#11 - Yu Darvish

What’s that Turtle doin’? Page 2 starts off with our first Pitching card. I do not expect there will be a page without a Pitcher in the rest of the set.

This is a pretty good one. The way Darvish's left arm curls his glove contributes to the flow of the line that I am always considering. Pitching cards don't always seem to have as much of that 'stop motion' aspect I see so often on Hitting cards. 

But this one does. The wrinkles of the uniform indicate how Yu's right arm is still rising. The extension of his necklace away from his neck illustrates that his whole body is driving to the plate - his obviously powerful left leg has not reached it's planting point part way down the mound.

I also like that this card shows off his grip so clearly, something not completely common on a live Pitcher's card. And is somewhat intriguing for Darvish in particular. His catchers in his years in MLB have discussed how he has 8 different pitches to select; we will get some details on that when we flip this card over, shortly here. Obviously, some of those are probably only minor variations of each other. Even so, one would think that with an 8 pitch arsenal, hitters would not be able to guess which of them he is going to throw.

Yet that is precisely the theory explaining how the Astros so thoroughly took him apart in the 2017 World Series - that he was "tipping his pitches," as they say in MLB. Every team is said to have an expert on the bench, constantly looking for any "tell" by an opposing Pitcher. On this card, Yu's glove is already so far from the ball rising in his right hand that it leads me to think this might be part of his problem - leaving the ball out of his glove for too long in his motion, giving hitters more time to see the grip and guess the main style of the pitch about to be coming at them.

But that's just a non-player's guess, based on absorbing a baseball card. I know if I stood in a batter's box and faced Yu Darvish, my AVG would be precisely point triple zero.

Making a set of baseball cards from live game action photos probably presents problems for Topps. Or maybe, more so for us, the baseball card collectors. Card after card of a Pitcher Pitching wears one down, while flipping through stacks of cards. This is a big reason I like to put action cards in a binder; once 9 cards are together and viewed simultaneously, having multiple Pitching cards in view is no big deal.

Overall a well executed card using a good photo selection, quite appropriate for the set's 2nd Rookie Cup.

Uniform Hero? Yes. I think it will take quite a while yet before a card # ≠ Uni #. Darvish did have to wear #21 during his half-season with the Dodgers, but has been able to reclaim #11 in Chicago; it would seem to be his preference.

Where’d the egg hatch? Darvish previously played in Japan and went through the "posting" process to be signed by the Rangers early in 2012, which cost Texas nearly $52 Million just for exclusive negotiating rights with Darvish to then sign him to a contract for $60 Million more. Japan also has a draft system and Darvish was heavily scouted by professional teams, including MLB teams, while he was still in high school. He eventually settled on entering the Japanese draft, where he was selected in the first round in 2004.

How about the migrations? When his initial six year contract hit the 5.5 season mark in 2017, the going-nowhere-fast Rangers traded him to the Dodgers for 3 prospects. Analyzing trades of 2 month "rentals" is often a fool's errand, as compared to trades for a season or more of a player's contracted time. Much less is given up in such deals, although the prospects coming back can sometimes end up being an everyday MLB player.

After the 2017 season, Darvish signed a new 6 year deal with the Cubs, however an injury in his first season in Chicago limited him to just 40 Innings.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

On the back of some baseball cards, I learn things. A few years down the road, Topps would begin printing foreign League stats on card backs; something that would have been dramatic on this card.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 221 strikeouts, Darvish is 5,493 away from Nolan Ryan's all-time record of 5,714.

Probably the obvious record to select for comparison here, as Nolan Ryan was a key decision maker involved in bringing Darvish to Arlington. 221 Ks is a very respectable number for a "Rookie," or any other, season.

However, Darvish debuted in MLB at the age of 25, making it quite unlikely he can break an all-time MLB record, at least in any of the "counting stats."

After his quite shortened 2018 season, Darvish has 1,070 Strike Outs.

Subspecies? Given his fame before even arriving in Major League Baseball, Darvish started receiving 'bonus' cards from Topps in 2012, where he is on one of 5 "Rookie Variations" (along with Bryce Harper) issued with the 2012 set.

This Topps appreciation continued in 2013, although his 2 photo variations did not arrive until Series 2, where he has both a "Sunglasses" SP and an "Autographs" SP with this same card #. The "Autographs" image was also used for a Chrome photo variation.

And now, I present my first time machine trip back into my own blog, something I will continue whenever I add a Sea Turtle to share with you, or otherwise discover a key bit of Sea Turtle info, post-posting, originally. Whenever this happens, I will simply include a note on whatever new card post I am posting that day.

And today I discovered in an old post on my regular baseball card blog, Base Set Calling, that I used to own one of the Darvish photo variants from Series 2, and even scanned it and displayed it before trading it away to the fun Play At The Plate blog, who appears to be on a bit of a hiatus currently. So that is 'close enough' for sharing with you here, now. Though now I also realize I need a new copy of this one, some day.

Bling That Shell This is the first card I do not have my desired parallel for, although I am pretty sure I will ultimately select the Target Red parallel for this one, and for a pretty obvious reason, which is sitting right there on Yu Darvish's head on this card. I do not expect much difficulty locating one.

Blog Update Highlight 

Not long after I wrote this post, I had a few developments with this particular card. First, I pulled a cool parallel of it -

Yes, here in the winter of 2019 I managed to stumble across a "pack" of 2013 cards to open, as detailed in a video embedded in the #19 - Joey Votto post.

The page construction dynamics at play are all overly detailed there. If I never find a Pink card for Lawrie, Ethier, or Moreland, the above /230 Orange card might make it into the All-Parallel set. If things go more as I hope finding a Pink card, I would rather use the following recently arrived card in this slot: