Latest / Cards & Categories / Ep. 51 : June Players Of The Month PC

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Ep. 51 : June Players Of The Month PC · Cards & Categories

• 0:15
  Hello, and welcome everybody to episode fifty one of Cards and Categories. I'm
• 0:20
  Mike Coolard from Rasball, joined as always by my very good friend Jeremy Burr,
• 0:24
  also from Rassball. How you doing, Bud? You feeling refreshed after
• 0:28
  our week off last week? I took a week off. I am refreshed
• 0:32
  halfy fourth of July that we just had lots of fireworks, lots of hot
• 0:35
  dogs and burgers. I am ready to go. I'm in game shape.
• 0:38
  Let's to put it that way. Yeah, And then, I mean,
• 0:41
  this is gonna be a big one because the void of no Baseball is coming
• 0:45
  up on Monday as we go through the All Star break. I always the
• 0:50
  worst is the days after the All Star break when there's just a total blackout
• 0:55
  of all sports, and I just I don't know what to do with myself,
• 1:00
  Like worse than the World Series, I think, because you're just like,
• 1:02
  oh, it's so hot, i'd need to be watching baseball. But
• 1:06
  you know what people can do next week? You can listen to this pod
• 1:07
  and catch up on our back catalog. So I think we've got lots going
• 1:12
  on. This is our fifty first episode. We actually recorded our first podcast
• 1:18
  last year July twelfth, so we're coming up on the one year anniversary.
• 1:22
  But yeah, congrats, but we've made it, and we will get into
• 1:25
  more like anniversary things next week because that's going to be the bigger, like
• 1:30
  we'll of eclipse the total. And I have some like tallies that I want
• 1:33
  to do in things like that just to be able to quiz you on stuff.
• 1:36
  So I sure hope you don't go back and look at any of my
• 1:38
  bold predictions or anything like that, because migrating could be questionable at best.
• 1:42
  Oh yeah, I mean, honestly, we're gonna from some of our preseason
• 1:47
  stuff. We've been doing pretty well. I will pat ourselves on the back
• 1:49
  a little bit, but yeah, I'll find I'll find some good jazzon be
• 1:52
  careful, you might pull in a bleak. Yeah, kicking through everything.
• 1:57
  But yeah, because it is All Star break, we've got lots of All
• 2:00
  Star festivities coming next week. And what we're going to do for our pod
• 2:05
  this week is we're going to get into the June Player of the Month PC.
• 2:07
  So we've got some pretty deep rabbit holes that we're going to be digging
• 2:13
  through during that PC selection because there are some very interesting choices this month and
• 2:19
  also a couple of repeats, so you'll have to stay tuned to see how
• 2:23
  we treat that when we do that discussion. But yeah, let's open up
• 2:27
  with some news and notes, And like I said, the All Star Game
• 2:30
  is right around the corner, we're going to be seeing a different home run
• 2:34
  derby format, which I'll say that I think I'm looking forward to this.
• 2:38
  So the new format is going to be in the first round, the eight
• 2:42
  hitters will just be able to hit without the head to head bracket style that
• 2:46
  they've had for the past couple of years. Then they move into a semi
• 2:51
  finals where the top four of those eight hitters will make it, and then
• 2:54
  that's going to be like reseeded based on how many homers you hit in that
• 2:59
  first round, and then from there it goes into a final head to head
• 3:01
  match up. But I think what's going to make it even be better overall
• 3:06
  is that they're changing the way that the rounds are going to be formatted,
• 3:10
  like directly you know, for the actual derby. So if you recall,
• 3:15
  it used to be where you used to get just ten swings and it got
• 3:20
  incredibly boring because players would sit up there, wait for the perfect pitch,
• 3:24
  try to really judiciously use those ten swings the ten outs. And then when
• 3:30
  they switched the format to kind of the more modern day version, it just
• 3:35
  turned into an all out how many balls can you swing at in two or
• 3:38
  three minutes, plus the bonus balls, which I found to be It was
• 3:42
  fun the first couple of times, but then it got a little chaotic,
• 3:45
  as you know, the cameras were trying to like line up and you couldn't
• 3:47
  quite see all the homers, and then you've got stat cast going in another
• 3:52
  box two and it's just absolutely pure chaos on TV. So I think they've
• 3:57
  trimmed it down a little bit where this year, in the first round and
• 4:00
  in the semi finals, we'll have each player go through a three minute round.
• 4:03
  You get only forty pitches, so I'm imagining that they'll just like fill
• 4:08
  a bucket with forty balls to use and then that's once it's gone, it's
• 4:12
  gone, and three bonus outs. So I think that's based on you know,
• 4:17
  at the end of if every swing is a home run or an out,
• 4:23
  like it's you're gonna line up at the end of the round where you
• 4:26
  get your three minutes. I think then you get your three bonus outs and
• 4:29
  then for the four hundred and twenty five hit home but Homer, you're getting
• 4:32
  a bonus period to get a fourth bonus out. I guess we'll see how
• 4:38
  it all plays out. But then in the finals, pretty much the same
• 4:41
  sort of format, but two minute round, twenty seven pitches, one timeout.
• 4:46
  I guess I didn't emphasize one time out in the early rounds too used
• 4:48
  to get too So I think it's gonna be a good hybrid of the old
• 4:53
  method and the new method. I'm really looking forward to it. What do
• 4:57
  you think about this change through the overall home run derbyfore Yeah, I I
• 5:00
  really like it as well. I do think you know and we I think
• 5:04
  we saw it this year with the struggle. It seems like MLB had and
• 5:09
  actually getting big names to commit to the derby. I don't know about you,
• 5:14
  but it does feel like they were struggling to get some guys to commit
• 5:17
  that they would have liked to have. And I think part of it is
• 5:19
  that there's just been enough fear built up over the last few years of if
• 5:23
  you have to swing as much and as hard as you do in those three
• 5:26
  minutes. It's it's a lot of stress on the body, and it's not
• 5:30
  like a normal thing a VP. And I mean getting a chance to kind
• 5:33
  of slow down and and swing and and actually go after the right pitches here
• 5:38
  and what you know, that's that's that's nice. Like that's a that's a
• 5:42
  that's a good thing. So, uh, to your point, I'm not
• 5:44
  sure exactly how it's gonna work. To your point, do they just get
• 5:46
  forty balls in a bucket or if there's a bad pitch and you don't swing
• 5:49
  in it and you get another another one, like you know, I'm assuming
• 5:53
  that they can be selective in that case, and so it's kind of a
• 5:57
  make sure of the new and old. And I also like the fact that
• 6:00
  they got rid of the one v one in the early rounds, Like I
• 6:03
  like the fact that all eight get to go up there, and it's it
• 6:09
  kind of gives you a more better likelihood of your bigger names and getting further
• 6:15
  in the bracket and not getting kind of knocked out by the eight seed getting
• 6:18
  hot and then just falling apart after that. So I think that that that's
• 6:23
  a it's a good change as well. So I'd say, the only thing
• 6:26
  I'm not a fan of this is just knit I'm not a fan of like
• 6:29
  the bonus ball and the bonus balls, like it seems like like overkills,
• 6:32
  like you get your three bonus hits and if you get another distance once and
• 6:35
  you get another butt like like can you just like continuously get bonus hits like
• 6:41
  just hit you know, five hundred foot home run after five hun a home
• 6:43
  run after five hundred hit home run? Like is that how this works?
• 6:46
  Uh? And so it's it is a little interesting, and it does like
• 6:48
  those those bonuses are like the old old style where they're like true outs,
• 6:53
  like a home runner an out and you actually get three outs like it's I
• 6:56
  think it will get a little confusing, but I think it'll be fun.
• 6:59
  I think it'll be fun. I think it's a good just to refresh the
• 7:01
  derby. So looking forward to it, and it's it's always quality. Second
• 7:06
  favorite part of it is watching all the kids in the outfield run around,
• 7:09
  run to each other trying to catch the ball so well anderson they get like
• 7:12
  donked with the balls because they like sometimes the range of like the kids there
• 7:17
  in the outfield is very wide ranging and I've never quite understood what it is
• 7:23
  because you've got like some who are six and you know, barely maybe out
• 7:29
  of tea ball, and then some teenagers and it's a really not great mix
• 7:33
  of like sending all those kids out too the outfield. But we'll see how
• 7:38
  this all works out. Like I said, I think they should take much
• 7:41
  like fifty year old guys like fantasy baseball players and put them in the in
• 7:44
  the outfield like everybody's like at the beer belly going and huffing them puffing like,
• 7:48
  and then you have the one guy that's like stayed in shape his whole
• 7:51
  life, like trolling center. Like I mean, I think they're missing an
• 7:55
  opportunity here for sure. Yeah, or just like maybe put like Zach Campbell
• 8:00
  out there or like have him be like without a glove or something, just
• 8:03
  really like make him a target. That would be fantastic. I love.
• 8:07
  It's kind of like the if you're going golfing in the and the cart comes
• 8:11
  by to clean up all the golf has and the driving range, like same
• 8:13
  thing as Zach Campbell. All right, Well, with that, we also
• 8:16
  have the All Star rosters being announced recently, and there's lots of new players.
• 8:22
  So I think this has been something that has happened quite a bit over
• 8:26
  the last half decade in terms of just newer, younger players coming through,
• 8:31
  and especially as the game has changed to become just more dynamic overall with the
• 8:37
  pitch clock and the new bigger bases and steel rules, and then on top
• 8:43
  of it all, like it just takes a different level of athlete to be
• 8:46
  able to hit some of these pitches that those pitchers are out there toss.
• 8:50
  And so with that, we have a total of thirty two players that were
• 8:54
  selected for the first time for our rookies, and of those rookies we have
• 8:58
  Showta Imanaga, Mason Miller, Jackson Merrill, and Paul Schmes. And obviously
• 9:05
  this is just the initial list. We'll have pitchers, especially pull out here
• 9:09
  over the next few days and be replaced. So I'm sure there are some
• 9:13
  snubs out there, but I feel like whenever we have those sorts of discussions,
• 9:18
  it doesn't age very well because then you know, after we post this
• 9:22
  pod, we'll find out that for some reason, you know, they aren't
• 9:26
  going to be having like Ranger Suarez on the team and Brandon Nemo were replacing
• 9:31
  him, and really kind of sorting out any of those snubs that are out
• 9:33
  there so out of all the names and maybe just kind of like all the
• 9:39
  overall general trends in terms of the youth movement and newer players making these All
• 9:43
  Star teams, anything really stand out to you amongst either the AL or the
• 9:48
  NL team. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, if
• 9:52
  you look at the teams, there's a few things that stand out to me.
• 9:54
  One, I do still love the fact that every team gets an All
• 9:58
  Star. I think there's important for a fan base, but it does create
• 10:01
  some really interesting dynamics. Is as you look at the names on here,
• 10:05
  and I don't want to pick in anybody, but I'm going to and you
• 10:09
  look at it and go, man, Ryan McMahon, if you really had
• 10:13
  an All Star season for for the for the Rockies, I'm just not I'm
• 10:16
  just not feeling that, uh for for for for that, I'm trying to
• 10:22
  think who else might fit into that that that range. Like, you know,
• 10:26
  overall, we're we're pretty pretty solid, thankfully, Like Mason Miller for
• 10:31
  the Athletics has decided to have an All Star season for the Athletics and so
• 10:35
  that's worked out pretty pretty well. I'm not sure. Tyler Anderson for the
• 10:39
  Angels, oh, pretty good season, but I'm the age, just do
• 10:43
  you have is there any as it's a triple A team at this point,
• 10:48
  sorry, the White Sox are a single A team. Just gotta keep it
• 10:50
  all straight, but I mean they're All Star. Was also very easy.
• 10:54
  You might actually like has a chance at starting the game possibly, you know,
• 10:58
  with Garret Shape from the White Sox. Yeah, exactly, if he
• 11:01
  doesn't get traded before then, right, but before I was just thinking the
• 11:09
  same thing, like, yeah, you know, single ars all Star,
• 11:11
  you trade them, do you get somebody else? And who the White Socks,
• 11:16
  whoever they trade for, it's gonna be the All Star sadly, you
• 11:20
  know it would actually it would definitely be Paul de Young, like he was
• 11:24
  second beyond Croasch. I guess it's probably Eric Fetty, Eric Fetty, And
• 11:28
  yeah, you're right, probably it's probably Fetty. But it is a good
• 11:31
  thing that they had Crochet to be able to send. Yeah, And I
• 11:35
  think the other thing it's interesting to look at is just kind of the I
• 11:39
  always get to kick out of looking what teams have multiple players in the starting
• 11:43
  lineups and and hate say does it does it ultimately make sense? And so
• 11:46
  you're you're looking at the the Phillies have Bryce Harper, Alec Baum and Trey
• 11:54
  Turner, which I think actually speaks a little bit more to the maybe third
• 12:00
  base positions. I'm not sure Bomb like really rises to a third base starter
• 12:03
  with the season's had. He's had a good season, but maybe not there.
• 12:07
  But it does point to, you know, Phillies being one of the
• 12:09
  best teams out there. They're they're having great, great players, and you
• 12:13
  also see, you know, the Guardians have a few players. Blue Jays
• 12:16
  didn't have a big sweep this year that fan base in the past, I
• 12:20
  was a little worried that the Blue Jays We're gonna have like four starters somehow
• 12:24
  because they one of the best voting fan bases that's out there. But only
• 12:28
  only Vlad was able to kind of sneak in there. So yeah, overall,
• 12:31
  I think pretty good, pretty good list. I'm really thrilled to see
• 12:37
  Paul Skeens in there. I think that was a fantastic pick for him.
• 12:43
  And again talking about relievers, how many Phillies relievers do we need on this
• 12:48
  team? Between Hoffman and u and strom Uh and Ranger. Swarz isn't a
• 12:56
  reliever, but sometimes I think he is. So it is crazy that like
• 13:01
  both Strom and Hoffman there made it from Philly just because, like the relievers
• 13:07
  are the easy thing to pick off from the really crummy teams to be able
• 13:09
  to take their one reliever that has like a two something ear and a twelve
• 13:15
  K nine while they still do And I'm trying to think that there's actually anybody.
• 13:20
  I guess Mason Miller is kind of that guy for the athletics right now,
• 13:22
  and yeah, he just actually deserved it. Yeah, even Kirby Yates,
• 13:26
  he's the only Ranger returning from you know, I guess no, Marcus
• 13:30
  Simon's also on the bench, so, but Kirby Yates is definitely in that
• 13:33
  role too, where you know, the Rangers are really falling apart, weren't
• 13:37
  able to get any of their big stars in except for Simeon there. So
• 13:41
  yeah, it's gonna be I think, an interesting matchup and just see,
• 13:45
  like honestly, like usually it feels like the al usually has the upper hand.
• 13:50
  I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the concentration of the teams
• 13:54
  in the AL East. And then you add in the Astros over the past
• 13:56
  few years, but I think the NL might have the upper hand this year
• 14:01
  just because, like in the late game, they get to use Paul Skeens
• 14:05
  and Aladela Cruz and those are both just absolute game changers if you're able to
• 14:09
  get a man on I'm immediately putting Elidela Cruz in as my pinch runner to
• 14:16
  get him on third base, don't you think? Yeah? I think so,
• 14:18
  And I think like you make a really good point there. From a
• 14:22
  depth perspective, the National League's depth, especially on the hitting side, is
• 14:28
  just far and away better than the American League team. It might just be
• 14:31
  my perspective, but you know, you do have from some very strong like
• 14:39
  Pete Alonzo, Mookie Bets, Freddy Freeman, guy type guys on the bench.
• 14:43
  Not to say that Carrea Endeavor's and Sally Perez are great, but like
• 14:48
  the star power definitely feels like it's it's favor in the National League there.
• 14:54
  And also from a reliever perspective, it would be there are a number of
• 14:58
  former relievers in the America League with crocheted Did I think we leave a little
• 15:01
  bit tayn or Hawk definitely did so. I think that there might be some
• 15:07
  there, but I don't know it's gonna be fun. II was drew for
• 15:09
  the National League. Varshallow the National League. Homer Love not always the fan
• 15:13
  of the DH, but more or less, I feel like the American leg
• 15:18
  League's won so much we need to leave, but like twenty years of the
• 15:20
  National League to win now to kind of even things out. Yeah, especially
• 15:24
  in our lifetimes, the AL has been super stacked. Yeah, but okay,
• 15:28
  let's move on to injuries and other transactions. So really, Brillin only
• 15:33
  have even since we talked two weeks ago. The biggest injury we've had is
• 15:39
  the closer for the Toronto Blue Jays, Jordan Romano, has gone down with
• 15:45
  the elbow is continuing to bother him. He had arthroscopic surgery on it is
• 15:48
  out probably two ish months, and this is something that we've been warning against
• 15:54
  on this podcast. Now it feels like for two months the other direction in
• 16:00
  terms of Romano has been battling through back injuries, elbow injuries, just all
• 16:06
  sorts of things in the kinetic chain that have been throwing him off all season.
• 16:11
  It's why I've been a big proponent of Yemy Garcia and Chad Green has
• 16:15
  been closing games in Toronto right now, while Garcia is he should be back
• 16:18
  right after the All Star break, if not later this week because he's out
• 16:22
  on a rehab with recovering from his sore elbow himself. But for the foreseeable
• 16:30
  future, I mean, is this going to move you towards maybe like even
• 16:34
  acquiring somebody like Garcia or Green in dynasty leagues because I think at this point,
• 16:42
  like it's not looking great for Jordan Romano even going into twenty twenty five.
• 16:48
  It's been a pretty lost year, but he also seems pretty beat up.
• 16:51
  So if you're targeting some cheap saves, are you barking up the tree
• 16:56
  for Chad Green and Yemy Garcia in deeper leagues or not deeper leaks but keeper
• 17:00
  leaks. Yeah, you know, I'm I probably shouldn't go there, but
• 17:04
  I'm probably sticking with Romano in those those keeper leagues, like he just still
• 17:10
  does have enough youth. And you're talking about Chad Green and Yvean Garcia,
• 17:12
  who thirty three thirty four year old guys there that both have had some good
• 17:18
  results this year, but both have had an incredible amount of luck. And
• 17:22
  I'm not sure how much I can you know, lean into to that.
• 17:26
  You know, Green signed through through next year, so you know you can
• 17:32
  kind of expect that he's going to be in the bullpen, be in the
• 17:33
  mix, and he does have a pretty strong history of being dominant at times,
• 17:40
  but not not all the way around, you know, whereas Jimmy's gonna
• 17:45
  be a free agent after after this year, after he had often invested.
• 17:52
  So if I had to pick one, it's gonna be Chad Green because just
• 17:56
  because I think, you know, Blue Jays are not gonna be probing to
• 18:00
  put another closer. I think they were looking for Romano to get healthy and
• 18:03
  come back. Green's probably gonna be the guy in the short term. Garcia
• 18:07
  might kick him out. But if we get in the next year and we
• 18:10
  have issues Romano again, it's probably back to Green. So that's probably where
• 18:14
  I'd be investing. And I don't think that's gonna cost you, but like
• 18:15
  a dollar and fan fab at this point in time, so I'm going with
• 18:19
  Green. I still do like Romano in the long run, but he's just
• 18:22
  gotta he's got to get right. And so I hate to say, I
• 18:26
  almost be surprised if we see him again last year. Yeah, I agree,
• 18:30
  and I guess I should have looked more closely at Emi Garcia's contract,
• 18:34
  But yeah, I actually I was trying to lead you there in that question
• 18:40
  a little bit because I think I am interested in Green as a very cheap
• 18:42
  keeper option in those types of leagues where you're already scrambling for saves that you
• 18:51
  know, especially I mean we play in an on a new league together.
• 18:53
  I think that's where he's a It's a great situation where you think about in
• 18:59
  dynasty leagues having to build out your rotation sometimes, but half the time I
• 19:03
  find in autnew and other sort of dynasty situations, I'm building out the bullpen
• 19:07
  like years in advance more than starting pitchers, because starting pitchers they always come
• 19:14
  up pretty quickly and move through systems pretty fast. So you can find I
• 19:18
  mean, just look at some of the options that have come up this year
• 19:21
  in terms of like you know, Schwellenbach, And I was gonna say David
• 19:26
  Festa, but maybe that's what I can do when we're recapping our when you're
• 19:30
  anniversary stuff, as it can go back and delete all audio footage of US
• 19:33
  praising David Festa. Those types of players, you know, come along and
• 19:40
  move through systems pretty quickly. On the back end of bullpens, it's hard
• 19:42
  to find guys that are dependable and that managers and teams trust overall. So
• 19:48
  if you've got to be thinking, you know, a year out sometimes per
• 19:52
  your closer options, I think Chad Green is maybe one of the best ones
• 19:56
  out there because he's signed up for next year in at ten and a half
• 20:00
  million bucks, and I think they're just gonna instead of eating that money,
• 20:04
  just let him be a really high end reliever for them next year and maybe
• 20:10
  trade him because it doesn't look like this turnaround in Toronto is gonna be very
• 20:14
  quick. Yeah, And I think you make a great point there. Just
• 20:17
  that's one of the beauties of dynasty leagues. I love that, like there's
• 20:18
  always an angle to play, and I do sometimes love playing that angle of
• 20:23
  the closer from a year from now, Like if I don't have every spot
• 20:27
  in my reliever taken, yeah, you better believe I'm investing in some guy
• 20:32
  that might just happen to be a closer if seven things break the right way.
• 20:36
  It's it's always good to feel to feel that feeling that you've predicted the
• 20:41
  future, even if it took seven guys to do it, so okay,
• 20:45
  Yeah, and then we had one trade in the two weeks since we last
• 20:49
  talked, and that was Aaron Sevali being traded from Tampa to Milwaukee for Gregory
• 20:56
  Barrios, who is in High A, so aren't going to really have his
• 21:02
  name come up for a couple more years. So the man to focus on
• 21:04
  here is Aaron Sevali, who has struggled a little bit this year in Tampa,
• 21:08
  but has also been better from a strikeout perspective than has been in the
• 21:15
  past. And I haven't checked his FIP recently. The fIF is still at
• 21:19
  four ninety six, but it's a four fifteen x FIP, so there's a
• 21:23
  lot of like the home run ball has just been eating Aaron Savally alive this
• 21:27
  year. As you know, he has gotten up to a nine K per
• 21:32
  nine And I think if there was any team that, like you, maybe
• 21:36
  wanted to go him to go to, this Milwaukee team is great in terms
• 21:41
  of they've found ways I've noticed over this year just like of being able to
• 21:47
  utilize the best of the pitchers that they've got. They've got a great defense,
• 21:51
  and on top of it all, you've got a team that's winning quite
• 21:53
  a bit, so especially if you're in a traditional five y five roto league.
• 21:57
  Aaron Sevali. Going to the Brewers, I think is a slight up
• 22:02
  arrow, especially if you're like an you know only league, like this is
• 22:06
  a boon for your overall playerpool. But brew is there maybe any other additional
• 22:11
  upside in the Savally kind of like Arsenal or anything else that he's been doing
• 22:17
  this year that you think that he could really turn back the clock a little
• 22:22
  bit to look a little bit more like Cleveland Guardians. Aaron Savali. Yeah,
• 22:26
  I mean, I I hate to be the negative Nancy here, but
• 22:30
  no, you know, I look at him and there's a few things that
• 22:34
  that that I'm I've never been a big Savally truther here, but one,
• 22:38
  when you're traded away from the Rays, like the Rays don't think they can
• 22:41
  fix you, that's not good news. And you know, he he really
• 22:48
  has kind of shifted his pitch mix a little bit this year, a little
• 22:51
  bit more towards more of a sweeper type of type of approach, and that
• 22:57
  hasn't really terribly paid off for him. It seems like that's not playing as
• 23:03
  well and it's making his uh his some of his other pitches not play as
• 23:08
  as strong, and he's kind of backed off, uh you know some of
• 23:12
  the plays like his split finger, which was you know, questionable when he
• 23:18
  was using it with with Tampa, but it was a reasonable pitch for him
• 23:22
  when he was with with Cleveland, he was for for a while there,
• 23:26
  he actually used it quite a bit. So you know, I think the
• 23:30
  bigger, bigger concern for me is he's just he changed the pitch mix.
• 23:33
  He's letting the ball get in the air a lot more and do with some
• 23:37
  bad home or luck. That's also cousins some problems. So you're right,
• 23:41
  there's a good defense there, but I'm still worried about the little Homer happy
• 23:45
  and like I said, if the race can't fix them, I'm just concerned
• 23:51
  that anybody can. Uh So I'm staying away. It's probably too shallow of
• 23:56
  analysis for some folks, but there's just sometimes when you see a team acquire
• 24:00
  somebody or a team trade somebody away that you're like, I feel like I've
• 24:03
  been here before. It's like like the Indians are sorry, the Guardians,
• 24:08
  the Guardians. If the Guardians are calling up a guy and they want to
• 24:11
  use them as a picture, I'm usually pretty interested, and then if they
• 24:15
  ship them out, I'm usually not. I think the Rays have gone to
• 24:19
  that category for me. Astros maybe a little bit as well. Ironically,
• 24:23
  the Pirates have gotten better at that too, after a number of years after
• 24:30
  they charted to destroyed Charlie Morton a game to the Astros. But anyway,
• 24:36
  I digress. Savali not too exciting for me all. Also on the sidelines,
• 24:41
  if I'm wrong, I'm not too upset about it. Okay, Yeah,
• 24:44
  And the rest of the transactions, we've got our call ups and calls
• 24:49
  down. So the first one we've got is it's a big one. James
• 24:52
  Wood, outfielder for the Washington Nationals, debuted just a little bit over a
• 24:57
  week ago on July first, so he was able to get a first hit
• 25:03
  in that first game and has been looking pretty good ever since. As we're
• 25:07
  talking here on July tenth, he has forty three played appearances in which he's
• 25:12
  hit two fifty three, seventy two, three sixty one and also tallied a
• 25:18
  homer and a stolen base. So the thing that I've been really liking to
• 25:23
  seeing in James Wood's profile too, is that the strikeouts have been pretty reasonable.
• 25:30
  You know, he's kept it in the mid twenties, and that walk
• 25:33
  rate has been over ten percent and really has been pretty formidable as long as
• 25:38
  he's been up, and I've been watching him over the past week, that
• 25:41
  he has a pretty good understanding of the strike zone. And that's what you
• 25:45
  want to see, especially from a player like James Wood, who is Aaron
• 25:51
  Judge. Like at six foot seven, he's already got a little bit big
• 25:55
  over a zone that he's he's fighting with, and pitchers do not want to
• 25:59
  come into that zone because we've seen in spring training and in the minor leagues
• 26:03
  what he'll do with balls that our belt hide. They will go five hundred
• 26:07
  feet and so he's not gonna necessarily it's like a combination of he's never gonna
• 26:14
  have a fair strike zone, but he also can't be expanding that unfair strike
• 26:18
  zone. So honestly, like that's what I really wanted to see with James
• 26:23
  Wood coming up, was if he could command the zone. He's had double
• 26:29
  digit speed, double digit power in the minor leagues. Ever where he stopped.
• 26:33
  I think this guy could be an absolute monster for fantasy, Like even
• 26:37
  into twenty twenty five, and I mean, I think we're looking at like
• 26:42
  the next kind of like super star player who could go like forty twenty and
• 26:47
  I'm thinking, I think it's gonna look a lot like what that kind of
• 26:52
  steroid era Fernando Tatist Junior looked like in terms of great power, great speed,
• 27:00
  letting the batting average fall where it does, but it's usually going to
• 27:03
  be pretty high because of just the that power speed combination. Am I getting
• 27:07
  two over my skis here in James Wood? You are not? I love
• 27:12
  James Wood. I think there's a lot to like about him here. You
• 27:15
  know, he's he's still trying to figure things out. But like through you
• 27:21
  know, roughly fifty played appearances here, you know he is hitting the ball
• 27:25
  as hard as like John Carlos, Stanton, Juan Soto. He has bast
• 27:30
  be in the top ten percent of the league. His hard hit rate is
• 27:33
  a ridiculous sixty two percent. The issues right now for him is he's like
• 27:37
  hitting the ball in the ground like he has He's still like he's still adjusting,
• 27:42
  so his launch angles like negative seven. That's the wrong way. But
• 27:48
  like you're to your point, good played approach like when he has connected,
• 27:52
  it's kid's gone where it needs to go, like, and he's showing all
• 27:56
  the right tools and there's no question like if he's making that kind of solid
• 28:00
  contact already and he looks comfortable, he's walking like, he doesn't look overmatched
• 28:06
  at all. He's definitely, definitely ready. And I'm I wouldn't be shocked,
• 28:11
  you know, if he had a really strong second half here. You
• 28:15
  know, we're we're talking, you know, first few rounds next year.
• 28:18
  As for for would, I don't think there's any question that he can.
• 28:22
  He can do that. You know, it's just a matter of do teams
• 28:26
  adjust back to him things like that. But there's probably a better situation for
• 28:30
  him in the league than playing for the Nationals right now. There's no spotlight
• 28:33
  that he was able to spend all the time in the minors to marinate without
• 28:36
  a ton of pressure to come up. And now that he's up, he's
• 28:38
  gonna have you know, consistent playing time, you know, and you know,
• 28:42
  it's not like the way of the world's on him to leave the World
• 28:45
  Series or anything like. I think there's everything around him is gonna work out
• 28:49
  well. So I absolutely love James Wood. You know, if you didn't
• 28:53
  invest in them, there's probably no chance you can invest them right now.
• 28:56
  Everybody owns him wants to see what happens. But I I'm higher on him
• 29:00
  that I have a guy getting called up for quite some time. Yeah,
• 29:03
  I think I'm right there too, And especially like even when he's struggling with
• 29:10
  these ground balls right now, they're still being hit with pretty good authority,
• 29:12
  and like it's it's just funny because like when you said that, it really
• 29:17
  sent my alarm bells off for like Jordan Walker from the left side. But
• 29:21
  it's also like it's a totally different approach when you're watching them at the plate
• 29:25
  that Walker always looked and has always looked way too inside of his head,
• 29:30
  way too worried, way too stiff. James Wood is just loose and confident.
• 29:34
  And it reminds me a little bit of like when we were watching Why
• 29:37
  at Langford in the beginning of the season that even like when the results weren't
• 29:41
  there, you can just see the off the confidence oozing from players when they're
• 29:47
  in the box and like it will come in due time. And I think
• 29:51
  that's where James Wood is at right now. And then when you also layer
• 29:53
  in he plays in a top five park for hitters in terms of that national
• 30:00
  especially as the summer goes on it gets warmer and warmer and warmer. It's
• 30:03
  a top five park for left handed bats. That right field porch is a
• 30:07
  little bit of like a cutout to it. That's just a really nice spot
• 30:12
  where Harper would always kind of pop homers. And Eddie Rizzario has been taking
• 30:17
  advantage of it before he got cut and moved to Atlanta, and so yeah,
• 30:21
  there's just a lot of really great factors here to put it all together.
• 30:25
  And then what makes it even greater is he's got speed. I think
• 30:29
  that if the power is not coming and he's struggling, he can always find
• 30:34
  a little bit of offense for himself by swiping bags. So we've seen that
• 30:38
  he's not afraid to run, and I think he's gonna be. He's gonna
• 30:42
  be I think a tough player to value going in a drafts next year,
• 30:47
  because it'll be a little bit like Ellie this year, where it's like,
• 30:51
  I know, the upper end is so great, but it's like I also
• 30:55
  have at a bertle Mondasa like feelings sometimes. But I guess part of it
• 31:00
  too. Is I need to get over that because Mondsey in the stack cast
• 31:03
  are never exactly like you know, let up the meters made them all red,
• 31:08
  but James Wood will yeah. And I think what's interesting is I think
• 31:11
  your modesty comp is actually really interesting for Dela Cruz, Like Dela Cruz and
• 31:17
  Woods are so much different players though like uh, there's they're physical specimens.
• 31:22
  But Dela Cruz is up there like hacking, like he is swinging at everything
• 31:26
  all over the place, and when he connect to some unbelievable Woods, not
• 31:30
  up there just swinging freely like something wrong he swings. His swing is free
• 31:36
  but like he's not just swinging blindly, what's coming up there? Like he's
• 31:40
  he's selective, he's picking the right pitch. Like so I do think he
• 31:42
  has a much higher floor than something like an Ellie, where Ellie's the talent's
• 31:48
  unbelievable, but you're going to go through roller coasters. I know. I
• 31:51
  had some animated discussions with some readers the other day over on Rasball with rankings,
• 31:56
  and they were calling me out for how high I had a LA in
• 32:00
  my rankings. And this was in the midst of his like you know,
• 32:04
  middle early summer slump where he was just awful, just awful, And I
• 32:08
  told him like that, the thing with Ellie is he's gonna be awful and
• 32:13
  then he's gonna be unbelievable, and then he's gonna be awful, and here's
• 32:15
  gonna be unbelievable and it's gonna even out and you're gonna look at this guy.
• 32:17
  And he went, you know, forty sixty and hit two forty and
• 32:23
  you were absolutely thrilled. But if you try to time the market or try
• 32:28
  to be like, ah, he's fallen off, like, you have to
• 32:30
  know what you're getting into with those types of guys. So I yeah,
• 32:35
  espousing, James would here, but it is James would time. It's his
• 32:38
  world, world, living in it. Let's see what happens. Yeah,
• 32:40
  I totally agree. Okay, the next big prospect debut that we had is
• 32:45
  actually a little bit of like the opposite on the Savant page in terms of
• 32:51
  brooks Lee. He's played shortstop and third base for the Twins and could play
• 32:55
  second base, so just all over the place. He's a switch hitting in
• 33:00
  older also drafted just a few years ago and rose through that system pretty quickly.
• 33:05
  But he I want to get your take on this, because I espoused
• 33:09
  like the virtues of brooks Ley in my Waiver Wire column this weekend, and
• 33:15
  I think he's a solid pickup. He's been producing pretty well for the Twins.
• 33:19
  He produced really well when he was in Triple A that when he was
• 33:22
  down there, he found his power stroke at the beginning of twenty twenty four
• 33:27
  here with an incredible seven bombs slugged six thirty five. And when you look
• 33:35
  into the actual bat of ball data, he's on the weaker end in terms
• 33:38
  of just not being able to produce some of those higher act of velocities.
• 33:43
  Hasn't been able to produce tons of barrels, but just executes and has good
• 33:49
  plate discipline. You know, he's got good back to ball contact skills.
• 33:52
  He only struck out around fourteen percent of the time in Triple A and that's
• 33:55
  right around where he's been throughout his time in the miners, as well as
• 34:00
  still being able to control the zone that you know, he almost has been
• 34:04
  walking ten percent of the time. So he's got the play skills and the
• 34:07
  productions followed him everywhere he's played throughout the minor leagues, especially when he worked
• 34:13
  his way up into double A and triple A and he was young for the
• 34:15
  leagues, he was able to show what he could do. So like when
• 34:20
  you're kind of looking at the standard fangrass page, if you didn't have like
• 34:25
  the stat cast back in the day and you, you know, were looking
• 34:29
  at this guy's profile in twenty twenty, like two thousand and five or whatever,
• 34:32
  Like, I think he would have been a really, really hot prospect,
• 34:37
  but because we know the bad of ball data, he has really slumped
• 34:40
  in everybody's eyes. But at what point, like does the actual production trump
• 34:46
  the bad ball profile or vice versa for you? So like I'm in on
• 34:52
  Lee, I'm not like super duper in on him, like we're I think
• 34:57
  he's a significant player, but I think he's own a ball and on twelve
• 35:00
  team or at middle endfield. So like where are you with berks Lean?
• 35:06
  Like yeah, what are you doing with that profile that I just outlined?
• 35:09
  Yeah? Yeah, you make a good point that you gotta be careful that
• 35:13
  you don't over invest in like your stack cast data, because there are guys
• 35:16
  that who are like stat cast darlings like Yandi Diaz is like the the consummate
• 35:22
  example of a guy that looks so good on paper, but like his results
• 35:27
  never show up as good. The don't can be wrong. Yandy's been pretty
• 35:30
  good at times like he should be an all start onan Soto slugger. Guys
• 35:38
  on the other side of the spectrum, so that don't don't look great,
• 35:43
  but they continue to produce. Lane Thomas being being a great example. Lane
• 35:46
  Thomas looks absolutely dreadful from a stat cast perspective, but he does all the
• 35:51
  little things just right. He has good line drives, he's not popping out,
• 35:54
  He's got enough speed to leg things out like his profile works well,
• 36:00
  and that's that's where I think brooks Lee kind of fits in, as I
• 36:01
  think he does have that intriguing, very solid, just good ballplayer profile.
• 36:07
  You know, it'd be interesting to see what eligibility he ends up with this
• 36:12
  year and that maintains in the next year because he's not likely to unsee Carlo's
• 36:17
  Korea. They're at a shortstop, which would be you know, what you'd
• 36:21
  want him to have as far as eligibility is concerned. But again, he
• 36:25
  has a pedigree. He was what the top ten pick eighth overall, which
• 36:30
  like we don't talk about him like that. So like, you know,
• 36:34
  I when I look at guys coming up up, like I'm usually evaluating,
• 36:37
  like what's their pedigree? Like where were they drafted? What are I'm going
• 36:42
  to say? Like what are the beat writers saying? And what do the
• 36:45
  numbers say? Like those are three very unofficial ways to look at it.
• 36:49
  But if the numbers are like yeah, okay, decent, but the beat
• 36:52
  writers are like, hey, he's good ballplayer, solid, like he's really
• 36:55
  going to do something and he's got this pedigree, I'm like, I'm going
• 36:58
  to give it a chance. Whereas you know, if you've got great stats
• 37:01
  in the you're draft in the fortieth round, the beat writers like, man,
• 37:05
  this guy can't he's just taking advantage of fastballs because he's bigger than everybody
• 37:09
  else. Then I'm sitting here going not so interested. So I think you
• 37:13
  have to triangulate those types of of you know, data points and lee,
• 37:19
  he's got me in the intriguing list. And to your point, I think
• 37:22
  middle endfield type of expectation is just right. And if and if you get
• 37:28
  more, you're you're really happy, and if you get less, you move
• 37:30
  on like you're not you're not really penalized. Too bad, and I don't
• 37:35
  think anybody else is really investing heavily in him. So he's he's a fun
• 37:39
  flyer and you might get rewarded. Yeah, And I mean the player who
• 37:43
  I ironically kind of like comped him to in my waiver wire column is a
• 37:46
  little bit of like Carlos Korea, where it is this bat only, shortstop,
• 37:52
  middle dfield option that's not going to provide any speed. But yeah,
• 37:55
  I'm I think I'm in the same boat that until brooks League shows that that
• 38:01
  exit velo really hinders him. He appears to just be like a good ballplayer.
• 38:07
  Another person who I think never really shows up great in stat cast is
• 38:10
  Mookie Betts too, like just sometimes to like great hitters attack really vulnerable pitches
• 38:17
  and then are able to gank them, you know, to where they want
• 38:22
  to on the field and be able to place them. So it's something to
• 38:24
  kind of keep our eye on as we watch brooks Lee over the next couple
• 38:29
  months. All Right. The other move we got is a demotion, as
• 38:34
  the Dodgers this afternoon demoted Bobby Miller after he struggled in an outing this week,
• 38:38
  allowing nine runs and has just really fallen off the velocity has decreased overall,
• 38:45
  he's lost a few ticks on his fastball. The overall command hasn't appeared
• 38:52
  to be there either as and then I think the last kind of kicker is
• 38:57
  that we talk about this confidence thing for her, James Wood and some of
• 39:00
  these other players that have been looking good. Bobby Miller does not have that
• 39:04
  right now, and that will be I think good for him to figure it
• 39:08
  out in the minor leagues for a little bit, as he is only let
• 39:13
  me get the age twenty five and was drafted just in twenty twenty, so
• 39:17
  you've got like a little bit of just weird development time going on there too.
• 39:22
  The Dodgers also able to do this because again they have a bevy of
• 39:28
  young arms that have come through the system and have kind of popped up.
• 39:31
  You know, justin Roblosky came Warbileski. That's quite the mouthful there. Warbi
• 39:37
  Leski came up in debut this week. Landon Nak has been in the rotation
• 39:43
  and looking okay. And then you've also got Yamamoto working his way back,
• 39:46
  Kershaw maybe working his way back. He's sitting at like, I think eighty
• 39:51
  seven right now, Buehler should be coming back soon. Glassnow is on the
• 39:55
  IL as that feels a little bit more like let's get Glass snow some rest
• 40:01
  time around the All Star break. And maybe they're doing the same thing with
• 40:06
  Bobby Miller, but I think they actually are sending him down to Triple A
• 40:08
  to work on some things, because Dave Roberts in interviews with the media has
• 40:14
  said that they don't there's no injury here, but they do think it's related
• 40:20
  to his mechanics as especially caused him to lose those ticks on his fastball.
• 40:24
  So, yeah, if you have Bobby Miller, you probably drafted him in
• 40:29
  the preseason as like a number two pitcher on your fantasy staff, and so
• 40:34
  it's been quite the journey to this point. What are you doing with him
• 40:38
  the rest of the season and what sort of milestones do you want to see
• 40:42
  him hit to be able to maybe regain some trust, to be able to
• 40:45
  move back into like a fantasy number two spot. Yeah, I mean,
• 40:50
  for me and I think we've talked about this before we jumped on here.
• 40:53
  I just traded for Robbie Miller in the league literally like twelve hours before he
• 40:59
  was demoted or whenever, however long before he got blown up and start.
• 41:05
  But you know, I still strongly believe in Bobby Miller. You know,
• 41:08
  I I is he fully healthy. I'm not certain he's fully healthy. Maybe
• 41:14
  there's a little mechanics thing. But you know, he also, like I
• 41:17
  do think the Dodgers maybe tried to over engineer him to a degree. If
• 41:22
  you look at his pitch mix, you know, he last year he is
• 41:27
  you know, a five pitch deep pitch mix, and it's like it's changed
• 41:31
  drastically this year, and it doesn't make a lot of sense where it changed.
• 41:37
  Like, so, first of all, he's lost but two ticks on
• 41:39
  the fastball roughly, and his four seamer usage went from twenty nine percent last
• 41:45
  year to almost forty four percent this year. He is going on that fastball
• 41:51
  very very consistently, which is which is surprising when you've lost ticks on it.
• 41:54
  But the most second was used pitched last year, not by a large
• 41:59
  margin, because he's pretty even across the board was his sinker, and that
• 42:02
  was a pretty pretty good pitch, like you know, as far as uh
• 42:07
  you know, his ex bad average against it was was two seventy one.
• 42:10
  But the slugging wasn't that strong. It had a pretty good spin rate,
• 42:16
  like it was a pretty decent pitch. He's thrown that ten percent of the
• 42:22
  time this year and that's really dropped off relative to his other pitches. And
• 42:27
  so it does seem like he's they're trying to change his pitch mix and refine
• 42:31
  what he's doing while he's having some mechanical issues which is reacent of velocity,
• 42:37
  Like those things just aren't playing. But you go back to what we talked
• 42:40
  about the off season why I was so high on him, like what does
• 42:44
  his pitch mix look like? Who are the guys that he's coming doing pitch
• 42:46
  mix? And even with being in this terrible year, his comms right now
• 42:52
  are Jared Jones, Garrett Cole, Jacob de Gram, Hunter Green, ignoring
• 42:57
  Luis Severino. But a bad ball profile is well, not nearly is exciting
• 43:02
  with guys like Well Millner, Alex Young, Joe Musk, Grove, my
• 43:07
  boy Sony Gray's in there. But you know it, it like it does
• 43:13
  seem like there's something mechanically wrong and if there's, if he's not hurt,
• 43:16
  that that's fixable. That's fixable. And if you fix that and he's back
• 43:21
  to he's getting another two ticks back and pitch mixes improved. I'm a buyer
• 43:25
  all day, so I'm picking up share, especially in dynasty leagues. I'm
• 43:30
  fully fully picking up shares of Bobby Miller because I I don't think this that
• 43:34
  I think who he saw last year's who he is. I don't think what
• 43:36
  we saw this year's who he is. And that's fine. Yeah, yeah,
• 43:39
  I think so too. I think, yeah, definitely, the arsenal
• 43:45
  is still there because when you go to his page on Fangrafts and look at
• 43:47
  the stuff plus numbers, they're all above one hundred. The location plus is
• 43:53
  low, but it's also he didn't need the location plus to know that he's
• 43:58
  been struggling with his contry. All the balloons or the walks have really ballooned
• 44:02
  on him. You know, they were over five in his rehab time,
• 44:06
  and they've been over five and a half in the majors. So I think
• 44:09
  that's the one thing I'm watching as he goes down to triple A is can
• 44:13
  he control the walks and even the homers too, because I think they kind
• 44:17
  of go hand in hand. That he's not putting the ball exactly where he
• 44:22
  wants and the mechanics aren't allowing him to do that, so he's walking,
• 44:27
  guys, he's giving up more homers and just not being able to execute.
• 44:31
  Okay, see what happens. Yeah, let's get into some card news now
• 44:37
  before we take a break to do our June Player of the Month PC.
• 44:43
  So we've got actually a pretty significant piece of baseball card news that's broken into
• 44:47
  like the mainstream news, and it's a little bit like Ocean's eleveny but like
• 44:53
  Dumb Motions eleven because I'll link to it in the show notes. If it
• 44:59
  is also one of your f time checking us out, certainly get into those
• 45:01
  show notes because everything we've talked about it is linked down there, and when
• 45:07
  we get into the PC discussions, we will have pictures of the cards on
• 45:10
  rasball dot com. But this story is just like it's been really crazy to
• 45:16
  watch unfold over honestly about like the last forty eight hours. But there's a
• 45:22
  Dallas Card Show, which I think is like the Dallas Card Show. There
• 45:24
  are really significant shows down there, and they really draw us some really crazy
• 45:30
  vendors that I can't even fathom hauling around some of these cards that were stolen
• 45:35
  down there, but one of the vendors down there had just an entire case
• 45:40
  of vintage slabbed cards, which we're all, i mean, five six figure
• 45:49
  cards, and so you're looking at quite a few mantles, fifty two mantles
• 45:53
  that are in there. You've got all sorts of really May's cards, all
• 45:57
  sorts of Hank Aaron cards, just the absolutely like except for maybe like a
• 46:02
  Honus Wagoner T two O six. It's got maybe everything in that case.
• 46:08
  They're currently estimating somewhere between like one point five and two million dollars with the
• 46:14
  cards we're stolen, and you can see in the actual like news like article
• 46:20
  that I'll link to that they've got some security footage of how these I think
• 46:27
  that they're teenagers who stole the actual like cards from this booth and how like
• 46:32
  unsuistigated. It was at the same time that it does sometimes blow my mind
• 46:37
  when obviously, like the card show that we're at, there are some pretty
• 46:42
  significant cards that we've seen there, but there's nothing I think to this level
• 46:45
  that we're taken from the Dallas card Show. And you know, when I've
• 46:51
  talked to some of the people at the card show that we're at you know,
• 46:53
  they go to Rosemont, Illinois here and there's a national card show pretty
• 46:58
  often some pretty big ones where there are tables like this that have just millions
• 47:02
  and millions of dollars of cards that people be pretty unprotected. I'm kind of
• 47:08
  like, it's kind of like surprising, I guess on this on the same
• 47:13
  kind of like token when you walking around with this many mantles. The card
• 47:19
  collecting community is tight enough that it's not like if all these mantles like showed
• 47:24
  up on eBay one, you would have to crack them out of their PSA
• 47:29
  cases because you can look at the serial numbers, they've already been flagged as
• 47:31
  stolen. Like you would never do that, I would hope not like that
• 47:36
  would really turn this into like even dumber criminal activity. But the cards would
• 47:40
  have to be cracked out of that case. But then you would have to
• 47:44
  just like really slow play getting them into the market because there aren't lots of
• 47:50
  great mantles and errands and the conditions that were stolen. And so it's and
• 47:57
  especially now that this news is out there, everyone's going to be out there
• 48:00
  looking for fifty one mantles, fifty two mantles, early mazed cards to be
• 48:05
  able to say, you know, is this legit or is this one of
• 48:07
  the stolen ones? And trying to pawn these things off is going to be
• 48:12
  harder than they could ever imagine. I would think from the criminal standpoint.
• 48:16
  Like I said, I'll link to the news article in the show notes.
• 48:21
  Also wanted to put this out there if you know anything about it, seventy
• 48:24
  K reward, So honestly, like if that was the reward, I would
• 48:29
  just ask the card show guy to like maybe give me a couple of the
• 48:31
  cards, like I think that's a fair trade instead of the seventy k reward.
• 48:36
  But Brew, I wanted to get to your take on this because I
• 48:38
  mean, were you just like as jump found a des ion that like you
• 48:42
  could you've seen the footage like in the news article, it was pretty easy
• 48:47
  for this heist to be done. Yeah, it was pretty easy, and
• 48:51
  I think you know, I think you kind of referenced like it was I'll
• 48:52
  say a professional job. Probably not a professional job, but like they case,
• 48:57
  basically the place for requite some time. The guy that actually took the
• 49:00
  cards, what was like stacking chairs, I think is what they said,
• 49:02
  for for like an hour before acting like a worker, you know, and
• 49:07
  so it was well choreographed all those things, but I'm I'm just I'm still
• 49:12
  surprised, like that they brought that much inventory and that much to a show.
• 49:16
  That that's tough, like you and I have done shows before, like
• 49:20
  and my inventory are like like one of those cards is worth more than my
• 49:23
  inventory, like it was, it's not worth stealing my my inventory, like
• 49:30
  it's ponding that thing off is gonna be more more than it's worth, or
• 49:34
  something bulky at twenty bucks, like it's just not gonna happen, but it
• 49:37
  is. It's really unfortunate. It feels like this happens every few months where
• 49:42
  there's some big thing where somebody steals cards, does something to a show that
• 49:46
  they shouldn't, and that that really is it's really disappointing because if you haven't
• 49:52
  done card shows, or you did those as a kid, like I I've
• 49:57
  really come to be like that's the way I like to buy cards anymore is
• 50:00
  card shows because it's truly about the bast majority outside of some guys, it's
• 50:06
  about the the enjoyment of cards. It's about digging through and finding what you
• 50:09
  can find, making connections having to chat talking to guys about why what you
• 50:14
  collect, why you collect it? You know, the hits you found,
• 50:17
  like it's it's just it's a good fun place and then stuff like this happens,
• 50:22
  and it's just like it kind of ruins the vibe, like it be
• 50:28
  able to just show those mantles off and just say we have them, and
• 50:31
  you know, be able to have handle somebody and let them hold this type
• 50:36
  of card. It's worth you know, seventy five or too was everyone's like
• 50:38
  two hundred and seventy five thousand dollars something like that, Like just that that
• 50:43
  valuable of a card. Yeah, it's just like you know, that card's
• 50:49
  worth like more than my house. Like it's just it's it's incredible, but
• 50:54
  you know, it is disappointing to your point. I don't know what they're
• 50:58
  gonna do, Like these guys got to be smart, is there is They're
• 51:00
  trying to move these like you're absolutely right, Like they're they're cracking all these
• 51:05
  out of the slabs, which hurts. I mean, the p S A
• 51:07
  six, Like you're just gonna take the value of that thing down so terribly
• 51:12
  because you have to if you're gonna move it. And I could just you
• 51:15
  can just see that they're like try to take these up to like one at
• 51:16
  a time to card shows, and it's like, oh, of course,
• 51:20
  the one card you have in your pocket is the Mantle. That's questionable at
• 51:24
  best. So yeah, probably have the brightest move by any any means.
• 51:30
  It is interesting they got such mainstream. Uh, these things always do seem
• 51:34
  to work their way out. The truth seems to always come out in almost
• 51:37
  all of these because that the car community is so tight knit that it there's
• 51:43
  some bad apples here and there, but overall it's a it's a really good
• 51:45
  place. So I wouldn't be surprised if we see a new store pretty soon
• 51:50
  that things have been returned or worked out in some way, shape or form.
• 51:54
  Yeah, and it is. They stole it from legacy cards with this,
• 52:00
  which reminds me that's the problem back when I was a kid to like
• 52:06
  put a z on like everything that's I like this guy that I'm pulling for
• 52:10
  your legacy cards. Also, it's one of one one hundred and twenty two
• 52:15
  total PSA six is on that Mickey Mantle fifty two tops, So it looks
• 52:22
  like there's roughly I'm going to do this math real fast, one hundred and
• 52:25
  twenty that are higher. So that's there's only three psa tens all time of
• 52:31
  that fifty two mantles. So I'll off dig around my collection. Maybe I've
• 52:37
  gollon laiter a round. Yeah, I mean I've seen recently Tops had it
• 52:43
  on their Instagram where they showed somebody who has one of them. It's actually
• 52:45
  the owner of the d Backs as a one of the craziest collections, maybe
• 52:51
  probably the craziest baseball card collection ever, but he has one of those tens.
• 52:54
  He also has like I think the sharpest Honus Wagner T two o six,
• 52:58
  So it is a it is crazy that like any of them actually exist.
• 53:02
  Yeah, no kidding. Okay, Well, since we've been gone for
• 53:06
  a couple of weeks, we will update people on the calendar for new releases.
• 53:09
  So next week, on July seventeenth, we've got TOPS Chrome coming out,
• 53:14
  So certainly come back next week to not only check out that anniversary pie,
• 53:17
  but to also hear us talk about Tops chron mostly probably in disparaging ways,
• 53:22
  but we'll say that for next week. We had Panini Boys. This
• 53:28
  summer got pushed back to eight twenty one, Panini Prism still coming out on
• 53:32
  eight twenty eight. I wouldn't be surprised that got pushed back because the other
• 53:36
  big pushback was Donris was supposed to come out the same day as Series two
• 53:40
  is just totally been shelved as a TBD. So I know the past few
• 53:45
  weeks when we were recording, we noticed all those releases coming out and we're
• 53:50
  wondering how fanatics and tops were going to do it. Well they didn't,
• 53:53
  So we're going to be waiting for a couple of those sets. And like
• 53:57
  I said, I think we will be reviewing that Panini Boys this summer when
• 54:01
  it comes out later, because it's really like the coolest Panini set I've seen
• 54:06
  in years. So yeah, make sure to check out those put them on
• 54:10
  your calendar. But we are going to take a short break and we'll be
• 54:14
  back with the June Player of the Month PC. Stick around, all right,
• 54:35
  Welcome back everybody. From that little break, we are going to get
• 54:38
  into our monthly segment, the Player of the Month PC. So the PC
• 54:44
  stands for Personal Collection. I'm also going to use POTM if I can rattle
• 54:51
  that off quickly quite a bit too. That stands for Player of the Month.
• 54:53
  It'll just help us so that I don't have to say that mouthful every
• 54:57
  time. This is our third one of the season, as we have.
• 55:00
  The June Players of the Month came out right after the month ended, so
• 55:05
  because we're off last week, that means we're covering them this week, and
• 55:08
  right off the bat, I'll tell you were skipping both the Hitters and the
• 55:12
  ALE and the NL because they were repeats from May as Aaron Judge and Bryce
• 55:16
  Harper went back to back for Player of the Month awards. Also pretty good
• 55:22
  chance that it puts them in the lead positions for those MVP awards in their
• 55:27
  respective leagues. So something to kind of keep in mind coming down the stretch,
• 55:30
  especially as we get into tops Chrome discussion next week, because I guarantee
• 55:36
  they're doing the MVP high back again. So Judge, I'll just kind of
• 55:39
  rattle through his numbers from June. He slashed three, sixty one, four,
• 55:43
  seventy nine, nine to eighteen. He's super amazing. He's absolutely unstoppable.
• 55:47
  I think he's gonna take a swing at hitting sixty two homers again.
• 55:53
  Health permitting is gonna be a big one, but I think it's gonna be
• 55:57
  a race down the stretch because there's been a few articles about this over the
• 56:00
  last week. For some reason. He's still getting balls in the strike zone
• 56:05
  and as long as that happens, he's going to be parking them in over
• 56:07
  the outfield fences. Yeah, he's been incredible. There's your point is it's
• 56:14
  health. If he's healthy, he's great. We'll see, but it'll be
• 56:17
  fun. If we get to the end of summer here, we'll get another
• 56:21
  chase at sixty two. That'll be fun. Yeah. And then Bryce Harper
• 56:24
  also had an amazing June. He hit three seventy four with ten doubles,
• 56:28
  seven homers that came up to an eleven sixty six ops. The Phillies are
• 56:34
  hot, hot, hot right now. He even had a little bit of
• 56:36
  a dl stent il stent mixed in there. So even with that, Harper
• 56:40
  still rode to this Player of the Month award. And like I said,
• 56:45
  it is back to back for both of them, both Harper and Judge.
• 56:49
  So if you want to go back to episode forty seven, that's when we
• 56:52
  did our May Player of the Month PC's picks, and you can get our
• 56:57
  Harper and Judge picks there we also back all the way in episode seven,
• 57:00
  way back in September or August, somewhere around that range. Last year we
• 57:07
  did a mock twenty twenty four first round in which we also followed that up
• 57:12
  with PC selections. Aaron Judge was in that one too, so good ones
• 57:15
  to go back to and check out some of our historical catalog. But we're
• 57:19
  not going to short you here on this section. We're still going to cover
• 57:24
  six total players as we are swapping out the hitters for we've skipped this every
• 57:29
  month because it's really weird once you start getting into it, and he'll see
• 57:32
  why the relievers of the month, so we will be picking those at the
• 57:37
  end. I think it's going to be fun to be able to like mix
• 57:39
  and match that going forward a little bit, because if you want to talk
• 57:44
  about really wacky PCs, which we love getting into here, doesn't get any
• 57:47
  whackier than relievers. But with that, let's open with the first real award
• 57:53
  that we have, and we're going to pick some PC cards, and that
• 57:57
  is Garrett Krochet from the White Sox was the al Picture the Month for June.
• 58:00
  He was absolutely electric with a one ninety one era over thirty seven and
• 58:06
  two thirds with fifty six k's and yeah, he's been absolutely electric all year.
• 58:10
  I think he would be probably the front runner for the al Cy Young
• 58:15
  but I don't think he's gonna get enough volume, as the White Socks have
• 58:20
  already said they're gonna start tapering his innings. He's already thrown a career high
• 58:24
  innings in terms of college, minor leagues, major leagues because of the shoulder
• 58:30
  and elbow injuries he's dealt with throughout his career. So Crochet might not be
• 58:34
  a White Sox when we talk, you know, in a couple of weeks
• 58:36
  here, But this I think is a great award for him. You've got
• 58:39
  the first pick. I will let you enshrine the first gear Att Crochet PC
• 58:45
  pick here for Player the Month in June. Yeah, so this this is
• 58:49
  a fun one in Crochet. He's only been around for a few years.
• 58:52
  So there's not a big depth of cards or there's the same picture you used
• 58:58
  like half of them. But I'm gonna go back to twenty twenty Bowman draft,
• 59:02
  which is where we get his first Bowman and I am going in the
• 59:07
  rare cards with the one of one black printing plate. I know I may
• 59:13
  have disparaged the Yankees and their black, gray and white pin stripes and how
• 59:17
  hard it is to have color matches and it's just not as exciting. And
• 59:22
  I heard about that a little bit from a few Yankees fans and how rude
• 59:27
  I was, and I will double down on that still the case for the
• 59:30
  Yankees. But you know, as I look at like color matches for black
• 59:35
  and white jerseys, the printing plate is actually fantastic for that. And this
• 59:40
  is the autograph print printing plate as well, so it is a you know,
• 59:45
  fantastic photo of Crochet. I have to assume it's all fully photoshoped from
• 59:51
  a college college pitching scenario. It's right now. You can buy this on
• 59:58
  eBay for five hundred dollars if you'd like. I think actually sold for like
• 1:00:01
  two point fifty like a month or two ago, and the guys just tossed
• 1:00:04
  it right back up there to see if you can double down on a good
• 1:00:07
  season, which is probably why his investment on his part. So fantastic card
• 1:00:13
  really one that I would love to own. And as I looked through,
• 1:00:17
  because I just got on a kick a printing plates for Garrett Crochet This was
• 1:00:21
  probably the only one that is clear enough that you actually get the color match.
• 1:00:24
  Everything else was if you get a different color like a yellow riss I
• 1:00:29
  am like printing plate is just not clear enough. You can't really see that
• 1:00:31
  or any other black ones, like they just didn't have enough definition, like
• 1:00:35
  this one was clean. There's a really really good printing plate RD, which
• 1:00:39
  Bowman Paper especially has been known for. But this one's actually the chrome version
• 1:00:45
  as well. So loving this one put in my PC for Garret Crochet.
• 1:00:50
  Yeah, I mean it's an ultimate one. We've been going to some high
• 1:00:53
  end and some low end, and this is definitely on the highest end that
• 1:00:57
  you can go here. I don't the five hundred dollars price kind of perplexes
• 1:01:01
  me. I would have thought it was more. But then you go to
• 1:01:06
  this eBay seller's cards in history. He's got a ninety two five percent positive.
• 1:01:12
  He's run a few scams. I don't know if this is actually the
• 1:01:15
  card if you if you purchased it for five hundred dollars, if it's actually
• 1:01:19
  going to come to you. But we've got a picture of the card and
• 1:01:22
  it looks great, so I think, yeah, that's going to be like
• 1:01:24
  one of the premier Crochet cards out there. I'm going to go to the
• 1:01:29
  lower end because, like you said, there are actually there's a lot of
• 1:01:34
  Garrett Crochet cards because he was really like the hot White Sox rookie for the
• 1:01:38
  twenty twenty one sets, and unfortunately he's kind of in like the same pose
• 1:01:44
  and lots of them and you don't kind of get the variation that there wasn't
• 1:01:47
  much of him pitching in twenty twenty because of the shortened pandemic season, and
• 1:01:53
  I mean he also didn't get any minor league actions, so there weren't lots
• 1:01:57
  of minor league shots that they were able to you know, dock up in
• 1:02:00
  photoshop. But with that all considered, I love the twenty twenty one Stadium
• 1:02:06
  Club Garrett Crochet card because you get the entire picture of him on it,
• 1:02:10
  and it's really well framed up and centered. It just makes him look like
• 1:02:15
  a flamingo with the one leg up, the high kick, and he's got
• 1:02:19
  a really really wonderful signature that you know, you see that on the printing
• 1:02:22
  plate you picked as well. It's just classic, you know, it's Garrett
• 1:02:25
  Crochet. This is a card that's going for about twenty bucks, and you
• 1:02:32
  know, I think it we'll talk. We should maybe talk about this now
• 1:02:37
  a little bit that in terms of like the All Star Break, it's a
• 1:02:40
  good time I find to sell some of the cars that you have in your
• 1:02:44
  collection that you know this is a twenty dollars card right now. I wouldn't
• 1:02:47
  be surprised we talk again next week. That's creeped up a little bit because
• 1:02:51
  I think during the All Star Break what I talked about off the beginning,
• 1:02:54
  where that that just total dearth of baseball going from one hundred to zero.
• 1:03:00
  It creates just an itch to be able to buy baseball cards, I think
• 1:03:05
  in a lot of people. And so you'll see some of these prices tick
• 1:03:07
  up. But this Garrett Croquete Crochet card, make sure you get it this
• 1:03:12
  weekend before that All Star Game, before he plays, because I think he
• 1:03:15
  could be electric when he gets his chance on Monday, whatever that game is.
• 1:03:22
  Yeah, I think I think you're right. There is something to be
• 1:03:23
  said for the All Star Game like price hike, and it's mainly the guys
• 1:03:28
  who are in the All Star Game, because I think what ends up happening
• 1:03:31
  is everybody wants to watch the All Star Game to watch their players and they
• 1:03:35
  see and they're like, Seth Lugo's an All Star and they start looking at
• 1:03:38
  like Seth Lugo, Man, that guy's pretty good. You know, I
• 1:03:42
  might want to grab a card that they go looking like. I'm gonna pick
• 1:03:43
  on a few these up right, and Seth Lugo is probably not the guy
• 1:03:46
  to invest in for just use them as an example. But I'm surprised this
• 1:03:52
  is a twenty dollars card, Like I think it is some of the picture
• 1:03:57
  qualities, but you know, people don't like pictures for some reasons, like
• 1:04:00
  the kickers of football, right, but actually probably people like kickers more.
• 1:04:06
  But you know, this is a fantastic card if you're right. He has
• 1:04:10
  a really really, really nice signature. It's not Randy Rose Arena level,
• 1:04:14
  to be clear, but it's still very distinct, very clear who it is,
• 1:04:17
  so good pick I like it. Okay, let's move on to the
• 1:04:20
  NL side to get that picture Player of the Month, and it was Christopher
• 1:04:25
  Sanchez from the Philadelphia Phillies. I'm a little bit excited for this one because
• 1:04:30
  he was close to winning this award in April, and in April we would
• 1:04:34
  have had like four cards to pick from because he actually doesn't have a Tops
• 1:04:40
  rookie card yet, he didn't ever have a Bowman card. He came through
• 1:04:45
  the Ray system initially and then was traded for Curtis Mead and just was never
• 1:04:49
  a really big prospect. But Christopher Sanchez was the NL pitcher of the Month
• 1:04:54
  in June. He had sixteen scores innings over you know, the last two
• 1:04:59
  starts, including a three hit shutout with nine k's against the Marlins at the
• 1:05:02
  end of the of the month, but in totally at a one sixty four
• 1:05:05
  era thirty three innings. And I think we've talked about this before that there
• 1:05:11
  are players that you've really helped me, hone in from a fantasy like wise,
• 1:05:15
  in terms of like looking at that ground ball rate along with that K
• 1:05:19
  rate, Christopher Sanchez is a great example that he's been able to keep the
• 1:05:25
  ball on the ground a lot, which has really led to a success.
• 1:05:28
  But with all those things that I just went over in terms of not having
• 1:05:32
  a very storied up and coming prospect like list, you know, lots of
• 1:05:38
  people knowing who Christopher Sanchez was, not many choices, but who are you
• 1:05:43
  gonna or which card you're gonna take out there to put into the PC for
• 1:05:45
  him. Yeah, well, I'm glad you referenced that first career complete game
• 1:05:50
  shutout that he had there against the Marlins, because I'm going with his only
• 1:05:55
  TOPS card, his TOPS now card from that June twenty eighth I think it's
• 1:06:00
  twenty eighth game against the Marlins when he was just dominant and that results in
• 1:06:06
  TOPS now card and that's the only one. So I don't know if you
• 1:06:10
  can call it his rookie card. So now he doesn't have the rookie logo.
• 1:06:14
  Uh So it does mag the question of when he does get a get
• 1:06:15
  a true TOPS rookie card, because you think it feels like it should come,
• 1:06:19
  but maybe not because it's too late. I don't know, And so
• 1:06:25
  I'm going with that one. The other thing that you have to love about
• 1:06:27
  it, he's in the City Connect uniform, within the car. It's it's
• 1:06:33
  in the eye of the beholder. But Philly ones are pretty rough, to
• 1:06:38
  be said. I think there's a few teams that just said, I'm not
• 1:06:40
  doing this. But it's a great card. You know, he's all fired
• 1:06:45
  up finishing that game out and it's uh, it's his only TOPS card,
• 1:06:49
  and so that's that. You know, this is this is pretty pricey.
• 1:06:54
  You can give it for about seven dollars, and that's probably where you're gonna
• 1:06:58
  stick with Christopher Sanchez. But hopefully this time next year he's got a few
• 1:07:01
  more cards to pick from, especially if he thinks keeps this thing going,
• 1:07:03
  he's gonna make a few sets. Maybe he'll get it. I haven't looked.
• 1:07:08
  Maybe he made a debut and TOPS Chrome that I don't know about.
• 1:07:11
  Probably not. Uh, we can probably look that up here, but yeah,
• 1:07:15
  I don't. I would have to imagine he's included an update, Like
• 1:07:17
  at this point, he's got to be either in regular update or Chrome update
• 1:07:23
  or both. That like, he's become a really fantastic picture for the Phillies.
• 1:07:27
  And yeah, this Tops out card, like you said, this is
• 1:07:30
  only actual TOPS branded card out there print running of only five sixty five technically
• 1:07:35
  his rookie card. And if he turns into anything more than like a you
• 1:07:40
  know, one time All Star or whatever, you know, if he turns
• 1:07:45
  into some picture of repute in the future, this is going to be a
• 1:07:48
  pretty desirable card once people kind of put two and two together and realize it's
• 1:07:53
  really his rookie card. Yeah, so it's fun. Now, the question
• 1:07:57
  is I only left like three cards left in the market for you, So
• 1:08:00
  where did you go? Yeah? I picked this one. Is I don't
• 1:08:04
  even know how common it would be defined. I didn't look it up.
• 1:08:08
  I just found it on TCDB and it was like, yep, I'll pick
• 1:08:11
  that one. His It is his two thousand and one Choice Lehigh Valley IronPigs
• 1:08:16
  card. It would be technically his first card in like the Philly system.
• 1:08:21
  So that's why I'm picking this. It's nothing terribly special except for that like
• 1:08:28
  it is. If you've been to minor league baseball games and you see the
• 1:08:30
  team sets that you're able to purchase, they just look dorky, you know.
• 1:08:35
  They look like they reminded me a lot of when you're able to like
• 1:08:40
  go to like picture day as a kid, and then you get like the
• 1:08:43
  package to be able to pick like all these different like random frames and backgrounds,
• 1:08:47
  and it's just all very amateur looking. That's what this Christopher Sanchez card
• 1:08:51
  is. That's what all the minor league like actual team cards that come from
• 1:08:56
  Choice are. And so yeah, if you want another card where it's technically
• 1:09:01
  like his rookie with the Phillies. This would be it because this is probably
• 1:09:05
  like the closest thing you can get to a bowman first for Christopher Sanchez,
• 1:09:10
  because he's never gonna have one. So I'm gonna look up actually to see
• 1:09:16
  if you can buy this card. Well, well you do that. I
• 1:09:20
  went on and something you said there because I'm looking around my office right now,
• 1:09:25
  and I know I got to see her somewhere. I got my son's
• 1:09:28
  card from when he was in Little league, and the way you described him,
• 1:09:33
  like it feels like the card you got like it does look like it.
• 1:09:38
  It literally looks like the fake border that they put around it, like
• 1:09:41
  they had to frame it with something like it. Basically somebody was in you
• 1:09:44
  know, was in paint or using word art and something like that and put
• 1:09:48
  it together. So I think it's a great, great call out. You
• 1:09:51
  have to love all the minor league team names, the Iron Pigs, like,
• 1:09:56
  come on, it's a great team name. I kind of wish the
• 1:09:59
  major league teams would embrace, embrace the awkwardness and go for it. Granted,
• 1:10:04
  I'm also sitting at the hometown of a independent league team known as the
• 1:10:10
  Corn belters. So, like I mean, you got to look for quality
• 1:10:14
  names in the miners independent leagues. That makes it good because who doesn't want
• 1:10:16
  an Iron Pigs card? Yeah? Absolutely, and you can get this it's
• 1:10:20
  just like three or four bucks on eBay. So there's still a few of
• 1:10:24
  them kicking around there. Like I said, I think as long as Christopher
• 1:10:27
  Sanchez keeps picking or pitching, well, we're not going to get too many
• 1:10:30
  more cards coming from him. So something to keep in mind if you're out
• 1:10:36
  there trying to hunt down some Sanchez cards and maybe even follow along with our
• 1:10:41
  Player of the Month PC. So our next player that we have is we're
• 1:10:46
  going to move on to the rookies from the al side. We have outfielder
• 1:10:50
  from the Texas Rangers, Wyat Langford, and this is going to be a
• 1:10:54
  big one because he was a big name last year in the twenty twenty three
• 1:10:58
  draft, obviously stared out of the gate, but he has certainly turned it
• 1:11:01
  around and in June he became the first Rangers rookie to hit for the cycle
• 1:11:09
  and actually the first cycle of twenty twenty four in all of MLB as well.
• 1:11:13
  He ended up slashing three oh nine three sixty eight five twenty six during
• 1:11:16
  the month, and I think he's just well on his way to start him
• 1:11:20
  Like this is just the jumping off point. I think we're going to be
• 1:11:24
  talking about White Langford being one of the premier stars of Major League Baseball here
• 1:11:30
  over the next few years. And with that in mind, what card are
• 1:11:33
  you going to take from Langford to putting the Player of the Month PC?
• 1:11:39
  Well, we went hi, we went low, we're going higher again,
• 1:11:43
  and Langford the prices are up there a little bit right now. So for
• 1:11:46
  a cool tw twenty five dollars plus three eighty four shipping, you could have
• 1:11:51
  purchased his twenty twenty four Bowman Spotlights super Fractor, the one of one from
• 1:12:00
  this year's Bowmen set. I absolutely love the Spotlight cards, the chrome spotlight
• 1:12:04
  cards that they did in Bowman. I think they're one of the cleanest cards.
• 1:12:09
  If you haven't seen them, they have simply all they have them is
• 1:12:12
  the Bowman chrome logo, a pure black backdrop with a little spotlight coming down.
• 1:12:18
  Can't even see the light. It's just the light from above shining over
• 1:12:21
  a single image of the player. There's no field, there's nothing that there's
• 1:12:25
  no other exciting background. Is just a very clean card. But the Superfractor
• 1:12:30
  adds like this golden hue and shined the whole card and it just absolutely stands
• 1:12:36
  out. I have to imagine just in person's an absolutely beautiful card. So
• 1:12:42
  one of one Bowman Spotlight super Fractor for why Langford. Absolutely fantastic card.
• 1:12:49
  This one I think was sold by a better, more reputable Ebayer user name
• 1:12:54
  of Huge Dork, but one hundred percent positive feedback across eighty seven transactions,
• 1:12:59
  so you know, you got to look at the silver lining here. But
• 1:13:03
  I don't I'm going to own this. I do hope somebody out there does.
• 1:13:08
  One of our listeners has this one, because it's an absolutely beautiful card
• 1:13:11
  of wild Langford. So what do you think? Did you pick this one
• 1:13:15
  up for a cool two grand? No, that was not me who purchased
• 1:13:17
  that, but I think it's a great choice that technically, I mean it's
• 1:13:21
  going to go it down as like a rookie card because you know it is
• 1:13:25
  twenty twenty four when he's making his debut, so it doesn't have the RC
• 1:13:29
  marked on it. But it is such a clean card. If you are
• 1:13:32
  a Wittling for believer, and lover, you've got to have that. I
• 1:13:35
  think that these spotlight cards are fantastic. The red actually went up. The
• 1:13:41
  of five Red went up this morning, so it's on a seven day auction.
• 1:13:45
  It is up to two hundred bucks as we're talking here on the evening
• 1:13:49
  of the tenth. So if you like that one of one super factor that's
• 1:13:54
  now gone, you can get in on the bidding for the red one,
• 1:13:58
  which gives you a little bit of that color match. And the red spotlights
• 1:14:01
  also just kind of look great all across the board. So I think this
• 1:14:05
  was a fantastic choice. I'm gonna have to go put a bit in just
• 1:14:08
  to say I was there. Yeah, yeah, So I can see you
• 1:14:11
  in that list of bids with the stars, I know which one which used
• 1:14:15
  made me series. Okay, well, I'm gonna go and pick one of
• 1:14:21
  those twenty twenty three cards that came out when White Langford got drafted last year,
• 1:14:27
  and I'm going for a big one as well. So I'm going with
• 1:14:30
  the twenty twenty three Bowman Chrome Draft Blue Wave Refractor first auto to put into
• 1:14:36
  our PC here, partly because I needed the wave pattern because I, in
• 1:14:44
  all honesty, I don't like this card very much because, like the base
• 1:14:46
  version of this Langford card, it's not the best photoshop job I've ever seen.
• 1:14:51
  In Bowman, they also like photoshopped him into Wrigley Field. I think
• 1:14:57
  it looks like with the bricks in the background, and and especially when you
• 1:15:00
  don't have the wave refractor pattern it, the background just looks really wonky and
• 1:15:05
  it makes it the texas on his helmet and the weird kind of like Nike
• 1:15:12
  logo and flag like even pop and make it look worse. So if you
• 1:15:15
  get the wave refractor here, it covers up some of those flaws and you
• 1:15:18
  get the color match with the blue. You want to talk about somebody who's
• 1:15:23
  got a pretty decent signature as well. Whyitet Langford out there? It's unique,
• 1:15:26
  It's very up and down. It's got like a very like heartbeat look
• 1:15:30
  to it that I really like it. And this one will set you back
• 1:15:34
  a cool eleven hundred bucks ungraded, but if you want the graded version,
• 1:15:40
  looks like there's also one up for two thousand bucks just below it. So
• 1:15:45
  I had to go with a classic color match here. Had to go with
• 1:15:47
  what could end up being a bit of an iconic card just given where White
• 1:15:51
  Langford's trajectory could go, and certainly was not an easy card to get when
• 1:15:57
  it came out because Bowman Draft was expensive last year, absolutely was. And
• 1:16:02
  I'm searching so hard to figure out if they put Global Field in the back
• 1:16:06
  of this or if that really truly is Wrigley Field, because that Globe life
• 1:16:13
  has those that weird like behind the right handed batter's box, it's that recess
• 1:16:19
  seating, so you're like looking right at people behind a net. So it's
• 1:16:26
  definitely not Let's gonna be some research for the for the for me for the
• 1:16:30
  rest of the night, trying to figure out what stadium that they put in
• 1:16:32
  there, because there's some very distinct logos on the chairs sitting right behind him
• 1:16:38
  in this in this photo. And I do love the card. The color
• 1:16:40
  match, I love the wave is an absolutely fantastic card of love Langford.
• 1:16:44
  And you're right like, there's a pricey, pricey card. This is one
• 1:16:47
  that you're hanging on to toward the end of the year to see if he
• 1:16:50
  gets that rookie the year before you move this one, because the price,
• 1:16:54
  the value probably can go higher than than this year. But it's it's it's
• 1:17:00
  a fantastic card, so good pick. Now You've got me so interested in
• 1:17:03
  the background of the photoshop because it is hops and they photoshop these things and
• 1:17:11
  it's like they don't think about it at all sometimes. So that's a nice
• 1:17:14
  little uh Easter egg that you've given to us. Yeah, I will retract
• 1:17:16
  it. It's not at rigally, but I think it's it's at a college
• 1:17:23
  stadium because you can tell by the two like goofs in the background wearing those
• 1:17:28
  bucket hats, Like that's a college baseball Look, those those goofs and the
• 1:17:32
  bucket hats that are in the background. So when Langford, you know,
• 1:17:36
  was playing at Florida. Honestly, like one thing, I think it's Texas
• 1:17:40
  A and M. Almost like Texas A and M. Yeah, or like
• 1:17:44
  one of the hats looks a little orangeish, so maybe Tennessee. But you're
• 1:17:46
  probably right, Texas A and M. Yeah. I'm looking at the logos
• 1:17:49
  on one of the hat, like the color of the hat and then the
• 1:17:55
  logo on the back seat there. I think that's A and M. All
• 1:17:57
  right, sleuthing, I'll figure this out later tonight what this looks like,
• 1:18:01
  because this is this is critical information for everybody listening. Well, I mean,
• 1:18:04
  I'm gonna keep looking it up while we're talking, so I mean we're
• 1:18:08
  gonna have this solved by the end of the podcast, as we're going back
• 1:18:10
  and forth here. But with that, let's flip it back over to the
• 1:18:14
  NL side, and the rookie player of the Month is my boy, Jackson
• 1:18:18
  Merrill. I've been all in on the Jackson Merrile train. I'm glad to
• 1:18:21
  see him win this. He has been absolutely on fire of late, and
• 1:18:27
  part of this has been a little bit frustrating because when he did this in
• 1:18:30
  June, he hit a bunch of these homers off of left handed pitching,
• 1:18:33
  and I was still kind of like streaming him in daily leagues, so I
• 1:18:36
  have stopped doing that since. But Jackson Merrill in June hit three twenty with
• 1:18:44
  nine homers and a nine ninety six ops. He is absolutely incredible. I
• 1:18:48
  don't even like know if I have a great comp for him, except for
• 1:18:53
  like it's kind of Bryce harpery like, which feels maybe too high. But
• 1:18:58
  when you watch that wing and his ability to put the bat on the ball
• 1:19:03
  with the power, that's what I think is surprised me. The most about
• 1:19:08
  Merrill's game as a rookie has been the power that's been there. So,
• 1:19:13
  I mean, he was my pick in the ras ball writer like picks for
• 1:19:18
  an l Rookie of the Year, and I'm excited to see that he might
• 1:19:21
  actually follow through with that. Though, because he is a rookie, we
• 1:19:25
  don't have too many cards to pick from. As you know, he wasn't
• 1:19:30
  exactly like the creamium or like the cream of the crop premium prospect coming through
• 1:19:35
  the miners, but he was well respected, so he has a good handful
• 1:19:39
  of choices out there. Which route are you going? Yeah, I'm going
• 1:19:43
  with a twenty twenty three Pannini National Treasures what I'm gonna call a jumbo patch.
• 1:19:49
  It's not really officially a jumbo patch, but is a large patch auto
• 1:19:55
  out of twenty five for Jackson Merrill. This is one of those National treasures
• 1:19:59
  that has a wonderful background of essentially a flag, the United States of America
• 1:20:03
  flag, and the patch is surrounded by you know, the stars and stripes.
• 1:20:09
  Absolutely, just a wonderful card. It's a three color patch, but
• 1:20:15
  it is a well framed three color patch with with those pottery's colors and the
• 1:20:20
  other thing I really like about it is for an unlicensed card with Pannini,
• 1:20:26
  I'm always a big fan of when they pick photos that position the player that
• 1:20:29
  you can't tell it's unlicnse that sounds kind of funny, but like in this
• 1:20:32
  photo, he is swinging swinging the bat and he is facing You're kind of
• 1:20:38
  looking at his right shoulders. He's facing what I would assume is the outfield,
• 1:20:43
  and so you can't see the logo to be on the front of the
• 1:20:45
  chest because his arm is blocking that. You can't see the front of the
• 1:20:47
  helmet. You can actually kind of see that there's you know, a bump
• 1:20:49
  out where the Potter's logo is, but you can't see this the Potter's logo,
• 1:20:54
  can't see the back of his jersey to see that there's nothing listed there
• 1:20:58
  with his name, And so like it's it's awesome that you can It looks
• 1:21:02
  almost like a licensed card. Meryl's autograph is not really that terribly exciting.
• 1:21:06
  It looks like my signature when I'm signing, like a release form at the
• 1:21:12
  doctor's office. Like he at least got his first letter, right, that's
• 1:21:15
  about all he got. But that's okay. At least it's not an ax
• 1:21:18
  I guess, but it's a beautiful card. This one that I'm looking at
• 1:21:24
  is listed for roughly five hundred on eBay again, and you know, and
• 1:21:28
  I've seen a number of them sell the multiple hundreds of dollars, so it
• 1:21:31
  is a very collectible card, being out of twenty five. So loving it.
• 1:21:35
  This is where I would add to my Jackson Merrill PC. Yeah,
• 1:21:39
  I think this is a great choice. It's a great jumbo patch and I
• 1:21:44
  mean there aren't many of them out there right now for him, So this
• 1:21:46
  is where you have to go if you want to get some Jackson Merrill,
• 1:21:50
  like really just nice rpas is to go into that National Treasure set because I
• 1:21:57
  don't know, like if Meryl will be included in some of the big ones
• 1:22:00
  that are coming out for TOPS. He should be in TOPS update because he's
• 1:22:04
  got rookie cards, but it's gonna be a little bit more limited because they
• 1:22:08
  start adding him an update. Yep. Absolutely, where are you going with
• 1:22:14
  Jackson Merrill? So I'm going with I think probably just the easy obvious answer
• 1:22:18
  here and that is his TOPS rookie that is out right now. That is
• 1:22:23
  the number six ninety nine from series to his rookie image variations. But it's
• 1:22:31
  also kind of weird. I was looking this up before with these image variation
• 1:22:35
  short prints that they put into Series two. Is the six ninety nine base
• 1:22:41
  is Sean Bouchard, So it's usually they like make it a related player,
• 1:22:45
  like a related Padre in this case, but Sean Bouchard is just a really
• 1:22:49
  random card. But you know that there's a few whole sets out there that
• 1:22:53
  people sorted and Jackson Merrill's in there at the six ninety nine instead of the
• 1:22:57
  Sean Bouchard, So keep that in mind if you find this thing in the
• 1:23:00
  wild. It's not exactly the most exciting card with just Jackson Merril running out
• 1:23:05
  of the batter's box, but it is his first official Tops rookie card before
• 1:23:12
  he is included in updates, So if you want to get this card,
• 1:23:15
  that is the route that you have to go. And honestly, I will
• 1:23:19
  say that this is maybe like one of the cards that looks pretty good in
• 1:23:24
  the twenty four design is that you know, overall he's got the yellow working
• 1:23:30
  in his motif with the yellow arm sleeve and the yellow shin guard, so
• 1:23:34
  that is the Padres color that's emphasized throughout the twenty four design with that pseudo
• 1:23:40
  neon, So I bet in person this pops even more with that little bit
• 1:23:44
  of that gloss kind of metallic finish that twenty four has. So I'm sure
• 1:23:49
  it's an absolutely beautiful card. The RC is positioned in a good spot.
• 1:23:54
  That just it's everything's pretty well balanced about it, which I like as opposed
• 1:23:58
  to sometimes some of the Tony Ford design has led to clunky, unbalanced cards.
• 1:24:02
  They didn't have to worry about with that with Merrill. So what do
• 1:24:05
  you think about this pick? Any of the other short prints like this really
• 1:24:10
  catching your eye this year? Yeah, I mean I think it's a it's
• 1:24:13
  a good pick, you know. To your point, I'm a little disappointed
• 1:24:15
  in the image for the short print and I think they're just a scrape in
• 1:24:19
  the barrel there with Jackson Merril. Jackson Merril's not the flashiest of guys.
• 1:24:25
  You know, he's just a good homeboy, does some good hard work,
• 1:24:29
  steal some bags, hit some dingers and calls it a day. So I
• 1:24:32
  wish there was a better picture for a short print them just running, But
• 1:24:39
  I think it's it's it's a great call, so I like it. I
• 1:24:42
  think Jackson Merrill has a ton of upside. I'm really excited to own him
• 1:24:45
  in a few leagues and I think, you know, he's only gonna get
• 1:24:47
  better. But you're talking to twenty twenty season twenty five maybe for Lucky and
• 1:24:54
  that that's a rookie of the year if I ever saw one. So I'm
• 1:24:57
  excited to see what the rest of the season holds for Mayor. Yeah,
• 1:25:00
  I totally agree. Okay, well, let's get to those wacky relievers of
• 1:25:03
  the month. So this is the first time that we're doing this, but
• 1:25:08
  because of those repeat hitters, we are going this sproute. The al reliever
• 1:25:13
  of the Month for June was Carlos Estevez from the Angels, who had ten
• 1:25:17
  scoreless innings with ten strikeouts, eight saves, one win, only allowed two
• 1:25:23
  hits the entire month, So that's a I was going to say point two
• 1:25:28
  whip, but it's lower than that. So less than point two whip because
• 1:25:31
  here's two hits in ten innings. We're not going to do that math super
• 1:25:35
  fast. I will say though that I did look it up. It is
• 1:25:39
  Texas A and M that Whiteling Ferd is playing at so you've nailed that with
• 1:25:43
  the blurry Texas A and M logo they play in front of like a brick
• 1:25:45
  background. I've always said I have a lot of knowledge. You might mostly
• 1:25:48
  be useless, but I've got a lot of it. Yeah, blurry college
• 1:25:53
  logos you can add to that. But we are I'm just kind of delaying
• 1:25:59
  the inevitable here. We've got a very short list of Carlos Estevez cards to
• 1:26:02
  pick from, but you found quite the doozy, So hit the people what
• 1:26:08
  you got. I am excited. This is my favorite card of the night
• 1:26:12
  that we are talking about. Sorry, Ryan Helsley when we did get there,
• 1:26:15
  but Carlos Estevez, I am going with his twenty nineteen Albuquerque Isotopes Choice
• 1:26:24
  Minor League card. I know you already went with the choice cards, but
• 1:26:28
  I'm going there. And what I love about this, you know we're talking
• 1:26:30
  the Isotopes. This is the Pacific Coast League Triple A team for the Rockies.
• 1:26:35
  They made an entire set for the Isotopes in twenty nineteen of every player
• 1:26:42
  holding a puppy, and this is Carlos Estevez, who remind you, is
• 1:26:46
  a pitcher crouching down holding it looks like a chihuala. It's a little chiuala
• 1:26:54
  with like all these bats in the locker behind him, like which makes you
• 1:26:58
  think very much like littlely posed picture. And he's holding this chihuahba and he
• 1:27:03
  is a massive human being and then it's just looking through it is like this.
• 1:27:08
  Literally, this entire set has everybody like Chichi Gonzales holding a puppy,
• 1:27:14
  Glenn Allen Hill next to a bulldog, like we are talking about Jeff Hoffman,
• 1:27:19
  who who is an All Star this year in a cowboy hat with a
• 1:27:26
  big mutt. There there are some some great, great great pictures here.
• 1:27:30
  Don't worry if the mascots got in on it too, or with the mascout
• 1:27:34
  from from the Isotopes as well as Taco. The mascot Taco doesn't actually have
• 1:27:40
  a puppy in the in the picture, so I'm a little let down by
• 1:27:44
  that. But hey, if you want this, we're talking like a dollar
• 1:27:47
  or two. Carlos staves Card. I think I saw like three of them
• 1:27:49
  on eBay. They're they're hard to find, but I am absolutely thrilled with
• 1:27:55
  this one. I might be making a purchase later tonight. So there might
• 1:27:58
  only be two carl Cars the Springfield Isotopes. The only thing will make me
• 1:28:02
  happier if I can find the entire set of of the of these cards,
• 1:28:06
  because that's a that's a collector's item right there. So she'll beat me,
• 1:28:13
  beat me, show me a better card of Carlos Esteves. I can't and
• 1:28:16
  I don't know, like this is I can't believe that you found this entire
• 1:28:19
  set of these these Uh. I wanted to say Springfield Isotopes, but that
• 1:28:25
  is the Simpsons Albuquerque Isotopes cards with these puppies. It is one of the
• 1:28:30
  greatest finds that I think we've uncovered here during this pod that like, man,
• 1:28:35
  what a set that. Yeah, if there is somebody out there with
• 1:28:39
  the entire set, I think it is going to be like a low key
• 1:28:42
  kind of collectors thing as maybe it unfurls a little bit that people you know,
• 1:28:46
  might know what it is from this podcast as we get the word out,
• 1:28:49
  because it is one of the most incredible like runs of cards I've ever
• 1:28:54
  seen. Then you just add in like how goofy the Isotopes jerseys are and
• 1:28:59
  like their entire you knows, and it's just like no notes, like yeah,
• 1:29:02
  perfect, this this is just this is just icing on the cake.
• 1:29:05
  This is this is fabulous. Okay. Well, since you took like the
• 1:29:10
  best card that existed in all of history, I had to go a little
• 1:29:14
  bit different route. Like I said, there aren't very many Carlos Estives cards
• 1:29:16
  out there, so I picked one from this year twenty twenty four Tops Heritage.
• 1:29:23
  I'm going with the black and white image variation here for Carlos Estevez,
• 1:29:27
  mostly because it's a really interesting photo on the card that it looks like Carlos
• 1:29:32
  estam has just like blew the game or gave up some huge hit, which
• 1:29:35
  is how I know and love Estevez. So I figured it was just even
• 1:29:41
  funnier to put it in the black and white photo because it makes it look
• 1:29:45
  like some sort of comedy sketch where you know, they're fading out from the
• 1:29:49
  awful event happening, and it's fading to black and white before they go on
• 1:29:55
  to the next scene. On top of it all, you get the ridiculous
• 1:29:58
  coloration of the the angels and the throwback to is it seventy five? It's
• 1:30:03
  seventy five, right, the seventy five Okay, Yeah, And so like
• 1:30:09
  I think the Angels really pop with the orange and the red and the blue.
• 1:30:13
  So you just added in all those different elements. It's there aren't too
• 1:30:16
  many choices for Estves cards out there. I was trying to look for a
• 1:30:19
  good color match, but a lot of the Rockies cards out there just there
• 1:30:25
  weren't good purple matches. So this is the route I'm going twenty twenty four
• 1:30:29
  Tops Heritage, Black and White. Carls Estavas, Hey, I mean,
• 1:30:31
  I think the only other things I saw with Steves is literally every other card
• 1:30:35
  he has is the exact same picture. Yeah, him throwing a pitch.
• 1:30:39
  Yeah yeah. And so like, I'm very proud that we found the two
• 1:30:43
  that were not the same picture where we all So, Carlos Estivas, thanks
• 1:30:47
  for making this this this podcast for us tonight. Exactly. Yeah, it
• 1:30:50
  was. It was great finding these cards. Okay. On the NL side,
• 1:30:54
  the NL Reliever of the Month was Ryan Helsley, the All Star from
• 1:30:58
  the Saint Louis Cardinals, and and he's been absolutely electric all year. I
• 1:31:01
  think this is the second time that he's won it this year that I remember
• 1:31:05
  when we were debating this back in April, we were deciding whether or not
• 1:31:10
  we wanted to do relievers every month and I think you're finding out maybe we
• 1:31:14
  should. This has been really fun, just like hunting down these cards.
• 1:31:19
  But Helsley was absolutely amazing in June. He's up to thirty one total saves.
• 1:31:26
  He had at two seventy seven EARRA in June with twenty one k's over
• 1:31:30
  thirteen innings and yeah, he's looking like he could save fifty plus this year.
• 1:31:36
  And especially the way the Cardinals have been playing the it's not like the
• 1:31:41
  lineup is lights out, so they're in a lot of tight games they win
• 1:31:44
  them with the bullpen, and Ryan Helsley's been a big key to that for
• 1:31:46
  Saint Louis. So we know his background pretty well, I think in terms
• 1:31:53
  of our own personal collections in collecting Saint Louis Cardinals cards, so I didn't
• 1:31:58
  have to look too far to find one that I liked. And I know
• 1:32:01
  you've got a great one, so I will hand it over you to put
• 1:32:04
  to the PC. Yeah, you're right. I've got a number of Helsley
• 1:32:09
  cards in the collection. I was at tempted to go with like, hey,
• 1:32:11
  what's the first Hellsley card I own? And things like that. It
• 1:32:14
  was like like a Don Ross Auto or something like that. It was just
• 1:32:16
  like, all right, this is a is a pretty weak set here,
• 1:32:19
  but I had to go with the twenty nineteen Tops update Ryan Helsley Rookie,
• 1:32:26
  which was his Independence Day card out of seventy six. And for those that
• 1:32:30
  don't know, every year one of the parallels the Tops puts out in their
• 1:32:34
  based flagship sets is the Independence Date card, always out of seventy six,
• 1:32:41
  and it's always got some version of the American flag as the backdrop. But
• 1:32:46
  I would have to say twenty nineteen is probably the best that they have ever
• 1:32:50
  done with this. It is you know, it's kind of like watching the
• 1:32:56
  TV and you get the flag flowing over is like the is the transparent backdrop,
• 1:33:00
  and you know it is absolutely Helsley throwing. You have to assume one
• 1:33:05
  hundred and five mile an hour pitch. There's everything he's given into this and
• 1:33:10
  the picture having beat his rookie and having, like I said, one of
• 1:33:15
  my favorite Independence Day parallels of all time. This was a no brainer for
• 1:33:18
  me. When I look at this card, it's not hard to find.
• 1:33:21
  It's forty dollars card. It's it's a really easy one to pick up.
• 1:33:26
  So if you want to add to your PC, there's a number of them
• 1:33:28
  out there. But this was This is a no brainer for me because I
• 1:33:30
  just absolutely have loved twenty nineteen Independence state cards. Yeah, and I think
• 1:33:35
  this is a great choice for like a low key color match because even though
• 1:33:40
  it's an Independence state card, the way that they just designed it from twenty
• 1:33:45
  nineteen, Tops really emphasized the red and the white. So you're getting both
• 1:33:48
  the red and the white with the Hellesley and the Cardinals jersey and not having
• 1:33:54
  to pay the price of the red you know, TOPS chrome, which is
• 1:34:00
  five and so that I mean, you're never gonna see one of those Helsley
• 1:34:04
  ones in the light of day because they're tucked away in some Cardinals PC out
• 1:34:10
  there that they're really difficult to get. So this is a great compromise.
• 1:34:14
  I think it's a it's a perfect choice. Yah, it's still not Carlos
• 1:34:17
  Ostavaz, I'm sorry, but it wasn't too bad. Where did you go
• 1:34:21
  finishers out with Ryan Helsley here? Okay? I also went with a twenty
• 1:34:26
  nineteen Ryan Helsley card from his rookie year, but I went with the Tops
• 1:34:30
  holiday autograph that he has in there because one it's number of out a two
• 1:34:34
  hundred, so it's a pretty rare card in terms of autos out there.
• 1:34:40
  He doesn't have a ton of autos, so he was in Holiday, he
• 1:34:45
  was in Update and Chrome and also Gallery, I believe, so there's not
• 1:34:50
  a huge number of sets that Helsley has autographs in. This card also is
• 1:34:58
  just a really interesting card I think from the photo angle, because you don't
• 1:35:02
  see too many pictures of pictures from their gloves side like this. It is
• 1:35:08
  a little awkward looking and like that's why I think they don't always go with
• 1:35:13
  it, but it gives you just a different angle of the pitch, the
• 1:35:17
  wind up rotation of you know, throwing a pitch, and with Hellsley here
• 1:35:23
  you also get that holiday field that the twenty nineteen holiday cards I've always enjoyed
• 1:35:28
  because they are subtle but holiday that you know, they're not garished the way
• 1:35:33
  that sometimes they've been over the past couple of years, where you have all
• 1:35:38
  sorts of ornaments and snow wall over them. That you've got a nice kind
• 1:35:42
  of classy touch of white holly in the background, and then on the borders
• 1:35:47
  you've got the red and green Holly. So it's just a beautiful looking card.
• 1:35:53
  It makes it look a little bit more natural, like it's like a
• 1:35:57
  you know, a woodland scene or something like that post holiday. So that's
• 1:36:01
  where I'm going to go for the PC. Ryan Hillsley Tops Holiday twenty nineteen
• 1:36:06
  auto of two hundred. Yeah, I like it. It's good. It's
• 1:36:11
  a good pick. I also love the holiday cards. The autos are usually
• 1:36:14
  numbered out of like two hundred or something like that, a little harder to
• 1:36:16
  find, but it's also much lower print run product, and so it's it's
• 1:36:21
  a fun fun to go after. You're right, It is a little awkward
• 1:36:24
  photo beyond that glove side, because you know, it looks like he's just
• 1:36:28
  holding his glove in front of his body, which you owe he's actually pulling
• 1:36:30
  it through in that release, but it looks like he's just awkwardly holding his
• 1:36:35
  left arm there, not knowing what to do with it. But it is
• 1:36:39
  a great card. A number of great players that were in that that twenty
• 1:36:45
  nineteen set. But hey, Eddie Hellsley auto is a good auto in my
• 1:36:48
  book. Yeah, I think so. I Mean, all these guys that
• 1:36:53
  we picked tonight have pretty solid autos, So It's been a fun night for
• 1:36:58
  in just kind of research time in terms of like going through and looking at
• 1:37:00
  all these cards, especially yeah, for some of these guys who had very
• 1:37:05
  limited selections. So get out there, get some of these players in your
• 1:37:10
  PCs now and I'll good hand of them. A handful of them are all
• 1:37:14
  stars too, So make sure you do that this weekend before that game hits.
• 1:37:18
  So let's wrap it up for this week. Brew Let everybody know where
• 1:37:23
  they can find you on socials and read your pieces. Yep, find me
• 1:37:28
  on Twitter or x at Jay Brewer one seven reach out. Let me know
• 1:37:32
  if you liked our pod tonight, because I think this is one of my
• 1:37:35
  favorite things we do every month talking about these cards. Also find me over
• 1:37:40
  on rasball on the weekends doing hitter profiles top one hundred hitters. Just buy
• 1:37:44
  out some bold predictions for the second half of a little bold on some of
• 1:37:45
  them, not so bold on others. I'm a little disupported. I pulled
• 1:37:49
  my Juliu Rodriguez bold on prediction. They actually bounced back in the second half
• 1:37:54
  and then he went on a little binge. But hey, come out interact
• 1:37:58
  rasball. Find me out there on Sundays. Well, how about you cool?
• 1:38:01
  Where can folks find find you? And Resie Downs? Well, yeah,
• 1:38:04
  first, I mean you obviously are one hundred percent responsible for that Julio
• 1:38:09
  Rodriguez bounce back. So everybody reach out to Brew and find him and let
• 1:38:13
  him know that you appreciate him burying that. But you can find me on
• 1:38:16
  Twitter, slash x and on Blue Sky at mcool seven and I am writing
• 1:38:23
  Waiver Wiver oh man, I've been doing so well about rattling that off recently,
• 1:38:28
  but writing Waiver Wire columns on Saturdays, So you can find me there
• 1:38:31
  to help you for your your fab picks out there, and you can reach
• 1:38:36
  the podcast on Twitter, slash x, at Cards Categories, cardscategories at gmail
• 1:38:42
  dot com if you want to reach us by email and let us know what
• 1:38:46
  other cards you might be putting into your player. The month PCs for these
• 1:38:50
  players and if you are looking for any cards and gear, cards and categories
• 1:38:56
  gear out there. We've got t shirts, we've got hats, we've got
• 1:38:59
  a baby, we've got a coffee mug. Find the details in the show
• 1:39:03
  notes. There is a link down there. And if you've enjoyed what you've
• 1:39:08
  heard in this podcast today, make sure you check us out, go back
• 1:39:12
  into our catalogs to find some of those other Player of the Month PC podcasts,
• 1:39:16
  but also make sure review and rate us wherever you're listening to us.
• 1:39:20
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• 1:39:26
  the message and get this podcast into more eears. So thanks again for checking
• 1:39:30
  us out and sticking around with us this week. We'll be back same time,
• 1:39:33
  same place next week. See everybody,