Friday 5: Top Five Rookie Position Players

I have two Friday Five posts this week.  One this evening, Friday, and I will have another one tomorrow early in the morning.  Yes, it is technically Saturday, but this is interesting stuff....  This week I am going to look at some of the rookie players who are floating around MLB this year.  There have been a ton of young talented players called up this year with a wide spectrum of performance levels.  Originally I was going to make one post with the top 5 rookies, but decided to split the group into two so I could get a few more names into the conversation.  Tonight position players, tomorrow pitchers.    With a little under two months left in the season, there are going to be some great races for the Rookie of the Year Awards.

Here are my Top 5 Rookie Position Players:


5.  Kris Bryant Cubs 3B

I have always had some reservations about Bryant, most of which revolve around his contact rate.  There was a great Fan Graphs article at some point about it since the season started, but I first started paying attention to the stat a few years ago after sitting near a scout at a Durham Bulls game who was talking about it as a way to rule out players, contact does not guarantee success, who will likely wash it in the Majors.  I first saw Bryant a few years back at USA Baseball.  It is really hard not to love the way the ball jumps off his bat and not think he's going to be a tremendous power hitter for years to come.  However, it seems that the contact rate issues are starting to mount for the Cubs third baseman.  He leads the league in strikeouts and has a .141/.258/.269 slash line with just 2 home runs over his last month of play.  Still, Bryant's overall stats for the year are good with 14 home runs, an OPS+ of 118, and a WAR of 3.0.  He's still a young player with a limited amount of at-bats in the Majors and can still make some adjustments to how he is being pitched.  He makes my list, but is in real danger of falling off if I revisit this post and his performance does not improve.  Here's a look at that power.....

  

4.  Jung Ho Kang Pirates SS

Kang is in his first year in the MLB, but played for awhile in Korea before coming over this past off season.  Sometimes overseas veterans can be a little hard to figure out.  The Cardinals were in on the Kang bidding and I was not completely sold on him being an impact player.  However, he appears to be the real deal.  Kang has done a job for the Pirates this year spending time at both third and shortstop.  His overall line currently stands at .291/.362/.446 with 8 home runs, 2 triples, and 17 doubles.  I like that production out of Kang, but he has actually gotten better as the year has gone along.  During July he posted a .379/.443/.621 line with 3 home runs, and 8 doubles.  I am curious to see how the season ends for the shortstop.  He is certainly in the conversation for Rookie of Year this year.  

3.  Matt Duffy Giants 3B

Duffy has been a big surprise this year for the Giants.  He's was never a huge prospect for the Giants with a career minor league line of .304/.387/.413.  He got on base, but he has never hit for double digit home runs, and has never taken an at-bat in Triple A.  Like most baseball fans, I was not expecting much out of him when the Giants jumped him up from Double A to replace Pablo Sandoval.  So far this year, playing third base full time, Duffy has slashed .309/.346/.464 with an OPS+ of 128.  If you're a fan of WAR he actually leads all rookie position players in the statistic at 3.6.  Duffy should also be in the running for Rookie of the Year, but I just do not hear his name get dropped very often in that conversation.  Perhaps I am conversing with the wrong people.

2. Randal Grichuk Cardinals OF 

This spring Cardinals manager Mike Matheny compared Randal Grichuk to a Lamborghini.  I laughed.  Grichuk seemed like a tools player, but he also spent the last year bouncing between the Cardinals fourth outfield spot and Memphis.  There were some great moments for Grichuk last year, like hitting a home run off of Clayton Kershaw in the playoffs, but also lots of frustrations.  He struck out 31 times in 110 at bats, had an OBP of .278, and only walked 5 times.  This season Grichuk has just over 250 at bats with a slash line of .288/.336/..572, 40 extra base hits, and an OPS+ of 144.  He's a fun player to watch and Cardinals fans rave about his skills, especially his bat, but I need to see a little bit more before I am completely sold on Randal Grichuk.  So, why did I put him ahead of the other players if he's not a slam dunk?  I think he and Bryant actually have the highest ceiling on this list.  Kang is approaching 30, Duffy is going to be a high average/high on base with a little pop, but Grichuk and Bryant could both be something special.  They just happen to be trending in opposite directions at the moment.  He would be my pick to win the NL Rookie of the Year at the moment.  

1. Carlos Correa Astros SS

I am going out on a limb here by saying that Correa will win the American League Rookie of the Year.  He has fewer at-bats than anyone on this list, but has a slash line of .291/.345/.567 with fourteen doubles, fourteen home runs, 8 steals, and an OPS+ of 148.  Correa was the first overall draft pick by the Astros back in 2012 and has the potential to be exactly what teams hope to get out of having that first overall pick: A franchise player.  There are not too many good offensive shortstops left in the game, but Correa looks like he is going to be a great one for years to come.  At just 20 years old we are likely in for a long run out of Carlos.  I am guessing it's going to look pretty nice at the end assuming he stays healthy.  

Waiting and Waiting.....

I spent the last week going through some of my favorite cards in the Stadium Club base set.  I felt a little bit unusual posting all kinds of cards from the base set without posting anything with a serial number or autograph on the card.  Since I did not actually open a box of Stadium Club I am more or less just piecing together the cards I like from the product.  Not quite as fun as opening a box, or some packs, but in the end I am still going to walk away with a complete set and a few nice autographs.  

I guess the end product is ultimately the same.  I set out through Ebay, Facebook Groups, and Twitter to track down a cool autograph from this product.  I ran into a familiar problem, I have mentioned in other posts, while trying to track down an autograph of a Cardinals, or Rays player.  Namely, they are all the same Cardinals and Rays players who always appear in every Topps product.  I love the Cardinals, but I am just not excited about Matt Adams.  

After contemplating several different directions, I landed my first autograph from Stadium Club last week, and it arrived in the mail this afternoon.  Here's my latest autograph:  

No Cardinals, no Rays, no problem.  I went with this Rodon since I loved watching him pitch at my alma mater NC State.  Rodon has had several autographs recently, and while I have not rushed out to buy them all, I am excited about his prospects of being a really good pitcher for a long time.  More Stadium Club in the near future....

2015 Durham Bulls Team Set

I have done a lot with Minor League sets during the past month and have a few more to throw up on my page during the next few weeks.  I am going to start out with the 2015 Durham Bulls team set.  I have been waiting for this set to hit the shelves at the team store for the last couple of weeks.  I went to a game Friday night and was happy to see the signs up for the cards as soon as I hit the front gate.  In fact, they were also at the concession stands too.

Similar to my previous Minor League sets I am going to pick out three players I am excited about in the set.  Two are going to be no brainers and I am going to pick out one player to keep your eye out for in the future.  Oh, and there's background music for this post.   Click on the video, it's Ryan Brett's at-bat music.

The lists on the Rays prospects vary greatly from website to website, but there are two players in this set who consistently show up high on every list:

1.  Richie Shaffer- The former Clemson star was the Rays first round draft pick in the 2012 amateur draft.  He was drafted as a power hitter, but had a fairly quiet bat his first two years in the minors.  Last year he started to come around a bit when he hit 19 dingers in Double A Montgomery.  He started out this season in Montgomery again, but after 7 home runs and 10 doubles in just about 40 games the Rays promoted Shaffer to Durham.  In 50 games in Durham the third baseman/first baseman has 16 home runs, 11 doubles, and a slugging percentage of almost .600.  He played third base in the lower minors, but is seeing more and more time at first.  Watch out James Loney, he was called up officially this afternoon. Shaffer has a bunch of other baseball cards in Bowman and Topps products if you are interested in picking up a few.  An appearance in the Futures Game this year has really improved his popularity and the price of his cards.  

2.  Ryan Brett- He's a little spark plug, but a lot of different prospecting publication really like him.  The Rays called him up early in the year, he got hurt, and has not really looked right since.  He's hit over .300 at almost every stop in the minors, consistently gotten on base, hit for a little pop, and stolen bases.  This season he is hitting .220. Brett is still just 23 and has awesome work out videos on YouTube.  He's going to bounce back and be a solid baseball player, or perhaps Batman.  

and my final name....

3. Taylor Motter- Motter does not have many cards and he's not on any prospects lists.  Ask a baseball fan who has watched a Durham Bulls game this year who the funnest player to watch on the field is and you will likely get the answer of Motter.  What does he do?  He plays everywhere in the field.  I think I have seen him play everywhere except first, catcher, and pitcher.   He has a little bit of pop, 9 home runs and 33 doubles, speed with 24 steals, and also has cool hair.  When he plays in the outfield he does a cool Dan Quisenberry imitation on his last warm up throw.  Watching him reminds me a lot of Ben Zobrist.  He does a lot well and can fit in just about anywhere on the field.  Card companies have not gotten the notice that this guy is good, there aren't many cards of him out there.  

#MyCardMonday

I like picking up autographs of Cardinals players.  When the Cardinals get a new player I go shopping, or trading, looking for an autograph of the new players.  This week I added Brandon Moss and Jonathan Broxton to my list of players I need to find an autograph of on cardboard.  I already had a Steve Cishek.  It did not take me long to track down a copy of a Brandon Moss autograph.  Just a matter of a mere afternoon between his trade to the Cardinals and a completed trade.  I also picked up a Jonathan Broxton, but I paid nothing, and traded nothing, for the card.  Just a straight donation to my collection on one condition.  I had to post a "bad" Cardinals card as payment for the Broxton.  I thought the #MyCardMonday post would be a good format for the payment, but we had to agree upon the card.  After a little haggling, we settled on Kip Wells.  

Who remembers the Kip Wells era as a Cardinal?  

I always post stats and videos with all of these cards, so let's cover Kip Wells terribleness in full.  In 2007 the Cardinals signed the right handed veteran to a one year contract worth 4 million dollars.  That was way too much money.  In return for that sum of money Wells led the National League in losses, had an ERA of almost 6, and an ERA+ of 77.  That ERA+ was second to last on the team, as he finished above Mike Maroth (0-5) who had an ERA+ of 42.  In all, the Cardinals found 26 starts for Kip Wells that summer.  There were so many low lights, but perhaps his worst start of the year came in a start against the Royals where he lasted just 1.1 innings while giving up 6 runs on 3 hits with 4 walks.  In all, Wells had 12 starts during the season when he gave up more than 5 runs.  

Despite the terrible single season that Wells spent on the Cardinals I still own an autographed card of the pitcher.  It's a sticker autograph and it's from the Donruss Champions set.  Not a great product.  The sticker has started to get a little foggy.  Seems fitting.  

2007 Durham Bulls Team Set

Just filling in a few holes from previous years.  I saw this set on sale this past weekend while I was attending Friday night's during Durham Bulls game and just simply could not pass this one up.  I think I now have all of the Bulls sets from every year that I have lived in North Carolina (roughly ten years).  I am going to have to go back and start working on the sets from before 2005 now.  This set actually has some pretty nice names in it for a Minor League team set.  A bunch of these players made it up to the Majors with Zobrist being the best of the lot.  Here's a look at the cards and a few thoughts on some of the players.....

Alright, a little bit hard to read and the cards have a horizontal orientation.  Still fun to look at.  The best card in this group belongs to Johnny Gomes on the left hand side of the middle row.  I was never really a huge fan of Johnny Gomes, but he's had a decent career and won a World Series ring with the Red Sox in 2013.  Long time relief pitcher J.P. Howell is below Gomes and Brent Butler is in the top right hand corner.

A few more Major Leaguers in this group too.  Top right is Royals/Rays infielder Elliot Johnson.  Most famously plowed over a Yankees catcher during a Spring Training and injured him somehow.  Can't remember how he trucked, but it might have been Francisco Cervalli.  Jeff Niemann on the middle left was a high draft pick out of Rice, had a decent year or two, and his career was then wrecked by shoulder problems.  Loved watching him pitch for the Bulls, but injuries definitely did him in.  Chris Richard is in the bottom right.  He was first baseman for the Orioles for awhile, but ended up in Tampa with the Rays afterwards.  Richard spent several years in Durham and is on the top of the franchise leader board in several offensive categories.

This is a good group of cards.  Let's start with the top left card belonging to Justin Ruggiano.  He's one of my favorite Bulls of all-time, and even though he's hanging out in Tacoma, I still am following his career.  Shawn Riggans is in the middle of the top row.  He was a pretty good catching prospect for awhile.  The Zobrist card in the set is in the bottom right hand side.  I also like the Gary Gaetti card to the left of the Zobrist.  

Last three.  Montoyo, the manager, is on the left.  He managed the Bulls a long time and did a great job.  Cool to add a card of his to the collection.  Wool E. Bull on the right is also a sweet add.  The Blue Monster in the middle?  Not so great.  

Archers!!

It's always nice to have a few friends who are looking out for your collecting needs.  I use my Facebook page to pick up cards in different groups, but there are so many different pages and posts that it can be difficult to keep track of all of the cards floating around out there.  Last weekend I got a Twitter message from one of my best Twitter follows who gave me the heads up on a lot of Archer cards that were up for sale on one of the Facebook pages.  The post slipped right past me.

After a couple of messages I was the proud owner of four new Chris Archer cards.  Pretty sweet lot, here's a look at the new cards......

At some point I had this card and I flipped it around to a fellow Rays fan to fill in a hole in a trade.  Not a difficult find, nor an expensive card, but I still love looking at it.  We've got an on card autograph and a cool picture showing some good grit from Archer making a pitch.  Again, sharp card, and if there was one downside to this lot, it's that this card is the only on card signature in the group.  

Archer autographs from Topps Supreme?  I have a few, but they are all from the 2013 release which was actually only released in Asian markets.  Why haven't I picked up any from the 2014 release?  It was actually released in the US which made the challenge of finding and buying the cards a lot easier, but for some reason it did not happen.  Looking back over my posts on this product, it seems like I spent a lot of time and money focusing on the Cardinals.  Sorry Archer collection, I hope this is the first of many cool Supreme autographs I pick up from last year.......

Here is a card that I already own.  If you cheat, scroll down, the next card is very similar too.  So what's the deal with wanting more copies of this card?  It's nice to own Archer autographs, but I swear that Topps did not make one of these cards with an identical patch.  It's like there was a giant pile of mismatched Archer patches sitting somewhere at Topps production facility and they used every last inch.  There are a few hundred copies of these cards and I have not found two patch pieces that are the same.  

It's true that duplicate cards kind of stink to own, but not when they have al sorts of cool and interesting patches.  Really happy with this new lot of Archer cards.   

Kindergartner Takes On Allen & Ginter

I will have some serious posts about Allen & Ginter over the next few days, but while you are waiting to see what I landed out of my box, I took a little bit of time to bust some wax with my five year old this afternoon.  We got out of the house for a little while this morning, took a walk, went out for lunch, and stopped to pick up a blaster of the recent Topps release.  Since they do not write blog posts in Kindergarten I am going to go ahead and type up his hits and thoughts on the cards.

He actually helped me out with my box this morning too, so he had a pretty good idea what the cards were going to look like before he opened up the box.  We categorized the cards into three groups: Little Cards, Baseball Player Cards, and Cards of Others Things.  Like Statues.  Here's a little peak at the sorting system......

Mini cards are at the top, baseball cards in the forefront, and the cards of other things are in the background.  Clearly the favorite card of the box was The Statue of Liberty card.  I am not sure why, but my son really loved that card.  I am pretty sure we will have a crease and some round corners by the end of the afternoon.....

Beyond the cool Statue of Liberty card we also pulled an autograph of Padres outfielder Cory Spangenberg.  While it's not the best autograph, it's hard to be disappointed with any "hit" cards that come out of a box of retail cards.  

Overall, Allen & Ginter was a pretty big hit with my five year old.  We liked looking at the baseball cards, but the non-baseball cards were a nice touch in this product and were something different to look at and sort.  Outside of the obviously popular Statue of Liberty card, my son also liked the Mantis card out of the A World Beneath Our Feet set, it's a mini too, and his favorite baseball card looks like a James McCann.

Most importantly, at the end of all the packs and all of the cards we were really happy with all of our cards.  We are going to work on boxing them up at some point this afternoon.  Should be fun to see how the sorting finally works out.