the almost daily dodger - keibert ruiz

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

it's numbered to 250 in the top left.

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.

almost free stuff friday, absolutely

so here is some base 2021 panini absolute up for grabs. remember, i require that you send me at least one card from my want list in exchange for the card(s) of your choice.  let me know what you are claiming in the comments.

sorry for the poor photos - i'll list the players.

first up, dj lemahieu, isiah kiner-falefa, yu darvish, shabe beiber, rafael devers, rhys hoskins, blake snell, max scherzer, manny machado

next up, jacob degrom, xander bogaerts, anthony rizzo, aaron nola, charlie blackmon (with bonus lurking mascot cutout), austin hedges, gerrit cole, jimmie foxx, christian yelich

next up, jp crawford, joey votto, bryce harper, ketel marte, brandon lowe, mike yastrzemski, mookie betts, joey gallo, javier baez

next up, willy adames, matt olson, kris bryant, miguel cabrera, carlos correa (with more dinger cutout action!), edd roush, buster posey, brian anderson, jose ramirez

and finally, lucas giolito, matt chapman, starling marte, joe jackosn, randy arozarena, jeff mcneil, hyun-jin ryu, colin moran, george springer

claim away!

not an absolute waste?

with steve garvey reemerging on a number of topps checklists this year, i wonder if his time with panini is over. the most recent panini release he's been featured in was their 2021 absolute set, and his cards were sticker graphs. this could just speak to the lower end market that this product fits in, but still. i wonder.

i did pick up one of his cards

it's a tools of the trade auto-relic numbered to 25. it's the most common card of his in the set, and features a plain white swatch and a piece of that jacket they've been using on cards of garvey's for a few years now.  i bought this card on ebay, although i did also open a blaster of the stuff. here's a sampling:

pack 1

four base cards per pack:

sandy koufax and walker buehler in the same pack is nice. i appreciate the lack of colorization of the koufax card, although the sign behind him is begging for some color

two green foil parallels per pack

i assure you, there is green foil on those cards

two other inserts per pack

pack 2:

base

green foil parallels

and inserts

you get the idea. it went on like this for several more packs. it was interesting to see edd roush getting a card in the set. pretty random, actually.

i am not going to show any more of the cards i found, other than this delightfully colorful one:

what a half-arsed colorization effort for roy campanella's power insert. is it weird that i like it? not absolutely, but just a little?

be sure to come back tomorrow night for an almost free friday featuring a bunch of cards from this set.