Bad Wax

I have been collecting an army load of football, baseball, and hockey inserts and game used.  It’s time to do another contest.  Since baseball is coming up soon, name your favorite team, and which minor leaguer you think will make a big impact this season.  For example, I’ll use the Blue Jays and Brett Wallace.  It’s that simple, if you win, I will give you a list of cards to chose from, just give me a sport.  Deadline for entries in Monday night at 9pm.  Good Luck!

Living in North Carolina, I was snowed in this weekend.  It seems like 6″ of snow is enough to shut the whole town down for a few days.  When I lived in Bethlehem, PA, anything under 8″ was just another day.  As always, please remember to call ahead to ensure that the player is indeed signing and that the times listed are correct.  Also several of the high-profile signings are requiring you to get bracelets, please make sure you know how to go about getting them.

All listings come courtesy of signingshotline.com.

Monday 2/1/10

Tuesday 2/2/10

Wednesday 2/3/10

Thursday 2/4/10

Friday 2/5/10

As always, if I forget to list a signing or one that I listed is incorrect, please leave a comment and share with everyone. Good luck this weekend, there are some great signings to go for.

Last year, I did a series of posts on the 20 rookies that I think will make an impact in the upcoming baseball season.  This off course was a rip-off of Donruss’s Rated Rookies from the 80s-90s.  For this series I felt it best to focus only on players who will either arrive this season in the big leagues or those who have already appeared in the big leagues but maintained their rookie status.  My first subject is Buster Posey.

First off I want to thank Travis at Punk Rock Paint for the RR logo you see on the card.  As always, his work is outstanding and if you haven’t read his blog you are doing yourself a disservice.  Now on to Buster, he was drafted 5th overall in the 2008 MLB Draft.  Since then, he has rocketed through the minor leagues. He started last season out at Class A San José, where he hit 0.326/13/58 with 6 stolen bases. He was then moved up to Class AAA Fresno, completely skipping AA.  At Fresno he hit 0.321/5/22 in 151 plate appearances.

In September, due to an injury of Benji Molina, Buster was called up to the Giants.  He showed solid defensive play, however due to sporadic at bats he had a tough time with MLB pitching.  This season he will no doubt break camp with the Giants and should be their starting catcher.  It is not out of the question that he could hit 0.290/24/85 this season if given a full slate of games.  If he does so he would definitely be a potential rookie of the year candidate.

Buster is a fantastic through the mail signer, so I decided to create a custom card for all the Ridiculous Rookies I name to send out for autographs.  I will create four of each card.  One is for me, the rest are going to be traded away.  If you are interested in any of the customs I create for this please leave a comment and email me a trade.  I’m just looking for jersey/autograph cards, I don’t even care who they are of.  These are glossy cards and as thick as a regular card.  The are in the Goudey shape of 3″ tall x 2.5″ wide.

As far as Buster’s cards on eBay, good luck, they are routinely selling for between $50 – $100.  Given that he is a prolific signer of through the mail, my suggestion is to go that route first.  One of my favorite signed cards is posted below, even that one sold for $75 recently.  Posey might be the best of the bunch in terms of rookies this season, but who knows, sometimes the biggest of prospects fail.  I just can’t see this happening with Buster though.

As you can see, I updated the look of the blog again.  I just didn’t like the way the free autograph list came out.  As always, please remember to call ahead to ensure that the player is indeed signing and that the times listed are correct.  Also several of the high-profile signings are requiring you to get bracelets, please make sure you know how to go about getting them.

All listings come courtesy of signingshotline.com.

1/29/10 Friday

1/30/10 Saturday

1/31/10 Sunday

As always, if I forget to list a signing or one that I listed is incorrect, please leave a comment and share with everyone. Good luck this weekend, there are some great signings to go for.

Earlier this week three more names flew off the free agent list, Jim Thome, Ben Sheets, and Xavier Nady.  While none of these guys will be the key for their teams run to the playoffs, they each are very intriguing signings.  All three of them fill niches that each team needs, depth and trade chips.  I am going to break down each of the deals and explain why it’s a good move.

The Jim Thome signing was a no brainer, a $1.5 million, one year deal with $750,000 in incentives based on plate appearances seems like a bargain to me.  The Twins get a veteran leader in the clubhouse, Kubel can now play more outfield and Thome comes back to American League pitching that he knows so well.  I doubt that he will see much more than 400 plate appearances (if that), but if he puts up numbers like he did last season for the White Sox, he gives the Twins a fairly lethal bat that they need right now.  As for his place in the card world, I discussed this a couple of days ago and it can be read about here.

The usually savvy Billy Beane has made some poor choices recently when it comes to older free agents.  Jason Giambi and for the most part Frank Thomas seemed like bad moves last year.  However with Sheets, I think Beane did his homework.  Sheets has already passed a physical and his workouts in Louisiana were so good that the A’s sent him an offer in 1 hour. Now don’t get me wrong $8 million for a guy that hasn’t pitched in a year and a half is a lot of money, but if there is anyone that can come back from the adversity that he went through it’s Sheets.  Plus as an added bonus, if Sheets pitches well, the A’s now have trade bait to bring in more fresh talent.  As for his hobby value, cards of his can be had for between $2 – $30, depending on what’s on the card.  The card pictured below is one of my favorites and it recently sold for $17.  I have always been a Sheets fan since he was in college, so for me this is a must have.  For others though, I can understand why they wouldn’t want it.

Finally the Xavier Nady deal, 1 year $3.3 million to serve as a backup outfielder.  This would have looked a lot better in 2009 after he hit 0.305/25/97 but still it offers the Cubs so depth coming off the bench.  The real question is can he come back from his 2nd Tommy John surgery.  I don’t know if he can, I am assuming he lost some bat speed and probably some power as well.  Of course in the role that he is in, he won’t see more than 300 at bats anyway.  Plus if he performs well, they can use him as trade bait at the trading deadline.  His hobby value is very limited since for most of his career he has been a fourth outfielder.  You shouldn’t have to pay more than $1 for his autograph, the one below can be had for that price and I would consider it one of his best cards.

Overall, none of these deals is likely to make a huge impact, but they all fit their new teams fairly well.  My hope is that all three have stellar seasons, but we have to be realistic, if one has a great season I would be thrilled.