#46 - Craig Kimbrel

What’s that Turtle doin’? It is somewhat surprising to me whenever I find a Craig Kimbrel card that does not show his distinctive pose while he "looks in" for the sign from his Catcher. I know Topps can't use that pose on every Kimbrel card they produce, but they sure do that often enough.

I am glad the Kimbrel card in this set is not one of those cards, as I always find them claustrophobic.

This card is more standard issue Pitching action. I like how the two vertical blue stripes of the Braves uniform help illustrate motion as he draws his right arm back to pitch.

Overall, between the uniform and the logo and the Sea Turtle design, there is a very pleasing amount of red, white, and blue well distributed all over this card. And it is hard to get more "baseball" than that trio of colors.

Uniform Hero? Front and center.

Where’d the egg hatch? Kimbrel was drafted by Atlanta in the 3rd round in 2008. He had also been selected by Atlanta in the 33rd round in 2007, but elected to go to college for one more year.

How about the migrations? He then came up to Atlanta in 2010, posting outstanding #s in just 21 Innings. In 2011, he became the Closer for the Braves, a bullpen role he has fulfilled ever since. He was just 23 years of age at that point, something some other organizations took careful note of in their signings. We will see a card related to that idea, and in my opinion related to Kimbrel's overall succes as well, in the Update set, many years from the date of this blog post.

A standard operating idea in Major League Baseball is that Relievers can't generally achieve peak results, year in and year out, across a long career, as compared to starting Pitchers. It does seem like that particular calculus has defined much of Kimbrel's career since this card was produced.

In 2015, the Braves either really needed a talent infusion, or perhaps they worried that Kimbrel's outstanding results for them could be maintained no longer. They traded him to San Diego along with superfluous outfielder - Upton Jr., for 4 players and a special draft round pick. The Braves received a pair of regularly-on-the-move outfielders, Carlos Quentin and Cameron Maybin, as well as a promising Starter prospect named Matt Wisler who would prove to not quite have regular MLB rotation stuff.

San Diego seems to have reached the same conclusions as Atlanta as they in turn traded him to the Red Sox for 3 players, including current recent starting Padre Centerfielder Manny Margot.

Overall, the Boston Red Sox seem to have been the winner of the transactions, as Kimbrel pitched to nearly identical levels of excellence, year after year, and made 3 AL All-Star teams after doing so 4 times in the NL with Atlanta. Though I suspect many Red Sox fans largely recall his post-season work for Boston, which did not not always go well. 

As I began composing this post just a week into 2019 Spring Training, Kimbrel remained probably the premiere un-signed Free Agent of the year. He was reportedly largely sticking to a demand for a long-term contract of 6 years and no less. But it also seems that the 30 GMs around the 2 Leagues are still considering their traditional standard operating idea for Reliever contracts, so .... Kimbrel eventually settled for a 3 year, $43M deal with the Chicago Cubs. 

Well, it would be 3 years if one doesn't count that he didn't make his first appearance in the 2019 season until June 27th, probably one of the longest Free Agent hold-outs into an active season, ever. As things turned out, I don't expect the friendly confines will be all that friendly for Kimbrel in the 2020s if he can't return to his form of the 2010s. I doubt many Cubs fans will soon forgive him for a pair of Blown Saves during a key pennant race series with their arch-enemies from St. Louis late in September, 2019. 

Nevertheless it would not surprise me at all to see Craig Kimbrel be the All-Star closer for the NL in 2020, and generally sit near the top of the Reliever statistics in MLB once again. Or not. Could go either way, really. That's the way she goes, for the guys out in the bullpen.

Don’t flip over real Turtles.

It seems a little surprising that Topps drew a blank here, for such an excellent young player. Normally printing a long raft of minor league stats is done for marginal players about whom it is more difficult to write a positive, pithy text of some kind.

Can the Turtle Catch the Rabbit?

CAREER CHASE: With 89 saves, Kimbrel is 519 away from Mariano Rivera's all-time record of 608.

If a collector has read any of this card back feature previous to flipping this card over, they will already know exactly which record will be considered here.

After the 2019 season, Kimbrel had 346 saves. Though Rivera's record finally settled at 652 Saves, this is definitely an all-time record comparison that one could see becoming much, ummm, closer, in seasons to come.

Subspecies? Players who make the All-Star team in their first full season certainly get plenty of attention from everyone, including Topps. This card image is also included in Opening Day and Chrome, but has no other variations.

Bling That Shell This card is the 9th on it's page, and I haven't used a Gold card yet, so.....

And that means it is also time to look at a completed page, the way I hope to enjoy the entire set some day. My preferences for picking a parallel color for the blue Sea Turtles led me to use three /x cards on this page, which, along with using an Opening Day Blue parallel, allowed me to skip using an Emerald card on this page. I hope I can keep that general not-use one parallel idea trending as I build more pages: