2018 Spirit: NL West

#153. Archie Bradley, Arizona Diamondbacks

#243. Charlie Blackmon, Colorado Rockies,

#22. Clayton Kershaw, Los Angeles Dodgers

#72. Hunter Renfroe, San Diego Padres

#91. Jeff Samardzija, San Francisco Giants

And thus ends the stroll through the 2018 Spirit base set. Currently working on the Clubhouse design but I'm doing 5 cards per team, so those will probably come in a 30-post frenzy at some point. I'm actually halfway through the cards, so I feel pretty confident about that one being completed. Stay tuned.

2018 Spirit: NL Central

#227. Willson Contreras, Chicago Cubs

#119. Jose Peraza, Cincinnati Reds

#18. Corey Knebel, Milwaukee Brewers

#69. Gregory Polanco, Pittsburgh Pirates

#123. Carlos Martinez, St. Louis Cardinals

The Reds and Cardinals cards look a little off since their team names are literally associated with the color red but the bigger flag on each is non-red. The Cardinals one isn't as weird since they actually use the navy here and there. But for the Reds, black isn't really an accent color so much as just an extra color. No real alternative there.

2018 Spirit: NL East

#8. Ender Inciarte, Atlanta Braves

#153. J.T. Realmuto, Miami Marlins

#77. Amed Rosario, New York Mets

#3. Rhys Hoskins, Philadelphia Phillies

#99. Max Scherzer, Washington Nationals

With this batch, you can see how the RC logo looks with this design. There's a perfectly little spot in the corner almost made for it. Topps has gotten better about placing their RC logos but for a while there they seemed to be an afterthought. The other noteworthy thing about this batch is the color choices for the Marlins. Traditionally, I've treated them as a blue/orange team but since they only wear their black hats anymore and I've been doing the hat logos on all of the cards, it kinda forced my hand. Rumor is they're gonna do a rebrand in a couple years so hopefully they'll be able to add some clarity to their identity going forward. Thanks, Jeets!

2018 Spirit: AL West

#88. George Springer, Houston Astros

#269. Garrett Richards, Los Angeles Angels

#103. Matt Olson, Oakland Athletics

#26. James Paxton, Seattle Mariners

#40. Joey Gallo, Texas Rangers

Trying to spread the love around is why you may notice the lack of Trout or Ohtani in the Angels slot. I think for future releases, I'll just go ahead and do the best players since the volume of designs I'd be doing is sure to decrease.

2018 Spirit: AL Central

#15. Yoan Moncada, Chicago White Sox

#111. Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Indians

#166. Mikie Mahtook, Detroit Tigers

#75. Ian Kennedy, Kansas City Royals

#233. Byron Buxton, Minnesota Twins

Jose Ramirez's card his the '2017 All-MLB Team - 1st' accolade, which you may be looking at saying, "wut?". Well it came from Jeff Passan's article at the end of last season and I think it's a great idea long overdue. The NBA has done All-NBA Teams and All-Defensive Teams forever and the NFL has the All-Pro designations every year. I like the idea of a definitive end-of-season list since the All-Star starters are really pretty arbitrary and only reflect the first half of the season at best. After seeing the list, it kinda makes Ramirez's monster 2018 season a little less out of nowhere. Plus it gives me plenty more accolades to put into use here.

2018 Spirit: AL East

I may be a little late getting it onto the blog here, but unveiling the 2018 Spirit base design division-by-division. First up is the AL East:

#205: Adam Jones, Baltimore Orioles

  #55: Andrew Benintendi, Boston Red Sox

#52: Aaron Judge, New York Yankees 

#20: Kevin Kiermaier, Tampa Bay Rays

#112: Russell Martin, Toronto Blue Jays

Taking a look at the design, it's once again borderless with full bleed photos. Since I've never done parallels for the Spirit base sets, I feel like the lack of borders is completely normal and cool and acceptable. All the player/team info is on a diagonal banner with a "fold" separating space for the team logo and text. If I'm being honest, it's pretty reminiscent of the 2013 base design. This time around, it's a little cleaner and less busy, mostly due to the lack of foil and font selection. I brought back the 'accolades' line for applicable players like Judge there. Personally, I think it's a cool way to easily show the real standout players from the previous year.

I also did backs for all but I'm just gonna show one example in this post for space's sake.

The angles and colors are here as well. The stat line is pretty basic stuff but with a few more "modern" inclusions like OPS+ and WAR (which is the Baseball Reference variety here). Benny here only has a couple of seasons under his belt so there's a small bit of text added in there. For longer tenured players, the stat box fills all the white space but I refrain from squeezing full career numbers on there because it's 2018 and the internet exists.

Gonna plow through the other divisions here since they're already all made up and ready to post. If I do any inserts this year, they will be very sporadic (especially since this is my first 2018 post and it's basically September). Once again, the pace catches up with me and kinda derails my big plans I have at the beginning of each year. So I'm gonna set my sights low for the rest of the year so I can not come up as short as normal. Stick around if ya want.