Here are a few more 1972 Topps cards for future and current Reds.
I’m not sure how many of these guys are part of the Reds’ plans for 2020. The Reds tried to land Grandal and Gregorius this off-season, but it remains to be seen which moves the team will actually make. I’m excited to see Moustakas in a Reds uniform, at least.
These 5 custom designs have been gathering dust in my “cards to psot” folder for quite a while. I’m not really thrilled about any of them, but I don’t hate any of them, either. They’re all just kinda…decent, in my opinion.
I think my favorites are the Bench and the VanMeter with the “2020” flag, but I feel like both designs are still missing something.
I almost titled this post “Let’s Do the Text Warp Again,” but I resisted the urge.
This design has a weird history. You see, I download a lot of other cards & images for inspiration. I just stick them all in this big folder on my hard drive. A few days ago, while looking through that folder, I stumbled across a design I didn’t remember seeing before. I had no idea where I found it, but I liked it.
So I decided to try my own version of that design, mainly because it was a good way to practice using Photoshop’s Warp tool. Here’s the version I ended up with:
I still wanted to know where that design came from, so I did some digging. Turns out it was a custom card created by the Rockies organization. It was one of several custom cards they posted on Twitter earlier this year.
UPDATE: A member of Facebook’s Custom Baseball Cards group pointed out that the design is fairly close to the 1976-77 Topps Hockey design:
The Reds recently traded for two players who were expected to help the team. Things have not worked out that way, unfortunately.
Trevor Bauer’s ERA has been somewhere around 9.00 since joining the Reds, and Galvis is in the midst of a 1-for-43 slump.
I think Galvis needs a 10-day trip to the DL to refocus or clear his head or whatever. We have too many promising young middle infielders to continue giving him playing time right now. I think Galvis will be OK eventually, and next year he’ll return to what we expected from him — a decent middle infielder.
Bauer is the real disappointment here, though. We was 9-8 with a 3.79 ERA in the American League. You would naturally expect slightly better numbers in the National League, since he’d be facing a pitcher instead of a DH pretty often. Alas…it didn’t work out that way. Bauer’s currently 1-4 with an 8.23 ERA.
I’m sure no one is as upset about this as Bauer. He’s a fantastic pitcher and a competitive guy. I have no doubt that he will turn things around and become our 3rd best starter (behind Castillo & Gray), giving us a strong rotation in 2020. With the Reds’ 2019 season in the dumpster, I would vote to let Bauer also take a trip to “Club DL” for 10 days.
Here’s hoping things get better for both of these players. If 2020 is going to be a big improvement over 2019, we’ll need them both to be solid contributors.
Alternate Reds 