The silly season for baseball cards

 

Apparently "silly season" has a lot of definitions. I know it primarily from golf. The "silly season" for the PGA and LPGA is around now/the end of the year, when random tournaments, like the Shark Shootout, are played in the offseason.

In baseball-card collecting, I consider the silly season as whenever Topps Update is released.

It used to be a little more clearly defined. Update was released in October or November and not many other baseball card sets were released around it. This year Update was released in mid-October. Then, two weeks later, Allen & Ginter, which used to come out in July, was released. Stadium Club is about to drop and then Chrome Update shortly after that and Holiday shortly after that.

So silly season was pretty quick (although I'm sure some would lump Chrome Update and Holiday into silly season, too). But the beauty of silly season in cards is it returns every time you open a pack of Topps Update!

The set is stuffed with filler and nonsense, cards that easily could have been cut from the checklist. It clouds what I used to love about Topps' update sets in the 1980s -- getting cards of players in their new uniforms. 

I've decided that I'm not going to bother even sampling any Topps Update this year. I just went and bought the Dodgers team set and that gives me a good enough idea of what's involved.

Here's some filler right now. These veteran combos cards just aren't interesting to me. I suppose the one with Ohtani and Yamamoto is a little fun, but I'm tired of seeing other teams in my Dodgers collection that isn't a play in the field. The photo with Ohtani and Trout is pretty lame.

 

 

These cards serve as checklists on the back. The themes on both make them "record breaker" cards or "season highlights" cards. I would've liked for them to be treated like that, as subsets, I would enjoy them more, instead of this randomness.

 

This Rookie Debut Update filler has been going on for awhile. Topps uses the date of a player's MLB debut as an excuse for an extra rookie card of a particular player. In some cases it means two cards of the same player in Update. In other cases, a player shows up in Update despite appearing in the main set and not changing teams. It's weird. It's filler. It's silly.

For the two guys above, Pages has two cards in Update. Yamamoto has a card in Update despite appearing in Series 2.

 

Here's another rookie debut card for a player who showed up in Series 1 for crying out loud!

 

 

Finally we're at a couple of cards that belong in Update in the traditional sense -- although just barely.

 

Both Dinelson Lamet and Ricky Vanasco are weird inclusions. Lamet pitched in three games for the Dodgers with his last appearance occurring on April 5. Ricky Vanasco appeared in two games. That's it. (That photo is wildly different from everything else in 2024 Topps, probably because Topps could find like one photo of Vanasco).

 

While I appreciate cards of "every player," Topps doesn't manage that (this would be a job for Topps Total). Here are some Dodgers relief pitchers who were around before the Topps Update deadline that did not get cards in Update: 

Anthony Banda - 48 games

Michael Grove - 39 games

Yohan Ramirez - 27 games

J.P. Feyereisen - 10 games

Neal Ramirez - 8 games

Nabil Crismat - 5 games

Elieser Hernandez - 5 games

Any of those guys (but especially Banda and Grove) are more deserving of a card than Lamet and Vanasco. It's already tough enough not getting Dodger cards of Cavan Biggio, Tommy Edman, Jack Flaherty, Kevin Kiermaier, etc., due to production deadlines, but there are still guys Topps could have included that are more appropriate. That's just someone not paying attention.

 

So that's a lot of silly cards before even getting to anything that is worth me buying Update.

 

The James Paxton at the top of the post is one of those good, old quality Update cards. Granted Paxton was off the Dodgers by the end of July, but he was a significant contributor for the first half of the season.

 

 

Among the Dodgers cards that aren't filler just one is of a hitter. This is it. That's understandable because most of the updating through the course of the year was to the pitching staff with all of the injuries. So there is:

Tyler Glasnow. Eventually out for the year.

 

Gavin Stone. Eventually out for the year.

Landon Knack. Forced to fill in before his time, multiple times, including in the World Series, because people were out for the year.

 

And a whole bunch of relievers. Because the Dodgers couldn't have won the World Series without a bullpen game or two or three or four ... because people were out for the year.

So this team set could have been created with about eight cards -- or a few more if Topps could've included cards of some of the other players I mentioned.

It almost seems like Update isn't really necessary anymore. But I guess it sells, because Topps keeps putting it out. I'm not sure if I'd miss it if they didn't.