International League of Bowman Chrome Autographs

I have a bit of an off season shopping, or trading list, that I am trying to finish off over the next two months before the start of the 2017 season.  A few of the cards I have been trying to find belong to players that I saw last year in the Minors.  Whether they played for the Durham Bulls, or against them, several players from the International League stood out along the way.  

This last weekend three of these cards arrived in the mail, adding one Braves player who has moved on to the Reds this off-season, and two Durham Bulls players.  

Reds player first......

I actually have a bunch of different Tyrell Jenkins cards from his time as a Cardinals prospect back in the day.  He was in the Jason Heyward deal with the Braves, was traded again this off-season to the Rangers, and was then released and claimed by the Reds.  He had some decent numbers in the Minors, but struggled in his dozen or so appearances with the Braves.  Even though I have a handful of his Cardinals autographs, and the Heyward trade ended up being sort of painful, I am happy to have a card of Jenkins in a Braves uni.  Never saw him in person with a Cardinals minor league team.  

Two Durham Bulls....

First up is Jacob Faria who spent the last half of the 2016 season in Durham.  I actually got to see his debut with the Bulls against the Syracuse Chiefs (Nationals).  Really impressive pitcher who should have a bright future in the Majors.  He's basically at a strikeout per inning with a good K/BB ratio.  Throughout his first half a season in the Appy League, with Princeton who plays at elevation, and he keeps the ball in the yard too.  

Considering the upside here, the Faria autograph in Bowman Chrome is a bargain.  Buy a few, put them in a box, and wait a year or two.  No need to thank me later on....

Last....

First off, Schultz went to college locally at High Point University.  I haven't ever really run into High Point's baseball team, but I know they have played some of the local ACC competition over the years.   I saw their basketball team once, they almost beat NC State.  Love Cat Barber.  

 

Schultz strikes a lot of batters out, which is sort of his claim to fame as a prospect.  His numbers are decent, but the 11 strikeouts per 9 innings just kind of jumps off the page at you.  He could be a starter still in the future, but reminds me a lot of some of the other pitchers the Rays have converted into relievers in the high minors like Enny Romero or Colome.  

This is another inexpensive card and very easy to find.  Glad to have it in the collection along with the other two cards of Faria and Jenkins.  

A Venerable Old Card Part 43

I have really been digging the Wax Ecstatic Podcast lately.  My daughter takes good naps when I bundle her up and push her around for a couple of miles in her stroller.  I enjoy the exercise and the fresh air, but I also download an episode or two of the podcast to keep me entertained along the way...

So far the podcast has covered most of the major baseball card releases from the 1980s and the early parts of the 1990s.  The most recent podcast covered the 1992 Upper Deck set and focused on the Frank Thomas base card.  All the talk about sets from my childhood has sent me back into the older sections of my collection to dig through all my favorite junk wax era cards.  

This weekend I spent a little bit of time working on sorting out my 1990 Upper Deck set.  I know it's not as good as the 1989 set, but it was the first Upper Deck set that I actually tried to put together.  The 1989 set was more of a dalliance, a few packs in hopes of Ken Griffey Jr. 

I knew that I wanted to pick out a 1990 Upper Deck card for my weekly Monday Venerable Old post, but it took me awhile to narrow the field down.  In fact, I ended up searching through my scorecards too just to see what players I saw around that time.  Since I lived in St. Louis, and the early 1990s Cardinals teams were pretty bad, I was really looking for some cool player on another team.  

Here is who I came up with.......

Mark Langston.

If you know of Mark Langston on the Expos it's probably because of the Randy Johnson trade.  I knew of Randy Johnson in 1989, but they traded him for Mark Langston.  He spent the first years of his careers on the Mariners, who were terrible, and all he did was strike out a ton of batters every year.  My house had a subscription to the Post Dispatch and I liked that League Leader section underneath the standings.  I was really there to check out Vince Coleman's stolen base totals most days, make sure Raines and Juan Samuel weren't going to catch him, but I also perused the other players and stats on there....

Langston struck out 204 in 1984, 245 in 1986, 262 in 1987, and 235 in 1988.  He did not pitch a full season in 1985, but he basically had 1,000 strikeouts in a little more than 4 seasons with the Mariners.  He was a huge get for the Expos at the time and I went to one of his first games as an Expo.

Langston did not disappoint....

pitching a shutout against the Cardinals and Jose DeLeon.  

The 1989 Expos ended up finishing 4th in the National League East behind the Cubs, Mets, and Cardinals, but it had nothing to do with Langston who was excellent in his brief time north of the border.  Stats were nice....

with an ERA just above 2, almost a strikeout per inning, and a WAR of almost 5 in just 24 starts.  Also good for an ERA+ of 148.  After the season Langston left for the Angels, where he pitched for 8 years before short stints with the Padres and Angels.  

I actually ran into Langston 8 years later on my 21st birthday when I drove to St. Louis from college to see a Cardinals/Padres game.  It's the third home run on the video, just 20 seconds in....

Perfect Pack Card

It's hard to believe that the college baseball season is fast approaching.  In fact, I was somewhat taken by surprise yesterday to check my Twitter feed at the end of work and see that there were dozens of pictures of local baseball teams out on the field in preparation for the upcoming season.

It should be a fun year locally.  My Wolfpack are ranked 6th in the D1 Baseball poll, but the ACC also has Florida State 3rd, UNC 9th, Louisville 12th, Clemson 15th, UVa 17th, and Miami 21st.  East Carolina is also ranked 10th.  I will definitely be checking out a few games once the season officially gets underway.  In the meantime, we live in an age where college baseball players have baseball cards....

I was a little surprised to find my latest NC State baseball player on cardboard.  In the past I have posted cards of Carlos Rodon and Trea Turner while they were in school at NC State, but both players were highly regarded players who appeared for USA Baseball and were considered slam dunk high first round selections.  Guy on my new card?  He did pitch in a game or two for USA Baseball, but did not spend the whole summer with the college All-Star team.....

Here is the card.....

Even if you follow college baseball, you might still be a little lost on Tommy DeJuneas.  He is from the Charlotte area, participated in the Perfect Game program, but was never drafted out of high school ending up at NC State.  His freshman year (2015) was outstanding ending with 39.2 innings pitched, 57 K's-25 BB, and six saves for the Pack.  Last year was a little bit shaky with an ERA north of 6 and a drop in strikeout rate, and increase in walks, hits, and home runs allowed.  

Still, DeJuneas is one of my favorite players on the team and I am looking forward to seeing him pitch this year.  I have a good feeling about this guy.....

Completely surprised to find this card, but very happy to add it to my collection.  I might have to do a little more digging into some of these Perfect Game sets for some more cool college players....

Project Durham Bulls #8: Aubrey Huff

2000-2002 Durham Bulls 

Background- 

Huff was a fairly polished college player when the Devil Rays drafted him in the fifth round of the 1998 MLB Draft out of Miami.  He played half a season in Single A and a full season in Double A before he landed with the Durham Bulls out of Spring Training in 2000.  Huff last 108 games in Triple A that summer posting a .316/.394/.566 slash line with 20 home runs, 36 doubles, and 76 RBIs.  The Rays called him up towards the end of the 2000 season for 40 games, but Huff was back in Durham for the 2001 season for 17 games before being recalled to Tampa.  In all, Aubrey Huff played 111 games in the Majors that year, but was less than impressive with an average below .250, an OBP below .300, and just 8 home runs.  Huff started out the 2002 season with the Bulls, but after 32 games went back up to Tampa.  Things turned out a little better the third time around and Huff stuck with the Rays.  He stayed with the Rays until 2006 when he was traded to the Astros for Ben Zobrist.  Aubrey Huff would go on to win two World Series rings with the Giants in 2010 and 2012.  

Card- 

Way back in 2005 the store owner of 1,000,000 Baseball Cards in western St. Louis County convinced me to buy a box of Upper Deck Artifacts.  The base cards in the product were okay, the relic pieces were mediocre, but the autographs were worth the price of the box.  I landed a George Brett autograph out of my box and at some point traded the card away or sold.  Something.  Even though George is gone there are still a few of these cards hanging out in my collection.  While looking for a Huff card for this post I actually narrowed my choice down to the two autographed cards from this set.  Huff also has a plain autographed card with no jersey swatch.  Both were around $5, swatch was a little over and non-swatch a little under, so I went with the nicer of the two cards.  

A Venerable Old Card Part 42

It's been a tough weekend around the game of baseball with the loss of both Royals pitcher Yordano Ventura and former uber prospect Andy Marte.  I had originally planned to write about another card in this space this week, but switched over to another card after putting some thought into the matter.  I have seen Ventura pitch games on television, but he is a player that I have never actually seen in person.  He was a very talented pitcher who had a bright future in the game.

My best memory of Ventura comes from the 2014 World Series when he pitched the Royals into Game 7.  The game came on the heels of Cardinals outfielder Oscar Taveras being killed in a DUI car crash in the Dominican Republic, you can see the OT18 on his hat in the highlights from the game.

Great performance by Yordano.  I know he will be missed by many.  

I actually wanted to spend a little bit more time talking about Andy Marte though.  He was a player that I knew very well from my first summer living in North Carolina watching the Durham Bulls.  At that point the Minor League experience was a new scene to me after spending 20 some years living in St. Louis watching the Cardinals.  

I figured out the players on the Durham Bulls pretty quickly during that first summer in North Carolina.  There was a lot of talent on that roster including Delmon Young (the best prospect in the Minors at the time), Elijah Dukes, B.J. Upton, Ben Zobrist, Jason Hammel, Edwin Jackson, and James Shields.  I also had to figure out the scenery with other teams.  What players were must see attractions?

 One of the biggest stars was Indians prospect Andy Marte, who had previously been with the Braves Triple-A affiliate the year before.  Between 2003 and 2006 Marte appeared in the top 50 prospects according to Baseball America, with three of those years being inside the top 20.  There was a lot of pop in his bat and he was just 21 when he made it to Triple A.

While I spend a lot of time on here talking about my Durham Bulls cards, I also pick up cards of players on other teams that stand out.  Those players can be old, young, and everyone in between.  They just have to stand out in my mind....

Marte stood out and made a few appearances in my card collection.  The first Marte card I added to my collection after seeing him play during the summer of 2006 was a 2003 Topps Heritage Chrome card that I picked up at a card shop in Durham.....

Marte cards were a big deal back in those days.  I don't remember how much I paid for this card, but it was a lot more than the $1 or so that it sells for now on Ebay.  While Marte never really made it big in the Majors, as a Minor League baseball fan, I ran into him several times over my years watching baseball in Durham.  Most recently I saw him with the Indianapolis Indians (Pirates) back in 2011.  He was older, definitely not a prospect at that point, but it was good to see him again.

Over the last few years I have backed into a few really nice Marte cards in the cheapy bins at card shows or ones with no bids in the last few seconds on Ebay.  While the Topps Heritage Chrome will remain my favorite, I have found several others which would have been gems long ago that are now just cool cards to look at and reminisce.

Just to throw out a second card of Andy, this is my favorite of my card show finds....

This would have cost a pretty penny back in 2003.  Sad to have lost Andy Marte at a young age, glad I could share a few cards with all of you.  

I'll Take A Second Beer

One of the hardest parts of the 2016 baseball season was the fact that the USA Baseball College team did not play any home games instead opting for a summer of touring Asia.  Their home stadium is about ten minutes from my house in Cary, North Carolina so they are always on my calendar at some point every summer.  They also usually tend to play a few games around other stadiums in North Carolina too, including the Durham Bulls Athletic Park.

Last summer the USA Baseball College team included one of the most impressive freshman in the country in the person of Clemson outfielder Seth Beer.  I am pretty sure that he is going to be a very high draft pick in the near future.  I had the chance to see him play at Duke last spring....

I also ended up with a Seth Beer autographed card.  

While the college team did not play a single home game last summer they still got some baseball cards in the Panini Elite Extra Edition product.  There are a few players from last year's team that I am hoping to find, but Seth Beer was a pretty big priority for me.  

I watched a few of his autographs on Ebay, but landed a really nice looking card off of a Facebook group page....

He has another autographed card in Elite, which just has an autograph, but I opted for this one with a jersey swatch.  I had a choice between the two cards.  Both are sticker autographs.  Overall, I just really happy to land another Seth Beer card.  Considering he was a freshman last year, I'd guess he leaves after his junior year, so we get three more chances to find some Beer cards.....

A Matheny I Actually Like....

The Cardinals are my Major League team of choice, but for the last few years they have frustrated me to no end at times.  More specifically, I cannot stand Mike Matheny.  I rarely voice this opinion in this space, but if you were to sit down and watch a Cardinals game with me, or follow me on social media my distain for the former Major League catcher would be a little bit more evident.  I could write a whole dissertation about specific reasons, but I am not going to get into that at the moment.  Here's one to think about....

Aledmys Diaz was one of the better rookies in baseball last year and one of the best offensive players on the Cardinals.  He spent a month batting eighth and played seven games batting ninth.

Which brings me to a Matheny I actually like.....

I was first introduced to Tate Matheny a few years ago while he was playing for the USA Baseball College team during the summer.  He's Mike's son and attended school at Missouri State where he was one of the better players in the Missouri Valley Conference.

Playing for USA Baseball means that he gets baseball cards.  Most of Matheny's cards are in the 2014 and 2015 products.  When these cards first came out they were a little pricey, but they have fallen back in price a little bit since Tate was drafted by the Red Sox.  Sounds a little bit backwards considering a lot of the USA Baseball College players end up being high end draft picks and pretty good prospects, however Matheny does not really fit into that category.

He was drafted in the 23rd round, but still actually appeared in the 2015 Bowman Chrome set.  The autograph is just as affordable as the USA Baseball signatures, so I picked one of those up too....

Cool airbrushing.  

Matheny is still just 22, but in a year and a half in the Minors is slashing .247/.295/.329 with 5 home runs, 4 triples, and 27 doubles.  Not likely to get promoted up the chain with those types of numbers. Still cool to pick up a pair of cards of a player I got to see play locally.