Here is the latest mailday roundup. I did receive surprise packages from Night Owl and Zippy Zappy that I was pretty happy about.
On another random note, I am improving my wantlist to a much more comprehensive needs list. It will be a long project. I have done 1981-2004 so far. When I get caught up I will go back from 1980 to the beginning. As I have been doing this, I have noticed a couple of things.
1. I have a lot more holes in my collection than I thought I did. Several team sets that I thought I had completed, are actually not done. The most annoying was 2002 Upper Deck 40 Man which I swore I had done. I am missing several cards in fact.
2. My collection page is incorrect in several places. Which means I need to redo it entirely. This project has now branched from doing a complete wantlist to completely redoing my entire collection. This is going to take weeks.
But, now for the cards:
2. Chris Young. Young proved to be a very good fourth outfielder with some impressive power. I am happy he will be back next year.
4. David Price. Price can look to Rick Porcello for guidance from a pitcher that was bad his first year in Boston and improved greatly his second year. We find out Wednesday whether Porcello will win the Cy Young or not. Even if he doesn't, it has been a great year.
5. A.J. Pierzynski. Pierzynski was simply bad in Boston. It was disappointing coming off a season in which he hit 17 home runs that A.J. played so badly in Boston. He was just a stopgap and his struggles allowed Christian Vazquez to come to the Majors.
6. Felix Doubront. I just got done putting up a big post on Doubront. He was a favorite player of mine for his time in Boston, particularly in 2012-2013.
7. Eduardo Rodriguez. I think E-Rod will have a breakout season in 2017. You heard it here first.
8. Brock Holt. Making Holt the starting left-fielder at the beginning of the 2016 season was a mistake. He has always been better as a super-utility man.
9. Jean Machi. I still wish Boston would have re-signed him. I liked him a lot in 2015.
10. Wily Mo Pena. This is another player I irrationally loved watching. Most of that comes from him hitting a mammoth home run at a game I attended in Kansas City.
11. Curt Schilling. Schilling was up over 50% on the last Hall of Fame ballot. I know a lot of his opinions are comments are distasteful, but he was a terrific pitcher who deserves to be in the Hall.
12. Brian Johnson. This card leaves me with just one more base card to get from 2016 A&G. Of course it is Xander Bogaerts, a player who seems to elude me frequently.
15. Andrew Bailey. This is one of the Boston Strong parallel cards. They are hard to find, and I only have two so far. My two are players who were not on the postseason roster. I need to keep searching for these. Bailey was doing reasonably well until going down with an injury, but that opened up the closer position for Koji Uehara, so no real problem there.
16. Jason Varitek. I am running out of cards to chase down for Varitek. I would love to see him show up in Archives next year.
17. Blake Swihart. Swihart is likely ticketed for Pawtucket to start 2017 with Sandy Leon and Christian Vazquez as the catchers in Boston. He will be up in Boston soon, unless he gets traded.
18. David Ortiz. Just one more SP to go in 2016 Heritage.
19. Xander Bogaerts. X is also the last remaining base card I need for Donruss Optic, though I do have this parallel now.
20. Babe Ruth. He was the last base card from 2016 Archives, but my first blue parallel.
Up next is the Night Owl package. Greg took a look at my want list and came up with some cards, though a few cards that he sent ended up being duplicates, just because someone else sent them first apparently.
22. Brian Johnson. Another casualty to a bizarre situation. Johnson may be knocking at the Major League door in 2017.
23. Cy Young. This is my favorite card from Greg's package. I had just added this to my Wantlist recently and now I have added it to my collection. I love cards of Cy Young that use photos that are not used over and over again.
Thanks for the cards Greg!
And now we have the Zippy Zapping:
24. Tyler Hill. Hill is a young, rising prospect in the Red Sox system. He had a terrific season in Lowell and is likely headed to a promotion next season.
25. Josh Beckett. This is your standard Zippy Zapping. Minor league cards and cards from Japan. This is the card from the Sega Card Gen game. Beckett seems to be having a resurgence in my collection of late.
26. Josh Pennington. Another guy in line for a promotion after a successful season in short-season Lowell. I am less high on Pennington than Hill personally, but he may be one to follow.
Thanks Kenny!
And last:
27. Mookie Betts. Tied once again with JBJ at 94 in the race between the Killer B's for first to reach 100. Bogaerts is lagging behind at 86.
28. Wade Boggs. I really like this Gold Label design. Boggs is still one of my all-time favorites.
29. Carl Yastrzemski. This card celebrates Yaz's 3,000th hit. He is still the only player to have his 3,000th hit with Boston. They have had four players hit their 500th home run with them (Jimmie Foxx, Ted Williams, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz) and two pitchers win their 300th game (Cy Young, Lefty Grove), but just one with 3,000 hits.
30. Ryan Hanigan. This is a Chrome Sapphire Blue parallel. I found a seller on Ebay selling singles from this set which was apparently only available online. The prices were reasonable but I really didn't want to buy a lot of them. I tried to think of the most obscure Red Sox player from the set, and I came up with Hanigan who played in 89 games over two seasons. Hanigan is not likely to be back next year. He was good defensively but simply could not hit.
31. Aaron Hill. Another player not likely to be back. This is the pink parallel numbered to 50. Hill was unfortunately a disappointment after being acquired from Milwaukee. He hit just two home runs and hit .218/.287/.290 and cost a couple of prospects, including a pitcher close to the Majors. Disappointing.
Glad you liked the small trio.
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