Michael Conforto – PaulHadsall.com

Easter baseball cards

Posted on April 2, 2018April 2, 2018 by Paul

I hope everyone had a good Easter (or Passover… or just a nice weekend.) It sure feels like yesterday’s 60 degree spring-like weather was the April Fool’s Day joke, because we woke up to snow (again) this morning.

The Yankees’ home opener has already been postponed, and who knows if the Mets can clear the snow from Citi Field’s seats in time to play tonight’s game.

You are looking live… pic.twitter.com/mhuqWsJCXE

— Evan Roberts (@EvanRobertsWFAN) April 2, 2018

So today’s a good day to look at the Topps Opening Day baseball cards I got for Easter. While Opening Day is overlooked by most collectors, I enjoy it because it’s about the closest I can get to reliving the experience of opening baseball cards when I was a kid.

Opening Day packs are cheap, usually a dollar. They have a decent number of cards in them (by 21st Century standards, anyway.) And given the unlikelihood of pulling any autographs or memorabilia cards, if you’re opening Opening Day, you’ve got to actually want the base cards or the fun “regular” insert sets.

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There are two reasons that Opening Day isn’t perfect. Number one: except for a few Series 2 previews and PhotoShop uniform swaps, Opening Day cards are rehash of the Topps Series 1 cards that came out in February.

Number two: Opening Day has a limited checklist – just 200 cards. The positive to that point is that you’re much more likely to have at least one star player in every pack.

Opening Day’s March release spot does give Topps a little more time to do things like add our first rookie card for Angels’ pitcher and designated hitter Shohei Ohtani (who impressed in his Major League pitching debut on Sunday.)

I’m kinda happy Topps used a press conference photo for this card – I love getting to see them on cardboard because they represent that time of optimism where your team’s new star player can do no wrong. There will be plenty of time for game action photos later. (I can’t wait to see what the card designers at Topps and Panini decide to do about including hitting and pitching stats on Ohtani’s cards next year.)

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While Ohtani’s rookie card is the draw for Opening Day this year, usually the inserts are the big thing. Card collectors who like mascots have to go for Opening Day. This year’s set also includes Team Traditions & Celebrations inserts, as well as an Opening Day subset and a Before Opening Day insert set.

I love the mascots and I think the Team Traditions & Celebrations set is a fun new idea. The other two leave me a bit flat.

The Opening Day cards have cool photos, but the backs are focused on how the teams did on Opening Day 2017…and that leaves them feeling a bit dated. If I were writing the copy for the card backs, I’d go with a more general focus. Maybe a particular team is unusually successful on Opening Day, or they have an active Opening Day winning streak. Maybe there’s a star player who does particularly well on Opening Day. Something…

The Before Opening Day insert set is worse, because the photos aren’t even that interesting. I’m pretty sure I don’t care which players had good springs in 2018. I know I don’t care about 2017 spring training performances. Hopefully this insert theme gets retired.

Other odds & ends:

The Mets split the final two games of their Opening Weekend series with the St. Louis Cardinals. Yoenis Cespedes and Jacob deGrom led the Mets to victory on Saturday, while Steven Matz brought his spring training struggles into the regular season on Sunday as the Cardinals won their first game of 2018.
Anthony Swarzak is the first Met to fall to injury during the regular season. He left Sunday’s game with a strained left oblique and is due to be reexamined today…. with the Mets being the Mets, he could be fine and barely miss any time, or he could be headed to the disabled list and never seen again.
In better injury news, Jason Vargas is making progress and Michael Conforto could be back on Thursday.
The Mets are wearing a commemorative patch to honor the late Rusty Staub, but Uni-Watch’s Paul Lukas points out that the design doesn’t really work very well.
The Yankees signed former Met Oliver Perez to a minor league contract on Saturday. I thought Perez was done when the Mets released him in 2011, but he’s had a nice second career as a lefty bullpen specialist. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him in the Bronx sometime this season.
Gabe Kapler has been a hot mess in his first weekend as the Philadelphia Phillies manager. The “highlight” was when he brought in a reliever who wasn’t even warming up on Saturday. Under the new pace of play rules, Phillie reliever Hoby Milner wasn’t entitled to the full warmup time he was given by umpire Jerry Layne. Atlanta Braves manager Brian Snitker was upset and ultimately ejected, but Kapler didn’t receive any consequences beyond a formal warning letter from Major League Baseball. (Rob Manfred might want to think about giving his pace of play rules teeth or scrapping them.) We’ll get to see if Kapler is done with Unlimited Bullpen Works or not, since the Phillies are due to open a three game series with the Mets tonight.

Baseball, New York Mets

Last Mets standing

Posted on August 25, 2017 by Paul

I thought I was numb.

It’s been an awful year for the New York Mets – yesterday afternoon’s lost dropped their record to 55-71, including a miserable 28-39 at home. (I feel blessed that they actually won one of the handful of games I went to this season.)

There have been so many injuries that the team is actually issuing press releases to help the media keep track of who’s hurt, who might be coming back soon and who’s done for the season.

Thanks to a series of summer trades, the Mets have become the second youngest team in baseball. And many of the veterans who are left — I’m looking at you, Yoenis Cespedes — have underperformed. A lot. (Cespedes, earning the highest salary among the 2017 Mets, has a 1.6 Fangraphs WAR — just 0.2 points higher than what Noah Syndergaard accomplished in 27.1 innings.)

I still put the Mets on as background noise if I’m home, but I haven’t actively paid attention to every minute of the tv broadcasts since early June.

Yesterday, I got to see the ugly footage of Michael Conforto dislocating his shoulder during his likely final plate appearance of 2017. And surprise, surprise… the Mets can still deliver that sucker punch even when you thought it couldn’t get worse.

My heart goes out to Conforto, who was on his way to becoming the Mets’ best player and one of baseball’s stars this year with an amazing season. Hopefully the Mets’ leadership will handle his injury properly and Conforto will be able to pick up where he left off next year.

Conforto, and more recently rookies Amed Rosario and Dominic Smith, were the reasons I was still watching Mets baseball this year.

Let’s hope Rosario and Smith can both make it to October 1st.

New York Mets

2016 Topps Update Mets

Posted on February 4, 2017 by Paul

Pretty much everyone who blogs about baseball cards is offering his or her opinion about the newly-released 2017 Topps Series One set this week.

I’m not there yet. In fact, I just got my 2016 Topps Update Mets team set today.

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Baseball

So you're saying there's a chance….

Posted on July 26, 2015 by Paul

For one night at least, everything went right in Mets-land.

Michael Conforto went 4-for-4 with a walk in his second major league game.
Kelly Johnson made a good first impression in his Mets debut by going 2-for-6 with a home run.
Kirk Nieuwenhuis also went 4-for-4, driving in four of the Mets’ 15 runs.
Lucas Duda hit a pair of home runs, offering hope that he’s returning to his April & May All-Star candidate form.
Daniel Murphy went 2-for-4, including a home run
Matt Harvey went 2-for-4 with a pair of RBIs… oh, and he pitched a pretty good game too.

It’s fun to watch your team score 15 runs on 21 hits in a single night instead of taking a whole week to reach those totals. Imagine if Terry Collins issued that “hit or sit” ultimatum a little bit sooner.

The Mets have a tougher challenge awaiting them today. Zack Greinke hasn’t given up a run since June 13th… but maybe, just maybe, the Mets can be the team to put an end to his scoreless innings streak.

And maybe, just maybe, they can find enough offense on a consistent basis to get their amazing starting rotation to the postseason where anything can happen.

It might take something on the order of a minor miracle, but after games like last night’s it’s easier to believe.

Uncategorized

That futile feeling….

Posted on July 24, 2015 by Paul

The New York Mets’ brain trust did two things today that fans have been hoping for since the All-Star Break. They promoted outfielder Michael Conforto from Double-A Binghamton (about 13 months after he was drafted with the 10th overall selection last year) and they made a trade to acquire help for the major league offense.

It didn’t help, as the Mets lost 7-2 to the Dodgers and are now 2-6 since the break, just one game over the .500 mark for the season. But the Nationals also lost again, so the Mets remain just three games out of first place in the NL East.

Conforto drove in a run with a ground out in his second major league at-bat, but otherwise was a non-factor in the game. So were most of the other Mets batters.

The trade has yet to be officially announced by the Mets or Braves, but it should improve New York’s roster without costing the organization any players who factored into any immediate plans. Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe add depth, but they are not really the kind of players who can make a bad offense into a good one.

Much like the Michael Cuddyer signing last winter, I like the move if it’s the first step of a plan to retool the Mets’ lineup. But if it’s the only trade that happens in the waning days of July, I don’t see that much point. (And considering how the Cuddyer signing turned out so far, I have to admit that I don’t have a very good record evaluating player acquisitions.)