Feeling 22

The card bubble has had its drawbacks for sure, no one likes paying inflated prices, but one of the few fringe benefits for me is that some of the rarer cards have appeared out of the woodwork.

In a previous post I showed a 1/1 printing plate auto of Luis Torrens, not too long after that I got this.

That is a black printing plate from 2014 Bowman Draft Picks and Prospects.

This is for the paper/non-chrome offering from 2014 Bowman Draft, aka the portion that has given me the more gruff than the chrome equivalent. As I'm not quite close to assembling the paper rainbow any time soon thanks to the elusive 1/1.

But eh, every little bit counts I suppose. Player collecting isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.

In the time since I acquired this plate things have gotten very interesting for Torrens. For starters he was brought back up to the big leagues after a brief stint in triple-A. Since then he's gone on an absolute tear, every other day you can see the Mariners Twitter feed showing a video of him hitting a dinger.

This recent stretch has seen him hitting seven home runs across 13 games, two of which were on June 25th where he went 2-5 with two dingers.

Absolute king shit right there.

The Mariners and their fans who do not deserve Torrens can gawk about Cal Raleigh or Night Owl's neighbor Tom Murphy all they want, Torrens is clearly the catcher of the future for the team. Or in true Seattle fashion they trade him away and enter another long playoff drought, either way Torrens' reign begins now.

With this I am now at 22 Torrens 1/1's. His jersey number at the moment! Obviously I am looking for more but we'll see what else surfaces during his hot streak and during what I want to think is the waning days of the current bubble.

In the meantime I made sure to secure another low numbered parallel that eluded me for so long, these /10 acetate things. Essentially they are just clear plastic. A gimmick for sure but I don't really mind, they're different. I let one slip away three years ago and made sure to nail this one down now that I have less patience but a little bit more money.

This is my first acetate card of the Torrenator and I'm quite glad as this gets me closer and closer to the ever elusive flagship rainbow. We'll see how things shake out I suppose but as of now I am down to just the 1/1's and any retail parallels thought to be impossible to find.

While I'm here I might as well tack on one more non-Torrens card I added because I don't think I'll ever have a chance to talk about it.

The latest heir apparent to the catching prospect from LATAM title is Antonio Gomez, signed by the New York Yankees out of Venezuela back in 2018. Gomez's immediate skill that has eyes popping right now is his arm that is an absolute cannon. FanGraphs gave it an 80 and most scouts agree it's the best of the best.

You could be prime Usain Bolt and he'd still nab you at second, his arm is just that fucking good.

Every other part of his game is a work in progress but shows great promise. He does have a fair bit of pop and depending on how his swings get unlocked going forward he could be a pleasant threat with the bat. I am particularly interested in seeing how the rest of his defensive profile looks in terms of actually catching and blocking the ball, as well as calling the game. According to scouts he's taken it upon himself to learn English so as to have better communication with pitchers. Considering how he's already stateside that's a huge plus. For a system that's seen better days with its catching prospect core, things are finally getting interesting again with Gomez at the very bottom of the ladder behind Josh Breaux, Anthony Seigler and Austin Wells. I am cautiously optimistic to see how this current core grows and develops.

I don't think Gomez is going to be my new Torrens and quite frankly I'm burnt out on doing a full player collecting thing ever again (although I will keep going for Torrens), but I did want to nab his autograph since he's one of the few new faces that I have been interested in for a while now. Fingers crossed he can be something good for the Yankees one day.

All in all, the void left behind by Torrens has been massive. The Yankees' catching prospect core disintegrated overnight in 2016 and never quite recovered, they've also been just alright since then. Or were until this year where they're just plain middling and kinda disappointing. Should've kept Torrens and Thairo Estrada.

As always thanks for stopping by and take care.