Duff Man. Oh Meh.

The Rays picked up Matt Duffy from the Giants in the Matt Moore trade and promptly sent him down to the Durham Bulls on an injury rehab assignment.  Since he is on the Rays I considered picking up one of his cards, but since he played in Durham it ended up on my to-do list.  

Now, I would much rather have an autograph than a relic card, but Duffy appears to be one of those players whose on-field performance and hobby prices are a little misaligned.  Don't get me wrong, he had a solid year for a player under 25 in 2015 going .295/.334/.428 with 12 home runs, 6 triples, and 28 doubles.  However, he's also not Kris Bryant or Nolan Arenado.  The 2016 season has seen a step back from Duffy, but his autograph prices seem to be in the $10 to $15 range for a lot of the cards for sale on Ebay and sites like COMC.  

I'd rather have a Matt Carpenter autograph for that much.  

After spending a few scrolling through Matt Duffy cards, I ended up finding something that looked pretty sweet on my computer screen, and still even looks pretty good sitting in front of me on my desk.  

This is also my first Strata card of the year.  If you remember last year I found a bunch of these cards, really liked them, but marveled at how anyone broke even opening up these cards.  Really, I'm still enjoying my Steven Souza autograph from last year.  Rodon and Kluber too, I just didn't pay anything for any of them.  

Same with Duff-Man here.  

Of course, the best part of getting a Strata card is typing in the little code on the sticker to found out when and where the player wore the jersey.  Off to the MLB Authentication site I went and this is what my Matt Duffy jersey back as....

I saw the date of the game, went to Baseball-Reference, and typed in the date for the box score.  I was hopeful when I saw that the Giants won the game 8-0 on a complete game shut out by Mad Bum.  Then I clicked the box score.  Sigh.  

It seems like every Giants player in the line up did something to contribute to the eight runs except Matt Duffy.  A giant bagel.  So, lets stick to the positives for a moment:

I now own a cool card of a player who appeared in a few games this year for the Durham Bulls.  

Let's also point out a few other details surrounding Matt Duffy.  Like I said earlier, Duffy is having a down year.  He did little to change that after coming over to the Rays in the trade.  I am even more skeptical about the fact that the Rays have decided to play him at shortstop.  I get Evan Longoria, but then let's trade for a usable part.  

To re-work a Simpsons catch phrase: Duff Man.  Oh Meh.