Buy Low, Sell High

It has been awhile since I have wrote about baseball and baseball cards on my blog. In the past week I have added a few more cards to my collection. I will start with my Victor Martinez lot that I bought off ebay for under $10. After getting the cards and going through what all I received I thought it was a pretty good purchase. It is a perfect example of collecting a player after he has had a down year. V-Mart battled injuries all season and had one of his worse season to date. I believe a healthy Martinez next year will be back to the .300 hitter with 15 home runs and 80 RBIs. Let's take a look at the cards that I received.

These two cards were the only ones that I knew where part of the deal. It was V-Mart lot and had both cards listed and said with extra V-Mart cards. The first card is from the 2011 Topps 60 relic set part of series 1 for that year. It is of V-Mart with the Boston Red Sox honoring his 2010 season when he lead the league with a .400 batting average against left handed pitching. The second card is from the 2015 Topps Stadium Club set. The member only stamp means it is a short print card and is one of 7 cards. Two really cool cards and I would have been happy to with both of them for $10, but there was more.

The lot also included a gold and purple parallel cards, a card /50 and a insert card honoring his first home run on September 29th, 2002. I also had some base cards to go with these 6 cards. All in all I was pretty impressed with all of the cards I received for a good buy.

A buy like this makes me think that collecting cards is somewhat like the stock market, you try to buy while the players value is low and sell them when their value high. I will probably not be looking to move these cards, because V-Mart is one of my favorite players, but I will continue to look for good buys.

#TwoforTuesday

My #TwoforTuesday post I figured I would share a couple cards of some Hall of Famers. I don't have many cards in my collection with Hall of Fame players, but these are some cool cards.

1999 Hall of Fame inductee Robin Yount stared for the Milwaukee Brewers during the 70s and 80s before retiring in 1993. He has 3,000 hits to his career to go with his 2 MVPs.

This Upper Deck Premier Trios card feature three great hitters, Carl Yastrzemski, Stan Musial, and Rod Carew. Yastrzemski and Musial were both part of the 3,000 hits and 400 home run clubs in their careers. Carew also reached 3,000 hits, but was not a power hitter like the other two. My personal opinion Upper Deck should have added someone else then Carew who has at least 3,000 hits and 400 home runs. A few guys on the list Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Dave Winfield, and Cal Ripken Jr.

The Trade: Cespedes for Porcello

The big trade for the Tigers this off-season was with the Boston Red Sox. The BoSox needed pitching and had a surplus of outfield bats and the Tigers need help in the outfield. I would like to say Detroit had a surplus of arms, but I personally don't think they do. Detroit would end up sending Rick Porcello to Boston for Yoenis Cespedes, Alex Wilson, and Gabe Speier. On paper this looks like a pretty even trade for both teams.

Rick Porcello made his major league debut back in 2009 as a 20 year old for the Tigers. Over the next 6 seasons he would go on to win at least 10 games for each year. He has shown signs of being a good middle of the rotation pitcher. He is known as a ground ball pitcher. He might not blow you away with a strikeout, but with a good defense behind him he can rack up the ground balls with a career rating of 52.1%. It seems for the past few seasons a lot of people were saying "this is going to be Porcello's breakout year." Well I would say 2014 was his breakout year. He had a career low 3.43 ERA and won a career high 15 games for the Tigers. The one thing I like to stress about Porcello is the fact he is only going to be 26 years old this season and has already 6 full seasons under his belt.

The centerpiece in trade that the Tigers received for Porcello is outfielder Yoenis Cespedes. Cespedes is a Cuban born player who was originally signed by the Oakland Athletics in 2012. He would make his debut that year at the prime age of 26. Last year before the trade deadline the Athletics would flip him to the Red Sox for Jon Lester and Jonny Gomes. Now that trade didn't make much senses to me. In Boston they have a mind set of going to the plate and looking for a walk before a base hit. This is not Yoenis Cespedes. He is a free swinger that only walks 6.5% of the time in his career and has struck out 20.9% of the time. That is the downside of Cespedes. The upside of him is that he has averaged almost 24 home runs and 87 RBIs (with a career high last year with 100). Now the other plus side is the cannon of an arm he has in the outfield. He has a total of 35 outfield assists in his 3 years in the majors. He will be a deadly force for the Tigers in the outfield and hitting behind Miggy and V-Mart.