1995 Cleveland Indians

Continuing our theme of Hall of Famers, we look at probably the best team Jim Thome was apart of, the 1995 Indians! They went 100-44, absolutely abusing pitchers in the first post-strike season with a monster offense on their way to the AL Pennant. Although Thome's the current Hall of Famer (and a third basemen this season!), the real star of this team was Albert Belle. Belle remarkably hit 50 HRs and had over 50 doubles!!

Print out this team and play them against yesterday's '95 Braves to relive that series. If you're a Cleveland fan like most of this site's creators are, it'll probably result in sweet restorative justice and an Indians win thanks to this team's bats!

1995 Atlanta Braves World Series Champion

Atlanta was definitely the NL Franchise of the 90s, winning five pennants and making the playoffs every season from 1991 on, unless a strike got in the way. Their success was largely behind their three amazing starting pitchers -- Maddux, Glavine, and Smoltz -- and the MLB Showdown original cover boy, Chipper Jones. In honor of Chipper entering the Hall of Fame, here's the Braves only World Series winning team, the 1995 Braves!

2007 Colorado Rockies

The 2007 Rockies are well remembered for perhaps the most incredible stretch run in MLB history! Colorado memorably won 13 of their final 14 games to force a one game playoff with the Padres for the wild card spot. They won that too, sending them to the playoffs with the franchise's first 90 win season. They proceeded to sweep through the NL Playoffs, giving them a remarkable 21 wins in 22 games to take the pennant! Clearly, the team got REALLY hot with their rolling in that stretch! The team is built around their hitting (surprise, surprise at Coors Field). Troy Tulowitski wasn't putting up his peak numbers, but between him and a couple of elite seasons from Matt Holliday and Todd Helton, get ready for a really fun team that gave baseball fans everywhere a lot of joy!

Personally, the Rockies have always been my second favorite team because my cousin's from Colorado and I got a new Rockies shirt as a hand me down every other year growing up. Here's a special shout out to Dante Bichette for that boss jersey-shirt I wore into complete disrepair in backyard wiffleball games. Also, the purple and black backgrounds are my personal favorite double-combo of card backgrounds of any team I've made so far and I'm probably going to make more Rockies soon because I want to print them out! I feel like some prime year Tulo, '17 Blackmon, and '10 Ubaldo are must makes.

Anyway, the team isn't quite as strong as some other squads on paper, but if you roll fortunately, there's no reason they can't be a team with some great streaks in them!

2018 MLB Showdown Super Draft League Week 1 Results

Week 1 is finally in the books. Week 2 is kicking off this weekend. So I want to get the stats out to everyone so that everyone can see the updates weekly as they happen. There were 2 teams on a bye ( this was because 2 teams dropped out last min) But we still have our 8 teams. Top 2 from each division will make the playoffs. After last months poll we had Rollie Fingers and Butch Huskeys with the most popular votes. So we will see how these teams turn out. So lets see what the results are and let you guys weigh in.

2001 World Series Champion Arizona Diamondbacks

We've got a couple 2001 classic teams coming at you this week, starting with the DBacks! Arizona was made earlier by David, but I remade them in the classic Showdown style! They're definitely a team dependent on their two big aces: Johnson and Schilling. Those two are studs. The hitting is ok, but they've got a BIG gun in Luis Gonzalez. I see him getting walked a lot. Overall, a fun team with some interesting deficiencies that make them a tricky squad to manage.

2017 Los Angeles Dodgers

Last season, the Dodgers took the Astros to seven games in an absolutely epic World Series (we've been really spoiled these last few seasons). It only seemed right that we provide everyone with the opportunity to replay the series on their own, so we created the Dodgers to match up with the 2017 Astros! Plus, what better time to unveil a team of Dodgers than right after they acquired the most sought after trade piece of 2018, Manny Machado!

The Dodgers definitely have a World Series champion caliber Showdown squad. They won 104 games, which could've been even better if not for a 1-16 stretch at the end of August/start of September! Lost in the transition from reality to Showdown card form is how good the Dodgers starters were as a collective, with Maeda, Ryu, and McCarthy all turning in fine seasons but not quite pitching enough to make the 2017 Dodgers Showdown rotation. Unsurprisingly, given LA's reputation as baseball's biggest payroll, the Dodgers blow past the typical Showdown 5000 point salary cap with this team. Honestly, I can't wait to print these guys out and face them off versus the Astros!

Without further ado, your 2017 NL Champs -- the LA Dodgers!

2005 Chicago White Sox

Finally, we're bringing back the 2005 White Sox in classic Showdown fashion! The White Sox won 99 games and went an incredible 11-1 in the playoffs, finally breaking the Black Sox Curse. The team's Pythagorean W-L shows what a great job at being opportunistic and strategic manager Ozzie Guillen was, outperforming their expectation by eight wins! While they're known for their speed and grit, the pitching was the real key to this team. They've got a great rotation and 'pen, helping them at least hang around in any game against other teams we've given you to play with earlier!

Home Run Derby Showdown Results

So I ran the derby with the 8 cards featured before. The rules were roll the die with the advantage to the batter automatically. BBs are a pass and have no result. Anything else was an Out. 10 outs and you are done. Here are the results. They may surprise you!!! Let's see how accurate this is in a few hours tonight.

SHOWDOWN HOME RUN DERBY - 10 out BB pass rules

ROUND 1

Jesus - BB, 2B,BB,HR,BB,1B,BB,HR,2B,HR,1B,K,2B,K,HR,1B,HR,2B,1B    = 5HR

Hoskins-BB,1B,1B,K,BB,2B,2B,1B,2B,HR,HR,K,HR,K,BB,K  =3HR

Winner Round 1 : Jesus Aguilar

Home Run Derby

It's July it's Monday and no regular season baseball games today... you know what that means. It's time for the HOME RUN DERBY!!! This is one of my favorite days of the year. Me and my friends hit whiffle ball home runs in the back yard and drink while picking players in the derby to do well and making other people drink. For exact rules of our drinking we take each bracket and the group of  people each pick 1 player from each bracket. Then during that bracket round when your player hits a home run everyone that didn't pick him takes a sip of beer and then vice versa. This goes on for every bracket and each round. It's fun and a much better way to watch it besides hearing BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK gone. But now lets combine my two loves. MLB showdown and Home run derby. Me and Peter came up with idea of special variant edition of the home run derby contestants with there projected stats at the half way point. Then tonight I might do a little home run derby with each player and see who ends of winning mlb showdown style... with the DIE! So stop talking Bob and lets see the damn cards. Now just to let everyone know I got the images from the TOPPS BUNT app this way I could get a consistent picture. I also will post later probably on twitter additional variants I created myself. But before I reveal those cards how bout a DERBY favorite. A monster in his own time Mr. Ken Griffey JR. He won 3 home run derbys. We took his 1994 half way stats to base his card off of. Again I took the art off some website for the variant.

All-Star Break Pitcher Tier Ranks

Now that we are at the All-Star break let's take a look at the Tiers some of the best pitchers around baseball are trying to fit into. After the past two weeks there is only 1 Tier 1 starter at the current times. It is still Jacob DeGrom and he improved upon his ERA & Whip score. There is 13 Tier 2 and 26 Tier 3 starters.

 

San Francisco Giants Dynasty

The most recent baseball dynasty belongs to the San Fran Giants of the early 2010s! The Giants won 3 World Series in five years, the first team to do so since the late 90s Yankees won three in a row. Unfortunately (as you can see in the previous 2012 Giants post on this blog), from a Showdown perspective, none of the individual World Series teams are that impressive as a group. My friends and I have joked for a while that Bochy must have a knack for "rolling well" in October. So for the Giants, as one of the real dynasties of my lifetime, I thought they deserved a team that collected the best players from their great run! I decided to start the dynasty a year prior to their first WS, as 2009 was when many of their best guys really got going and the team had its first plus .500 season since Bonds departed in 2004. So I looked from 2009 thru 2014 (when they won their 3rd WS) and the result of looking for the best players from that era resulted in the following squad! They're just under 6000 points overall (which makes sense for a super team like this), making them hypothetically much better than your standard Showdown team, but definitely not invincible nor unplayable against the other World Series teams we've unveiled. Personally, I can't wait to put this rotation up against the 2015 Blue Jays lineup! Ok, enough prattling -- it's time to roll out the Dynasty Giants!

Buster Posey took home the MVP in 2012 with this extremely valuable catcher card and led the Giants to a World Series title!

2003 Florida Marlins

Here is a remake on one of the amazing teams from early on in the process of the greatest MLB Showdown blog. The Florida Marlins somehow have two World Series titles in around twenty seasons, despite never winning their division. Meanwhile, the Brewers, Expos/Nationals, Mariners, Rockies, and Padres have zero titles in 200+ seasons of existence. The 1997 Marlins was probably the more talented roster, featuring young players that would go on to be stars (and maybe featured some Hall of Famers): Kevin Brown, Gary Sheffield, Edgar Renteria and more. However, we needed to make the 2003 Marlins first! As kids that mainly grew up in the Chicago suburbs, that epic Bartman-feuled collapse and the corresponding Marlins upset of the Yankees was the first truly magical postseason most of us saw (or most painful, depending if you're a pro or anti Cubs fan).

Something many of us forget is the Cubs and Marlins dispatched a pair of 100 win teams in the first round (Atlanta and San Francisco), and the Marlins did all this without a true power hitter or an OB 10 in the lineup! A balanced team with a solid rotation and weak bullpen, the Marlins truly are a case of a manager getting hot with his rolling (or fortunate that the other manager keeps giving up big hits off his own chart).

Hopefully you enjoy this underdog team!

World Series Rangers

The first complete major leagues, each person manages a team per division MLB Showdown league I ever played came after we discover Colby and the awesome guys at mlbshowdowncards.blogspot.com made a 2011 and 2012 set. We got the cards from them and made all the teams (under 5000 points) in the bigs and played out a 48 game season. The grand winner was the Texas Rangers, taking down the fantastic pitching Phillies in six games. Meanwhile, in my personal Showdown league where I didn't do any salary cap and I just put together the best players from 00, 01, and Colby's 11 thru 13 cards, the Rangers were the best team in baseball at 24-12 and beat the Wild Card Red Sox, swept the Blue Jays in the ALCS, and dominated the World Series 4 to 1 over the Dodgers. So in my mind, when it comes to Showdown, the Rangers are the best franchise around.... even though they've never won a World Series in real life. However, they got *really* close in 2010 and 2011, losing to arguably inferior teams in back-to-back World Series appearances. So to honor those fantastic Rangers teams, I put together the "best" collection of 2010 and 2011 Rangers cards to make their "World Series Rangers" team.

Also, since I wanted to put the blog's personal spin on everything, all 2011 Rangers cards are made through my hitting/pitching formulas rather than just reproducing the cards we got from Colby back in the day. It's fun seeing the slight differences, really showing how much this card making process is as much art as it is science! Also, I put together a few "foil" Rangers just because I think their secondary blue color looks really, really sharp. Enjoy this collection of amazing Texas Rangers!

2008 World Series Champion Philadelphia Phillies

The 2008 Phillies won 92 games and made their first playoffs since 1993's World Series appearance. A team on a mission, they absolutely demolished their opposition in the postseason en route to an 11-3 playoff record. The team is very interesting in its construction, featuring only one OB 9 and an average rotation for a World Series winner, but has A LOT of pop if you make mistakes to their star's charts and a bullpen that'll hold up almost any lead. Personally, I'm excited to see how this unique Showdown team plays against other WS winners.

2011 St. Louis Cardinals

Here we have the 2011 World Series Champion St. Louis Cardinals. They made the playoffs as the wild card team winning in the World Series over the Texas Rangers 4-3. It was a very impressive run for the Cardinals beginning their 4 year run of at worst making it to the National League Divisional Series. Coming in at 4170 points this team can add some more firepower but also missing the bench members that would drive up the point total.

7/9 Update On-Base Percent Leaders

Three weeks into my rankings update and what i have come to see is that Mike Trout is really really good. We are almost at the all-star break and now is when the separation will begin. Trout as of a month ago was ranked third with a .431 OBP and now is in a commanding lead with .455%. Behind him have been Mookie Betts and Joey Votto whom have both fluctuated over this past month but remained in contention fro that coveted second 11 On Base chance. The rest of the field continues to move around, and we see some new faces creeping closer to pack like Bryce Harper with his 218 AVG and .374 OB% can you say 8 walks. The biggest jump of the past few weeks was Eugenio Suarez moving up 10 places increasing his OB% from .391 to .405%. Our biggest drop off was Brandon Nimmo from .403% to .386%.

2015 Royals: MLB Showdown 2000 style!

While they got a post in the site's original, much less-polished format, we are obliging a request to re-do the team in the class Showdown style! A couple players cards got minor tweaks and Danny Duffy was swapped into the rotation, and these Royals are ready to join the other complete teams we've presented on the site! Sadly for KC fans, this team is probably the weakest Showdown team thus far -- although that didn't stop them from taking down the 2015 Blue Jays in real life!

After all, the 2015 Royals were sort of seen nationally as an amazing underdog story, even though KC was the defending AL Champs and took home the best record in the AL with 95 wins (five better than their Pythagorean W-L). Managed by Ned Yost, the Royals flipped the script on the high on-base, power hitting, great starting pitching formula of most contenders, emphasizing putting the ball into play, speedy small ball, and great defense. Unfortunately, that does not translate extremely well to Showdown thanks to the extreme emphasis on On-Base and the shorter bullpens, but the Royals are definitely still good. The rotation is led by a stellar Johnny Cueto, the offense has five OB 9 hitters plus an OB 8, and the bullpen is LOADED (again). This will definitely be a fun squad to use if (a) you're a Royals fan and/or (b) if you love having to play a hands on, steal-heavy, pull the starter quick managerial style in Showdown!

Without further ado, your 2015 World Series champion Kansas City Royals!

2009 New York Yankees

In 2009, the Yankees broke their World Series "slump," taking home their first World Series title since their late-90s Dynasty ended. They won 103 games, mostly behind their prestigious lineup.  Their lineup was led by Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter, who finished second and third in the MVP voting and both won Gold Gloves. Of course they had other familiar Yankees stars on the team, such as A-Rod, Matsui, Posada, Cano, Johnny Damon and Nick Swisher. Moreover, the free agent signing of CC Sabathia proved instrumental to their success, giving them the frontline starter they needed alongside their potent offense. They knocked off the defending champion Phillies in the World Series in six games, and honestly have a lot more team speed than I would've guessed. Honestly, as much as I hate the Yankees, this is going to be a fun squad to play with and match up against other World Series champion teams!

Without further ado, the 2009 Yankees cards!

2013 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox

The latest installment to the collection of great baseball teams and World Series Champions is the 2013 Boston Red Sox. The Sox finished the season at 97-65 just short of a 100 win season. They defeated the St. Louis Cardinals 4-2 in the Fall Classic.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!

Happy Fourth of July everybody! To celebrate in pure MLB Showdown fan fashion, here's a couple special cards for the best seasons of our nation's capital team's franchise faces and *the* face of baseball for many mid-20s fans like myself. Enjoy!

MLB Showdown 2018 League - Bob 2000-2000P-2001-2001P-2014-Custom

This is going to be a long post... I think... not sure I just started writing it. But my 10 team DH custom draft league has started! We completed our draft on July 1st. We drafted through roughly 2000 cards. The sets included 2000, 2000 Pennant, 2001, 2001 Pennant, 2014 Colby, and custom cards from this site. I know you guys will be familiar with a handful of them. This whole league will be in the 00-01 style and most of the rules will be similar. Main rules that a different are: The league is a 5500 salary pt league min 18 players. 9 position players and 4SP 4RP 1CP min. If a starting pitcher allows 4 ER he loses 1 inning pitch and then every 2 ER following. Relief pitchers lose an IP when they allow 1 ER. You can intentional walk and sacrifice bunt. You can also go for any runner on ground ball outs. The rule I added that might be the most interesting is the mistake pitch from Clutch. If the pitcher rolls a 1 no matter who they are the batter gets to use the 24 sided dice. This is such a fun way to go OOOOMMMGGG! Anyway knowing all that I hope you guys will look through the draft that we did and weigh in on your opinions on who is awful, who is good, and who you think will win. Lets start with the AL.

Pinstripe Post: Twins and White Sox

Time for a weekend Pinstripe post, featuring the two teams suggested by the fans in my previous pinstripe post: the Twins and the White Sox! Minnesota had a lot of fun pinstripe backgrounds out there to try and I applied them to MVP Joe Mauer and peak Kirby Puckett. Meanwhile, the White Sox were a bit more of an artistic struggle, but I tried a few combinations on their best current player, Jose Abreu. Because his cards are kinda meh, I added his normal 2017 card to the mix too! Enjoy!

2018 MLB Season ERA/WHIP Starter Comparison

Last week I brought you the update on the players chase for the 11 On-Base. This week im bringing the ERA/WHIP combinations to show who the most feared pitchers are currently in baseball . Also a preview of what one of them may look like if the guy in the lead keeps up the work he has put in so far this season. Three Tier 1 Pitchers but it will be hard for them to keep it up the rest of the season.

MLB Showdown 2017 Season: MIDWAY UPDATE

So I was originally going to try to post individual series recaps, but between churning out new cards and real life, I'm way too far behind. Thus, you're getting a "mid-way" update on the season... despite it being more like the 2/3 update. If you missed the original post explaining the league, quick update: all 30 MLB teams playing a 30 game schedule, with five guys each GMing one team per division. We each started with the players who were on the rosters of each team post-free agency. So the Yankees had Stanton, Cardinals had Ozuna, etc. etc., although their cards are based on their 2017 statistics. We also all had 10 minor league prospects (eventually will be explained in detail) and several contender teams gutted their farm systems for firepower while lesser teams tanked for more future potential. Now that we're over the halfway mark, I'm going to bring you: (1) Standings, with some discussion on the various division/wild card races, (2) Statistical leaders and award races/All Star thoughts, (3) Thoughts previewing the home stretch in the season.

Turner's leading our Majors in steals, leading off the Nats' lineup as Washington attempts to take advantage of a weak schedule for an unheard of 30-0 Showdown season! Whether they can do it is a hotly contested topic in our circle, but they're halfway there at 15-0!!!