2018 Clubhouse: Washington Nationals

146. Bryce Harper

147. Anthony Rendon

148. Max Scherzer

149. Stephen Strasburg

150. Trea Turner

Here's the possibly/probably final Clubhouse card for Bryce Harper with the Nats. Fitting that it's the final Clubhouse post of the year. The team set is solid and probably perfect as-is once you take into account that it was made before Juan Soto was called up. He'd probably get Strasburg's spot today.

Rendon and Scherzer are the autographers. Rendon had a sneaky great season, so this is a pretty good non-hobby pairing.

And here's Max's luster parallel to finish of the 2018 Clubhouse posts.

2017 SPIRIT BOX BREAK - PACK 10

137. Jordan Zimmermann

179. Carson Smith

191. Michael Conforto

299. Stephen Strasburg

89. Arodys Vizcaino

280. Scott Schebler

32. Blake Treinen

96. Sean Doolittle

203. David Dahl (RC)

G133. Huston Street

TL58 . Rougned Odor - Team Leader (TEX-HRs)

Another pitcher-heavy pack. Best card is probably the Dahl rookie. The Odor was the first of the Team Leader cards I designed so the Rangers' red/blue made it perfect for the 2-color motif.

2014 Spirit Base: 411-420

#411 - Marlon Byrd
How often do the Phillies wear these blue helmets? They look good.

#412 - Pedro Alvarez
Pedro's having a bit of a down year after 2013's breakout season.

#413 - Shelby Miller
I wonder if he'll actually see any postseason action this year...

#414 - Nick Hundley
Hundley will be seeing plenty for sure with the Orioles.

#415 - Madison Bumgarner
Had to break out the regular/non-extended version of the font for Bumgarner here. I was really tempted to go with a snot rocket photo but decided against it.

#416 - Logan Morrison
I haven't heard anything about him for a while so I guess he isn't rubbing Mariners' fans the wrong way like I thought he might.

#417 - Jake McGee
It's so hard to write something about every card.

#418 - Neftali Feliz
Man, has his stock fallen since 2011. Maybe if he can stay healthy and the Rangers will keep him in the bullpen he can regain his success.

#419 - Dioner Navarro
He looks like some guy they just pulled of the street and stuck the gear on in this photo.

#420 - Stephen Strasburg
Strasburg looks kinda normal here. Good for him.

Don't Skip Class

The 2012 edition of the MLB Draft happened a week or so ago so I've kinda had it on the brain for a bit. Baseball's draft is really unique when compared to the NFL and NBA versions. Most of guys are complete strangers before getting drafted, unlike the top college football and basketball players who get national attention for a season or two along with the copious amounts of coverage leading up to the draft. And unlike the Cam Newtons and Kevin Durants, the top picks aren't expected to lead their teams the following season. The timeframe for these players to start contributing is stretched much further, so by the time a guy reveals himself to be a bust or not, fans have moved on. Basically, it'll take years before anybody has any clue whether or not a particular class is strong.

I took a little trip back to the draft results from the past dozen years or so and decided to do a draft-focused set to pick out the best picks and see how they stack up from year to year. Clubhouse Head Of the Class. This is a 100-card insert set that spans 10 drafts, from 2000 to 2009. That's a pretty good cut-off as far as singling out the 10 best players from a draft. Outside of Harper and Chris Sale, I'm not sure anyone from 2010 has made a mark in the big leagues yet.

The first thing I did was compile the checklist. It's pretty interesting to see the stacked 2005 draft (8 of the top 12) compared to bottom-heavy drafts like 2000 and 2001. Some years were a little thinner than others but I think I did a good job find 100 guys that deserved to be featured.

Looking at the design, we have a silver foil border that goes around approximately 2/3 of the card edge. The left side is a bit thicker and has the "HEAD OF THE CLASS" text in black running over it. Above that is the draft year in silver foil as well. This is one of the few asymmetrical inserts I've done, so it was nice to change that up a bit. We've got the team color backgrounds behind the player cutouts along with an info bar at the bottom with the player name and team logo.

On the back, the silver border has been turned the team color and the background is solid black. We have a small player portrait on the right with the card number and player position/team below. The top spells out which year the player was drafted along with the top 10 picks from that respective draft. The picks are listed in order but obviously skips ahead to the pertinent draft slot. The player depicted on the card has his name and draft slot bigger, bolder and italicized. Beneath that is a brief write-up about what makes them one of the 10 best from their draft.

This was a fun insert just to figure out the players to include and to take a look back at drafts of the past. The fun part is, I'm sure that even 2 or 3 years from now, these checklists could look drastically different as some late-bloomers or Renaissance men start to emerge in the league. As a Giants fan, though, I sure hope the #10 pick from 2006 could stay included in the future.

1-2 Punch

The last post focused on heavy hitters so now it's time for mound masters (sounds like a great name for another inserts somewhere down the line.) The hook for this one is spotlighting teams with 2 pretty good or even great pitchers at the front of their rotation. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to put together the checklist. For quite a few teams, the drop off from number 1 to 2 is pretty big. That's why guys like Kershaw and Sabathia are absent here. On the other end of the spectrum, you've got a couple of teams with deeeeeeep rotations that end up leaving off a some great pitchers, Cole Hamels and Madison Bumgarner* in particular.
* I reeeeally hope Timmy gets back to normal or his inclusion over MadBum will look particularly egregious.

Basically we've got player cutouts on top of a gold diamond (mimicking the 1-2 Punch logo shape) on top of a team-color saturated photo. The big 1 and 2 on the side look really cool with the cards stacked next to each other.

The design here is a little more 'sophisticated' than a couple of the other Clubhouse inserts, but I think it's nice to appeal to some different tastes with a low-end set. We have some gold foil here on the 1-2 Punch logo along with the player & team names. I included the fineprint (copyright, MLB and MLBPA logos) on both sides so the number 2 guy doesn't get dumped on. I figure player collectors would probably appreciate having a full side of their guy on a 2-player card.

Here's the 14-card/28-player checklist I came up with. See any blatant snubs?

GIANTS: Lincecum, Cain
PHILLIES: Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee
TIGERS: Justin Verlander, Doug Fister
RAYS: James Shields, David Price
BREWERS: Gallardo, Greinke
RED SOX: Josh Beckett, Jon Lester
DBACKS: Ian Kennedy, Daniel Hudson
ANGELS: Jered Weaver, Dan Haren
BRAVES: Tim Hudson, Tommy Hanson
REDS: Mat Latos, Johnny Cueto
CARDINALS: Adam Wainwright, Jaime Garcia
MARLINS: Josh Johnson, Mark Buerhle
RANGERS: Yu Darvish, Derek Holland
NATIONALS: Strasburg, Gonzalez