A tour of my 2018 BREWERSNOW set - Part II

Here we go... after a mild twitter shaming from Vossbrink, I am back at posting my 2018 BrewersNOW set. You can check out the first 32 cards of the set here.

I am proud to say that between me, Nick, and Marc Brubaker, we've managed to create a nice little stir in the hobby. The wonderful SABR Baseball Commitee blog wants a post summarizing our experiences, so I've been compelled to contribute this post, which will be linked in the SABR post.

Of course, with the new season approaching, there has been much chatter about rebooting the idea for 2019. Nick and Marc both used designed their own sets with photoshop-type programs (I'm hopelessly dumb when it comes to stuff like that) and then had them printed in sheets (Marc has yet to do this, as of this writing, actually) and cut them up. Nick sent me some of his a few weeks ago and DAMN was I impressed. They were on much thinner stock than my Rookies App cards, but the photos were sharper and he, of course, had much more leeway in the design and backside features. They were also MUCH cheaper than my cards, which ran about 80 cents each (I think Nick's cost about a nickle each). But I am still leaning towards using the Rookie App for 2019 - if I do a 2019 set. 

My reticence is only that the 2018 season was SO great for the Brewers - literally the best year of Brewers baseball I've been around for, that trying the same thing in 2019 would be a set up for a let-down. Of course, the Brewers could very well repeat as NL Central Champs and make another playoff run, but there was something special in the symbiosis of this idea and that season that would be hard to replicate. 

AHHHAHAHAAH. Who am I kidding? I'm a junkie for this crap. Of Course I'm going to do it again. Anyway, on the second half of the player cards. 

 33. Jhouyls Chacin

 34. Matt Albers

35. Domingo Santana
Domingo had a very rough start to the year and spent most of 2018 at AAA. He did come back up in August and September and had some huge hits along the way. He was traded to the Mariners in the offseason. 

36. Wade Miley
I made this card during DL stints for Miley (this is actually him leaving a game with an injury) and didn't expect he'd end up anything like the team's defacto ace come October. 

37. Nick Franklin
One of the guys everyone forgets played for the '18 Crew, Franklin played in a single game and was injured, as depicted here. 

38. Derek Johnson
Another guy who won't be back in the 2019 set, DJ jumped to the Reds this winter. 

39. Tyler Saladino
This might be my second-favorite card in the set to the Lorenzo Cain from the previous post. That's Saladino in the dugout after his inside-the-park homer in Arizona. 

40. Dan Jennings
With relief pitcher photos limited, I had to horizontal-ize a few to get them to fit properly. I kind of like the sideways photo in the standard design, like Upper Deck used to do when horizontal cards were still a novelty. 

41. Carlos Subero

42. Corey Knebel
The only card I redid due to an error, in which I spelled his name "Knabel."

43. Freddy Peralta
A hell of a debut for Freddy, in which he fanned 13 Rockies and took a no-hitter into the sixth. 

44. Brandon Woodruff

45. Boone Logan

46. Alex Asher
This is the only photographic evidence I was able to find of Asher as a Brewer. I lifted it from a tweet from the team announcing he'd been sent to AAA. 

47. Zach Davies

48. Jason Lane

49. Erik Kratz
Along with the Suter and the Counsell, these were the three I re-did to upgrade the pictures. Like with Counsell, I had to use an emotional moment to best capture the season. We see the beginnings of a chat between Kratz and ornery prick (who I totally love) Joey Votto that eventually cleared the benches. Kratz gave the quote of the year after the game, when asked what prompted the heated moment. "We were discussing the Canadian dollar and flawed systems in our two governments. He was coming from a different side of it, and we were just discussing those kinds of things."

 50. Brad Miller

 51. Keon Broxton

52 Mike Zagurski
He will be the answer in a future Sporcle quiz about the 2018 Brewers that no one will ever remember. 

 53. Aaron Wilkerson
You'll notice we're kind of into the woods now. I made these cards mostly as the players debuted with the Brewers, so we're at the point in the season when lots of short-term bullpenners were being cycled between Milwaukee and AAA.

54. Nate Orf

55. Corbin Burnes

56. Joakim Soria
Here were have out first trade pick-up for the Crew. Soria was decent, but not spectacular. He won't be back in 2019. 

57. Mike Moustakas
Moose was the big get the Brewers, picked up at the deadline from KC for Brett Phillips and Jorge Lopez, both of whom have cards in the first half of this set. This is a pic from his Brewers debut.

 58. Jonathan Schoop
The Brewers also added Schoop at the deadline, but he struggled mightily in Milwaukee. 

 59. Jordan Lyles
Lyles was decent for the Brewers, but in an anonymous kind of way, thus I couldn't even find a picture of him in uniform where his face was showing. Oddly enough, he drew a walk and scored the winning run in a wild 13th inning walk-off against Pittsburgh, but I couldn't find any images of him from that night. 

 60. Gio Gonzalez
It took so long for Gio to get into a game after the Brewers picked him up, I had to use something like looks like a dumb Topps variation image. 

 61. Curtis Granderson
So far, this is the only Granderson Brewers card aside from a single Topps Now issue. I NEED more Grandy Brewers. 

 62. Xavier Cendo
Fitting, perhaps, that the final player card in the set is the only guy who is missing from my All-Time Brewers set. Despite having seen action in EIGHT different MLB seasons, he is without an MLB card and only has regional Minor League issues. He's appeared in 249 games, for hell's sake, give him some love, Topps. 











So, that makes 62 cards. One shy of seven complete pages. I have no more coaches or players to add... what should I do? What can POSSIBLY complete this set??

63. Bob Uecker
The only way to end it.

I'll be back soon with my game highlight cards!