Meet Randal Grichuk

The World Series has ended and the hot stove is heating up around Major League Baseball.  The Cardinals have been pretty busy so far this month trading away hometown third baseman David Freese to Angels for Peter Bourjos and Randal Grichuk and then signing shortstop Jhonny Peralta away from the Tigers.  The new players have given me some new players and cards to find over the winter.  I got started on the new players right away last week in tracking down a pair of cards from new Cardinals outfield prospect Randal Grichuk.  

Most baseball publications put Grichuk in the top five prospects in the Angels organization.  While the Angels organization is pretty thin, Grichuk still sounds like he might be a pretty solid prospect.  He's already an above average outfielder defensively and has some good pop in his bat posting 22 home runs and 56 extra base hits in exactly 500 at-bats in the Texas League (AA).  He's a bit of a free swinger, but there's always time to work on his plate discipline.  I am guessing a good summer in the Cardinals organization and we should see Grichuk in St. Louis at the end of 2014 or the beginning of 2015.  

On to the cards.  Grichuk has a few different cards floating around and even has a few autographs.  In fact, there are five of them.  The most common of which is an In The Game autograph issued by the Canadian card company in 2011.    There is also a Donruss Elite from the same year and a pair of Bowmans.  More recently, Panini put out an autograph of Grichuk in last year's USA Baseball release. I decided to try to track down a Bowman autograph and found a nice copy of his 2010 Bowman Draft card on COMC.  

2010 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects Randal Grichuk

Grichuk's other Bowman autograph comes from the 2009 Chrome set.  Hopefully I can track down a copy at a good price.  It seems like the price of Grichuk cards went from $3 or $4 a few weeks ago to selling for more than $10 the past week and a half after the trade.  I am going to blame the bump in price on the fact that every Cardinals collector is out trying to find a Grichuk autograph.  I am sure that by spring the excitement and novelty will die down a little bit.  I also ended up with another cool Grichuk card...

2013 Panini USA Baseball Randal Grichuk Jersey 

This USA Baseball jersey is the only relic card that Grichuk has out on the secondary market.  I like the USA Baseball cards and try to check out some of their games every summer, but I never watch any other teams outside of the College All-Stars.  Naturally that means that I missed getting to see Grichuk in a USA Baseball uniform.  Really cool card and happy to add to my collection.  

Excited to see Grichuk in a Cardinals uniform.  Looks like Randal is fitting in well to his new home.