Category Archives: Player Spotlights

Player Spotlight: Rick Ankiel

Posted by on 20 May 2013 No comments

A Mets legend 13 years before putting on the uniform

I’ve been a big fan of Rick Ankiel since 2000 for two rather contradictory reasons.  The first is because I managed to pull not one but two of his autograph cards from 2000 SPX.  Numbered to 1500 (which was what passed for limited in those days), the Rookie / Young Star autographs in SPX were tough pulls.  To get two of the same autograph from a few packs was quite unlikely, but for them to be from one of the hottest rookies in the game?  That was just amazing.  Ankiel would go on to finish second in Rookie of the Year voting with a bright future ahead of him and solid value in his cards.

The second reason I am fond of Rick Ankiel undid the first.  TINSTAAPP.  Look it up.  While the regular season validated Ankiel’s top prospect status (he was ranked #1 by Baseball America going into the 2000 season), everything fell apart in the postseason.  In Game 1 of the NLDS, he lasted only 2 2/3 innings against the Braves and gave up 4 runs.  The Cardinals took the series and eliminated the team that had knocked the Mets out of the postseason in 1999, seemingly clearing a path for the Mets to go to the World Series.  All that stood in their way were the Cardinals, with Ankiel set to start Game 2 and get a shot at redemption.

There are two things I remember most clearly about the Mets in the postseason back in those days.  The first is Robin Ventura’s 15th inning grand slam single in 1999.  The second is the first inning of Game 2 of the 2000 NLCS.  Ankiel started off with a full count strikeout and then the wheels fell off.  A full count walk, a wild pitch, and a second full count walk on a second wild pitch put runners at the corners for Todd Zeile, who hit a sac fly on, you guessed it, a full count.  Robin Ventura broke the streak with a four pitch walk and Benny Agbayani got impatient and hit an RBI double before he could be issued his three balls.  That would do it for Ankiel, who somehow gave up only two runs in his second postseason meltdown.  He got one more chance to turn things around in Game 5, coming in to start the 7th inning of what would be the 7-0 blowout clincher for the Mets.  That went about as well as his previous outing – one strikeout, two walks, two wild pitches, and one run in 2/3 of an inning.

As a fan of the Mets, I always like to see them walk (literally in this case) all over their opponent.  As a fan of baseball though, I hate to see a career implode as suddenly as Ankiel’s did in October 2000.  Ankiel would pitch just 34 more innings in the majors between 2001 and 2004 before it was clear that his postseason performance was no fluke.  Rick Ankiel the pitcher was done.

This would not be the end for Rick Ankiel.  Starting back at the bottom of the Cardinals’ system, he used his strong arm and decent bat (for a pitcher) to transform himself into an outfielder.  In 2007, he made his return to the majors as a slightly better than replacement-level hitter.  After six years spent between the Cardinals, Royals, Braves, and Nationals, Ankiel hit bottom and signed with the Astros for the 2013 season, appearing in 25 games before being released.  By the Astros.  There was nowhere left to go.

And then he signed with the Mets on May 13.  Rick Ankiel, replacement-level outfielder who wasn’t good enough to play on the 2013 Houston Astros, was eagerly snapped up by the Mets to patch up their sinking ship of an outfield.  You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not jumping for joy over this move.  But hey, at least those autographs count as part of my Mets collection now.  And with a major league career spanning nearly a decade and a half, he must have a lot of interesting game-used cards, right?

Eh, not quite.  The bulk of his game-used cards are bat or white/gray jersey cards from 2000-2002.  He does have some blue mesh Team USA jersey swatches, a few Cardinals patch cards, and at least one game-used shoe card.  Beyond that, we have to dig down to game-used base cards and game-used dirt cards.  Seriously.  There were a few more boring jersey cards in 2009 and 2010, then nothing.  Rick Ankiel hasn’t been relevant in years.  Welcome to the Mets.

Player Spotlight: Matt Harvey

Posted by on 25 April 2013 No comments

Once underappreciated, now the real deal

Few people saw Matt Harvey as a future ace even as recently as this time last year.  Wheeler’s talent was plain to see, but Harvey?  He just wasn’t there.  Even after his debut “too long to delay rookie eligibility, too short to make a Rookie of the Year case” season, there were many who were not ready to believe.  Harvey’s still here, but his doubters have turned out to be the mirage.

Matt Harvey was drafted seventh overall in the 2010 amateur draft to indifference with a side of LOLMets.  The consensus seemed to be that Harvey went too high and the Mets played it safe with a signable pick with less upside than some of the younger talent that was still available (like currently drug-suspended catcher Yasmani Grandal).  Harvey’s supporters weren’t particularly vocal, but having a sensible, if not sensational, first round pick was an improvement over some of Omar Minaya’s previous drafts (see: “Kunz, Eddie”).  I’m sure Harvey’s detractors switched over to bashing the Mets for picking a kid who didn’t even play high school ball in the next draft.  They didn’t see the talent in Harvey that the Mets were banking on.

What I saw though were some pretty damn nice cards.  Long-time readers know that draft day(s) is an exciting time for me as I scour the depths of eBay for any pre-pro cards from the newest members of the Mets organization.  What started as a subset in the 1985 Topps set (best known for Mark McGwire’s first card) is now an entire segment of the hobby.  Between various Team USA sets and inserts and All-American game cards and autographs, many of the top amateur players have an extensive checklist before they get drafted.  For Matt Harvey, this included a few autographed jersey cards and some jumbo patch cards from one of his Team USA jerseys.

It didn’t take long for Harvey’s pro cards to materialize.  Topps featured autographs from Harvey in 2010 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects and Panini did the same in 2010 Donruss Elite Extra Edition.

As Harvey worked his way through the Mets’ system in 2011 and 2012, he became harder to ignore.  His efforts were rewarded with an appearance in the 2011 Futures Game, with pieces of his jersey from the event first appearing in 2011 Bowman Draft Picks & Prospects.  Only red swatches could be found in 2011, but the black and white secondary colors followed in 2012 Topps Pro Debut.  Shortly after Pro Debut was released, Matt Harvey made his debut in the majors with an 11-strikeout statement that proved once and for all that he was for real.

Or at least it should have.  With arguably the best pitching debut since Stephen Strasburg, Harvey should have been in the discussion with the great young pitchers in the game.  Like R.A. Dickey a year earlier though, few outside the Mets fanbase could see the greatness that was clearly there.  Autograph collectors at least could be forgiven; there hadn’t been any Matt Harvey autograph releases since the 2010 products.  Harvey was on the checklist for autographs in 2011 Bowman Platinum, but the product released in July of 2011 only had this to offer:

As 2011 came to an end, there was no word on redemption fulfillment.  2012 came and went, but Topps could not get the cards, a pen, and Matt Harvey together in the same place at the same time.  Now well into 2013, all we have is a tweet from Topps indicating that the cards may have been dropped off with Harvey during spring training.  Was this all a mass delusion?  Could the stress of cheering on the Mets through collapse and utter failure have driven us to conjure up a savior who could lead the team to greatness?  Why could an arm that could throw a high-90s fastball with pinpoint precision not be called upon to put ink to cardboard?

Our fears were put to rest when Panini released 2012 National Treasures in, um, February of 2013.  This product, one of their best half-licensed baseball releases to date, included Matt Harvey’s autographs on cards (with pieces of his ’89 throwback jersey), on stickers, and on manufactured fabric.  The demand for these autographs was so great that the base versions (each numbered to 99) initially sold in the $20-80 range.  Harvey then went on to win his first four starts in such grand fashion that he was mentioned alongside some of the greatest pitchers in Mets history.  One of them, Dwight Gooden, then bestowed Harvey with the moniker “The Real Deal.”

The world has finally accepted Matt Harvey as no mere figment of the imagination or hallucination brought on by whatever is in the air in New York City.  And now the world is buying up his autograph cards in a frenzy, pushing the price of even his most common autographs over the $80 mark.  If you don’t already have a Matt Harvey autograph, you probably can’t afford one.  And don’t bother looking in any current Topps products, they can’t even get him to sign cards from 2011.  They do have some jersey and patch cards though, so it’s not like they don’t acknowledge that he exists.  Maybe MLB’s appointed one true card manufacturer has become invisible to Matt Harvey.

Player Spotlight: Brian Cole

Posted by on 31 March 2013 No comments

Remembering a tragic loss

You can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of Brian Cole.  You won’t find him at Citi Field or in the Mets minor league system.  He isn’t among the ranks of failed Mets prospects working for a shot with another club or in another country.  He never hung up his spikes and left his playing career behind.  He never got the chance to.  On this day in 2001, Brian Cole lost his life in a car accident in Florida.  He was 22.

Drafted in the 18th round in 1998, Cole moved up through the system quickly, finishing the 2000 season in Binghamton, only about a year or so away from the majors.  His performance up to that point earned him a rookie card in 2000 Topps Traded along with an autograph card in the same product.  Cole was set to be a fixture in the prospect ranks in 2001.

The first I had heard of Brian Cole was after 2001 SPX was released shortly after his death.  This product contained his only game-used jersey card, something that I thought was important for my collection at the time.  And that was the last I had heard of him until this spring.

You won’t find many Brian Cole cards out there.  Including the SPX jersey/autograph, he has just seven autographs.  His memorabilia includes the SPX jersey and bat and bat/autograph cards in 2001 SP Top Prospects.  After his autographs in 2001 SP Top Prospects, SPX, eX, and Finest, Brian Cole’s time in the hobby spotlight was over.

Twelve years after his death, the world is finally hearing the story of Brian Cole.  Between a Sports Illustrated profile of him in their Baseball Preview issue and talk of a movie, it looks like Cole will not be forgotten.  It seems like there should be more to this story, but that’s really all I have.  I had never heard about how great Cole was until I read the stories over the last few days.  Back in 2001, the vast resources we now have to follow every detail of every aspect of baseball just did not exist.  Now though, we have no excuse.  And so I’m posting this, incomplete as it is, to make sure that my little corner of the world has a place to remember a prospect that never had a chance to make his mark in New York City.

Brian Cole wasn’t the first prospect to die in a tragic car accident and, sadly, will not be the last.  Some are struck down through no fault of their own, while others tempt fate through reckless actions.  After a spring when a prospect was arrested while driving 111mph while intoxicated, it seems like history is determined to repeat itself.  That one will get another chance, but there’s still a message that needs to be sent.  No matter how good you are, your future is never guaranteed.

Player Spotlight: Jon Matlack

Posted by on 13 February 2013 No comments

Why does nobody remember this guy?

I’ll have to admit, until a few years ago, I didn’t know much of anything about Jon Matlack.  I knew he was a Mets pitcher on the ’73 team and that’s about it.  It wasn’t until I started digging more into the team’s history that I discovered just how good he was.  His greatness has by and large been lost to history, and that’s a shame.  Because Jon Matlack was awesome.

Missing: One Jon Matlack patch card. If found, contact me.

Matlack’s game-used resume is a short one.  His only material is from 2001, with Mets pinstripe jerseys in  UD Decade: The 1970s and UD Legends of New York.  UD Decade also featured a patch card (though that is nearly impossible to find) and the Legends of New York jersey has a parallel version numbered to 400.  He has no certified autograph cards and only a smattering of uncertified autographs.  In the last decade, when every nobody who ever put together a mediocre career has been celebrated in cards, Jon Matlack has not had a single baseball card made.  Not one.  In fact, since his retirement, there have been only seven officially licensed Jon Matlack cards produced.  In addition to the four mentioned above, he had two more in the base UD Decade set and one base card in UD Legends of New York.  Seven cards to remember one of the best pitchers in Mets history?  How is this possible?

Not shown: 2001 UD Legends of New York

Matlack was taken 4th overall in the 1967 draft, ahead of Ted Simmons, Bobby Grich, Vida Blue, Jerry Reuss, Don Baylor, Davey Lopes, and other stars you’ve forgotten about.  I guess he just had the bad fortune to come up at a time that baseball would come to forget.  While we remember a disappointing Nolan Ryan getting traded and becoming a star with the Angels in 1972, we forget that Matlack was named Rookie of the Year in that very same year with a performance that was a match for Ryan’s season (according to bWAR at least).  He would go on to be named an All-Star three years in a row before getting traded in a complicated deal that gave the Mets Willie Montanez, Tom Grieve, and Ken Henderson.  The Mets got nothing out of that deal and the Rangers got a couple of good seasons out of Matlack mixed in with a few mediocre ones.  He was through at age 33.

Just a few days ago, Brandon Webb announced his retirement at the age of 33.  Webb’s career was shorter and had a longer peak, and while he lost out on Rookie of the Year to a clearly inferior Dontrelle Willis, he did win one Cy Young award and finish second twice.  Matlack only managed to get Cy Young votes once, good for a 6th place finish in 1976.  Clearly he’s no Webb.

Well, except for that 8.8 bWAR season in 1974 that blows away anything Webb ever did.  Wait, what?  34 games started, 14 complete games, 7 shutouts, 265 1/3 innings pitched…  Let’s just stop right there.  He pitched 14 complete games and averaged 7 innings on the other 20.  That right there would get you an MVP award today.  Throwing some other numbers out there: 195 strikeouts, 76 walks, 8 home runs allowed, ERA of 2.41…  Any way you slice it, that’s an elite season.  0 Cy Young votes.  Oh, and his record was 13-15.

How did this compare to his contemporaries in 1974?  Well, his 8.8 bWAR led all NL pitchers.  So did his 7.4 fWAR and 5.2 WARP.  His 2.41 ERA was third behind former Met you’ve never heard of Buzz Capra and Hall of Famer Phil Niekro (and just barely ahead of 1974 NL Cy Young winner and future former Met Mike Marshall).  His 195 strikeouts were good enough to tie him with Niekro for 4th behind Steve Carlton, Andy Messersmith, and teammate Tom Seaver.  14 complete games put him tied for 5th with Reuss, 4 back of Niekro’s 18, but his 7 shutouts put him one up on Niekro for the league lead.  Basically, Jon Matlack was all over the leaderboards in 1974 and certainly one of the top starters in the league.  And not a single damn Cy Young voter noticed.

The first place votes that year were split between Marshall, who led the league with 21 saves, 20-game winners Messersmith and Niekro, and 19-game winner Don Sutton, who led the league with 40 starts.  Buzz Capra got one token vote to finish at the bottom tied for 9th.  Jon Matlack would have to wait two years for any Cy Young votes, coming after a 1976 that wasn’t half as good as his 1974.  That’s not to say that he should have won the award in 1974.  A case could certainly be made for Niekro, who put up a roughly equivalent performance.  Marshall has a good case as well as the top reliever.  Buzz Capra and Andy Messersmith had great seasons.  But nobody remembered Jon Matlack when it was time to cast votes.  Story of his life.

This year, Justin Verlander will pass Matlack’s career total bWAR.  Justin Verlander at 29, after 7 seasons, Rookie of the Year, Cy Young, MVP, and (supposedly) dating Kate Upton, has yet to surpass an age 30 Jon Matlack.  While I’ll be the first to admit that one-size-fits-all metrics are to be taken with a truckload of rock salt, there has to be something to that.  Jon Matlack was too good to be forgotten.

Player Spotlight: Abraham Nunez

Posted by on 1 February 2013 No comments

Same name, same difference

This is the story of two guys named Abraham Nunez who, after a chance encounter on a train, got an apartment together and shared experiences in love, loss, and punk rock music.  Wait, no, that was the plot to the anime Nana.  This story is about the Abraham Nunez who didn’t play for the Mets and the Abraham Nunez who, well, didn’t really play for the Mets.  Should have stuck with the punk rock romantic drama…

Abraham Nunez the non-Met was the player to be named later in the 1999 Brad Penny +2 for Matt Mantei trade that looks mind-boggling in hindsight.  Penny had three seasons with the Marlins that were worth about as much as Mantei’s entire run with the Diamondbacks.  The throw-ins in the trade, Abraham Nunez and Vladimir Nunez, were utterly worthless.  After a disappointing cup of coffee in 2002, Abraham had a disappointing half season with the Marlins in 2004, after which he was traded to the Royals, where he had another disappointing half season to finish his career.  To his credit, he never played for the Mets.  That’s more than I can say for the other Abraham Nunez.

Abraham Nunez the not-really-Met was a player to be named later in a 9-player trade between the Blue Jays and Pirates in 1996.  Despite getting six of the nine players in the deal, the Pirates got almost nothing of value, having only a few seasons of adequacy from Craig Wilson to show for it; three of the others never even made the majors.  The Blue Jays didn’t fare much better with one decent season from Orlando Merced, a terrible season from Carlos Garcia, and a mix of mediocrity from Dan Plesac.  Nunez lasted 8 seasons with the Pirates and was completely unremarkable.  After his release from Pittsburgh, Nunez had a career year in St. Louis, which he turned into a two year, $3 million deal in Philadelphia, where he was a disaster.  At least he has that going for him.

This Abraham Nunez came to the Mets in 2008 after 11 seasons in the majors and a total of 0.0 bWAR.  Picked up in the bargain bin after his release from the Brewers, Nunez must not have been expected to do much, because he sure didn’t.  He made his Mets debut in San Diego on June 5 as a pinch hitter.  He grounded out to short.  The results were completely different when he came in to pinch hit three days later.  That time he popped out to short to end the inning.  And so ended the major league career of all Abrahams Nunez.

So why does any of this matter?  Both Abraham Nunezes have game-used bat cards and I, um, bought the wrong one first.  The wrong Abraham Nunez, like every other prospect in 2001, had a bat card in a 2001 Donruss product (plus at least one autograph, but I didn’t fall for that…).  This can be excused because he had not yet begun to suck.  The right Abraham Nunez, like every other player in the late ’90s, had an autograph card in a Donruss Signature product.  His rise to competence was commemorated in 2005 with a bat card in 2005 Donruss Champions.  And that’s the place that Abraham Nunez has in my collection.

10 Lee Mazzilli Autograph Cards Every Fan Should Own

Posted by on 24 September 2012 No comments

Shamelessly pandering to Mets Police

It’s been a rough nine months here at Collect The Mets as I realize just what is involved in scanning and presenting thousands of cards, especially when I keep buying more cards faster than I can process them.  It doesn’t help when I go off on tangents like game recaps.  The content just isn’t going up as fast as I would like and the readership suffers as a result.  The Twitter followership is doing well by comparison, but that’s probably because I don’t tweet often enough to be annoying.

So it wasn’t too much of a shock that I didn’t make the Mets Police Twitter 86 list.  If anything, I probably owe 86% of my Twitter followers to Mets Police.  I knew what I needed to do to get more attention though – more cowbell, er, I mean more Mazzilli.  And so I reached back into my extensive archives to put together this piece.

Longtime readers will know that Lee Mazzilli has been in my autograph collection since the early ’90s, when I met him at an autograph signing in Filene’s.  When certified autograph cards became all the rage, Mazzilli was sadly absent amid all of the Gary Carter, Keith Hernandez, Dwight Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Davey Johnson, Mookie Wilson, and even Kevin Mitchell autographs.

Presumably, there are no more than 25 Mazzilli fans. Otherwise, this could be a problem...

Fans would have to wait until 2003 for the first Lee Mazzilli certified autographs.  Upper Deck finally ended the drought with three Yankee Greats autographs in 2003 Sweet Spot Classic.  This was a three-tier parallel autograph set featuring blue autographs (not numbered), black autographs (numbered to 100 or less), and red autographs (numbered to 25).  Other notable Mets in this insert set include Dwight Gooden and David Cone.

It wasn’t a long wait for Mazzilli’s next autograph appearance in 2003 UD Yankees Signature.  The Pride of New York autograph insert set featured just about every notable person ever associated with the Yankees, so finding Mazzilli in there wasn’t a big surprise.  Also featured in this set are Don Zimmer, Dwight Gooden, David Cone, and several other Mets whose first names do not start with D.

Mazzilli was also featured on the Pinstripe Excellence dual autograph insert set with fellow also-Met Mike Torrez.  Like Mazzilli, Torrez was also on the small-town autograph circuit in the early ’90s, though for some reason I have two of his autographs from back then.

Upper Deck was on a massive Yankees kick in 2003.

But that’s not all!  Mazzilli was featured two more times in 2003 Yankees Signature, this time on a pair of Yankees Forever triple autograph insert cards.  Triple autographs are common these days when you can just slap three sticker autos on a card and call it a day, but in the olden days, you had to get three different people to physically handle the card for these sort of things.  With guys like Paul O’Neill and Dave Winfield on these cards, Mazzilli clearly wasn’t the main draw.

Surprisingly, Mazzilli did not have any autograph cards in 2004 or 2005, when products like UD Timeless Teams, UD Past Time Pennants, Topps All-Time Fan Favorites, Topps Originals, and Donruss Timelines went heavy on players from the ’86 Mets.  His next appearance would be in the UD-produced 2006 Fleer Greats of the Game.  In addition to the base Greats of the Game Autographs card, Mazzilli was featured in the Nickname Greats insert set with the inscription “Italian Stallion.”  These would be Mazzilli’s first and only sticker autographs.  At least he was finally shown as a Met.  Other Mets featured in one or both of these sets include David Cone, Sid Fernandez (“El Sid”), Howard Johnson (“HoJo”), Tom Seaver, and Rusty Staub (“Le Grand Orange”).

Things came around full circle when Mazzilli made his final autograph appearance in 2007 Sweet Spot Classic.  Unlike the 2003 version, this one shows him as a Met.  Also unlike the 2003 version (as well as just about every Sweet Spot autograph from the era), only one version of this card was produced, numbered to 199.  Other Mets in this set include Tom Seaver and Keith Hernandez, all with cards numbered to 16.

And that’s all there is.  Mazzilli has never had an autograph card in a non-UD product and has never had a game-used memorabilia card.  If you’re looking for a premium Mazzilli card, these ten are the only ones you have to choose from.