No limit to this team roster

 

 

I've been updating my Dodgers binders again. It's lasted me all spring and through the summer.

Not a coincidence it coincides with baseball season because I like to update binders while I'm watching a game. It keeps me busy through commercials (if I'm watching network/cable TV) and calms me through irritating announcers (Karl Ravetch, Chip Caray). It especially helps while watching Dodgers games as I almost can't conceive of viewing a Dodger game now without something else to do -- thank you Dave Roberts pitching changes. It's kind of like my blanket during a horror movie.

 

I'm nearing the end of this update, closing in on this year's Dodgers cards, and I've known all along that the Topps flagship count for the Dodgers is pretty large this year.

 

How large? Well, seven years ago I wrote a post in which I totaled the size of the Dodgers team set for each year of Topps flagship since 1952.  It ranged from a low of 15 to a high of 37. The 2024 set is much closer to 37 than 15. There is no limit to Topps' team rosters.

So it's time to update that post with the years that have arrived since. I'm not going to repeat all the years I covered before, you can read the original post if you like. But I will give the average for each decade and a high and low number until we get to the 2010s.

1950s

Average: 25.13 players

High: 35 (1959)

Low: 16 (1954)

1960s

Average: 28.3

High: 37 (1960)

Low: 24 (1963, 1969)

1970s

Average: 26.3

High: 31 (1972)

Low: 23 (1973, 1977)

1980s

Average: 28.6

High: 32 (1982)

Low: 25 (1983)

1990s

Average: 24.3

High: 32 (1991)

Low: 15 (1996)

2000s

Average: 21.8

High: 26 (2003)

Low: 15 (2000)

 

2010s

2010: 21

2011: 18

2012: 20

2013: 22

2014: 25

2015: 22

2016: 28

2017: 28

2018: 32

2019: 24

Average: 24.0

High: 32 (2018)

Low: 18 (2011)

2020s

2020: 29

2021: 31

2022: 22

2023: 21

2024: 32

Average: 27.0

High: 32 (2024)

Low: 21 (2023)

Through the first half of the 2020s, the average number for Topps' Dodgers' team sets is the largest since the 1980s and the third-highest overall. The 2024 team set, with 32 cards, is tied for the fourth-highest ever.

However, the 2024 total is a bit inflated with a decent amount of fluff included.

These are all checklists cards, easily the most to show Dodgers since these kinds of checklist cards started appearing about a decade ago.

But even if I discount those cards, 2024 still produced 28 Dodgers cards, which is among the better totals since the 1990s. A few years that seem to match or exceed that 28 total includes stuff like individual league leader cards or, in the case of the 2021 set, World Series cards -- which I am not complaining about.

I don't know what the totals are for other teams. I'd like to see every team have around 26 cards since that's the roster limit for teams at any given time (except September). It could even go higher since teams are calling up and sending down/shelving players at rates that I have never seen in almost 50 years of following baseball.

But please no returning to the late 1990s, early 2000s when Topps led you to believe that a team got by with just 16 players.