
• 45:20
  first five innings here. Victory lap. Hey, when you have a sixty
• 45:23
  five pitch limit cap and you go five innings and get the win. I
• 45:29
  know, right, it's I mean, it's just all dandy. He is
• 45:31
  the ace that everybody didn't expect them to be. Uh, I know,
• 45:36
  he's the ace that you should have expected them to be because he is Sonny
• 45:38
  Gray and he is exactly what that team needs. And you know, I'm
• 45:45
  I'm so thrilled to see him back. And I think what was interesting is
• 45:47
  that he basically skipped the rehab started. He he convinced, you know,
• 45:52
  the Cardinals to say, I'm ready throw me out there. And the Cardinals
• 45:55
  basically said, we're gonna let him rehab in the majors. We're gonna put
• 45:59
  them on the punt, let him work himself up, and he's gonna go
• 46:01
  out there look fantastic. And I think they actually tried to They're not say
• 46:05
  they tried to take him out, but he let runners get on and I
• 46:07
  think the Marvel went out there to try to pull them from the game,
• 46:10
  and he's like, nope, I'm good, let me finish the ending.
• 46:14
  The next pitch, you got a double play to get out of the out
• 46:15
  of the fifth type thing. So yeah, he did everything he needs,
• 46:19
  So Victor Lap, he's you know, we're talking top ten percentile Xcira walk
• 46:23
  rates. That's one start, I get it. But yeah, he's he's
• 46:28
  looking great. It's good to see him back. There's you know, he's
• 46:30
  now back. I think there's a few other guys that are on the minute.
• 46:34
  Like I said, we mentioned Surezer earlier, Berlander coming back, Nicolodolo,
• 46:38
  I'm not. I'm a big nickolodolea fan. He's he should be back
• 46:40
  here before too long. I think actually here in just a few days.
• 46:45
  So I think, you know, there's I know we've got these guys.
• 46:47
  We just lost some injury, but there are some guys that are kind of
• 46:50
  working their way back. So if you played the the injury bug in draft,
• 46:55
  which I know I said I wouldn't do, but I absolutely did.
• 47:00
  It's kind of funny, you know, you asked a little bit because I
• 47:04
  have Strider in a few leagues. I looked at the team where I had
• 47:07
  Strider and Bieber. I had traded Bieber because I had all this backup,
• 47:09
  and I lost Strider, and I looked at my bench and here comes Sonny
• 47:13
  Gray here, Nicolodolo, like at Kyle Bradish, like I got like I've
• 47:17
  got I got an all star bench here of all these guys that are hurt.
• 47:20
  Now I just got across my fingers that they weren't actually hurt that bad.
• 47:24
  So yeah, there's some silver lining. There are a few pictures that
• 47:28
  are coming back here that that could be valuable, and Sunny Gray's just the
• 47:30
  first of them. Yeah. Absolutely. Okay, Well, I think that
• 47:35
  wraps up our news intro and kind of analysis there for the category side.
• 47:40
  So we're gonna get into just cards from here on out. That first we'll
• 47:45
  get into we were espousing the virtues of Big League twenty twenty four as I
• 47:52
  think, just a fun set to open overall, and you found a cool
• 47:57
  tweet that actually I didn't even know these exists, did that there are magic
• 48:00
  boxes out there that are just chalked full of autographs, which is I can
• 48:07
  only imagine opening one and just like, I mean, it's like hitting a
• 48:12
  lottery ticket, if not even maybe rarer given some of the print runs on
• 48:16
  these tops cards. But I think, yeah, what a great way to
• 48:22
  also get people into card collecting with a set like Big League, because it
• 48:28
  also adds a little bit of that like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Golden ticket
• 48:31
  element if you obviously I don't think people are out there trying to hunt these
• 48:36
  things down purposely. That it's just a fantastic little nugget to run into if
• 48:43
  you ever open some Big league or are planning to in the future. But
• 48:49
  did you know about these being in Big League and were you expecting anything like
• 48:52
  this? No, I did not realize these are bigleg I know we're going
• 48:57
  to talk a little bit about another set here after we take a break that
• 49:00
  has a little bit of this kind of hot box flip flavor where you kind
• 49:05
  of expect. So maybe every case skit a hot box, which we will
• 49:08
  talk about that in a little bit. What that what that means. But
• 49:12
  I did not know they had had the magic boxes, which I think great
• 49:15
  marketing. I actually give Tops some credit every once in a while because I
• 49:20
  love this. I love when they do things like this. And so the
• 49:22
  magic boxes. You have ten magic boxes in all of twenty twenty four Big
• 49:28
  League Baseball, and I think there's seven in hobby and three in the value
• 49:31
  boxes. And what that means is every pack has an auto, every single
• 49:37
  pack. So you're talking to Hobby Box, you have eighteen autos, and
• 49:40
  for Big League and I don't remember the odds from our conversation on this.
• 49:45
  But it's not a product where you're I don't think you're always guaranteed in auto.
• 49:50
  It's not that type of product. So to open like your first pack
• 49:53
  and get an auto, be like, man, this is a big hit
• 49:57
  for a relatively cheap product. And then your next one you have auto next
• 50:00
  week like, oh my goodness. And then every base card is a foil
• 50:05
  card, and so you're literally talking some version of a blue red foil card
• 50:14
  for every single every single card that's that's out there. So and I haven't
• 50:20
  spent time to look at you know, what's the value of the foils and
• 50:22
  things like that, but you can just imagine, you know, the one
• 50:25
  that has popped up so far and was talked about. You know, you
• 50:30
  have autos in this of Eli Dela Cruz, a Junior common Nero Hessen,
• 50:36
  Kirstad Jordan Lawyer, Matt McClain, Jason Dominguez, Ben Joyce, Anthony Volpey.
• 50:43
  The list goes on, like those autos were all in a single box.
• 50:47
  Like that is an absolutely that is a thousand, fifteen dollars box that
• 50:53
  you pulled out a big league and that is a collector that's just got to
• 50:58
  be an absolute dream to open, like, and I don't I don't know
• 51:01
  how you react to something like that. So I love this move by Tops.
• 51:06
  I think it's fantastic. I we talked about we just talked about two
• 51:08
  weeks ago, and I had no idea this has existed to me. I'm
• 51:14
  actually slightly like, I kind of want to buy a box a big league
• 51:15
  now. I wasn't playing. I kind of want to buy a box like
• 51:20
  the on the This is like the lottery, right, It's probably better odds,
• 51:22
  but the chance that you hit that it would just be absolutely phenomenal,
• 51:27
  especially if you're like a breaker or something like that, which was I think
• 51:30
  that now the joke is where all these boxes are going as the breakers but
• 51:35
  be open by now, like so some of them must be buried or just
• 51:37
  haven't like the surf pictures of them. Yeah, And I mean, do
• 51:44
  you remember that those like foil cards are even rarer on this set that it
• 51:47
  it tears up where like the blue foils are a certain part of the set,
• 51:52
  and then the red with the like Elie de la Cruz red Bocky foil
• 51:58
  is in there that uh, covering around like fifty ish bucks, fifty to
• 52:01
  seventy bucks, and then you've got even a tier above that of the Gold.
• 52:06
  So yeah, some of those are going to be I think pretty sought
• 52:12
  after cards because it's been a fun set and replacing Opening Day, and especially
• 52:17
  for set collectors, there's fewer large sets to collect, which is when we
• 52:23
  get into tops Heritage here. I think we'll discuss that a lot. That
• 52:27
  it's one of the I find one of the most popular sets for people to
• 52:30
  put the entire set together, and because it is just really fun going through
• 52:37
  that process of building an entire multiple hundred card set and looking at it all
• 52:43
  together all in order and completing that checklist that I think Big League's got a
• 52:46
  lot of potential for that this year out of twenty twenty four big League.
• 52:52
  But yeah, like I said, we will talk about tops Heritage after the
• 52:54
  break. I'm just gonna also do a quick preview on what we got for
• 52:58
  coming out of new sets, because we missed one last week that was kind
• 53:02
  of honestly, it was a surprise. I didn't It wasn't on the schedule
• 53:06
  until it was released last week on April third, and that's Top Sterling.
• 53:10
  We've talked over the past couple pods about products like tops Dynasty and some of
• 53:15
  the really other high end products top Sterlings in that vein where you're looking at
• 53:21
  a super expensive box for just a few cards, and the the I want
• 53:25
  to say, I was gonna say gimmick, but I would say, like
• 53:29
  the touch of top Sterling is that the patches and the memorabilia that are inserted
• 53:35
  into the cards are framed in this metal metallic silver little frame around it,
• 53:43
  which is kind of cool for top Sterling. But I actually don't own early
• 53:47
  own any Sterling cards or haven't ever opened any, obviously, Brew do you
• 53:52
  have any Sterling cards in your collection? No, I've been watching a few.
• 53:57
  I would really like. I think they are fantastic looking cards, but
• 54:00
  now I don't own any of them. And to your point that they are
• 54:04
  just there are another more of the premium sets that are a little harder to
• 54:06
  come by, and they, again, they look very nice, and I
• 54:12
  think they're one of those that, just like Dynasty or things like that,
• 54:15
  you just want to have one of your favorite player and your set, just
• 54:17
  to have one because they are fantastic looking cards. Yeah. And then obviously
• 54:22
  today on April tenth, we have Tops Heritage twenty twenty four coming out,
• 54:28
  so we will get into that after the break. Next week on four seventeen,
• 54:31
  we have twenty twenty four Tops Chrome Black coming out, which it's a
• 54:36
  little bit earlier in the release schedule than usual for Chrome Black, but this
• 54:39
  is another higher end product where traditionally in the past you get one in case
• 54:45
  to auto and somewhere between like four and six cards in the pack with a
• 54:51
  mix of like a couple of color parallel four cards and then yep and then
• 54:55
  some bas cards. So pretty limited. But I've never opened any Tops Going
• 55:01
  Black, but I've enjoyed it since they brought it out in twenty twenty,
• 55:05
  and it really HARKing back to the Tops Black and Gold sets of the early
• 55:09
  nineties, and I think they're really slick cards. They have like a it's
• 55:15
  a really hard to describe look until you should, like hold one, because
• 55:20
  it's like chrome and shiny and matt all at the same time. It's but
• 55:25
  they I think it's been one of the better new sets that Tops has added.
• 55:31
  I really enjoy the set, but never opened any. I certainly pick
• 55:36
  up a lot because like especially those singles go relatively cheap for the comparison to
• 55:42
  how expensive the boxes, because the checklist for the autos is it reminds me
• 55:47
  a little bit of like Tops Inception, which we've talked about in the past,
• 55:51
  where like the the auto range is so huge, like you have some
• 55:57
  players that are the upper ends, the up echelons of like Hall of Fame,
• 56:02
  Inner Circle, Hall of Famer players, really really great rookies and then
• 56:08
  like back up outfielders for the Oakland Athletics. That's a double a autograph right
• 56:15
  there. Yeah, I agree. I really do like Tops Chrome Black as
• 56:20
  well. What's really interesting to me is that I was looking back at the
• 56:23
  release for twenty twenty three Tops Chrome Black because it just felt like this just
• 56:29
  happened like so so soon. And the release date for Topic Chrome Black in
• 56:34
  twenty twenty three was December fifteenth, so we're talking four months, and so
• 56:40
  what it's I thought it had come out over the summer because it was slated
• 56:44
  to come out over the summer, but it got pushed back to December,
• 56:46
  remember when there was just like that log jam of production yep. And so
• 56:51
  what I'm curious is like, is this something to come for twenty twenty four,
• 56:57
  where all of our products that we expect are like some crazy like they're
• 57:00
  gonna probably keep the flagship right where they are, But is everything coming in
• 57:04
  some weird order this year because they got so messed up last year behind production,
• 57:09
  They cut certain things, they reintroduced things like Stadum Club that we weren't
• 57:13
  expecting, right, They were a little bit all over the place. So,
• 57:15
  you know, are we getting a whole new standard in twenty twenty four
• 57:20
  On the timing of some of these sets, That'll be really interesting for me
• 57:23
  personally to watch because you kind of are used to buying certain cards at a
• 57:29
  certain time of the year and things like that, and then all of a
• 57:31
  sudden, these things come out and you're like dealing with tops grown black,
• 57:36
  you know, in the spring. It's usually late summer or into the fall
• 57:39
  or even the winter, and it's just, I don't know, is that
• 57:44
  a good for marketing? I don't know. It just feels like, let's
• 57:47
  chips fall or where they may it was what probably is happening at the tops?
• 57:51
  Yeah, it's really strange. And then the last one we've got currently
• 57:54
  on the schedule still hanging out has been there since December and still on on
• 58:00
  schedule is Bowman twenty twenty four coming out on May eighth, so that's going
• 58:05
  to be a pre significant release. The prices for the presale were absurd,
• 58:09
  I will say absolutely absurd that I think that the hype has gotten to Bowman
• 58:15
  a lot, and it's just it's really hard for me to swallow because the
• 58:20
  quality of the actual like Bowman cards is still pretty low in comparison to like
• 58:25
  Flagship and some of these other sets that we talk about, just because they
• 58:30
  are a thinner card stock and has always been that way that Bowman's always been
• 58:36
  traditionally a little bit cheaper because of that. And now with the hype of
• 58:40
  the prospects and this Bowman set will have Dylan Cruz in it as well as
• 58:46
  Walker Jenkins, and so you're looking at people really hunting down those autographs for
• 58:52
  those firsts, And like I said, the presale prices were I think two
• 58:57
  sixty for a hobby and then five hundred for a Jumbo, which is bananas.
• 59:01
  It's just insane. Yeah, Okay, So I love Bowman. I've
• 59:07
  ripped Bowman a few times, and it's it's got the point where I might
• 59:13
  as well go back and buy a box from like five years ago. Yeah,
• 59:15
  if I want to, first of all for print run purposes and things
• 59:19
  like that. But you know, we'll see. But I'm not touching it
• 59:22
  this year. Yeah yeah, maybe just retail like obviously some blaster boxes here
• 59:28
  and there. But yeah, I at that hoppy price. That is steep,
• 59:31
  but you want to talk about a non steep hoppy price. Tops Heritage
• 59:36
  twenty twenty four, we're gonna get into it after this break. Stick around,
• 59:54
  all right, welcome back from the break everybody. We are going to
• 59:58
  get into the overview of twenty twenty four TOPS Heritage, which I think is
• 1:00:04
  probably the second most popular set honestly behind Flagship every year. Now that it's
• 1:00:09
  a pretty significant release now for TOPS, and Heritage goes back to the early
• 1:00:16
  two thousands when it came out. And really what Heritage is trying to do
• 1:00:22
  is they will take an old design from the nineteen seventies and apply it for
• 1:00:28
  all the modern players. So they also do this in Archives, which we've
• 1:00:30
  talked about too. But the difference between Archives and Heritage, even though they
• 1:00:36
  use the same designs a lot, like it's really confusing sometimes when you're sorting
• 1:00:39
  through cards, and you're trying to figure out what's Heritage, which is Archives,
• 1:00:44
  but Archives will have several different years in one set, and Heritage is
• 1:00:50
  always a consistent year all the way throughout. This year, it's going back
• 1:00:54
  to one of my favorite top sets of all time, and that is nineteen
• 1:00:58
  seventy five TOPS. Just a really colorful set with the multicolored borders. The
• 1:01:04
  different names of each team are in different colors that are consistent throughout, and
• 1:01:10
  so nineteen seventy five TOPS is just it's also a blast to like look at
• 1:01:15
  the actual vintage nineteen seventy five Tops because it's they were on the forefront of
• 1:01:21
  like printing color technology back then with Tops, and so it's funny like seeing
• 1:01:27
  just the way that the printing plates would sometimes get off and get all sorts
• 1:01:30
  of different color combinations. But yeah, I love this twenty four Heritage set
• 1:01:37
  and the design that harkens back to seventy five. What about you group,
• 1:01:42
  Yeah, I'm actually slightly gonna be a detractor here, guy. No,
• 1:01:45
  so that's not where oft that I love a seventy five set. I do
• 1:01:50
  love the seventy five set, and it only if it's off center because I
• 1:01:52
  feel like every nineteen seventy five Cardiff scenes off center. But there's something to
• 1:01:58
  me where like it was such a set that kind of like stood out from
• 1:02:02
  all of those vintage sets, just so different than everything else, Like it
• 1:02:07
  didn't feel like a vintage set, I think kind of at the time,
• 1:02:10
  like everything else had a kind of this classic look, and so it's it's
• 1:02:15
  this weird feeling now to have it on the modern players, this kind of
• 1:02:19
  colorful set, it just doesn't feel it doesn't feel vintage, because like that
• 1:02:23
  seventy five was when they, like I want to say, started to come
• 1:02:28
  out of vintage in a way, like you're just on the border of not
• 1:02:31
  being that vintage feel anymore. And so that's this weird feeling for me as
• 1:02:37
  I look at it, and I'm like, I don't feel like it's marketing
• 1:02:39
  back far enough to those those old cards, even though we're talking about like
• 1:02:46
  the Robin Yount, George Brett Rookie card time frame. Like there's some amazing
• 1:02:52
  players that were huge in the set. I remember the Aarons, the Gibsons,
• 1:02:54
  all those like I absolutely love those, But there's something about it that
• 1:02:59
  just isn't hitting as a strong for me, and I don't know why,
• 1:03:02
  but I just feel like that set was like just coming out of the vintage
• 1:03:06
  era just slightly, and I'm expecting Heritage to be like totally vintage, and
• 1:03:13
  so it's messing with me a little bit. But beyond that, I'll get
• 1:03:16
  over it. I do love Heritage. I think it is one of the
• 1:03:22
  best sets for the year for a number of reasons, which we'll get it
• 1:03:23
  too, so I'll all get over it. I'll still collect it, let's
• 1:03:30
  go. I think it's also just because you're getting old, like the years
• 1:03:34
  are emerging passed, like yeah, as somebody who when I scroll through Twitter
• 1:03:38
  sales and see like nineteen ninety one Stadium Clubs listed as a vintage like,
• 1:03:44
  yeah, it's kind of throwsy for a loop. Sometimes, Yeah, you
• 1:03:49
  might be getting the root cause here there's there's a whole other therapy pod that
• 1:03:52
  we can go down there. So yeah, we'll do that for the after
• 1:03:58
  show. But anyways, let's get back in to TOPS Heritage this year,
• 1:04:01
  for there will be eventually a Heritage high number as well. So there are
• 1:04:06
  two Tops Heritage releases every year from Tops, this initial one in the spring,
• 1:04:12
  and then they come back with another set that adds to like the end
• 1:04:15
  of it, and so this first one that's coming out, you've got a
• 1:04:19
  five hundred card set. The little bit of the twist here with Heritage compared
• 1:04:25
  to what you have in Flagship is it's actually a little bit closer to what
• 1:04:29
  we're talking about in Big League in terms of having short prints in the actual
• 1:04:32
  checklist. But the difference is there isn't like the tiered aspect to TOPS Heritage
• 1:04:38
  that the first one hundred cards except for number eighty two, which is Nathan
• 1:04:43
  Muvaldi, is a short print. Number four oh seven, which is the
• 1:04:46
  Laoti Tavaris, is another short print. I was looking all over trying to
• 1:04:50
  figure out why they did that, but I haven't found anything yet. If
• 1:04:56
  we do find something, I will report back. But those first one hundred
• 1:04:59
  cards this year in TOPS Heritage will be short printed, so that just means
• 1:05:03
  they're harder to pull out of packs. They're one of every three packs should
• 1:05:08
  have one short print, and so they're more like inserts than they are like
• 1:05:13
  a regular based cards. So typically it's been the other way around that Heritage,
• 1:05:18
  the higher numbers were the short prints, so like three hundred to four
• 1:05:21
  hundred or four hundred to five hundred were the short prints, so it's a
• 1:05:25
  little bit of a change this year. Putting the first one hundred is the
• 1:05:29
  short print also harkens back to the seventies when tops used to actually like they
• 1:05:33
  would have higher number cards at the end of the set that were short printed
• 1:05:40
  even back in the seventies. So I think that's what, you know,
• 1:05:45
  the nostalgia factor with Heritage, as well as the way that they incorporate the
• 1:05:50
  short prints into the actual checklist, I think are a couple of the reasons
• 1:05:56
  why this is such a popular product between all sorts of collectors, either like
• 1:06:00
  individual you know, team collectors, set collectors, just people who love ripping
• 1:06:06
  product. So you see all sorts of people trying to build this entire set
• 1:06:12
  from one through five hundred. Yeah, it's and I didn't actually realize that
• 1:06:15
  the short prints is beginning to set this year. That's going to throw me,
• 1:06:17
  throw me off. So you just looking like the four hundred level or
• 1:06:20
  something like that trying to find those short prints, so that that is going
• 1:06:25
  to be an adjustment to make this year. But yeah, I mean,
• 1:06:29
  you got your your big names. We all know everybody's chasing looking for Ellie,
• 1:06:32
  and he's gonna be the hot, hot thing for a lot of the
• 1:06:35
  products coming out coming out this year. But I think that you know,
• 1:06:40
  this is also one of those sets that they do a fantastic jobs with.
• 1:06:45
  I don't call them mini sets, but the the different there's the all the
• 1:06:48
  different inserts that they have, like they're fully baked and thought through. They
• 1:06:53
  do a great job with the relics, the memorability options, they do a
• 1:06:57
  great job with the variations. They do great job SERTs, but it is
• 1:07:01
  light on parallels, which is I think really interesting. And the parallels themselves,
• 1:07:06
  if I recall, are not actually numbered, but they are limited,
• 1:07:13
  which is I think does throw a lot of collectors off. And that's one
• 1:07:15
  of the fun things that I've always enjoyed about Heritage is it's less now because
• 1:07:20
  I feel like the tops felt bad for some of us collectors that didn't pay
• 1:07:24
  attention. But it used to be this kind of set where like you would
• 1:07:28
  have to comb through your cards to really understand what you had because of the
• 1:07:32
  different types of variations were so subtle, but once you found one, it
• 1:07:38
  was like it was just like, look at this gold mine I found.
• 1:07:40
  This is this amazing card that was so hard to find. So you know,
• 1:07:45
  if I if I could, I want to. I want to start
• 1:07:46
  with the relics, because you know me, I love relics. There's one
• 1:07:50
  that I specifically want to want to talk about, and you know, I
• 1:07:54
  like the Clubhouse collection. Every year they have those. But I'm gonna get
• 1:07:58
  your take on the nineteen seventy five mint nickel relics. This is something that
• 1:08:03
  they did in the Minor Heritage Minor League version, and I know I have
• 1:08:10
  a card or two of that, But what's your take on the mint nickel
• 1:08:15
  cards that each for there's actually parallels of this. There's a dime parallel,
• 1:08:23
  which that's the genius marketing. But each mint nickel card is out of fifteen
• 1:08:30
  and the diamonds are out of ten. Try to do that math that somebody
• 1:08:34
  missed up there. But what's your take that? Do you the nickels like
• 1:08:40
  they're literally a card with a nickel in the card as the relic or I'm
• 1:08:45
  assuming the dime is the same way, and like the dimes, you're talking
• 1:08:47
  one out of like fifteen thousand, hobby. Yeah, that opportunity for a
• 1:08:54
  pack and the nickel I think is one out of them, will say one
• 1:08:56
  eight thousand packs. So what's your take on on the nickel relics this year?
• 1:09:01
  Yeah, so this is something I think that they've had for a long
• 1:09:05
  time in heritage. I don't know when it goes back to, but especially
• 1:09:09
  the stick here is that they take nickels and dimes from nineteen seventy five put
• 1:09:14
  it in and so yeah, I think they're cool. Like I think that
• 1:09:17
  they're fun because of the fact that they come from the actual like year that
• 1:09:25
  the set is related to, so that it's just like a little bit more
• 1:09:29
  intrigued to it. And I think especially just a little bit more fun than
• 1:09:34
  honestly like some of like the napkin matches that we get where you're not sure
• 1:09:39
  if it's from like a quote unquote player worn jersey or just like a jersey
• 1:09:45
  that they took down from the shelves at the stadium and that was for sale
• 1:09:48
  and cut it up, you know. So it is cool to get like
• 1:09:51
  an actual piece of something. It's a little bit like in Allen and Ginter
• 1:09:57
  when you get some of those like fossil relics and stuff where it just like
• 1:10:00
  it adds another fun factor to the card collecting. Overall. That especially,
• 1:10:05
  you get some really great, fantastic players here in terms of rookies and Hall
• 1:10:12
  of Famers and stars and Lawrence Butler, he really stands out in that checklist
• 1:10:18
  as somebody who doesn't really fit in with the others. Him and Johann Rojas,
• 1:10:25
  I think is what it is. But I think they're great cards.
• 1:10:30
  I've never owned one. But along with that too, they actually they have
• 1:10:34
  stamp relics again this year too, So these are stamps that were from nineteen
• 1:10:39
  seventy five, a little more common. They're of fifty so a little easier
• 1:10:45
  to pull. But these are all going to be players from the seventies Hall
• 1:10:48
  of Famers, all stars, guys from that era. What do you think
• 1:10:53
  about the stamp cards. Yes, I don't know why. I like the
• 1:10:57
  nickel cars better than stamp cards. We're a shiny objects guy. Yeah,
• 1:11:01
  I'm shiny. I'm a thick relic shiny objects kind of guy. But I
• 1:11:05
  do I do like the SAMs. I think again, they're unique, they're
• 1:11:09
  fun. I do like the fact that they are just the called the Hall
• 1:11:13
  of Famers for for for the most part, I'm trying to look through there's
• 1:11:15
  anybody that's not really a Hall of Famer here, not really see anybody,
• 1:11:20
  but I do. I still think it's a fun you know, just I
• 1:11:25
  don't say gimmick, but it's a fun deviation. They do have that kind
• 1:11:30
  of retro feel and it is just it's unique. You don't end up with
• 1:11:33
  cards like that that often, so when you do see one out in the
• 1:11:38
  wild or a card show or something like that, there, you know,
• 1:11:40
  it's it's something that you want to try to pick up just because it's it
• 1:11:44
  is one of the more unique cards that you're gonna find in any set.
• 1:11:46
  So I do like the postal stamps and stams as well, So a lot
• 1:11:51
  to like in that the member memorabilia area. Yeah, And I think what
• 1:11:57
  Heritage is also known for, even more so than the memorabilia and relics,
• 1:12:02
  is the autographs here. So the autographs on the nineteen seventy five design and
• 1:12:08
  honestly any of the throwback designs has always looked really fantastic, that it signs
• 1:12:14
  really well, and especially just like the spacing, I think of the overall,
• 1:12:17
  like older cards, it is a little bit more wide open. It's
• 1:12:21
  a lot less busy, so it looks fantastic that especially the real one autographs
• 1:12:28
  are a huge hit with collectors that people love trying to put this set together,
• 1:12:33
  or if you're a PC collector for a team or a player, really
• 1:12:39
  huge to put one of these in your collection. So those are back again
• 1:12:44
  this year in terms of the real one autographs will be base and blue,
• 1:12:47
  but then you get special limited edition ones in the red ink where they also
• 1:12:54
  hand right on the card, not the actual player signing it like somebody from
• 1:12:59
  Tops. It's the numbering on it, but it's like a hand numbered card
• 1:13:02
  out of seventy five, which is also a really nice touch to it,
• 1:13:05
  just adds I think a little bit more than a stamped on serial number.
• 1:13:12
  Yeah. I think it'll be interesting because the seventy five design also has the
• 1:13:15
  fake signature. Yeah, and so it's I always get a kick out because
• 1:13:20
  somebody like opens us and you know, the the real signatures aren't gonna look
• 1:13:26
  that different. You know, clearly the red things like that will, but
• 1:13:30
  you know they don't look that different than the actual signatures. And so it'll
• 1:13:35
  be interesting to see how many, you know, situations we have of somebody
• 1:13:40
  getting scammed over because they thought they had an autograph or cards being posted trying
• 1:13:44
  to be sold as autograph cards, things like that. So that'll be interesting
• 1:13:47
  from from the set as well. So there are a lot of good a
• 1:13:50
  lot of good autographs. To your point, this is a kind of up
• 1:13:55
  and down autograph set where you're getting all the way down there into like Slate,
• 1:14:00
  Heathcock and good Priester and you know, things like that, and then
• 1:14:04
  you get all the way up to Jim Rice and you know, Juan Soto
• 1:14:08
  and George Brett. I think it's gonna be a big one. Yes,
• 1:14:12
  obviously his rookie was in the seventy five set. Absolutely, so you've got
• 1:14:16
  the full full range of of those ones, and even get into like the
• 1:14:21
  dual autographs and triple autographs and things like that, and so you have to
• 1:14:26
  think, like the Johnny Bench Tony Perez Eli de la Cruz triple autograph is
• 1:14:30
  going to be one of the hottest cards and absolutely in this set. So
• 1:14:35
  autographs are absolutely fun as much as we all have the autographs, though,
• 1:14:41
  you can't can't get out of the set without talking about the variations. Yep,
• 1:14:45
  right, you've got the color swaps you've got the air variations, you've
• 1:14:51
  got the image variations, you've got the missing signature variations, the nicknames,
• 1:14:56
  the throwbacks, like all of them. And what I what I love about
• 1:15:00
  these variations is they're subtle. They're generally pretty subtle. Again, you open
• 1:15:06
  the pack that they've actually fixed this in the past years probably don't know how
• 1:15:10
  many years been, maybe five, six, seven years ago. They didn't
• 1:15:14
  turn the card around when it was an insert like this or a parallel in
• 1:15:18
  the pack, and so you have to really pay attention and like even look
• 1:15:21
  at the actual like card serial numbering to figure out if you have a like
• 1:15:27
  I remember going through heritage cards like checking and I still do it because you
• 1:15:31
  want to be careful you don't miss something and recognize you got something. But
• 1:15:34
  in the last I don't think it was the last year they started doing this,
• 1:15:36
  maybe two years ago where they actually printed on the back might say color
• 1:15:42
  variation or color swap or so I think, yeah, it was either twenty
• 1:15:45
  two or twenty one. But yeah, that made it almost like I like
• 1:15:50
  it because like it makes it easier, but I don't like it because it
• 1:15:53
  makes it easier. Yeah, exactly, it's like there's something to be said
• 1:15:57
  for being, you know, digging through a dollar box somewhere and running across,
• 1:16:02
  like if you've some you know, if you're anything like you or I
• 1:16:05
  that spend probably too much time with the cards. You're going through and you
• 1:16:11
  see a card of a player that you like, you've seen the heritage card
• 1:16:17
  so many times, and you look at this, you're like, that's not
• 1:16:20
  the base card, but it's not labeled. You don't know anywise when you're
• 1:16:25
  just looking at it's like, this is, you know, the throwback variation,
• 1:16:28
  this is the action variation or something like that. Those are always always
• 1:16:31
  fun to find. So that's gonna be a big thing for folks to watch
• 1:16:38
  out for, just the subtle, subtle changes with with variations. Yeah,
• 1:16:43
  any of those that are your favorite. Yeah. For for me, you
• 1:16:47
  know, I think the favorite that I would go back is going to be
• 1:16:54
  really the the color swap. I think I really enjoy just the it's kind
• 1:16:59
  of like the negative I don't know if you can say that chrome for chrome,
• 1:17:01
  like it's just a slight hint of something different that we almost have to
• 1:17:06
  look really hard to recognize that it is different. But I really like the
• 1:17:11
  color swaps. I feel like the image variation is kind of almost two standard,
• 1:17:15
  like every set has a image image variation or something missing, like the
• 1:17:19
  signatures missing, something like that. The nicknames one, I haven't seen what
• 1:17:26
  the nicknames are, so that one might grow on me to see who they
• 1:17:30
  are. And that is a little bit smaller of a checklist. But yeah,
• 1:17:32
  I think the color swap for me is one of those favorite ones because
• 1:17:35
  it is just so so subtle and sometimes I almost forget like what is actually
• 1:17:41
  swapped versus not, so you got to put them next to each other to
• 1:17:44
  figure it out. Yeah, I agree, that's my favorite too, and
• 1:17:47
  for pretty much the same reason as well as it just kind of like being
• 1:17:49
  a little trippy when you start, Like when you see it and then you
• 1:17:54
  line it up against a non colored swap card, it's like you're like,
• 1:17:58
  wow, that is kind of cool. I'm not sure why, but it
• 1:18:00
  just like it eases your brain just enough to where it really intrigues you.
• 1:18:06
  And then on top of that, we've also got color variations here in terms
• 1:18:12
  of the parallel so of your base cards, all of them will have these
• 1:18:16
  parallels, which is you know, normally it will have the nineteen seventy five
• 1:18:23
  double dual color border. But you also have variations with your white border,
• 1:18:30
  red border, which is a Target exclusive again that they've had that for a
• 1:18:33
  number of years now. For tops Heritage, you also have a black border,
• 1:18:39
  a black and white image, and then a flip stock, which is
• 1:18:42
  it's like vintage stock for the flagship product where it comes on a thicker stock.
• 1:18:47
  It's just a different cardboard that it's printed on. You would notice it
• 1:18:51
  like if you had it in your hand, but on top of it too.
• 1:18:55
  There's also additional chrome variations of select cards through the set, so especially
• 1:19:01
  getting into like some of the bigger stars and trying to make sure that there's
• 1:19:05
  chrome variations for just about every team. I think traditionally there's been the heritage
• 1:19:14
  chrome of every card, right or no, no, no, I take
• 1:19:18
  that back. It depends on year to year that like whether or not you've
• 1:19:21
  got chrome variations. But here's the variations you've got this year. Are blue
• 1:19:27
  sparkle refractors which come back, purple refractors which are coming back, and those
• 1:19:31
  are hot box only. We can talk about hot boxes a little bit after
• 1:19:35
  these variations. Just a base refractor of five hundred and seventy five, a
• 1:19:41
  silver refractor of three seventy five, a black refractor of seventy five, and
• 1:19:45
  that black refractor always lines up with the year that the actual set is based
• 1:19:51
  on gold refractors that are five, and then of course you're super fractors one
• 1:19:57
  of one. So the big one there that I think people will see the
• 1:20:01
  most is the purple refractors because they come in the blaster boxes just standard like
• 1:20:10
  as inserts, kind of like a gold parallel or rainbow foil parallel from the
• 1:20:15
  flagship. But there's also hot boxes out there, which are they have all
• 1:20:21
  purple cards in them, I believe, right? Or is it one purple
• 1:20:24
  card for every pack? It kind of changes year to year. And I
• 1:20:27
  don't know if I've seen a hot box yet from Heritage. Yeah, I
• 1:20:30
  haven't seen one yet, but it does. It does seem to vary a
• 1:20:32
  little bit what they are. But yeah, I think you end up with
• 1:20:39
  I want to say it's every every pack has one or two, you know,
• 1:20:45
  purple. I think it's every pack has a purple card. One purple
• 1:20:48
  card, yeah, and so reactor. Yeah, so you basically get a
• 1:20:53
  chance to get a pretty rare card harder to find card for every single pack,
• 1:20:59
  and so you end up with I can't remember how any packs in a
• 1:21:01
  box. Probably you know my guess, twenty four. Yeah, and so
• 1:21:06
  you're twenty four packs in a hobby and you get a twenty four purple cards
• 1:21:12
  purple refractors, which are good, they're fun, fun to look at.
• 1:21:15
  I do think it'll be a little interesting with the design this year, just
• 1:21:18
  to have a a because the every card's two tone colored card and now your
• 1:21:25
  parallels are single tone. I think it'll be a kind of interesting. Look.
• 1:21:29
  I haven't really looked too closely. I know, I've looked at the
• 1:21:30
  whites, which kind of throat. They are kind of trippy if you have
• 1:21:33
  just a white parallel, because it looks like the card was almost finished in
• 1:21:39
  a way. And so I think that'll be interesting as you start to get
• 1:21:44
  in some of these parallels, you know, there's just like all red or
• 1:21:46
  something like that. It just almost feels like a printing mistake to a degree.
• 1:21:51
  Yeah, And actually with that white border parallel there, it's only day
• 1:21:58
  one, but we're already starting to see like some of the errors that come
• 1:22:01
  out on this set, which is kind of funny. And one of them
• 1:22:04
  is that the white border parallels are like misprinted on the back in terms of
• 1:22:15
  the actual like border on them is the black border, and then but on
• 1:22:23
  the back it says it's the white border. So that's one of the errors
• 1:22:26
  that we've seen so far. The other error that we've seen, and this
• 1:22:30
  one's actually a pretty big miss from an actual quality control standpoint, is the
• 1:22:38
  Red Shaney's card actually has a picture of white herzoc on it. So that's
• 1:22:43
  a pretty classic Tops issue that they've had in the past where they just put
• 1:22:47
  the wrong picture of somebody on it, and so that it'll be a fun
• 1:22:51
  Red Shandy's card to have in your collection as a Cardinals fan. And then
• 1:22:57
  the other error that's come out is this one's a little bit deeper cut,
• 1:23:02
  and honestly, I wouldn't have found it if it wasn't for the Reddit thread.
• 1:23:06
  But the one of the inserts that they have is every year in Heritage
• 1:23:12
  is like a flashback to the moments of like what happened in the year that
• 1:23:15
  the actual design relates to. So for this year, obviously it's nineteen seventy
• 1:23:19
  five, and with that they were celebrating some rides opening up at Disneyland or
• 1:23:27
  disney World, and the picture on the cards actually of Disneyland, not disney
• 1:23:30
  World. So for the disney geeks out there, that'll be I don't know
• 1:23:35
  if that'll be a collector's item or just a little funny ha ha. Yeah,
• 1:23:41
  it feels like, you know that that's really trying to across two true
• 1:23:45
  cults, card collectors and Disney fans. And I think the probably the ring
• 1:23:49
  leaders are Disneyland card collectors and so or disney World or whatever. They won't
• 1:23:55
  be, So I think that that one is gonna it's gonna be one of
• 1:23:59
  those that has like the weird value because in the misprint that it's everybody,
• 1:24:02
  I say everybody, but a lot of folks are gonna want to just have
• 1:24:05
  that card because of the errors. But I do find it a little funny
• 1:24:10
  that Heritage is known for trying to create fake air cards. They know,
• 1:24:14
  we're just talking about the actual errors of Heritage, because it does. It
• 1:24:16
  does feel like that that tends to be a thing that they do. So
• 1:24:23
  it's it's unfortunate, but at least it's not a super fracture air so far.
• 1:24:28
  Yeah, exactly, So that might be next week'snooze. But yeah,
• 1:24:33
  let's also get into the print runs a little bit here, because I think
• 1:24:36
  this has been a little bit of what sunk TOPS Heritage for me recently that
• 1:24:42
  the past few years it has been a very overproduced and mass produced set that
• 1:24:47
  I see still plenty of like twenty twenty two and twenty twenty three blasters out
• 1:24:53
  in the wild on discount shelves or sello packs here and there that you know,
• 1:24:58
  show up at Walgreens and TVSS and things like that. But the nice
• 1:25:02
  thing is for twenty twenty four, the TOPS Heritage print run for the whole
• 1:25:08
  base set is actually down down to a level that's even below twenty twenty one.
• 1:25:13
  So it peaked in twenty twenty two of around two hundred and forty five
• 1:25:16
  K, was down to two hundred and forty one K, and it's going
• 1:25:20
  to be a print run of about one hundred and eighty five K for each
• 1:25:25
  base card this year. So I do like that that it doesn't feel quite
• 1:25:30
  as junky as the past few years have been for TOPS Heritage overall. Yeah,
• 1:25:34
  I agree, I think it's it's actually fantastic news for the hobby.
• 1:25:36
  Like there was a little bubble, but the bubble didn't fully burst, which
• 1:25:41
  is which is good news. And if things are coming back down and if
• 1:25:44
  if you know, Heritage is a sign of things to come for the rest
• 1:25:46
  of some of the sets this year, I think that's great news. And
• 1:25:50
  yeah, to me, it makes it a little bit more interesting to buy
• 1:25:54
  a box because you feel like it can hold the value a little bit more
• 1:25:57
  than the paper it's printed on. I mean, hey, we're card collectors.
• 1:26:00
  You know that if you're buying a box of cards, it's automatically a
• 1:26:04
  loss. If if you're looking at for any other way, he probably shouldn't
• 1:26:08
  be doing it. But yeah, I'm actually thrilled to see that the and
• 1:26:13
  I'm actually very shocked to see it down below twenty twenty one levels, like
• 1:26:16
  I would have expected them to come back to maybe twenty twenty two or between
• 1:26:19
  twenty one twenty two levels. And we're talking about almost sixty thousand cards less
• 1:26:28
  per player, and when you're only talking about one hundred and eighty five thousand
• 1:26:31
  cards like that, you got like a quarter of the cards out, which
• 1:26:35
  was which is very meaningful. So I did see somewhere probably on Twitter,
• 1:26:44
  probably looking the same thing you were that it looked like hobby boxes were produced
• 1:26:47
  relatively the same rate as last year, but the retail was down pretty significantly,
• 1:26:54
  which does make sense, right if as the hobbies moved a little bit
• 1:26:57
  more towards breakers and things like that, you're going to maintain the kind of
• 1:27:00
  box perspective from a hobby versus what you might find on the retail blaster or
• 1:27:08
  hangar packs. Yeah, And I think part of that is because this set
• 1:27:14
  is so popular with set collectors that lots of people out there buy an entire
• 1:27:18
  case of it, just like one case and then use that to make an
• 1:27:21
  entire set and kind of get started on the insert sets. So that's I
• 1:27:26
  think a portion of it too is keeping that case available for those types of
• 1:27:30
  buyers. And part of it too is, like I think it's great that
• 1:27:35
  they were able to reduce the print runs and still keep this an economical product
• 1:27:41
  overall, because like Flagship, you will see heritage in all sorts of places
• 1:27:45
  from retail environments like targets and walmarts, in individual retail packs, fat packs,
• 1:27:54
  hanger packs, blaster boxes, mega blasters. But then you get to
• 1:28:01
  the hobby boxes, which are only ninety dollars apiece. So it's a very
• 1:28:04
  affordable product and certainly a great product to get into that I think even more
• 1:28:13
  so than Big League, Like I think what Heritage does is it brings lots
• 1:28:15
  of generations of card collectors together, from you know, people who opened it
• 1:28:19
  back in the seventies, to people like us who were into card collecting in
• 1:28:24
  the nineties and would rifle through the vintage seventy stuff and then obviously have memories
• 1:28:30
  of when Tops Heritage for start in the early two thousands, as well as
• 1:28:35
  Fleer used to run Fleer Tradition, which was kind of in the same vein
• 1:28:40
  as Tops Heritage, with the thicker card stock and the vintage feel. And
• 1:28:45
  so because of the price point, it allows like lots of people to gather
• 1:28:48
  around this product, which I think is really fantastic, and especially given that
• 1:28:53
  the print runs are a little bit lower, it should hold its value a
• 1:28:56
  little bit more than the past couple of years have. Yeah, I'm I
• 1:29:00
  haven't bought it yet. I'm actually disappointed that I didn't get jump on.
• 1:29:03
  I was actually looking to see if I could still grab a box from from
• 1:29:08
  my usual supplier. That sounds like I have a problem, which I do.
• 1:29:14
  And he looks like he's already a big league still available, don't worry.
• 1:29:17
  Yeah, but it looks like Heritage was already sold out, So if
• 1:29:20
  I'm really a box of those, I'm probably gonna have to actually stop by
• 1:29:25
  the store over the next few days here and pick one up. But Heritage
• 1:29:29
  is always always a blast to pick up and rifle through. Yeah, and
• 1:29:33
  there still are hobby boxes on tops dot com too, so both hobby boxes
• 1:29:40
  and monster boxes. The hobby boxes will run you ninety five on there,
• 1:29:44
  but I've been seeing them sell in like the ninety two hundred dollars range,
• 1:29:46
  So certainly a very affordable hobby box that will give you one autographer relic,
• 1:29:54
  which I mean sometimes the relic can be, you know, not the best.
• 1:29:58
  But you're also you're only out ninety one hundred bucks, you know,
• 1:30:01
  It's not like when you're dropping two hundred and sixty bucks and Bowman next month.
• 1:30:06
  Yeah, no kidding, All right, Well that was great. I'm
• 1:30:11
  looking forward to ripping some Tops Heritage. I haven't ripped any yet either,
• 1:30:15
  but I'm certainly going to be looking for it on shelves that when I'm out
• 1:30:18
  running errands this weekend and we'll probably drop by my local hobby shot to get
• 1:30:23
  a box if there's still any available, and some big week if it's still
• 1:30:27
  there too. Try to find one of these magic boxes out there now.
• 1:30:30
  That will be like a very much like a Willy Wonka situation hunting one of
• 1:30:34
  those down. Well, good luck to you. I hope you'll find it
• 1:30:40
  in a If you find the magic box, me save me a pack.
• 1:30:43
  Okay, I will save the last pack for you. Okay, Well,
• 1:30:47
  let's wrap up this week. Brew Can you let everybody know where they can
• 1:30:50
  find you if they want to get a hold of you. Yep, find
• 1:30:55
  me over on Twitter or x at j Brewer one seven. Also find me
• 1:31:00
  a ras balls on the weekends, Twitter, Twitter profiles, hitter profiles,
• 1:31:04
  We've gone too long today, Hitter profiles on Sundays. Also doing your Top
• 1:31:10
  one hundred for the rest of the season, breaking down updating as we go.
• 1:31:14
  So probably another week or two before we get in our first full release
• 1:31:17
  of that Top one hundred, Like likee to let things marinate a little bit,
• 1:31:20
  but find me over on ras ball on the weekends. How about you
• 1:31:25
  remind everybody where you can find you. Yeah, you can find me.
• 1:31:28
  Also on ras Ball on Saturdays doing your waiver wire reports. So we will
• 1:31:32
  have our third week running this weekend, and I think it's going to be
• 1:31:35
  a big one if you had some of the injuries that we talked about in
• 1:31:40
  the first half of the show. And yeah, certainly always guys popping up.
• 1:31:44
  You know, I'm thinking about Gavin Sheets, who I suggested for pickup
• 1:31:48
  this past weekend. He's really stepped into the White Sox DH role, So
• 1:31:54
  probably going to be another good Gavin Sheets week. It's also like it's funny
• 1:31:57
  that like guys hang around on my report for let guess it takes some a
• 1:32:00
  little bit to get picked up. But yeah, you can find me on
• 1:32:03
  Twitter at in Coool seven. You can find the podcast on Twitter at cards
• 1:32:09
  Categories. You can also email the podcast at Cardscategories at gmail dot com.
• 1:32:15
  Let us know if you're out there ripping any tops heritage and finding anything great,
• 1:32:18
  or maybe you beat me to one of those magic boxes from Big League.
• 1:32:23
  You can also buy some merch from us, so I will leave that
• 1:32:26
  in the show notes and details. If you're looking for a new hat for
• 1:32:29
  this summer for going to ballgames, doesn't get better than a cards and categories
• 1:32:33
  podcast hat So we appreciate you sticking around and checking out our podcast and listening
• 1:32:39
  through as we overview tops Heritage Today and helped you out on some injuries in
• 1:32:44
  the first half. So if you can, rate, review, comment,
• 1:32:47
  like this podcast wherever you're listening to us, we greatly appreciate it and we
• 1:32:54
  will see you again, same time, same place next week. Thanks everybody, be a