My Favorite Duke Player

It has been too long since I have picked up a card of my favorite Duke player Marcus Stroman.  I did a lot of work on Stroman cards while he was finishing up his college career and when he was first drafted by the Blue Jays, but have gotten away from his cards a bit this summer.  It's not necessarily that I have not been looking for Stroman cards, but more surprisingly card companies have produced few cards of the Blue Jay during the summer.  

I am a little bit surprised given the success that Stroman has had in the Majors during his first season. Currently Stroman is sitting at 9-5 with an ERA of 3.83, but has been improving throughout the season.  His FIP (Fielding Independent ERA) is sitting at 3.00 right now which is better than all kinds of pitchers you've heard of: Adam Wainwright, James Shields, and Masahiro Tanaka to name a few.  

His ERA in the second half of the season is a half a run lower and he has had some spectacular outings.  Two games that I had the pleasure of watching were his win against the Cardinals at the beginning of June and his gem against the Red Sox in late July.  Both were impressive.  Here's a video clip of each:

The game versus the Cardinals:

The game versus the Red Sox:

While it seems that most baseball fans around the Triangle have been focused on the meteoric rise of NC State product Carlos Rodon through the minors for the White Sox, many have missed out on the success of one of our local gems in Stroman.  In the last month, the News and Observer (the largest newspaper in the Raleigh-Durham area) has ran at least four stories about Carlos Rodon pitching in a Minor League game or a promotion in the Minors.  Stroman stories?  Zero.  

Well, at least the good folks over at Topps have jumped back on the Marcus Stroman bandwagon and given collectors a pair of new autographs to chase down.  One is in the Topps Chrome set, which I managed to pick up last week in a trade, while the other is in the Bowman Platinum release.  

This is the refractor version of Stroman's Chrome Autograph and is a print run of /499.  There are the usual array of different colors and print runs on this Stroman autograph, so there are lots of price points for collectors ranging from a few dollars for the base version of this card all the way up to $30 and $40, which is where his completed sales of low print runs are currently sitting at on Ebay.  

I am pretty excited about the future of this former Duke player and would recommend pick up a few of his cards to add to your collection.