Cowboys and Rangers

I'll be attending the WVU/Oklahoma St game at 1 today. This will be the first home conference game of the season so the crowd should be pretty pumped. Baseball will always be number 1, but I do love some good college basketball. WVU has only 1 loss right now and has cracked the top 15. Last week was a great week as they had 3 road games and won them all.  Let's Go Mountaineers!

This post will finally wrap up 2015 for me.  What a year! My apologies to Spiff from Texas Rangers Cards as he sent this right around Christmas. Spiff and I have had an ongoing blind trade for well over a year. He always seems to find something interesting for me.

Joel Hanrahan turned himself into a very productive bullpen piece for the Pirates.  When the Pirates acquired him from the Nationals it seemed that he was more of a throw in piece, but almost immediately he turned a corner to become super productive reliever

The Pirates as a team are not in the business of paying relievers big money so when Hanrahan was approaching free agency the Pirates traded him to the Red Sox. The trade ended up working out for both teams, but in ways not expected. The Bucs received prospects and Mark Melancon. Melancon at the time was coming off a bad year, but immediately refound his form and turned into a top ten reliever in all of baseball. Hanrahan had arm issues and has not pitched in over 2 years. The silver lining for the Sox was that they received Brock Holt who has turned himself into one of the better utility players in the league. 

Love the Museum Collection relic! 

Speaking of Melancon, he is in his last year of his contract. I fully expect the Bucs will deal him at some point. Not good business to pay a reliever 10 million when you are a small market team. 

 The Pirates still remained intrigued by Barnes, but he cannot stay healthy. This will probably be a make or break season.

I have some nice cards of Barnes so it would be cool to see him hit is stride.

 Ike Davis was terrible for the Pirates. Marte and Cutch are the backbone of the franchise.

Stickers!

Thanks for the cards Rob! I still have some Rangers sitting around to send your way.

Thanks for reading.