I was excited to see Ray Lankford show up in the 2023 Donruss set. I picked up the base card and several of the parallels. I was happy and content, but then Panini released their Immaculate Collection product. It included Ray Lankford autographs.
I bought one last week and it showed up in my mailbox this afternoon.
Sticker autograph and I do not care.
This is a really good write-up on the back of the card. Someone actually put some time and effort to look up those statistics and write them into a few short sentences. Well done, Panini.
No special guests or Aaron Boone memes for this set appreciation post, just baseball cards of players wearing Minor League uniforms. As a person who follows and watches Minor League baseball, these are always fun sets to flip through. This was the third Pro Debut set, so it was still a relatively new product at this point. More than a decade removed from its release, there are plenty of players on the checklist who are in the prime of their carer or beyond.
Let's get it.
The 2012 Topps design has always been fairly low on my list, easily the bottom quartile of all their base sets. It's just uninspired and looks like they did not put much thought or effort into this design. Someone came up with this five minutes before pitching it to some higher-up. The photography is fine, it's not Stadium Club or anything. You better believe I am going to count the bad design towards the final rating at the end of the post.
It gets worse.
There are no statistics on the back of the card. I almost want to stop the post here and just tell you to avoid ever touching this set. Add in that Topps is calling Dante Bichette a "dynamic offensive" player. That is only making things worse. He couldn't hit a beach ball outside of Denver.
This set is really a hit or miss product. The good names are great, but there are a lot of former highly regarded prospects who never panned out or lived up to the hype. As a fan of the Minor Leagues, I am going to try to stick to the success stories for the cards I show off. The percentage of players who did not make it is really high, even for a Pro Debut product.
The best three cards in the set are no-brainers. Like decade into their careers and they are Hall of Fame trajectory type players.
First, we have Syracuse SkyChiefs outfielder Bryce Harper.
Bryce Harper was in Triple A less than a month during the 2012 season before the Nationals called him up to the Majors. I usually make a point to see players like Harper when they roll through Durham, but he did not make it that far into the schedule. Despite the miss on my part, this is a cool card. I miss the SkyChiefs, who had a train as a mascot. You can see it on his batting helmet. There is story there, but I am not going to tell it on my blog. Cool card and a cheap Harper rookie if you don't own one.
One of the other really good cards belongs to Cardinals third baseman Nolan Arenado.
Arenado is shown here with the Modesto Nuts of the California League. That's A Ball and Arenado is 20 years old in this picture. Arenado was actually on Modesto in 2011, his 2012 season was spent with Tulsa in the Double A Texas League. Who would have guessed this guy would go on to hit 300 home runs and win 10 Gold Gloves?
Baseball America rated him the 42nd best prospect right along side fellow third baseman Mike Olt and Will Middlebrooks in their 2012 Prospect Guide.
Oops, missed out on that one.
Last up of the really good cards is Manny Machado of the Fredrick Keys.
I will not listen to your Manny Machado slander about him not being a future Hall of Famer.
A few other really good players in this set......
We've got Jose Ramirez. Probably also a Hall of Famer, or getting really close. The card shows him with the Indians entry into the 2011 Arizona League team. Ramirez is an 18 year old on this card, one the youngest players featured in this Pro Debut set. This card is why this set is fun to look at years later.
We've also got what feels like an air brushed Gerrit Cole.
Cole was actually in college in 2011. He went to UCLA and was selected by the Pirates with the first overall pick in the MLB Draft. Cole did end up playing with the Bradenton Marauders during the 2012 season, but he was only there for a few starts before the Pirates promoted him all the way up to their Triple A team.
Locally, we've got Christian Yelich playing for the Greensboro Grasshoppers.
Yelich is another really young player in this set, only 19 in this picture. Turned out to be a pretty good player. Why do the Greensboro cards never have the players posing with the bat dogs?
Many teams have bat dogs these days, Greensboro was the originator.
Let me move on to the Cardinals and Durham Bulls portion of the post.
There are a lot of Durham Bulls in this set. There are not many Cardinals players in this set. At least not many who made it to the Majors. It was a toss up between Shelby Miller and Matt Adams.
I am going with Matt Adams, because you can see his uniform.
I have always liked the Springfield Cardinals uniforms. The Cardinals should do this with all their Minor League affiliates. Two birds on the bat with the city name in the Cardinals script.
My best memories of Matt Adams on the Cardinals include his home run off of Clayton Kershaw in the 2014 NLDS.......
There was also that time FanGraphs wrote an article about how bad Matt Adams was playing left field and fellow Cardinals outfielder Tommy Pham liked the article post on Twitter.
On to the Durham Bulls portion of the post. There are a lot of them.
Some former Bulls are in the base set, but were on the Royals at the time this product was released......
You can't read the names, because it's 2012 Topps, but this is Wil Myers and Mike Montgomery.
Montgomery recorded the final out in Game 7 for the Chicago Cubs in 2016 World Series, so I should probably ignore all his cards, but he also threw a no-hitter for the Durham Bulls at a game I attended. Seeing a no-hitter is pretty cool, so I just try to ignore his Cubs cards.
I have also sacrificed a Durham Bulls card from this set for an in-person autograph for my son.
Never replaced it, not sure I ever will.
There is also a card of Taylor Motter in the set, but he is on the Princeton Rays and not the Durham Bulls. He looks weird with short hair. Motter does not have any certified autographs, but I have an in-person autograph copy of the card that I prefer to the unsigned copy.
There are also two Tim Beckham cards, which both show him on the Durham Bulls. The first is a relic card.
There are parallels of this card with patch pieces, but they've always been really expensive when they've shown up and the patch pieces are just the blue trim from the middle and sleeve areas of Beckham's jersey. If I ever saw a patch piece from the Bulls logo, I would be all over it.
Last Tim Beckham card......
Easily my favorite Durham Bulls card, as well as my favorite card overall in this entire set.
Let's make one more stop with this set and then I will assign it a rating.
Pro Debut products usually come with a few autographs per box. The 2012 Pro Debut set was no different, but the autograph checklist is terrible. I have autographs of Drew Hutchinson, Charlie Tilson, and Matt Adams, and they are three of the better names available.
So, how does the 2012 Pro Debut set rate?
I had been ranking the sets featured in my Set Appreciation posts, but I am going to stop that today. Instead, I am going to rate the set on a 1-5 scale based on its design, quality of checklist, insets, value and price, and also an overall.
Today's rating scale is using the Durham Bulls beloved mascot, Wool E. Bull.
The design is really bad and the lack of stats on the back of the cards is really hard to get past for me. I gave the set 1 Wool E. Bull for design and I felt like that might be generous. The checklist has some strong names, but it is really top heavy. There are a few other solid names in this set that I did not bring up in the post, my time is limited, but there are a lot of failed prospects here. More than other Pro Debut sets.
My two highest ratings were for inserts and value. While the autograph checklist is terrible, I am a sucker for those manufactured patch cards with the Minor League logos. I know that there are few Minor League card collectors floating around on Blogger, but those are universally loved and were a great concept. The value offered here is good too. There are really cheap boxes and packs of cards that you can find on the discount table at shops and shows.
Overall, I give this set two Wool E. Bulls. There are better Pro Debut sets out there.
For a team that is 120 years old, the Durham Bulls can be really bad at history.
I say this as a person who grew up attending Cardinals games. The Cardinals have a museum, statues of players outside the stadium, multiple places where the retired uniform numbers are displayed, and all the National League and World Series pennants are also prominent while watching the game. The Cardinals are an old franchise who have won a lot, had a lot of great players, and they are not afraid to tell you about it.
The Durham Bulls have a banner for the past 20 years of division and league pennants on the side of the stadium, along with a display of their selected retired numbers. The retired numbers do include Joe Morgan and Chipper Jones, a movie character, Jackie Robinson, and their two best Triple A managers.
These are the retired numbers:
The Triple A pennants are displayed, but in all the Durham Bulls have won their division 35 times, including years where the division title was rewarded for first-half and second-half winners, their league title 17 times, and their level National Championship 4 times.
The National Championships are all recent, Minor League baseball did not play those games prior to the early 2000s. I am not even sure they award a National Champion in the lower Minors, just Triple A. I think.
While it is not immediately clear that the Durham Bulls are a really old, highly successful Minor League franchise by walking around their stadium, they have been wearing some throwback uniforms over the past few years which are borrowed from really old teams.
This year, the Bulls wore their 1913 uniforms.
A few years back, the Bulls wore their uniforms from 1902. In between the two, they wore a few different uniforms that borrowed designs from those highly successful late 1990s Devil Rays teams. in 1902, the Bulls were known as the Tobacconists. Seems like a good name for a 1900s professional sports team from North Carolina.
Beyond the Tobacconists uniforms, the Durham Bulls also gave away a Tobacconists bobblehead. They gave the bobble an old fashioned appearance. No specific player was used for the bobble.
Here is the front.
Turn it around......
Here is the back of the bobble.
This is a little bit of an odd bobblehead in my opinion. It's the only nondescript, non-player specific bobblehead in my collection. We couldn't get Otis Stocksdale or George Brucker?
Otis was a dapper fellow.
This Durham Bulls giveaway is a knock-off of the 1950s/1960s team bobbleheads, which have never really been my thing. I know there are a lot of bobblehead collectors who love those types of things, but I guess I am not a die-hard. More of a casual bobblehead collector. I ended up designating a portion of one shelf for my oddball Durham Bulls giveaways, which is where this guy resides.
It currently has a population of two.
Jose Oquendo is not odd, but the Derek Jeter statue is definitely an odd choice for a giveaway from the Durham Bulls. Jeter needs his own post.
A year and I didn't spend any money on his cards, because he is boring along with the majority of the Cardinals current roster. When the Cardinals traded away a whole bunch of their roster a few weeks back, it was a chance for them to add some non-boring, non-terrible players to their roster and perhaps give me a few new names to collect.
I was preparing myself for disappointment, but they actually got a decent return for a few rental pitchers.
In particular, there are two players I am willing to collect.
First up is infielder Thomas Saggese (sa-jas-ee).
The Cardinals are playing Seggese at second base, currently with their Triple A team. What makes Saggese a non-boring player?
This year, he has hit 26 home runs, 34 doubles, and 111 RBIS all with a .381 on-base percentage.
He's currently blocked by Nolan Gorman and Tommy Edman, so hopefully someone gets traded for a non-boring pitcher who actually strikes out some batters.
I'm hopeful.
Saggese has a bunch of cards, including several autographs. Unfortunately, the prospecting crowd has caught up with him, so they can be a little pricey at times. I managed to land this Bowman Chrome autograph in exchange for a few other Bowman Chrome autographs.
One more, because it's Saturday and I have a long to-do list today.
Tekoah Roby has a little more risk, because he has an injury history.
He also strikes out batters, which is something different for the Cardinals. His innings have been limited to just 12 over the past month, but he has 19 strikeouts with 3 walks and an ERA of 3 in those appearances.
Pretty good.
The prospecting crowd has not caught up with Tekoah Roby, so his autographed cards are generally around $5.
I have been writing about the Durham Bulls a lot this past week, so I figured I would break out some Delmon Young cards, scan them, and write them into a post. Delmon was a top 5 prospect for several years in the early 2000s and was the star of the Durham Bulls when I moved to North Carolina.
His most famous moment as a top prospect for the Durham Bulls was launching his bat at an umpire after striking out in a game against Jon Lester......
Delmon would later go on to disappoint Rays and Twins fans, before developing a reputation as a clutch Postseason player for the Tigers and Orioles. He was out of MLB in his early thirties, but continued to play baseball overseas in the Australian League.
Sorry, no Australian baseball cards in this post, but these are my Top 5 Delmon Young cards......
5. 2007 Topps 52 Chrome Delmon Young
Yes, it's a reprint or rehashed design from 1952 Topps, but it's a really good looking card. This is also when we started getting the "official" rookie cards. This is an official rookie card, unlike the other cards on this list, which are all unofficial.
4. 2007 Topps Finest Autographs Delmon Young
Baseball cards do not usually reference too much on-field drama, but here we are with Delmon's 2007 Finest autograph. Notice the "Revenge is Sweet" footnote at the bottom of the card. The back has a short write-up about the "revenge", but they go a little soft. So, here is the story this card is supposed to tell:
The Rays called up Delmon Young at the end of August 2006. His first game is against the White Sox in Chicago. Ozzie Guillen thinks Delmon is an ass and has Freddy Garcia drill him in the back on the first pitch in his first career at-bat. A few innings later, Delmon hit a home run off of Freddy Garcia.
Here is a snippet of the box score:
Here is a white card with a silver sticker. I cannot roll my eyes hard enough.
3. 2006 TIAA-CREF Durham Bulls Delmon Young
Yes, I do work in education and would love to hear about your TIAA-CREF retirement plans, provided I get a baseball card for listening to your sales pitch.......
TIAA-CREF guy: "Save some money or you'll be on food stamps when you retire"
I enjoyed the sales pitch, but after actually getting the Delmon Young card in my hands and hearing about my future on food stamps, I remembered that there is a financial advisor guy who stops by my school. I am going to teach for 30 years, get a full pension and benefits from the State of North Carolina, and now I also have a TIAA-CREF Delmon Young card.
You do not see this card very often.
2. 2004 Bowman Sterling Delmon Young Bat/Autograph
Delmon could always hit.
Delmon could never catch the ball.
This card used to be worth a bazillion dollars and it shows Delmon likely playing a routine fly ball into a double or triple, depending on the speed of the batter. When people who are getting into prospecting ask my strategy as a Minor League for getting good cards of big prospects, I think of this card and tell them to wait a decade. I am certain this card had a three digit value when he was on the Bulls in 2005 and 2006, but it was $10 when I bought it.
1. 2003 Bowman Chrome Delmon Young Autograph
One of the great "what could have been" cards from the early 2000s. If only Delmon had stayed on the field a little longer and treated the regular season with the same urgency he treated the Postseason. Maybe not thrown a bat at an umpire, or yelled a bunch of antisemitic stuff at some guy in New York.
I have reached my fall break and have all sorts of fun activities planned for myself. I am three days into break, I don't have to teach students again until October, and I am feeling really productive. I have been doing carpool for my middle schooler everyday, gone shoe shopping for my first-grader, planned and cooked every meal this week, folded laundry, and replaced the rollers on the upper rack of my dishwasher.
I could post pictures of my food, but I am more proud of fixing the dishwasher.
I am going to do some caulking and yard work the second half of this week.
I have also been working on filling some holes in my old Durham Bulls cards.
It's amazing how much cheaper cards of prospects are when you revisit them after the player has retired and the card is more than 15 years old. I don't know where to find pricing data from 2007, but B.J. Upton was a pretty popular prospect back in the day. Doubtful that an Upper Deck autograph numbered to 50 would for less than $10, but today......
Too good to pass up.
I missed this card back in the day. Not only are there several B.J. Upton cards in the UD Black set, but it was also had Justin Upton autographs, who had been the first overall selection in the 2005. Both Upton brothers in one set. Sorry, Kate was not included. Also not sure if B.J./Melvin and Justin had dual autographs, but it seems like something Upper Deck would pull off.
I miss the backs of the Upper Deck cards.
The autographs were always upside down in the packs and the first thing you saw was that Richard McWilliam signature and the "Congratulations" banner across the top of the card. You knew you had found something good.
Slightly less expensive, I also found a really cool Carl Crawford autograph out of the 2005 Fleer Patchworks set. Carl was in Durham before I moved to North Carolina, but helped lead the team to their first International League Championship. He was the first star player the Durham Bulls had as a Triple A team.
I have always dabbled in Carl Crawford autographs, but never outright collected them. Might start dabbling with his Rays cards a little bit more here in the near future. Not sure I can touch his Red Sox or Dodgers cards, but his early cards seem like they are fun.
There are some really good baseball channels with short videos on YouTube that occasionally provide me with good background while I am doing my school work at night. I ran across one a few week's ago about former Blue Jays and Angels relief pitcher Mark Eichhorn. You can find the video here.
Interesting career.
In summation, Eichhorn came up with the Blue Jays in 1982 and failed miserably. He went back to the Minors and started throwing sidearm. Eichhorn also dialed back the velocity on all his pitches and became noted as the softest tossing pitcher in modern baseball. He came back up in 1986 as was the setup man for Tom Henke. Eichhorn had one of the best seasons by a modern relief pitcher with a sub 2 ERA, 14 wins, 10 saves, and more than a strikeout per inning.
Without going year-by-year through his career, Eichhorn ended up playing 11 years, mostly with the Blue Jays and Angels. If you're into sabermetrics, his WAR7 (WAR in his best 7 seasons) is equal to Billy Wagner and Lee Smith, just without the saves.
Eichhorn's career was derailed by injuries in 1995, which is where my baseball cards come in. As a middle reliever, Eichhorn has very few cards and not many with much flash or pizzaz, but after watching the video I felt like trying to find one.
Eichhorn attempted to come back with the Angels in 1996. He missed huge chunks of the season and was not very effective, ending the year with an ERA north of 5. However, he did end up signing cards for the per-pack-autograph Leaf Signature Series.
Here is the flashiest Mark Eichhorn card out there:
This was less than $2, a small price to pay for an intriguing player with a good story.
In the process of finding this card, I discovered that Mark Eichhorn actually fit into my collection quite well and I already owned a card of him outside of common cards from the 1980s and 1990s products. It turns out Mark Eichhorn was on the Durham Bulls for a season.
Deep dig into the Durham Bulls team set box:
This is Mark Eichhorn from the 1998 Durham Herald Sun Durham Bulls team set. It was a giveaway from the local newspaper. This was the Bulls first season as a Triple A team, also the first season for the expansion Tampa Bay Devil Rays. As a new franchise, the Devil Rays did not have many prospects ready for Triple A, so they signed a bunch of 30-somethings to fill out their top Minor League team.
I enjoy a good 4A player as much as the next person, but the 1998 Durham Bulls set is all 4A players, which has long made it one of my least favorites. Russ Mormon, Dennis Springer, Dave Eiland, Bob Natal, and Dave Silvestri all make appearances.
The picture on the card actually looks like it is from the exhibition the Bulls played against the Devil Rays in Durham before the start of the 1998 season. There are some grainy photographs of the game floating around on the internet.
Anyway, the presence of Mark Eichhorn and the knowledge of his career has moved the 1998 Durham Bulls set ahead other of their team sets with Aubrey Huff or Josh Lueke.
Baseball card people love prospects. It's just really hard to figure out which Minor Leaguers are going to end up being good Major Leaguers. So much money lost. In fact, I was playing around with some Delmon Young cards just a few days back. Going to make a post about those later this week.
I try to spend very little on prospects, but let me sell you on one of my current favorite Minor League players.
I have posted a few Jonathan Aranda cards over the past year, but not really given him much of a write-up. Honestly, he does not have very many cards, nor is he a very highly regarded prospect. The cards that Aranda does have are generally really inexpensive, like he's typically the amongst the cheapest autographs or inserts in the products with his cards. I honestly have no idea why more people aren't in on his cards.
Let's rewind to the 2021 season. Aranda played in Double A with the Montgomery Biscuits. He won the Southern League MVP and was a Postseason All-Star for his performance in the Double A playoffs. Last year, Aranda played with the Durham Bulls. He won his second straight MVP Award, was named a Triple A All-Star, and was named a Triple A Postseason All-Star for helping the Bulls win the Triple A National Championship.
This year?
Aranda is still playing for the Durham Bulls and is batting .339 with a .613 slugging percentage. He has 25 home runs and 23 doubles in roughly 350 at-bats. There is a very good chance he's going to win his third league MVP in row later this fall without taking another at-bat. Add in that the International League is a pitcher friendly league, and as a left-handed batter, the Durham Bulls Athletic Park has a deep right-field line and power ally.
Aranda has now been up with the Rays for two weeks. He was up briefly earlier in the year due to injuries, but this latest call-up feels like it might be for good. Especially considering Aranda has hit. In two weeks worth of games Aranda has on-base percentage over .400 and has a handful of extra base hits. He's walking as often as he is striking out, which is a very good sign for a young hitter.
Here are my latest cards of Jonathan Aranda.
Again, this is just about the cheapest autograph in Topps Finest this year. I got this for under $5 and it has been that low for the majority of the summer. There are colored parallels that cost more, but I like the base autograph just fine. I also like that he is batting in this card. Strangely the majority of his cards show him in the field, which is his real weakness. Not the best defender.
Next.
There are some really bad autographs in this year's Topps Chrome set, so this is not quite the cheapest autograph. It's still right around $5. Little better signature on this card. Aranda has variance on how he signs the "A", which is a better look here than on the Finest card.
Last card.
Not an autograph, but I am a sucker for combined shipping on cheap cards. I picked this up as a bonus with the Topps Chrome autograph. The same seller had this Silver Pack insert listed for $1. Great looking card of Aranda playing second base.
If you're into prospect, you should definitely buy this guy.
The Durham Bulls had a really good infielder on their team.
I am talking about Osleivis Basabe.
He played a little bit at second, short, and third base. Pretty good bat to go along with his versatility in the field. Osleivis call-up was a little strange and happened during a Bulls game I attended against the Memphis Redbirds a few weeks back.
The Bulls posted a video without any sound of Basabe getting pulled from the game.
A moment Osleivis Basabe will never forget 💙🧡
Manager Michael Johns gathered the team together during last night's game to announce Osleivis was going to the Big Leagues pic.twitter.com/9GUdyNqql1
Strange the Rays needed a shortstop in the middle of a game. I follow the Rays pretty closely and I did not see anyone get placed on the injured list. I thought the Rays had a shortstop? His name is slipping my mind at the moment, so let's not wander off topic.
I am just going to keep talking about Osleivis Basabe.
I have been able to add two Basabe autographs to my collection so far.
First up is his 2021 Bowman Chrome autograph from his time with the Rangers.
Nice looking card of him at Spring Training.
I know there are people out there who, in the past, probably sank a lot of money into buying up Bowman Chrome autographs of Rays shortstop prospects. However, Basabe's Bowman Chrome autograph is right around $20. You could skip a box of cards at Target or Wally World and buy an autograph of the Rays starting shortstop instead.
A little background on Osleivis.
Basabe was signed by the Rangers as an International Free Agent out of Venezuela in 2017 and was traded to the Rays for Nate Lowe at the end of the 2020 season. For those who confuse all the Lowes on the Rays, Nate was a first baseman. Nate played on the Rays with Brandon Lowe, who is not related to Nate. The Rays now have Josh Lowe, who is Nate's brother and also teammates with Brandon Lowe. Anyway, Osleivis has been promoted from A-Ball all the way to the Majors over the past three seasons.
I also found a Bowman Platinum autograph of Osleivis Basabe in a Rays uniform.
It's a sticker autograph, but it also cost me less than $5.
I feel like Osleivis Basabe might be my go-to infielder to collect on the Rays for the foreseeable future. Although, he created some waves earlier in the season when he stole Wool E. Bull's hat while the Bulls were celebrating a walk-off hit.
Come for Kameron Misner's game-winning hit
Stay for Osleivis Basabe stealing Wool E. Bull's hat during the celebration 😂 pic.twitter.com/bsvjnlkzLO
I guess I could think of worse things that a talented, young shortstop could get caught doing then running around with a mascot's hat. No MLB investigations or anything.
In the meantime, the Bulls have Austin Shenton taking a lot of at-bats as the shortstop since Basabe was promoted to the Majors. Another really good looking prospect. Shenton is older prospect, almost 26, and drafted out of Florida International by the Mariners. The Rays picked him up in the trade for Diego Castillo. Shenton has 26 home runs and 42 doubles between Double A and Triple A this year.
His autographs are also pretty cheap.
Less than $5 for this Bowman Chrome.
For this entire post, I am under $30 for three autographs of three pretty promising Rays middle infielders. Maybe some more cards of Basabe and Shenton in the future. Let's see how they play and hope they don't wander into any problems.
