The Trading Post #161: Chavez Ravining

Over the years, I've never really thought to keep track of the rate at which I win giveaways and contests run by my fellow bloggers. I entered a couple today, and I have my fingers crossed. As expected, my luck is best when there are more prizes on offer, which is what happened with a giveaway that Alex at Chavez Ravining ran this summer. 13th place sometimes brings up the rear, but other times, 13th place is a fine place to be.

 2019 Topps Father's Day Blue #131 Mark Trumbo /50

Of the many prizes on offer, I ended up with a couple low-numbered parallels from 2019 Topps Series 1. This Mark Trumbo card is numbered to just 50 copies, and it's from the Father's Day Blue parallel set. It has a pale blue border color, which works well with the hockey stick design of 2019. Maybe blue and orange paired together appeals to the Denver Broncos fan in me. Compared to the angular 2020 set, this is actually pretty nice. It might even be the best design they've done since they got rid of full borders after 2014.

I used to see Mark Trumbo's name a lot. He began his career as an Angel, and then spent some time on the Diamondbacks. I'll admit that long before we all knew how amazingly good Mike Trout was, I got their names mixed up from time to time. Same initials, same team. Of course, that didn't last long once it became clear that we had a future Hall-of-Famer in our midst. After Trumbo's time with Arizona, when I saw him during his frequent matchups with the Rockies, he sort of fell off my radar. He led the Majors with 47 home runs in 2016, earning a Silver Slugger and his second All-Star appearance in the process. After that, he trailed off due to injuries, and wasn't signed to play anywhere in 2020 even before the chaos that ensued this season. It's unclear whether the pandemic will end his career, which certainly could be the case for many players, not unlike what happened after the 1994 strike.

2019 Topps Mother's Day Pink #219 Martin Perez /50

As you might expect when there's a Father's Day Blue parallel set, there's also an equally rare Mother's Day Pink parallel set. This Martín Pérez card is numbered an even 50/50, which looks so appealing. Any one of them is nice, but knowing you have the very last one is just a little extra cool.

It doesn't look quite pink to me, more of a brick red. With a more uniform background than on Trumbo's card, you can see more clearly how Topps shades the card to make a colored parallel. Presumably, Trumbo's photo is just as blue as this is pink, but it just doesn't stand out much when the backdrop is a bunch of fans sitting in the shade. 

This card is pretty recent, but Pérez has already appeared on two other teams not pictured here. He was part of the Twins rotation in 2019, then moved on to Boston for 2020. He started 12 games, which is effectively a full season when a 60-game schedule is in place. He's a free agent once again, and is looking for a spot to land in 2021.

2020 Topps 206 Wave 1 #26 David Dahl

In addition to these two prizes, Alex found a few Rockies for me, mostly from recent retro sets. As I alluded to a couple months ago, Topps brought back the 206 brand once again. I said at the time that I expected to find some "in the next decade", but I had no idea it would take just a couple months. I'm not sure on the print run, but it's one of the print-to-order sets that Topps offers as an online exclusive, like Topps Now. 

The card back of this mini does tell you that it's from the 50-card Wave 1, but annoyingly, there's no card number on any of these. Beckett calls it #26, I guess because of his uniform number, but building this set would be a frustrating endeavor. Good thing there's a pleasing shade of green on the front.

Dahl won't get to wear #26 when he starts playing for the Rangers next year. The team retired it for former manager Johnny Oates, so he'll need to pick another. Yes, that's where he'll land, since the Rockies decided to non-tender him this offseason. Texas didn't waste any time in scooping him up, and he'll get to play in their brand-new park. Interestingly, because the Rockies had their late-July Opening Day against the Rangers, none other than David Dahl got the first-ever hit at Globe Life Field. He also has his name in the record books for the first strikeout and the first double.

I guess the Rangers liked what they saw on the first day MLB played in 2020.

2020 Topps Turkey Red '20 Series 2 #TR-37 Sam Hilliard

Another retro set Topps decided to resurrect in 2020 was Turkey Red. Unbeknownst to me, Topps last produced this in 2013 and 2014 as an online exclusive, but none of those are in my collection. There was a 2007 set, and I do have a few of those. At that time, it was a main set, but this year, Topps made it an insert set as part of 2020 Topps. They also smoothed the front of the card, giving us that front that isn't quite matte and isn't quite glossy, a lot like what you'll find in recent Topps Archives sets.

Somewhat annoyingly again, Topps restarted the checklist numbering in Series 2, producing a 200-card insert set numbered 1-100 twice. Topps, please don't do that. What's the story with weird card numbering in 2020?

In any case, we're back to full-size, looking straight-on at a posing Sam Hilliard, one of the young Rockies prospects. His September call-up in 2019 went pretty well, but he didn't look great in 2020. Perhaps he'll still need time to develop. He got a card in the 2020 Topps Base set, which has the official MLB Rookie Card logo. As you can see, this insert also has the RC logo, and I'm really not going to even pretend to understand how the RC logo works. Shouldn't it just be on one? Or is it everything for the whole year?

2019 Topps Gypsy Queen #146 Kyle Freeland

Drifting back one year to 2019, we come to Gypsy Queen, the retro set I generally know the least about. It's helpful that Topps put the year in the upper corners. I'm not great at telling the years apart, even though I've seen this design twice before. 

The card back takes note of Freeland being a Colorado native, pointing out that he needed to just two seasons to earn over 75% of all wins and 67% of all strikeouts by a Colorado-born Rockie. Now, there isn't tremendous competition for that number, as I can't think of anyone else who fits the bill besides Mark Knudson, who had zero wins and three strikeouts as a Rockie. Roy Halladay never pitched for the Rockies, so I'm not sure who else they're referring to.

And on the front, Freeland is clearly pitching in Oracle Park, home of the Giants. This photo is from 2018, when it was still known as AT&T Park. And I'm pretty sure I have the date. It's easier with pitchers, especially starters, who only go once every five days. He played a full season in 2018, and a pretty great one, too. But he only pitched twice in San Francisco. 

Like the Rockies, the Giants have their own manually-operated out-of-town scoreboard in right field, and it's really hard to see clearly in this photo since it's so far outside the depth of field, but I'm pretty sure the matchup we can see is Royals at Brewers, and maybe that's a "4" next to Milwaukee's name. If correct, that would date this to June 27th, 2018, when the Royals beat the Brewers 5-4. The Rockies suffered a heartbreaking loss that day, as the Giants won 1-0 via a walkoff solo home run. Freeland went toe-to-toe with Madison Bumgarner for seven innings, only to see the bullpen lose it to Brandon Crawford.

2019 Topps Gypsy Queen Fortune Teller Mini #FTMNA Nolan Arenado

As little Gypsy Queen as collect, something I see even less frequently is a Gypsy Queen insert card. But Alex found just such a thing for me, a mini of Nolan Arenado. It's the height of a normal card, but narrower, coming in at 1 7/8". Arenado's card is from the 20-card Fortune Teller insert set, which is sort of a steampunk version of 1995 Topps Cyberstats. 

We're told to "Gaze into...THE FUTURE!", and on the card back, Topps has done just that. They tell us, correctly, that Nolan Arenado's 2019 season would be his fifth straight with at least 30 home runs and 100 RBI. We're also told that he was tied at four straight with Chipper Jones and Vinny Castilla among NL third basemen.

Even with the shortened 2020 season, he wasn't on pace for a sixth, so that's about as far into the future as we can look. But what I'd really like to know is whether Nolan Arenado will continue to be a Rockie.

2020 Diamond Kings #149 Nolan Arenado SP

It's a bit of an open question, especially with the opt-out clause he has in his contract coming up at the end of 2021, but for now, he'll continue to get purple cards, with or without an official MLB license, and which may or may not be short-printed. Panini is still making the Diamond Kings set, still making it look like a painting. And I still enjoy how it feels like a playing card.

Panini went a little more in-depth on the back, narrowing Arenado's 2019 season down to several statistics that puts him in a class all by himself. Apparently, Nolan is the first righty to hit .315, score 100 runs, hit 40 home runs, and (of course, since this is Nolan) win a Gold Glove at third base. They didn't specify which lefty has done this, but it's an impressive single-season performance nonetheless.

Thanks to Alex for sending these cards my way! By the rules of his own contest, all I was due were those two 2019 Topps parallels, but he went above and beyond and found all these great retro cards that I was unlikely to otherwise encounter.

Finally, as I finish this post up, I sadly just learned about the death of yet another Hall-of-Famer, Phil Niekro. If he happened to see it earlier this year, I hope he got some joy out of seeing the entire Cardsphere celebrate his birthday using his '88 Score card.

Playing in the Big Leagues (Part 2: Subsets and Beyond)

The days are really starting to blend together. Consider how I opened my blog post with Part 1 of a 2019 Topps Big League blaster:

"It's a sunny but cold day in Colorado, following a few days of snow. And since it's too cold to be able to do much bird photography (another one of my many hobbies), this makes it a good day to look at a blaster of 2019 Topps Big League."

All that remains pretty much true today, same as it was this time last week. We're a few days removed from the last measurable snow, and I did manage to spot a few birds today (including a raven), but one day is pretty much indistinguishable from any other, and they're still getting shorter. At least the insert cards we'll see in Part 2 offer a little bit of novelty, something that's in short supply these days.

2019 Topps Big League #346 Charlie Blackmon / Christian Yelich / Matt Carpenter SK

Even the 2019 Stat Kings subset looks pretty much like it did in 2018. Once again, Charlie Blackmon led the NL in runs scored, though his cast of supporting characters is different. Charlie got top billing again with an even scragglier-looking beard than he had the previous year, flanked by 2018 NL MVP Christian Yelich, who made a cameo on Trevor Story's base card. Elsewhere in the NL Central, Matt Carpenter rounds out the trio.

2019 Topps Big League #350 Freddie Freeman / Anthony Rendon / Nick Markakis SK

Nolan Arenado led the NL in doubles during the 2017 season, but didn't even crack the top three in 2018. That honor went to Freddie Freeman, who won both the 2020 NL MVP award and the NL Hank Aaron Award, which is given to the top offensive player in each league. He's only the second Brave to win the award, after Andruw Jones. He's joined on this three-player card by Anthony Rendon, who actually tied Freeman's 44, followed by fellow Brave Nick Markakis, who was up to bat during one of the funniest (slightly NSFW) broadcasting moments in Red Sox history.

Interestingly, Anthony Rendon had every right to be the featured player here. I guess he just lost out alphabetically. But he hit an identical 44 doubles in 2019, and managed to tie once again for the NL lead, deadlocking with Corey Seager. I didn't pull the NL Doubles leaders card in 2020 Big League, but it appears that Rendon was listed first that time. We'll eventually see some 2020 Big League, but that's for another day.

2019 Topps Big League Wall Climbers #WC-9 Mookie Betts

I don't remember exactly how many packs were in this blaster. Probably nine or ten. But it was enough to encounter plenty of inserts, such as this Mookie Betts card from the 10-card Wall Climbers set. He was Yelich's MVP counterpart in 2018 over on the AL side, and has racked up five consecutive Gold Gloves by now. Of the many Mookie Betts highlights that belong in this set, Topps chose July 21st, 2018, as noted on the card back. Careful observers will note that the play in question took place in Detroit's Comerica Park, while the photo on this card is clearly in Fenway Park.

In any case, the wall in this part of Fenway isn't particularly high, certainly not high enough to have to "climb". But now that he's a Dodger, he still needs to put those acrobatic skills to the test in Dodger Stadium and elsewhere in the National League. Perhaps you saw him during the NLCS.

2019 Topps Big League Blast Off #BO-10 Giancarlo Stanton

Of course, robbing home runs wouldn't be such an amazing highlight if it happened often. Usually they sail far, far over the wall, especially when they come off the bat of a slugger like Giancarlo Stanton. That leads to his appearance in Blast Off!, fifteen cards showing some of the best power hitters in the game. Joey Gallo is indeed featured in this set, the player who at various points in his career has had more home runs than singles. As of the end of 2020, his singles count is ahead by two.

Stanton is the main event on this card, though, complete with a rocket launch theme. The card back tells us that the longest one of Stanton's 38 homers in 2018 went a whopping 458 feet, and it was the first one he ever hit wearing the Yankee pinstripes. At home, that is.

Back when he was a Marlin, one of his shots to straightaway center featured the single most perfect crack of the bat I've ever heard. Bonus Marlins Home Run Sculpture if you click on that one.

2019 Topps Big League Players Weekend Nicknames #PW2 Jose Altuve

Topps got some good photos on Players Weekend in 2018. We saw Edwin Diaz, aka Sugar, wearing his Players Weekend jersey in Part 1, and they used this photo of Jose Altuvé from the same weekend for a 30-card insert set. The diminutive Astros second baseman is simply known as "Tuve". I saw him play in person once, and the main thing I remember is that he got picked off of first base.

Speaking of the Astros, Family Guy gave us a particularly hilarious take on the team's cheating scandal in a recent episode.

All these Big League insert sets are generally pretty plain. No flashy banners, no foil, not even many bright colors. It's sort of a flat look, like iOS 7 when they got rid of all the shading. I do like the little motion lines they put near the Big League logo and the bat in the lower right. 1982 Donruss could only dream of such things.

2019 Topps Big League Blaster Box Cards #B3 Mike Trout

As in the 2018 set, Topps turned the blaster box itself into a card. Unfortunately, I think I did an even worse job cutting this one out than the Bryce Harper card I tried the year before. I might invest in a paper cutter if they keep doing this sort of thing. It's basically the same as a normal base card, other than a dark brown border and actual cardboard rather than paper stock. Trout is one of four possible options, and it's clear to see which one you'll get when you buy the blaster itself.

I didn't pull Trout's normal base card, but I'm assuming the card back is basically identical, other than the card number. On it, Topps recognizes Trout's talent and how his name alone singularly identifies him as the best player in baseball. With rare exceptions, he's been either #1 or #2 in AL MVP voting his whole career. 2020 was an off year for him, as he only finished fifth.

He's so good, in fact, that all you really have to do is follow which legendary Hall of Famers he passed in WAR in any given month and simply tweet "Mike Trout". That is acceptable as a complete tweet. You may have even arrived at this post from just such a tweet.

2019 Topps Big League Star Caricature Reproductions #SCR-CA Chris Archer

Star Caricature Reproductions is the last insert set I found in this blaster. I'm only missing an example of Ballpark Oddities, a small and intriguing-sounding set. This is a set I've seen before, as Trevor sent over Charlie Blackmon's card in a PWE last year. The artwork on Blackmon's card always struck me as a little strange, and I think Chris Archer's card is a little more like what I expect. The design has the same dotted line border as the Nicknames set, but they replaced the ball and bat with a pennant and a slightly modified Big League logo. It's sort of like a little Easter egg hunt, finding where the crossed bats logo pops up on a design.

Chris Archer has spent some time as a Pirate, but he missed the entire 2020 season for reasons beyond the pandemic. There's talk that he'll end back up with the Tampa Bay Rays, and judging by how far they went in the 2020 Postseason, that looks like the place to be right now.

2019 Topps Big League Blue #150 Albert Pujols

Time for a few parallels before we wrap things up. It's back to the base card design, and this Albert Pujols card is given a nice shade of blue on the border, a color found only in these blaster boxes. The photo is obviously a ceremony of some kind, and it happens to be from June 2nd, 2018, the day that the Angels honored Pujols's accomplishment of reaching the 3,000-hit milestone. Pujols threw out the first pitch to Adrián Beltré, another member of the exclusive club, and that's what's pictured here. 

As you can see on the left side of the card, he was presented with a special portrait for the occasion, and to my eye, it would not look out of place as a Star Caricature Reproduction card. Even the card back mentions this major accomplishment, which is essentially a lock for gaining entry to the Hall of Fame. Of these few players, only Pete Rose, Alex Rodriguez, and Rafael Palmeiro haven't punched their ticket for Cooperstown, and they all have special circumstances keeping them out. Among recently-retired and still-active players, I have no doubt that Ichiro, Pujols and Beltré will make it in once the requisite five years after retirement have passed. 

As for potential upcoming members to the 3,000 hit club, Miguel Cabrera might make it; he has 134 to go. Beyond that, it might be a while before we see anyone else get to 3,000 hits. Robinson Canó is relatively close, but he's been suspended for the entire 2021 season. And after him, Nick Markakis is the next active player on the list, but he's not even at 2,400. It's not an easy thing to do.

2019 Topps Big League Blue #327 Cody Bellinger

An hour's drive up The 5 and you'll come to Southern California's latest World Series Champions. The Angels held that title for nearly two decades until the Dodgers finally put all the right pieces in place. A lot of those pieces are happily celebrating in this photo, surrounded by another Blue border. The border color works great on a Dodgers card. The main event here is 2017 NL Rookie of the Year Cody Bellinger, who clearly just did something excellent, and we can also see Max Muncy in the background, wearing #13.

2019 Topps Big League Gold #183 Victor Robles

Our final card is of the Gold variety, a one-per-pack parallel that can be found even outside blaster boxes. The border color isn't tremendously different from the light brown found on normal base cards, but I guess it's about as close to "Gold" as it can get at this price point.

Victor Robles has been with the Washington Nationals since his rookie debut in 2017. He earned a World Series ring in 2019, and is shown here wearing the team's special 4th of July jersey. Notice the curly W/quasi-Walgreens logo has a stars-and-stripes motif. I'm guessing he's celebrating hitting a triple, judging from his position on the diamond. That was before they implemented Baby Shark celebrations, with increasing degrees of intensity for hitting a single, double, or triple.

Alternately, "The fish I caught was thiiiiis big!", which I totally would have submitted to Beckett's funny captions column when I was a kid.

Topps Big League just puts you in that frame of mind.

ToppsGelt

As another year's Hanukkah winds to a close, it's about that time for your occasional education on Jewish culture here at Infield Fly Rule. It's certainly nothing as in-depth as my full eight-night Stadium Club extravaganza from 2018, but there's still cause for celebration. We all know the mail hasn't been especially speedy this year, but I did get a Hanukkah card delivered from my mom, and inside was yet another Eight Men Out need.

1994 Topps Gold #395 Bill Brennan

As longtime readers may know, I've gradually been collecting the Topps Gold checklist replacement cards from 1992-1994 Topps. I have a full set of the six 1993 cards, completed last year. I don't think I have any of the 1992s, but with the above Bill Brennan card, I'm well on my way to having the '94 set as well. For those not in the know, Topps figured that getting a one-per-pack Gold parallel of a plain old checklist would be disappointing, so they picked a few extra players that didn't make it into the regular base set and gave them gold-only cards.

In a rather inattentive error, I actually had this card on the list twice, so Mom must have figured I really wanted it. It ended up being Bill Brennan's last Major League card. He had numerous minor league issues, and a few major-brand MLB cards following his 1988 debut, including an appearance in the famed 1989 Upper Deck set, but his career never took off. He appeared in four games for the '88 Dodgers, so he probably has a World Series ring somewhere. His career didn't progress beyond the Minors until a final, brief stint with the Cubs in 1993, as pictured here in a Studio-esque posed shot.

On the back, Topps has this listed as Brennan's Rookie Card. Donruss, Score, and Upper Deck all gave him cards in 1989, but Topps didn't get around to it until after his career ended. That makes it one of the rare examples of a Rookie Card and a Sunset Card all in one.

And since this is a Gold card, I thought I'd make a little Hanukkah pun and call it ToppsGelt. Gelt is a Yiddish word meaning "money", and in the context of Hanukkah, it refers to the little golden foil-wrapped chocolate coins that are given as small gifts. They're a favorite item to gamble with while playing Dreidel. I didn't buy any this year, but getting a relatively rare overproduction-era card is a great substitute.

Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays!

Playing in the Big Leagues (Part 1: Base)

It's a sunny but cold day in Colorado, following a few days of snow. And since it's too cold to be able to do much bird photography (another one of my many hobbies), this makes it a good day to look at a blaster of 2019 Topps Big League. It's been a month or so since I went through the debut 2018 Topps Big League set, and I found it surprisingly enjoyable. From what I can tell so far, 2019 picked up right where it left off.

2019 Topps Big League #125 Juan Soto

I've been spending an excessive amount of time on the Topps BUNT app lately. Come find me at AdamK0310 if you're a fellow BUNTer. I mention this because I've found a handful of Juan Soto autograph "cards" in the app. Most current signatures, mine included, are basically chicken scratch, but Soto's is particularly awesome. A good friend of mine ordered a signed 8"x10" after his Nationals won the 2019 World Series, and it's even better to see in person.

Obviously, there's no signature on this Big League base card, but it does capture the moment of Soto's bat flip in horizontal fashion. Maybe this one is more of a bat toss than a true flip, as even a charismatic young player like Soto has to keep it in check, lest he get beaned. MLB has a long way to go before they even approach how well they do bat flips in the Korea Baseball Organization. It's practically an artform.

Also visible on this horizontal card is the Washington Nationals All-Star Game patch, which the team wore in 2018. Somehow, this young star hasn't appeared in a Midsummer Classic yet, but it surely won't be long before he does. He won the NL batting title in 2020, after all. Like Bryce Harper before him, he made a splash with the Nats at a very young age, and we're told on the card back that he's the first Big Leaguer who was born after the inaugural seasons of the Diamondbacks and Rays.

The 2019 Big League design blends a few familiar elements. There's a waving pennant, which is basically 1965 Topps. There's a light-colored woodgrain pattern in the background, which blends in nicely and doesn't make itself as obvious as 1987 Topps did. And there's the occasionally-used theme of a ticket stub. A few sets have done this, but the textbook example in my mind for that is 2003 Fleer Authentix. Soto's card tells us we're sitting in Section 2019, Row BB, Seat 1.

If I have a seat 20 decks above the field and about 50 rows deep, I'm glad I at least have an aisle seat.

2019 Topps Big League #243 Pat Neshek

This isn't the actual debut of 2019 Topps Big League on the blog. Trevor sent several last year, and I even told a similar ticket stub joke then. I get a lot of mileage out of that one, in true Dad Joke fashion. As you can see from the way the ticket stub design is cut off on a vertical card, you really need a horizontal card for that joke to land. On the other hand, the vertical layout makes it a little more obvious that they're also going for a scrapbook theme, with the photo slightly tilted and a border added at the bottom to give the illusion that these are two photographs (or cards, or tickets, whatever) stacked atop one another. It's really quite effective, especially in such a low-budget set.

Noted baseball card collector Pat Neshek appeared in this 400-card set, and Topps didn't miss an opportunity to plug their product. His "Did You Know?" fact on the back is that he pulled a rare red-ink Shohei Ohtani autograph when he opened his own box of 2018 Topps Heritage. He sold it, a move he later came to regret.

2019 Topps Big League #169 Adam Frazier

As in 2018, plenty of fun photographs made it into the checklist. Here's one of Adam Frazier getting a Gatorade shower on throwback uniform day. Usually this kind of thing is relegated to an insert set even in something like Opening Day. But in Big League, it's right there for all to see in the main set. 

Adam Frazier, while a useful utility player, isn't generally known for walkoff home runs. But one is enough to get a great card like this, and this is from his 11th-inning solo shot on August 19th, 2018. He's surrounded by teammates Jordan Luplow, now with Cleveland, and David Freese, the 2011 World Series MVP who retired after the 2019 season.

2019 Topps Big League #33 Jon Lester

The Pirates were their playing division rival Cubs that day, although Jon Lester didn't start. That task went to Jose Quintana, who ended up with a no-decision. That game obviously took place in PNC Park, so this shot of Jon Lester in Wrigley is clearly from a different series. The photo is from 2018, and in the years since, the Nike Swoosh has migrated a few inches over from the undershirt to the jersey itself.

Remember when that logo was the worst thing expected to happen in baseball in 2020? Nothing quite like a global pandemic to put things into perspective.

2019 Topps Big League #279 Edwin Díaz

It seems like this was a pitcher-heavy blaster, at least among base cards. Edwin Díaz had a stellar year in 2018 for the Mariners, and Seattle cashed in during the offseason, trading him to the Mets. Prior to that, Díaz saved a whopping 57 games for the Mariners, and even managed to get the extra-innings win in the 2018 All-Star Game. His fun fact on the card back mentions his haircut, which has a lightning bolt pattern shaved in above the ears. What the card doesn't say is that Mariners manager Scott Servais, who was very briefly a Rockie in 2000, promised to get that same haircut himself if Díaz reached 50 saves.

As mentioned, Díaz did indeed hit that mark, and Scott Servais is a man of his word.

2019 Topps Big League #377 Edwin Díaz AW

Díaz is pictured on his main card as a Photoshopped New York Met, but he had spent his entire career in Seattle when these cards were printed. That's where this photo came from, which Topps used for his Award Winners subset card. Yes, Edwin Díaz was named the Mariano Rivera AL Reliever of the Year in 2018, thanks to those 57 saves, 124 strikeouts, and a truly magical WHIP of under 0.8. 

As this card points out, the legendary Mariano Rivera never had 57 saves in a single year. That said, part of that is due to how good the Yankees were back then. Closers on dominant teams who often win in a blowout aren't going to get as many save opportunities as closers on a middling team like the Mariners, who squeak out wins by just a run or two. This card also tells Díaz only had a one-run lead in nearly half of his save situations. That's unquestionably an award-worthy season, but it's been an outlier thus far in his career. 

2019 Topps Big League #394 Edwin Díaz HL

One more Edwin Díaz card, and it's from the Highlights subset. He's wearing his Players Weekend jersey in this one, showing the moment when "Sugar" secured his 50th save on August 25th, 2018. As a Rockies fan, I applaud that, because it came at the expense of the Diamondbacks, who finished one place behind the Rockies in the NL West that year. 

This being the milestone 50th save, Topps also took the opportunity to mention the Scott Servais haircut thing on this card, saving that juicy tidbit for one of the final cards in the checklist. All in all, this was pretty much an Edwin Díaz hot box. He made his mark with the Mariners, but with the recent change in Mets ownership, he could find himself in a very fortuitous situation.

2019 Topps Big League #240 Trevor Story

Those are the highlights from the blaster, but I did have this Trevor Story card set aside with a note that it was sent to me by Rod at Padrographs. I don't usually have the best luck with finding Rockies in blasters, so I appreciate having traders looking out for me. For the moment, Trevor Story is still a Rockie, but with the strategy the Rockies front office has been running the past few years, that remains a question mark. He could be shipped off anywhere at any moment for a questionable return package, much like what happened when the Marlins traded Christian Yelich, the cameo player on this card.

If not for that trade, this card could show negative-career-WAR Lewis Brinson as the cameo, rather than a player in the midst of an MVP season. Story is just as capable of winning the MVP, and I hope if he does so, it's with the Rockies. In any case, he's sure to remain in the Big Leagues for quite some time to come.