Friday, March 26, 2010

Calling all cards, Anthony Lerew, where are you?

As I mentioned in my earlier post Stage 2: Wanting the Cards, I had looked for a baseball card set that wasn't full of inserts, short runs, alternate cards, etc., as I didn't really want any of that stuff. My search had been partially in vain. What do I mean partially? Well, I have learned that Topps apparently puts out a Topps Baseball Factory Set each year. This set basically compiles all the base cards from their Series 1 and Series 2 sets for the year into one. That sounds great! No unwanted chase cards, or extraneous stuff that I'm not really interested in. Now, comes the partially part.

If you take a look at this blog, I think it would be pretty easy to see that when you boil it down, I'm really a Kansas City Royals fan. Sure, having cards for other players is cool and all, but what I would really like is a set of basic cards that includes every player, for every team. Why every team? Well I'm sure I'm not the only one out there who would like to have a card for every player on their team for a given year, and if I'm gonna ask for every Royal, I imagine someone else wants every Cardinal. I apologize if this sounds greedy, but if you ask my wife, she would say my completist attitude is annoying to her as well. :) To make matters worse, I'm not only a completist, I'd also like them to have the same format, not some being hologram cards, or a card splashed with gigantic ribbons of color, you get the idea I'm sure.

So, after discovering the existence of these Factory Sets I did a little research. I wanted to see how many players from the 2009 Royals are actually in the 2009 Topps Factory Set. I found a total of 21 players listed for the Royals. Of those 21, only 19 actually played in a game for them in 2009. That left 26 players who DID play a game for the Royals without a card in the set. They are, in order of number of games played:

Player................Games
Alberto Callaspo........155
Mitch Maier.............127
Willie Bloomquist.......125
Yuniesky Betancourt......71
Jamey Wright.............65
Brayan Pena..............64
Juan Cruz................46
Josh Anderson............44
John Bale................43
Roman Colon..............43
Kyle Farnsworth..........41
Ron Mahay................41
Luis Hernandez...........37
Robinson Tejeda..........35
Horacio Ramirez..........19
Ryan Freel...............18
Bruce Chen...............17
Tug Hulett...............15
Sidney Ponson............14
Yasuhiko Yabuta..........12
Dusty Hughes..............8
Victor Marte..............8
Carlos Rosa...............7
Lenny DiNardo.............5
Doug Waechter.............5
Anthony Lerew.............3


I can understand some of these guys not having cards, Anthony Lerew only played in 3 games after all. I'm probably one of the few folks, other than Anthony Lerew, who wants this card. Some I don't understand, Alberto Callaspo played in 155 games and has no card in this set? Sure, I'm naive and don't understand all the business ins and outs of player deals with card companies, I'll admit that, I just know what I want. I'd like to see maybe a Series 3 set from Topps, that throws a card in there for all the players that weren't in Series 1 or 2 and played a game in the Majors that year. Tall order I know, but with Topps being the exclusive Official Baseball Card Company of Major League Baseball, its something I'd like to see.

Barring the ability to get a card for every player on a team, for a given year, in a single set, I'm wondering if someone out there has a database that shows what set a player IS in for a given year, or if that player even has a card in existence. For example, is there someplace on the internet that I can go to and:

1. Select Kansas City Royals - 2009
2. See every player that played (even Anthony Lerew) that year
3. See what set they have a card in
4. If no card exists, tell me that

If I could find that, I could at least feed my completist monster. :)

2 comments:

  1. kind of a cross between baseballreference.com and teamsets4u.com i guess. those are the two sites i use to determine who played for the dodgers in any given year and whether they have dodger cards or not for that year.

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  2. Hadn't heard of teamsets4u.com, will have to check that one out. Thanks for the heads up gcrl!

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