with will smith firmly in place as the dodgers' catcher of the future, i was not disappointed in 2021 when keibert ruiz was traded to the nationals in the max scherzer/trea turner trade. sure, as a top dodger prospect, keibert ruiz was featured in a lot of sets and so was a big part of my 2021 card pickups, but getting scherzer and turner was a good return for ruiz and josiah gray.
ruiz literally burst on the major league scene with a home run in his first big league at bat, and in the end two of his three dodger hits were round trippers. with the nationals, he obviously hasn't kept up that pace, but he hit 18 homers in 2023. i looked up his current stats earlier this week, and ruiz has regressed offensively in 2024. he does have 12 homers so far this season, but his obp is around 0.255 due in large part to his low walk rate. he just turned 26 so he has some time to pick his production up, and i hope that he does.
anyway, i've had a number of ruiz cards languishing in my scanned folder since the trade, and i figured it was time to post them.
this first one is a 2020 bowman platinum purple parallel of the "walmart top prospects" insert card
here's a 2021 panini absolute rookie class insert
and a 2021 panini mosaic mosaic prizm parallel
and finally, a 2021 topps gypsy queen indigo parallel
which is also numbered to 250, just like the other purple hued parallel that kicked off this post.
the dodgers might be in another catcher quandary soon with 23-year old dalton rushing and 22-year old diego cartaya coming up the pipeline. rushing has recently been playing some outfield which makes me think he may be up sooner rather than later.
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