not so serious about series 2

with little confidence in the local box store shelves, i went ahead and ordered a box of 2020 topps series 2 a couple of weeks ago. it arrived last week, and, fresh off of my 2020 topps big league pack ripping experience, went to work on discovering the cardboard that lay within.  here's the first pack that greeted me:

14 cards per pack, so it took two scans. first dodger of series 2 for me is edwin rios. i scanned the back of the salvador perez card, and here's a better look at it:

reminds me of when i first saw the back of tommy john's 1978 topps card, although that one said "on disabled list" on the 1975 season's row.

here's a better look at the josh naylor card from that pack

it features naylor in dodger stadium in an actual padres uniform (more on that to come).

here's pack 2:

two packs, two dodgers. not bad. unfortunately, the box did not maintain that pace. here are the other dodgers i found in my box - ross stripling:

the dodgers tried to trade stripling to the angels in the offseason, but that deal fell through so he remains a dodger. with the shortened season and david price's opt-out, he should get a fair amount of work.

kyle garlick:

strange to see garlick as a dodger in this release, since he was traded to the phillies in february and topps has photoshopped a whole host of other players in to their new team's uniforms.

matt beaty:

that's a nice application of the horizontal 2020 design.

brusdar graterol:

topps resorted to photoshopping graterol in to a dodger uniform, even though there was plenty of time to use an actual photo of graterol as a dodger from spring training. how do i know, well, i found one variation in my box, and it was this one:

because the season hasn't started yet, there is way more photoshop in series 2 than there otherwise might have been.  here's a jonathan schoop card

that shows him as a tiger, but that's a twins uniform underneath the photoshop. side note - schoop's 2020 topps big league card features him wearing an actual tigers uniform. oh well, at least topps did well to select this photo, as schoop's glove covers up what would be the tell-tale nike logo. topps did the same for the luis urias card and they dropped him in to one of the brewers' new uniforms to boot.

not so much for jurickson profar's card 

profar played for the a's when the 2019 season ended, but now he is with the padres, who are bringing back the brown in 2020. profar got the photoshop treatment, which is made even more obvious with the lack of the 'swoosh'.  same goes for corey dickerson

he's actually a phillie in this photo, not a marlin.  one of the worst is gerritt cole's card

this is the same image that was used on his opening day card. topps has issued cards of cole featuring him in a real yankee jersey, but went the photoshop route for his base card here. it also looks like they gave him a haircut. he had a photoshopped variation card in series 1, but of course, his variation card in series 2 features an untouched photo. more on variations in a bit.

i was happy to see a chad wallach card in one of the packs i opened.

he's played in the majors in each of the last 3 seasons without any cardboard to show for it, but topps continues to "bowman-ize" the backs of rookie cards

so you wouldn't know that by flipping the card over. it would be nice to see his major league stats, meager as they may be.

some other cards that i took notice of include former dodger farmhand willie calhoun's

i had read somewhere that one of the reasons there was only one ranger in series 1 was that topps was waiting for a new logo to use. i didn't think they meant the logo of the rangers' new stadium! you can see that calhoun is wearing a commemorative patch bidding adieu to their old stadium last year, but 2019 topps didn't feature that logo on ranger cards. i would be interested to know why the new stadium logo was added to cards this year.

i found four more double play cards to add to my collection - here's domingo leyba

according to getty images, that photo used on leyba's card comes from the marathon game between the diamondbacks and cardinals that was played on 9/24/19. while it doesn't look like leyba is in a position to throw to first, baseball reference does score this play as a 6-3 double play. i am guessing that goldschmidt was running with the pitch (it was a 3-2 count), leyba was covering the bag, and marcell ozuna hit a grounder right to leyba who touched the bag, jumped, set, and threw to first. or maybe ozuna fell down on the way to first. either way, it's in the binder even if it is not a conventional dp turn.

kevin newman

jon berti

and a gleyber torres/francisco lindor checklist

yoenis cespedes got one of the most interesting cards in series 2, in my opinion

it reminds me a bit of the 2017 topps joc pederson card that, at first, looks oddly cropped, but then you see the ball and it makes sense.  topps missed an opportunity to do the same thing with teoscar hernandez's card

a different cropping would have, i think, made this card a bit more interesting.

one of the best things about the 2019 season was the number of different uniforms that the reds wore to mark their 150th anniversary as a club. i was a bit disappointed when i attended a game in cincinnati and they were wearing their regular home unis. however, there have been plenty of the throwbacks featured on cards this year, including trevor mahle's series 2 card

the 1950's mr. redlegs jerseys are not seen as much as some of the other ones, so i appreciate this card.

for the most part, i felt like there was a lot of monotony with the series 2 cards as i opened all of the packs. it seems that topps saved most of the personality for photo variations. why photoshop when you can use real photos from spring training? i get why there are variations, but it would be nice if they didn't come at the expense of a decent regular base card.

one of the most highly publicized variation is andrew mccutchen's (and it is really great), but his base card is not bad, either

still, i would prefer flagship to be variant free.

i thought that i might find more than one photo variation, but as far as i can tell, the graterol was the only one in the box. the insert ratio did play out as planned for me, and i had decent success with the player selection.  i was happy to see that the 2030 insert set was not a rehash of the 2010 topps 2020 inserts (as cardboardconnection had initially shown)

the design borrows some shimmer from 2019 topps and also 1994 pacific. i found more mike trout, thanks to the 'player of the decade' insert set

in a similar vein, i found a few 'decades best' cards and 1985 design cards. one of the latter was of carl yastrzemski

now, yaz's card is in the all-star format, but there were some 1985 base styled cards in these packs. i was really hoping for a jim palmer card, as he last played in 1984 but was not featured in any 1985 product. no dice there (in update hopefully?), and seeing yaz reminded me of how disappointed i was last year when topps included him in the 1984 design, but as an all-star instead of on a regular 1984 design card. i really had hoped to see his full career stats on the back of a 1984 topps card, but all we got back then was a highlight card (a la al kaline and brooks robinson). another miss for topps. seriously, how tough is it to give some thought to this sort of thing when putting together a checklist, especially when the player is already featured in the set! speaking of which, topps is using the 1974 design in this year's archives release. do you think there will be a willie mays card showing him as a met? i certainly hope that there will be, but am not holding my breath. 

ok, rant over. here is the guaranteed auto or relic from the box:

i know relics aren't what they used to be, but i was pretty pleased to see the player of the decade here, even if he plays for the other los angeles team (that isn't really in los angeles).

with that, i am done with series 2 outside of a couple of specific cards that i've purchased online. i'll be interested to see what comes of update this year without an all-star game (more on that in a couple of days).