Too Early To Judge

At my local post office there's this one clerk who I chat regularly about baseball/Yankees/baseball cards about. For privacy's sake I'll call them S.

S grew up collecting baseball cards of their favorite Yankees players like Mantle, Ford and Maris. So as you can imagine they're an elder statesman. Most of the time we talk about flavor of the week topics (mainly garbage the New York media puts out) like whether or not the Steinbrenners are going to sell the Yankees.

S knows that I'm a big fan of minor league baseball. So they sometimes ask me how the future Yankees are doing down on the farm. The guy they're really interested in the prospect every Yankees fan is obsessed with, Luis Torrens Aaron Judge.

The supplemental first rounder's work so far has been nothing short of astounding. He pretty much demolished the Florida State League and is continuing to terrorize the Eastern League.

His performance has been so great that Yankees fan are clamoring for the front office to call him up.

Now S asked me the other day why the Yankees don't call up Judge. I had a few ideas and most of them had to do with money.

The biggest reason is Carlos Beltran. Regardless of Beltran's performance, his contract guarantees that he'll continue to be in the lineup. That's not changing until the Yankees find someone dumb enough to take both Beltran and his salary.

Also, keep in mind that these are the Yankees who are trying to start spending money wisely (sort of) and figure Judge to be a huge part of their future. For all we know when Judge is actually ready the Yankees could keep in the minors for two weeks for that extra year of arbitration (ala Kris Bryant) or a little longer for super-two status (ala Wil Myers).

The more important reason is Judge himself. Mike Axisa, over at River Ave Blues, was asked when the Yankees'll promote Judge to triple-A (as of this post he's currently in double-A). Axisa brought up an excellent point that the league needs to adjust to Judge so that Judge can show that he can adjust to league that adjusted to him. If he can do so at double-A and then triple-A (which would theoretically put his ETA sometime in 2016 at the earliest) he'll probably be ready.

At any rate, it's never a good idea to promote a prospect when they're not ready for the big leagues yet. And although Judge's numbers may prove otherwise, I haven't heard too many scouts using the phrase "big league ready" to describe Judge yet.

I suppose it's also worth mentioning that Judge isn't exactly the first outfield option the Yankees have should they seek some help in-house. The Yankees still have Ramon Flores and Tyler Austin ahead of him on the depth chart at right field. Although Austin's off to a slow start, Flores has been doing fairly well at triple-A. Or at least enough so that in the event of an emergency Flores will be called up instead of Judge.

GIF courtesy of GIPHY

Back to Judge himself though, a lot of people seem to have misconceptions about what exactly Judge will be. That's not all that surprising since baseball fans in general are horrible at having realistic expectations, but it certainly doesn't help that there's this ongoing narrative that Aaron Judge is going to be Giancarlo Stanton.

The reality is that Judge is not going to be Giancarlo Stanton, no matter how much anybody wants him to be. BTW, I'd totally love it if Judge became Stanton even if I know it's not possible. Aaron Judge is going to be Aaron Judge, period.

GIF courtesy of Pinstripe Alley

And who is Judge going to be? It's too early to tell but a scout told The New York Post that they see him as a middle of the order threat who'll hit in the .250's with 25 HRs. That's not Giancarlo Stanton but I'd still take that and consider it a reasonable expectation for Judge.

Of course the future is not set in stone and Judge could very well exceed that ceiling or he could fall short and be even worse.

Currently he's absolutely destroying double-A putting up (as of this draft) a 151 wRC+. Some people are worried about his strikeouts but I'm not as worried considering that pitchers have just started to pitch differently to him, and because he still has a .373 BABIP (as of this draft) which is absolutely great. If he struggles to make adjustments and goes into a slump near the end of the year well into next year, that is when you worry. Both stats courtesy of Fangraphs BTW.

So to everybody wondering why Judge isn't up yet, I say slow down. He's not ready for the big leagues yet and there's no need to screw him up by forcing his way up (the Yankees did that a lot in the 00's). He'll come when he's ready, and there should be a boatload of puns ready at everybody's disposal when that happens.

GIF courtesy of Pinstripe Alley

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

More Additions

So in the month of April I didn't add a single new Luis Torrens card to my collection. That's somewhat astonishing to me, and also not surprising considering how eBay/COMC/etc... rarely ever offer any new LUIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSS cards worth acquiring.

That said before (and after) I took my blogging hiatus the blogosphere helped me land some big additions to my Torrenterion collection.

That my friends is a yellow printing plate of LUIIIISSSSSSSSSSSS from Leaf Valient.

This is the fifth 1/1 Torrens card in my collection and my third plate.

This fine specimen was sent to me by The Card Papoy through Bob Walk The Plank (long story). As if I didn't have enough debt to fulfill to those two...

Still, I love that I have this plate in my collection and that I can say I have five 1/1s now.

Scratch that, make it six.

Yeah, I originally received Papoy's plate in mid-March but I waited for this plate from 2014 Bowman Draft to come in to begin blogging about it.

Oh and I'd be remiss if I didn't show this awesome sketch TLC drew on the bubble mailer for me. Thanks a bunch TLC :).

So yeah. My chase for Torrenators has slowed (mainly because nothing notable has popped up in recent times) but it's still alive and well thanks to the blogosphere and the occasional miracle that pops up. Thanks a bunch guys :).

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).

Sorry I Lost My Mind, But I Never Really Meant To Die

So as some of you may have noticed I've left this blog relatively dormant for the month of April.

It was a combination of a lot of things. My real life got a little too busy for me to keep up with blogging, I suffered a massive case of writer's block where I struggled to write any half-decent posts, and I decided to just take a break rather than waste everybody's time by trying to continue at barely half strength.

However, while I was I away I did take a little look at how many page views I got in April and was surprised to see that my blog had over 1000 views in April. I guess it's because I used to post on a near daily basis and some people still stopped by to check if I was still alive.
Regardless, that speaks volumes to me and I can't thank all of the readers out there enough for stopping by in April even though this blog had nothing to offer you (nothing new anyway).

So thank you, all of you.

On that note, lets move onto some hobby related matters.
Don't worry, I haven't left the hobby. I mailed out a bunch of TTM requests in April and am preparing to send more as I type this. I've managed to get some cool in person autographs in Staten Island and I've also attended a local card show here in May (I'll be blogging about those soon enough).

On the other side, for the month of April the only hobby related purchase I made was a box of binder pages and one single pack of 2015 Panini Stripes & Stars. It's the first time I'd ever spent that little on "cards" in one whole month.

I guess I'm not as interested in cards as I was as recently as two months ago. TTMs & IPs seem to be the only part of me that keeps going.

Photo Credit: ME

So as you can imagine I didn't pick up any Gypsy Queen or Opening Day or whatever was out in April. I didn't even pick up any new LUIIIIISSSSSSSSSSS cards.

Despite not having a good enough transition for what I want to talk about next, I'd like to shoehorn in that April was also the end of another part of the hobby.

2015年4月1日AM4:00をもちましてネットワークサービス等を終了させて頂く事となりました。2012年の稼働開始より多くの皆様にご利用いただきまして誠にありがとうございました。 これにて当アカウントからの投稿を終了させていただきます。
— SEGA CARD-GEN MLB (@CARDGEN_MLB) April 1, 2015

As you can see (if you can read Japanese), SEGA Card Gen has officially come to an end. It had a pretty short run and I wish I could've played it a lot more when it was around, but it was fun while it lasted.

Now that the arcade game is officially gone all we're left with are memories and baseball cards. Cards that are in limited quantities at that. Those cards are going to be a lot harder to find than they were before.

Oh and speaking of Japanese I have one more important announcement.

Starting this month I've decided to post in both English AND Japanese on this blog. Somehow I've gotten a small portion of readers from Japan (or at least enough to know that they can't all possibly be just Ryan-san) and I've been wanting to post in Japanese on this blog since I first started. And it's finally going to happen.

I would like to specify though that not every post I do will be done in both English & Japanese. My Japanese posts will probably be a once in a while type of thing (mainly focused on the posts centered on cards the Japanese don't have access to like vintage cards) and most of the posts on this blog will be in English. But expect to see a few post titles in a foreign language in your blogroll in the future.

Because of the massive time difference between Japan and here (Eastern Standard Time), I've already set a specific time for my posts to go online. My English posts will be published at 6:30 PM (EST) just like they've always been for the last few months. My Japanese posts will be published around 4:30 AM (EST).

My first Japanese post is set to go live in a few hours and it'll officially kickstart a brand new chapter for this blog.

So thank you again to those that bothered to check in in April. Here's to a better (and hopefully more active) May!

As always thanks for stopping by and take care :).