Tag Archives: David Thompson

Product Spotlight: 2017 Topps Heritage Minor League

Posted by Matthew Lug on 31 December 2017 Comments Off

Who needs Aaron Judge when you have Tim Tebow?

I’m never really sure what to make of the minor league edition of Topps Heritage. I love seeing the variety of team names that can be found in the minors and there are always a few interesting oddities that show up, but the nostalgia factor doesn’t quite work as well as it does for the big league product. It’s not like the Binghamton Rumble Ponies had any vintage 1968 cards (or even 2016 cards). Retro style cards of players with little or no major league experience seems a tad bit presumptuous, especially considering how many of them will go on to careers in the big leagues of scouting, coaching, car sales, or plumbing rather than baseball. Minor league baseball toys with your expectations to the point of cruelty sometimes, as does this incarnation of Heritage. Every once in a while though, things pan out.

Product Spotlight: 2017 Bowman

Posted by Matthew Lug on 31 May 2017 Comments Off

Too much of a good thing or just too much?

The base Bowman franchise is one of the cornerstones of the Topps product line. As such, it is a rock, always there, yet always changing in subtle ways. It’s frustrating sometimes, refreshing sometimes, but always there. 2017 Bowman is no exception – it’s there, there’s a lot to like, and there’s a lot that just makes no sense.

In 2015, Topps seemed to be headed in the right direction. 2014’s excess of confusing and unnecessary parallels yielded to the order of 2015 Bowman’s sensible parallel structure. 2016 Bowman did away with the ice parallels and wave refractors introduced in 2012, which was probably due, but it introduced full-size shimmer parallels in green and gold, numbered the same as their non-shimmer counterparts. 2016 Bowman Draft turned this concept into blue and gold wave refractor autographs. And 2017 Bowman combined both ideas and cranked it up to 10 – 10 shimmer refractor parallels, 5 base and 5 autographed. Double the autographs, double the fun?

2016 Mets Top Prospects (Cardboard Edition)

Posted by Matthew Lug on 23 January 2017 Comments Off

A very different kind of top prospect list

It’s that time of year again when a young (or not-so-young) man’s (or woman’s) fancy (or dread) turns to ordinal rankings of young baseball players. That’s right, top prospect lists! Everyone’s got one and you usually regret looking at the other guy’s. Why should we be any different here? Now, I am not a talent evaluator, so we’re going to have to come up with some other way to rank these guys. And after a comment I made on For All You Kids Out There (For All You Kids Out There is the official podcast of your Baseball Prospectus Mets Local site), the answer became clear – we’ll rank them by the strength of their cardboard.

2015 Mets Draft Class Autographs

Posted by Matthew Lug on 1 September 2015 Comments Off

No first round pick? No problem.

Full list of 2015 Mets draft picks

Thanks to the Michael Cuddyer signing, the Mets didn’t make their first pick in the 2015 draft until #53. While you can understand (even if you don’t agree with) the reasoning behind reluctantly giving up a first round pick when the goal is to win now, it certainly makes it hard to get excited about the draft. The Mets had to be hoping that some signable top talent would fall into the second round. As a collector, I was just hoping for someone who would make it into the fall’s autograph lineup (though last year’s top Mets pick Michael Conforto is still waiting for his Bowman Chrome autograph, due out this Friday). September is here and there is reason to hope for some nice prospect autographs from this group in the coming months.

With their top pick, the Mets took Desmond Lindsay, who was left off most amateur top prospect lists due to injury. The Mets obviously thought he was worth the risk and saw him as clear first-round talent. So far, he has performed well enough to earn a promotion to Brooklyn and should be the obvious choice for a Mets representative in upcoming draft products.

Once again, this year’s draft class had plenty of autographs available on draft day thanks to Leaf. After Lindsay, Max Wotell, Thomas Szapuki, Sixto Torres, Brendan Illies, and L.T. Tolbert (who apparently goes by a variety of names) all have Leaf Perfect Game autographs. Of them, all but the last two signed with the Mets.


2 Desmond Lindsay	3 Max Wotell	4 David Thompson	5 Thomas Szapucki

6 Chase Ingram	7 Corey Taylor	8 Patrick Mazeika	9 Kevin Kaczmarski

13 P.J. Conlon	17 Sixto Torres	18 Jordan Humphreys