Still Kicking

Figured it was time to throw something up here to stop the blog from being sent to the abyss.  I will say that I use the blog a lot more for research purposes then I would have ever thought when I stopped posting in 2018.  It would be upsetting to see it disappear.  

When I was blogging I was a notorious unorganized collector but I kept my blog tidy.  The use of tags of the players mentioned in each post proved to be very helpful in my organization of my collection post blogging.   Those mail day posts that seemed forced and boring were some of the most helpful! 

I'm come a long way in getting things in order.  

My initial thought was to get all my WVU collection in binders.  Figured this was a doable venture and eventually I accomplished that goal.   I took that momentum (plus the time that Covid gave me for indoor projects) and started chipping away at Pirate stuff.  This helped me get cards that had been stored away since I was in high school/college into a more accessible area.  Still a ton of work to do but it's fun to think of a player like Kevin Young and in a matter of seconds have access to all the cards I have of him.  

I'm still actively buying cards, just in different ways.  In the blogging years it was 90% eBay and the rest COMC.   That has flipped to being predominantly COMC with a few trusted Twitter sellers helping me out with my more obscure card projects.  My eBay purchases these days are mainly Topps Now or team breaks when Heritage is released.  

My brain hasn't adjusted to how much people are willing to pay for cards.  It's a good thing, but I'm no longer able to find obscure 90's cards in the $5-10 range, or Bowman parallels of obscure prospects.  The awesome thing about cards though is that you can always find something to grab your attention.  Lately I've been messing around with Pirate Topps Black parallels and college issue (ie Prizm Draft) autos of Pirate prospects.  Getting a lot of autos for $3-$10 range which is a significant discount compared to Bowman.  

I'm still active on Twitter or X or whatever the hell it is.  I do like interacting with a lot of my old blogging friends there.  If you're on there come find me.   

BobWalkthePlank

@walktheplank82

See ya in a couple years...

Quarantine Projects

Hello old friends!  Figured it was about time to do a post before my blog gets lost in the ether.  Hard to believe I retired the blog almost two years back. 

The retirement was not in vain as I continue to strive towards my goal of organization.  If you follow me on Twitter I've been posting periodic updates.  Quarantine has provided a unique opportunity to make a serious dent on a goal that at certain points seemed unattainable. 

Forever the elephant in the room was a crawl space full of cards that had been packed away after multiple moves.  With some prodding from my wife the project was tackled in early April.  It took a month of consolidating and moving but all the cards are finally in one place.  The task at hand now is tackling all those monster boxes and get the Pirates in binders and trade bait separated. 

Obviously the project had some fun moments.  As I was consolidating all these cards to the monster boxes my eyes locked onto a few unique finds. 

The only card that was kind of a surprise was the Kobe.  When I found a 500 count box of mid 90's, early 2000's basketball I took the time to go ahead and see what was in there.  When I was initially going through the box it seemed more likely that I would unearth an early Lebron James instead of Kobe, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a Topps rookie. 

Silver lining now is that I've started to send out packages again (4 last week!).  Many of the cards unearthed are from a time period in which many people weren't collecting (early 2000's) so it should make good trade bait. 

With the organization projects I haven't spent much time adding new cards to my collection.  I have a large amount ready to ship on COMC, but they seem to be running at a snails pace so I've let those sit.  I think I've only utilized eBay two or three times since the calendar switched to 2020. 

The biggest addition came via box break from the Card Papoy and Brian of HSCA.  I kind of thought we hit our high point when I pulled Kevin an Aaron Judge auto last year, but then he pulled me the above Ichiro.  Needless to say I was excited to get such a unique card.  I actually have it on a shelf next to my some of my higher end Pirate cards.  Box prices are so out of control now that Brian, Kevin and I put the brakes on our breaks.  Trying to workout a possible reverse box in the near future just to keep up our normal trade correspondence.

I have a fairly big collection of unopened boxes.  A lot of the junk wax era stuff was bought in the early 2000's at auctions and packed away in a Rubbermaid container in my crawl. The late 90's stuff was accumulated by rounding out purchases on Steel City over the years when buying boxes for our breaks.  Nice to have everything in one place now to have a better inventory.  Interesting to see the renewed interests in some of these sets.  I think many player collectors realize those insert sets from the 90's are much rarer than low numbered auto cards now.

Lots of loose packs too.  Many of these were courtesy of Wes as part of his 1056335645545 packages he sent my way over the years.  I often joke that I have a whole wing of my house devoted to items he sent my way.  As I continue to go through things that joke quickly turned to reality.  Wes has a heavy footprint in my collection. 

That is pretty much the full update collecting wise for me. My wife and I have cancelled any travel this year so we instead got a new porch on our house.  Helps make the stay-cation a little more relaxing and provided a little more quarantine square footage.  I try to fill downtime with Zoom happy hours with my out of town friends to stay in touch.  While not ideal it helps pass the time and have a social outlet.  Things are starting to open up again in my town, but with my daughters health history we have been avoiding most in person contact as much as possible. 

Hope everyone is doing well.  Big virtual cheers to all my old blogging pals.  Later

Boo

Well hello there old friends.  Didn't mean to scare you.

It's your old friend Matt providing a proof of life.

Thought it was an appropriate time to provide an update so Google doesn't throw my blog in the trash. Being that my last post was in October the death blow could have happened any day.

Thankfully I don't feel as cardboard isolated as I was expecting when I shutdown the blog. Twitter has given me a nice platform to stay in touch.  While nowhere near as fun as blogging I can at least give proof of life to my old friends.

Like most social media Twitter is a vast wasteland of festering garbage, but over time you can make it a handy tool.  You just have to learn to navigate the 1000 people trying to sell you crap and "trendsetters" trying to tell you what you should be buying.  As you can tell by the use of two gifs Twitter has already polluted my brain.

Collecting wise I have had some fun developments over the past months. I had mentioned that I was close to finishing my WVU organization project.  Happily I can say that it is complete.....at least the first stage.  I have everything in binders in alphabetical order.  Some players had so much that they got their own.  While I'm still not at the Excel sheet or Trading Card Database level of organization I can at least open a binder and see if I have a card in a short amount of time.  The long term goal would be Excel sheet level, but baby steps.....

Back in October I had also made reference to planning the great Pirate sorting project.  While I still have no idea what the hell I'm doing.  I'm giving it the old college try.

The sorting trays are at least helping me see what players are best represented.  This has allowed me start binders for some of the long term Buccos like Cutch, Marte and Bay.  Its a big project....like 10 monster box and multiple plastic storage containers big, but its rewarding to see things taking shape.  I also enjoy doing it which helps. Everything just comes down to time.  Sorting is one of those things that in order to clean up a mess you have to make a mess. 

Between all the organization projects I've still managed to add some cards.  The majority of my focus has been my Jevon Carter collection. 

Basketball collectors go crazy over Prizm, but so far my favorite additions have been the Rated Rookies and Certified Material parallels.  I guess I like cards that if you stare at them long enough may cause a seizure. 

The Pirates will always be the main focus, but honestly I haven't bought too much in that area. I still scour checklists for guys getting their first cards, but the majority of the acquisitions have been potluck/obscure.

I'm a sucker for obscure autos like this.  Sets like Topps Lineage and Heritage have some great names and I've been making my way through the lists.  This Bob Del Greco and Gair Allie is my most recent acquisition. 

He has a terrible auto, but I don't care.  Look at that beauty. Bonilla and Manny Sanguillen were always the top of the list for needing Pirate certified autos and finally over the past two years both have came to be. Now we just need the Holy Grail.....BOB WALK

When I first started blogging I had made reference that I use to collect everything under the sun, but consolidated to make the Pirates and WVU the main focus.  A fun loophole is adding dual autos like this Trevor Story/Josh Bell auto. 

How about an obscure patch card! When I saw this it was a must buy too. 

If you like to "prospect" but don't want to spend crazy amounts of money, alternatives exist.  If I were to buy the Bowman alternative to this Contenders card it would cost $100's.  This cost me less than $10. With that being said I love Bowman cards and try to get all the Pirates that I can.  In my experience their is almost always a lull in which to prices come down to a more manageable amount.  For every Trout/Harper you have tons of other guys that either get hurt or don't perform at some point that causes said player to lose some prospect luster. 

Obviously I'm speaking as a Pirate collector but I'm fairly certain this holds true across the board.  Even the "hot" players now like Austin Meadows, Cole Tucker and Tyler Glasnow had points you could pick up autos on the cheap.  Tucker and Glasnow were at $5 for extended periods of time.  Tons of stories of Aaron Judge autos selling for less than $10. Patience is always a big thing if you want to save money.   

I saw a superfractor 1/1 of former Pirate prospect and current Blue Jay farmhand Reese McGuire sell for over $1300 back in March.  His ceiling is likely of a backup at the MLB level.  Even if he turned into an everyday player that is still a crazy amount.  You could literally buy an auto of Trout, Pujols, Harper, Jeter, Betts and multiple other people and still have money to spare.  You could even get a Mike Trout Bowman Sterling auto for about $1300.  That is always what is mind boggling. 

The beauty about collecting is their is no wrong way.  My thought process is always going to be as a collector rather than an investor.  So it probably is true that when you get that big player it more than pays for tons of misses.  I just have a hard time grasping the gold auto /50 of a guy that is not even rated as a "top" guy in that system going for $1000's.  I just feel if you waited at least 6 months past release you will save yourself a lot of money.  I guess its the Mike Trout/Albert Pujols syndrome.  The fear of missing out on the next big thing. 

Ultimately my inability the grasp the thought process behind these purchases doesn't mean they are wrong.....In some ways I do enjoy the attention these bring to the hobby.  The overall sportscard catalog is vast.  If you can't find something you like you probably need to take a long hard look in the mirror.   Its reasonable to question the direction the hobby is heading but trends generally come and go.  Just sit back and enjoy the ride. 

Enough of that.  See what card Twitter has done to me. 

Travel wise I've been pretty dormant over the winter.  That is about to change here in a month as I'll be in San Diego and Orlando in May.  Baseball trip and the cartoon mouse will be a lot in a short span, but both will be fun in their own way.

Hope everyone is enjoying the baseball season.  The Pirates can't hit worth a damn, but the pitching has been awesome so things are going pretty well.  Probably not sustainable, but I'm enjoying the ride.

Thanks for reading. 

Hello Neighbor

Hard to believe its been close to four months since I announced my blogging retirement.  I do miss it, but the work reasons I cited for leaving are still very much present.  With that being said I figured I do one of those back to school things where I talk about my summer.  It will also help the blog from becoming totally dormant when/if my current schedule changes. 

Most of my hobby time over the summer was spent organizing.  I got the majority of my WVU collection in binders which like any organization project took ten times longer than I hoped.  Initially I figured it would take 5 binders, but quickly figured out about 3 times that was needed.  I have way too many Steve Slaton cards!

I'm in preliminary stages of planning out my Pirate organization project.  I feel like I'm going to need several industrial engineers on retainer. Right now my thinking is getting long term Pirates like Cutch, Marte, Neil Walker and Jason Bay in binders while organizing monster boxes for shorter term guys.  Time will tell.

New arrivals into the collection have been WVU dominated.  2018 was an odd year for Pirate releases. Checklists continued to be dominated by the likes of Gregory Polanco and Starling Marte.  While I like collecting each guy, I'm more than set on having a nice rounded out collection of each.  Just type in Starling Marte in trading card database.  SO MANY CARDS!

In some ways its kind of a throwback to the early/mid 2000's when most of my new additions were retired players. 

I bought this redemption not long after Archives released.  This has always been a nice way to save a few bucks over the years.  As I expected, the turnaround was very short so the gamble paid off. 

As the summer ends in Morgantown everything shifts to football.  While football will never be a favorite sport for me I do enjoy this time of year.  I live within walking distance of the stadium so our house becomes somewhat of a meeting ground for all my out of town friends during home games.

 As usual with most of my posts over the years I just throw a bunch of pics with complete disregard to timing and subject matter. 

I rarely buy non core collection stuff these days, but made an exception for this Bill James auto. 

 Four years ago my wife and I decided to have a combined birthday celebration in which we hosted a few friends for an Oktoberfest themed tailgate. Fast forward to present day and that celebration has blossomed into a huge party which we had close to 60 people over.  The sausages were direct from Wisconsin.  Its a good bit of work to pull this party off now, but we love it. 

 As I mentioned above, the WVU collection has taken center stage since my retirement.  The fact that former WVU point guard Jevon Carter actually has cards is a big deal.  I enjoy college basketball a ton so I'm glad I'll have something to look for besides straggler Joe Alexander and Devin Ebanks cards.

 Good lord I'm jumping around like crazy....

The obscure retired autos from Heritage can be tough to find and expensive.  I've been trying to dig up some stragglers that I've missed over the years like this Harding Peterson.

 Back in the early summer I picked up a handful of Will Grier cards from the Leaf Army set knowing they would be too expensive once the season starts.  I'm glad I did.

 One of the few 2018 cards I picked up.  Loved the Homestead Grays uniform pic too much not to buy it.

 I went to Asheville NC in August.  If you like craft beer I highly recommend a visit.  They have almost 40 breweries within the city limits. 

 Asheville is also famous for being home to America's largest home, the Biltmore. 

 With so many breweries in Asheville you have to do things to set yourself apart.  Of course having great beer is always number 1, but good food is nice too.   This was dubbed Spanish surf and turf featuring bone marrow and octopus.

 Cool mural at Green Man brewery.

 This is a shot of Canaan Valley in WV. 

 Cool shot from a Black Bears game in Morgantown. 

So, while I'm not blogging I'm still very much involved in all my usual shenanigans.  At the very least this might help reduce the amount of Viagra and "make money at home" comments on my old posts. 

Hope everyone enjoyed summer! For those still lucky enough to have their chosen baseball teams still actually playing, good luck!

Email Exchange Turns into Fun Blog Post (20 Years of Crappy Pirates)

Over the course of the last couple of weeks I've been exchanging emails with a close friend of mine trying to determine what we think is the most egregious Pirates lineup over the past 20 years.  We set a few perimeters because we didn't want this to be a failed prospect list (300 ab's , 100 ip).  I've documented the Pirates failed draft picks on numerous occasions so I figured we would try something new.

The idea was to showcase a lineup of guys that were given way too long of a leash.  You have to take in account some context when doing this as well.  For the most part we avoided young players on bad teams.  Even if they are bad those are the guys you want to get a chance.  With that being said a few young guys made the list because they were so bad they had to be mentioned. 

C - Rod Barajas -

The Pirates collapsed hard in 2011 and came into 2012 with some glaring needs.  In desperate need of a backstop the Pirates signed aging journeyman Rod Barajas.  It was disappointing because the teams core was looking legit.  Sure enough it failed miserably and Barajas was replaced by another long time minor leaguer Michael Mckenry.  The Pirates would go on and have an even more soul crushing collapse to finish below .500.

This was a unanimous choice

1B - Randall Simon

First base has long been a black hole for the Pirates.  They've tried everything you can think of and literally nothing worked for the better part of 20 years.  The biggest disappointment of the 20 year span we examined would be Adam LaRoche. Expectations were very high and he could never meet them.  The weird thing with LaRoche is you could say he was our best and most disappointing player at that position.  For our project LaRoche was still too productive.

The Pirates have a laundry list of guys that most casual fans would say "I don't remember him being a Pirate."  My buddy's first draft came back with Daryle Ward.  While Daryle was truly inept I countered with Simon and Lyle Overbay.  Truth be told no wrong answer existed.  We agreed to eliminate Ward on the fact that he played outfield too.  Simon beat out Overbay because Randall had no track record or pedigree to really warrant playing.  Simon as a Pirate had 514 career at bats and a -1.7 WAR.

2B - Jose Castillo  - (Co Captain)

I say Co-Captain in the sense that he is one of the guys we knew had to be on the list.  Castillo is a player where the narrative never really matched the production on the field.  Announcers would always talk about his slick fielding and power bat.  Truth be told as defensive metrics started to become a thing he never really graded out that well.  While Castillo would showcase big power at times, he was so madly inconsistent that his bat was never close to being average.

The Pirates stuck with him over the course of a whopping 1765 at bats.  He accumulated -2.7 WAR during his tenure.  YIKES!

SS - Clint Barmes

We had some fun exchanges on this one.  My friend had chosen Pat Meares and I had Barmes.  It was truly a coin flip, but the narrative of Barmes was the deciding factor.  A lot of the reason Meares was bad can likely be attributed to injury shortened seasons.

My vote for Barmes was more for the fact that he was a weak link on some good Pirate teams and that he was resigned after his original two year deal was over in 2013.

3B - Andy Laroche (Co Captain)

A sure fire pick for each of us.  I told you that we tried not to penalize younger players but LaRoche was the main exception. First, he was centerpiece in the three team trade that sent Jason Bay to Boston and Manny Ramirez to LA.  Obviously it is not uncommon for prospect oriented returns to fail, but the Pirates had to hit hear and LaRoche was so bad.

The other bad thing is that the Pirates did everything in their power to give him opportunity to play and develop and he just couldn't produce.  Over the course of 1044 at bats he accumulated .6 WAR. Some secondary fallout occurred here as well.  In order to keep LaRoche at third the Pirates traded away Jose Bautista for a minor league catcher.

OF - Jeromy Burntiz

This one falls under the category of totally unnecessary signing which was a hallmark of GM Dave Littlefield. Obviously, Burnitz was an accomplished major leaguer having some productive years with Milwaukee.  By the time the Pirates signed him in 2006 he was 37 years and well past his prime. Burnitz only had 313 at bats as a Pirate, but was an easy addition to the list for producing at such a low level.

OF - Jose Tabata -

I'll keep this one short as I talk about Tabata all the time.  Tabata wasa a former Yankee prospect that was traded to the Pirates for Xavier Nady and Damaso Marte.  It was quite the roller coaster ride from there.  He shot up the Pirate system and became a very productive young player.  So productive that the Pirates signed him to a long term extension to keep his prices stable. Surprising it went south drastically.  Hamstring injuries, and perceived lack of dedication put him in the doghouse.  He could never regain the hit tool and speed that made him such a drool worthy player.

OF - Lastings Milledge

We had a tough time coming up with the last outfielder.  So many names made sense here, but most fell into the category of guys the Pirates drafted and couldn't develop.  The others didn't hit our 300ab minimum.  We chose Milledge because of his prospect pedigree and the fact it was the type of trade fans had been wanting the Pirates make.  So his failure seemed even more disappointing than normal.  Fortunately the Pirates saved face a little as one of the throw ins in the deal with the Nationals was Joel Hanrahan who developed into a nice reliever for a few years.

SP - Jeff Locke (Co-Captain)

Here is a man that had 9 lives when surviving roster purges with the Pirates.  The guy was just destroyed in the local media to the point you almost felt sorry for him.  Long story short he pitched 644 innings for the Pirates, with the bulk of the working coming in all three playoff years.  He makes the list because you always had to wonder if they would have replaced him with someone just a hair better than one of those wildcard teams could had been a division winner.   I'm all for younger pitchers getting an opportunity, but his leash was just too long.

SP- Kevin Correia

Just a pitcher that wasn't any good that the Pirates decided to give too much opportunity.  A very confusing signing that never really made much sense.

SP - Jon Niese

 Very few innings with the Buccos but the narrative was too good to pass up.  The Pirates traded Neil Walker for Jon Niese.  Obviously, Walker was a fan favorite so it was going to take a lot for Niese to get in the good graces of the fanbase.  He was horrendous from day one.   What makes it even more damning is the fact that Pirates GM Neil Huntington gave a public interview saying how big of a mistake it was to trade Walker.  He said he was trying to get a MLB piece instead of prospects and it bit him in the ass.

SP - Ryan Vogelsong

Vogelsong is an easy guy to root for, but both of his Pirate tenures were bad.  Once thought of as a long term piece to the Pirates rotation in the early 2000's, he could just never get it going.  After about a 5 year stint of playing wherever he could overseas an opportunity arose with the Giants and he took advantage.  Eventually he would make his way back to the Pirates again in 2016 and he once again failed to put up numbers.

SP - Matt Morris (Write-in Candidate)

I put write in candidate because Morris didn't meet our innings pitched requirement.  What Morris had was bad results at a very hefty price tag.  The trade for Morris will go down as one of the more head scratching ones in Pirates recent history.  When the Pirates traded Rajai Davis for Morris they also inherited 10 million in salary.  All the warning signs were there that Morris was a shell of his former self.  Maybe it would have made some sense to take him on if the Giants were eating the salary, but for some reason the Pirates took it on too.  Of course Morris was eventually released the following season and Davis has had a very successful career as a fourth outfielder.  

RP - Jared Hughes and Daniel McCutchen. - 

Collectively these two had almost 500 innings and combined for - 1.7 WAR.  Metrics hate guys that can't miss bats and that sums up these two perfectly.  

So this was a fun project. It was fun taking a long standing email chain and adding some visuals.  It wasn't an exact science, but I felt we captured the soul of the project.