I wavered between posting this here or in GQ. I suspect the question has a factual answer, but hey, it’s about baseball/baseball cards.
During the offseason, how do the baseball trading card makers determine which players get their own cards? Specifically, I’m thinking about all those players who shuttle back and forth between the big club and AAA, but never spend the full season with the MLB club. Mainly, these are AAA players who are called up to fill in while one of the “regulars” is on the disabled list. But some of them may be players who made the club out of spring training, but after a month or so the manager decides the guy needs some more “seasoning” and off he goes back to AAA. Often he’ll be back with the big club before the end of the season - during the “September callups” if nothing else. Or maybe it’s one of the regulars who ends up spending most of the season on the disabled list and only appears in a handful of games. Just some examples of the kind of players I’m talking about.
How do they decide which, if any, of these players gets their own baseball card? “Has a Major League contract”? “Was on the 25-man roster at the end of the season”? Other factors?
ETA: And by “his own baseball card”, I specifically mean the card showing the player as a member of a specific team. I’m leaving out “hot prospect” cards and other “special” cards. Basically, the player’s “official, regular” card.
I think rookie cards are “special” cards by your standard, so I’ll exclude them.
I suspect it’s a case by case basis for guys who aren’t technically rookies but split time between AAA and the show. I’d be surprised if there was a defined threshold for number of games in MLB that requires a card. I’m thinking of a guy like Matt LaPorta, who certainly would not be a rookie, but is currently in AAA Columbus. If he spends much time at all in Cleveland, I’d expect him to get a card because he is fairly well known.
Are there any other card makers besides Topps these days? I thought everyone else pretty much folded.
Topps baseball card sets used to always number 792 cards. There aren’t 792 players that play each year - so they include everyone they can, and fill in the rest with filler cards highlighting certain accomplishments over the season, league leaders, prospects, etc.
I’d include rookie cards, particularly if the photo shows them in their Major League team uniform. I think it’s only relatively recently that they started dressing up rookie cards to look special and call attention to themselves. My Randy Johnson rookie card (alas, stolen along with everything else in my ministorage unit a couple months ago) looked like every other Montreal Expos card that season (1988).
I’m sure that number has gone up. 30 teams x 25-man roster = 750 players. There are definitely more than 42 roster changes across the league each season.
Am I recalling correctly that Michael Jordan got a card when he was with the White Sox despite never making the major league team? Did he even get to Triple-A? Maybe that counts as a “special” card.
… and so I checked the Topps site, and as near as I can tell a “complete” basic Topps set now has only 660 cards, which would mean a bunch of players are getting left out entirely.
No, he played with the Birmingham Barons of the Double-A Southern League. However, that didn’t prevent him from appearing on a variety of baseball cards.