This is part three of a twenty-five part series chronicling my budding collections of the 2016 World Series champion Cubs. Obviously, I’ve already starting showing off some of those cards, but I wanted to offer a formal introduction to the various players. With my legacy player collections, I’m still going to attempt to show every single card on the blog, but with these new guys I’m taking a different approach as you’ll see here where I lump cards in one scan, and will probably skip many of the more basic cards I get unless I can get a good theme together.
Chris Coghlan may seem like an odd choice for the third part, but there are a couple reasons why I thought to do this now. One was that I figured it might be easy to put together quickly while knocking out a role player early. I can’t put all the heavy hitters out front. The second is to act as a little commentary on rookie prospecting since Ohtani fever is catching on (along with Albies and a few other Braves). I’m not so quick to pull the trigger and chase the big money cards. Partly because I don’t collect them, but also partly because I know that just about all prices for the hot new thing come back down to earth.
A couple rookie cups
Chris Coghlan didn’t catch the world on fire in 2009, but he did win the NL Rookie of the Year award that year. He beat out Dexter Fowler (8th) and some dude named Andrew McCutchen (4th).
He was solid with the Cubs too
Baseball is pretty crazy, and anyone can have a really good year. 2009 was Coghlan’s best (as seen in some of these card backs), and it’s possible the league adjusted to his solid start and he never was able to fully adjust back. Plus, you can see that injuries hampered his progress as it took several years to get back up to over 100 games played, but it was too late by then.
Bought at this year’s NSCC
The sad thing is that Coghlan’s story is honestly more common than the other way around. There are plenty of ROY winners that don’t pan out. But it must have been encouraging for Marlins fans just like Geovany Soto’s win in 2008 was for Chicago.
The rest of these are from COMC purchases
Now, cards like this that might have been a little sought after, although maybe not much due to playing for Florida, that are worth less than a dollar now.
Love the blue refractors
Now, in terms of Chris’ time with Chicago, I thought he did well with us. He wasn’t a regular, full-time guy but he played his role well and effectively. Even if he did occasionally show some attitude or “passion” here and there.
Don’t love the crazy curving
He’s also one of the guys that really helped me figure out my limits for the new collections. Originally I thought about adding everyone that played on the team that year (since all contributed to some degree to the year). Then I decided to limit it to the playoff rosters as that would be a lot of random guys with just a couple games. I also added Jason Hammel (removing Chapman) since he really did have a huge part in our success even though he was left off the playoff starting rotation.
Yup, still cool
So, in the playoffs, Coghlan was in the games, but didn’t contribute much offensively for us. He went hitless in 7 ABs, 3 strikeouts, and had one walk and scored a run in the NLCS. That run was important to me and helped that decision to not just collect the starters. As a result, I’m getting some really cool looking cards for cheap.
Mini gold
Chris is already out of baseball. 2017 was his last year (spent in Toronto). It can happen that quickly. So, I’m not buying Ohtani. Heck, I’m not buying high on Rizzo or Bryant even though they’re more established. We’ve seen Schwarber’s prices dip already. Some time or an unexpected injury can turn you from a Trout into a Strasburg with a snap of a finger. Even so, there will always be someone that’s willing to collect these guys, just like I now collect Coghlan.
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