I read a story on the wire at work last week about Red Sox pitcher Zack Kelly, perhaps you saw it, too. It ended up on youtube and social media as well.
For Photo Day at Red Sox camp, Kelly wrote a message on the paper that featured his name and number for ID purposes. It said: "5th year in MLB. Can I please have a card?"
Kelly is 30 years old. He has pitched in the majors since 2022. He appeared in 49 games for the Red Sox in 2024. He appeared in 28 for them last year. He has 98 total MLB games. His only cards are from minor-league team-issued sets.
Dan Altavilla has pitched in the major leagues for eight years -- 152 games total. He started with the Mariners in 2016, throwing in as many as 41 games in 2017. He moved on to the Padres in 2020, then played for the Royals and last year was in 28 games for the White Sox with two saves.
He has no Topps cards. His last non-minor league cards were in 2014 with Panini's Prizm Draft Picks Series and Elite Extra Edition (it's possible this is a licensing thing for Altavilla, I don't know).
Tyler Matzek was all over Bowman cards in 2011 and 2012. He appeared with Topps, too, in its Pro Debut set and Heritage Minor League set. And when it came time to produce Matzek's rookie card, Topps was there. He showed up in flagship and Heritage in 2015 (I don't know why there's no rookie logo).
Then he was dropped. Fair enough, Matzek didn't play in the majors between 2016-19. He was in the minors and in independent ball.
But in 2019, the Braves signed him. He showed up in 21 games in 2020. He appeared in 69 game in 2021, the year the Braves won the World Series and has pitched in 20 postseason games total. Forty-two more games in 2022. Injuries have since taken hold but he was there in 2025 and has totaled 175 appearances.
His only Topps cards since 2015 are Topps Now, related to the Braves winning the World Series, and a difficult-to-find 2021 Allen & Ginter mini.
I am sure there are many other cases like these of veteran players without cards.
These are the players I have in mind when I write about Topps forcing an army of rookie cards into its sets.
I write about it a lot.
Often when I write about a player like Jon Moscot, who appeared in 2016 Topps Update only because Topps could slap a rookie card logo on the card -- and pitched in eight games total in his big-league career -- someone will comment that they like the idea of every player who made a major league appearance getting a card.
Yes. I do, too.
But that's usually not the point. My reason for citing this is that Topps doesn't really care about making a representative set of who appeared in major league games the preceding year. It used to. But now it cares about how many sets it can sell to rookie-card hunters and player-collectors. Topps begins creating its checklist each year by selecting the rookies FIRST, then builds the rest of the checklist around them.
That's how you get this:
Donny Sands appeared in three games for the Phillies in 2022. He hasn't appeared in a major league game since. But because Topps saw another opportunity for a rookie logo, he showed up in the 2023 flagship set.
Another Tigers card from 2023. Another rookie logo. Brendon Davis played in three games for the Tigers in 2022. He didn't play in any others. Has been out of baseball since 2024.
I didn't mean to single out the Tigers. I have limited time today. But I could've shown 30 examples with no trouble. It didn't take any work finding these cards. All I had to do was pick any Topps set from the last dozen years (or more) and there was a "whoozhe" at my fingertips.
Yes, it's great these guys got a card. Davis was bouncing around in the minors for seven years before finally making the majors.
But what about Zack Kelly, Dan Altavilla and Tyler Matzek? They all have appeared in many more games than the cup-of-coffee guys who if they were to show up in a set when I was collecting as a kid would have had to share cardboard space with two or three other prospects. Players like Zack Kelly are sacrificed for another rookie logo in the set.
Topps doesn't seem to have a way of finding players for its sets who came to the majors as a free agent (as in Kelly's case) or some other avenue. It is so zeroed in on that high draft pick and that logo that it can't see what it's missing and sometimes that's veteran major league players who fans know and can identify and contribute to World Series titles!
Yeah, I'm rooting for Joe Rock and Tristan Peters, who I've pulled in 2026 Topps three times each -- appropriate since each have 3 MLB game careers so far. But I'm rooting more for a card of catcher Chuckie Robinson, who has appeared in 52 games and only has autograph issues.
OK, now is your chance to yell "Bring back Topps Total!"
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