One and done: A baseball card assessment

Had to go pick up some socks at a local sporting goods chain and while I was there I purchased my annual pack of Topps. Apologies for the poor quality of my photo.

Pretty uninspiring  design, both front and back. A brief description from bottom to top, left to right:

• Michael Bourn, Atlanta Braves. Has played so long there’s no room for anything on the back except stats, which include slugging and on-base percentages in addition to batting average, as well as WAR.
• Yordano Ventura, Kansas City Royals. Major and minor league stats plus an anecdote meant to be charming.
• Devon Harris, Toronto Blue Jays. One of the players Topps has deemed a “Future Star.”
• Mark Grace, Chicago Cubs. Part of a subset celebrating 100 years of Wrigley Field.
• Dariel Alvarez, Baltimore Orioles. Although he appeared in 12 games for the Os in 2015, there’s just on line of minor league stats. What happened to the other two years? It’s not like they didn’t have the room to include the information.
• Jose Altuve, Houston Astros. The only real star in the pack.
• American League RBI Leaders / “New Order: Altuve + “Carlos Connection” = Lift-off: These are reminiscent of the cards of my you, especially the latter when you’d have such “parings.” They’d usually have a little profile on the flip side, but now it serves as the front of a checklist.
• Asdrubal Cabrera, Tampa Bay Tays: Meh
• Travis D’Arnaud, NY Mets: Finally, a Met. They have 18 lines of major and minor league stats here, so again, what’s up with the Alvarez business?
• Steven Souza Jr., Tampa Bay Rays. You could have had some fun with this one. Put him in a marching band uniform or something. Then again, it was John Phillip SouSa.
• Jon Neise, Mets. Not any more.
• Oh, and that white card? That’ what set off the security alarm when I was leaving the store. Twelve cards for $1.99. I guess they threw in that for free.