Tag Archives: Bartolo Colon

2017 Mets Card Spring Preview

Posted by on 10 March 2017 1 comment

Bouncing back from a year that fell short

The Mets made the postseason for the second consecutive season last year, but not even a superb outing from Noah Syndergaard could get the Mets past the Giants in the Wild Card game, so it’s been a long offseason. Speaking of Noah Syndergaard, this happened:

We saw lots of Syndergaard in cardboard last year and will likely see a lot more this year. Beyond him though, the cardboard Mets didn’t have a whole lot of depth in 2016 and there could be less in store for 2017. The Mets have two stars shining brightly in Syndergaard and Yoenis Cespedes, which could make everyone else hard to see. Or maybe they’ll be a rising tide that lifts everyone else into prominence. Honestly, I have no clue what Topps (and especially Panini) is doing and I get the feeling that they don’t either.

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2016 Mets Card Spring Preview

Posted by on 12 March 2016 Comments Off on 2016 Mets Card Spring Preview

Unfinished business (scanning last year’s cards…)

Well, it’s that time of year again… Florida is relevant for baseball, prospect lists are coming out left and right, and I’m still digging through a backlog of 2015 cards to scan in the hopes of closing out 2015 before Opening Day (probably not happening…). But the card releases don’t stop, so I have to let you know what to expect in 2016. One thing’s for sure – there’s going to be a lot for Mets fans to chase in 2016.

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Product Spotlight: 2015 Topps Series 1

Posted by on 18 March 2015 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2015 Topps Series 1

Changing up the base Topps formula

When it comes to base Topps, there hasn’t been much of a difference from year to year in a long time. Most of the elements of the flagship Topps products date back to at least 2012, some all the way back to 2001. It was time for a change.

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2014 in GIFs

Posted by on 31 December 2014 2 comments

Duda doing all the things that Duda does

Another year, another batch of GIFs to entertain, amaze, and confuse.  2014 had a lot of highs and lows.  And a lot of Lucas Duda.  But before we got to the Mets’ first base conundrum turned revelation, let’s check in on the minors.  This year, I experimented with GIFs from original video content shot at minor league games.  I’ve already covered the 2014 Binghamton Mets in GIFs, so let’s start with the Brooklyn Cyclones.

Marcos Molina rocketed up the prospect lists in 2014, going from a relative unknown to one of the hottest pitching prospects in a system filled with them.  Here he is on what must have been an off day for him.  He still pitched well, but it wasn’t anything worth raving about.

One of the other big names in Brooklyn was Michael Conforto.  Taken tenth overall in the 2014 draft, Conforto came with high expectations.  He started his professional career off with an impressive hitting streak, which he is shown here extending.  If he keeps this up, he could make it to the majors very quickly.

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2014 Mets Debut Autographs

Posted by on 16 June 2014 Comments Off on 2014 Mets Debut Autographs

The Mets dump the youth movement

A few weeks ago, the fans were clamoring for Juan Lagares and Wilmer Flores to get regular playing time and for the Mets to call up some of their top pitching prospects. Sure enough, Lagares and Flores got into more games and Rafael Montero and Jacob deGrom made back-to-back debut starts against the Yankees. A month later, Lagares is on the DL, Ruben Tejada has seen a resurgence, Montero was sent down to AAA where he hit the DL, and deGrom is still chasing his first big league win despite some outstanding starts. On top of that, a slumping Travis d’Arnaud was sent to AAA, where he is actually doing quite well. So much for the youth movement… While the kids are away, Bobby Abreu has been seeing regular playing time, Daisuke Martsuzaka is back in the starting rotation, journeymen relievers Buddy Carlyle and Dana Eveland were called up from Las Vegas to aid an exhausted bullpen, and Taylor Teagarden took over for d’Arnaud and started his Mets career off with a grand slam, the kiss of death for Mets newcomers. Through all of this, the team, well, has not been good. With no impact prospects looming on the horizon and no money available to bolster the Mets’ meager payroll, there’s not much to be optimistic about. How about them Cyclones?

Curtis Granderson Jose Valverde John Lannan Bartolo Colon
31 March 2014 31 March 2014 31 March 2014 2 April 2014
Chris B. Young Kyle Farnsworth Bobby Abreu Eric Campbell*
2 April 2014 2 April 2014 22 April 2014 10 May 2014
Rafael Montero* Jacob deGrom* Buddy Carlyle Dana Eveland
14 May 2014 15 May 2014 31 May 2014 2 June 2014
Taylor Teagarden Dilson Herrera* Erik Goeddel* Dario Alvarez*
10 June 2014 29 August 2014 1 September 2014 3 September 2014

*MLB Debut

Previous Editions

Age before prospects

The Mets spent freely (relatively speaking) in the offseason and it looked like it paid off with 15 wins in April. Despite Curtis Granderson not hitting, Bartolo Colon occasionally getting shelled, and Chris Young missing more than half of the month due to injury. A week into May, the Mets were 16-17 coming off being swept by the Marlins, so maybe things weren’t working out quite so well after all. Cast-off veterans Jose Valverde, John Lannan, and Kyle Farnsworth were called on to shore up a bullpen left in shambles when Bobby Parnell joined the TJ club, but Lannan has already been sent away and Valverde and Farnsworth won’t be far behind. This team needs some fresh faces, so of course they called up Bobby Abreu, shown here when his face was fresh in 1997. That makes two of this year’s new additions with autograph cards from 1997. Time to give some of the kids in Vegas a shot at the big leagues.

Product Spotlight: 2014 Topps Gypsy Queen

Posted by on 12 May 2014 Comments Off on Product Spotlight: 2014 Topps Gypsy Queen

Some good, some bad, and some ugly photographs

Gypsy Queen just isn’t my kind of product.  I’ve never been a fan of tobacco style products, though I can understand the appeal considering the popularity of that era among hardcore collectors.  At least you can get proper toploaders and binder pages for the tobacco size minis, unlike most of the other minis that are plaguing the industry.  And yet, even though I have no interest in building a set of these, I always find myself with at least the Mets autographs and relics plus a base team set.  There’s just something about the distinct simplicity that makes Gypsy Queen stand out.

Card Design

The formula for a Queen Design is pretty simple.  Take some earth tones, add some fancy frame squiggles, and slap a big Gypsy Queen logo on it.  This year’s version is similar to the 2012 design, which is a bit of an improvement over last year’s overly busy look.  I’m not a fan of the heavy use of filters to give the photographs a vintage painting look.  It’s not as bad as whatever went wrong with this year’s Turkey Red, but it looks less “vintage artwork” than “Hey look at this cool Photoshop filter I found!” to me.

Mets Selection

Overall, 8 cards is a bit below average for a 350-card set, but the split between base and short prints is even more off.  Only five Mets made the 300-card base set: Rookies Wilmer Flores and Travis d’Arnaud, Daniel Murphy, and newcomers Curtis Granderson and Bartolo Colon.  Three Mets are among the 50 short prints: Matt Harvey, Zack Wheeler, and David Wright.  While it is strange to see all of the stars missing from the base set and loaded into the short prints, it’s another absence that is most notable – retired players.  Gypsy Queen is loaded with retired stars, more than 50 in total, but none of them are Mets.  This is the first year without Tom Seaver in the base set, though you could just make your own by cutting out a 2014 Gypsy Queen frame and slapping the Seaver picture they use every year into it.  If you were hoping for a full set of identical-photo Seaver Gypsy Queen cards, that’s the only way you’ll get it.

Parallels

100 of the 300 full-sized base cards have blue (numbered to 499) and white (retail exclusive) framed parallels.  Flores, d’Arnaud, and Granderson made the list here.  These are always some of the nicest cards in Gypsy Queen and they’re common enough to be easy to obtain.  On the mini side, all 350 mini cards have a full range of parallels including black (numbered to 199), red (numbered to 99), and sepia (numbered to 50).  Despite the low numbering, many of these carry little or no premium.

Inserts

Two inserts is actually pretty good for Gypsy Queen.  Seaver shows up here, though I’m not liking the sepia treatment of the overly filtered photos.  These would probably look more vintage without the filtering.  At least it’s not the usual Gypsy Queen Seaver photo.

Variants

Matt Harvey and David Wright have all of the photo variants this time around.  The full-sized cards get reverse negative variants (with different photos from the base cards to begin with…) and the minis get the usual photo variants that end up being far more common than the regular versions.

Relics

2014 continues the decline of Mets base relics in Gypsy Queen.  After having four in 2012 and three in 2013, we’re left with just two this year, one full-size and one mini.  And neither features a photograph that comes close to matching the material.  Wheeler’s shows him in home pinstripes, but the material is from last year’s orange Los Mets jersey.  Gee’s material is from his home white jersey, but the photo shows him in, um, black?  Gee hasn’t worn a black jersey in a game since 2011, making the photo more than two years old.  Apparently getting material from last year is easier than getting photos from the last two years…  The Gee also has patch variants numbered to 10 and 5.  Matt Harvey is the lone Met in the jumbo patch relics (numbered to 50 or less), though most of these do not feature patches as the name implies.

Autographs

On the other hand, this year’s Gypsy Queen doubles the total number of Mets Gypsy Queen autographs that have been made.  The first three years of Gypsy Queen gave us autographs from Angel Pagan, Jon Niese, R.A. Dickey, Jeurys Familia, and Kirk Nieuwenhuis.  2014 Gypsy Queen features the first certified autograph card from Jeremy Hefner, RC autographs from Travis d’Arnaud and Wilmer Flores, and autographs from David Wright and Zack Wheeler.  Interestingly, the RC logo is on the d’Arnaud and Flores autographs after being absent on rookie autographs in previous years, proving that nobody has any clue what a Rookie Card is these days.  Parallels include red (numbered to 49), gold (numbered to 25), green (numbered to 10), and purple (numbered to 1).  Wright and Wheeler also have mini autographs (numbered to 10) and autographed relics (numbered to 25).

Verdict

Mixed bag.  On the one hand, the autograph checklist would be good for just about any product and there are a reasonable number of easily obtainable parallels and variants to chase.  On the other, the lack of retired players in the base checklist (even just another Seaver with the infinitely-recycled photo) and relics that are little more than filler (the orange Wheeler jersey has gotten a lot of use so far this year…) leave considerable room for improvement.  ‘Unbalanced’ might be the best word to use to describe this year’s Gypsy Queen from a Mets perspective.