2000 Commons Challenge - Regular Season Recap and Postseason Preview

And thus the regular season has come to an end. Took two months to complete with every team playing 44 games. Had a good time and now for a recap of the regular season:

2020 MLB SHOWDOWN SET --- AL CENTRAL

 WE DID IT!!!! This is the last division of the 2020 MLB set and it feels great to get all the card out for everyone before the World Series is even over. So make your trip to staples, and load up on printer ink cartridge's or just make them print it all for you at your local, library, staples, fed ex , ups store. Best case scenario if you are feeling up to it, and have them laminate them for you as well. The AL Central was an exciting division coming into the season. Last years winners the Minnesota Twins made the improvements to become deeper, adding Kenta Maeda and Josh Donaldson among others to push the Central harder. The Cleveland Indians saw great strides from some young pitchers last season and saw them grow even more this current season. The Chicago White Sox went out and signed a ton of talent to come in and play with all their young up and coming players and  they were ready to compete now (and for the future). In this season, we saw all three of these teams take the division lead at some point and it really came down to the final week of the season to see who would fall where in the standings (and in the playoff picture). 

2020 MLB SHOWDOWN SET --- NL CENTRAL

 The NL Central was the most tightly contested division in baseball this season and four teams from the division made the expanded playoffs. This division would have been fun to see play out over a full 162 game season. Like all the other divisions this division has some great players and some very low players. While no complete superstars in this division offensively, they have some stellar pitching that many teams can benefit from. 

2020 MLB SHOWDOWN SET --- AL WEST

 It is officially World Series Week, and I for one a hyped, the Tampa Bay Rays and Los Angeles Dodgers are going to have an awesome series with lots of showdown star power in the series. In this post were going to look at the AL West and if it wasn't for Tampa Bay, we may have had the worst World Series Showdown team ever. Not because of them being a bunch of cheaters, but because the regular season version of the Astros was not very good... all the averages and on bases dipped from the last couple years (since they must now see how hard it is to hit like every other team in the league when you don't know what is coming). Okay, I have gotten all my Astros bashing out of the way, so let's BANG on through the AL West and see what the studs (and duds tbh) will be joining the set of stars and that have already been released. 

                                               

2020 MLB SHOWDOWN SET --- NL WEST

 It's Friday you know what that means, time for another division of the 2020 set. This time we bring the NL West and the top two teams in this division are mighty impressive. I can't imagine the showdown battles that can be had with these teams. The other three teams bring on plenty of useable players and once again we see the depth of a division. The Dodgers are currently down 3-1 to the Braves in the NLCS, can they use this showdown squad to get this series back to a game 7. 

2020 MLB SHOWDOWN SET --- NL EAST

We're back and better than ever, after unloading the AL East last Friday, this time we are bringing you the NL East, another loaded division full of talent, whether it is in the NL East Champion Atlanta Braves, or the bottom of the standings ladder Washington Nationals, what a sad fall for Washington. The amount of depth in this division truly made it an interesting one in a shortened season. Also this division is loaded with young talent that will keep this division strong for years to come, the obvious Atlanta youth of Acuna, Albies, Fried and Ian Anderson, Miami and its surprising season, including the MLB debut of Sixto Sanchez and his awesome card, the Nationals with Juan Soto and many more in this division will be fun to see the players develop their charts over the years. 

2020 MLB SHOWDOWN SET --- AL EAST

 It is officially here, the beginning of the release of the 2020 MLB Showdown set. Now thanks to some free time the team here has been able to hammer out much of this set faster than usual, and instead of individual team write ups and making you wait, we thought in theme with the crazy season we would do a crazy divisional card drop. So up first is the American League East, personally I wanted to get the New York Yankees done and out for our good friend Rekt after his Yankees dismantled my Indians, as like my way of losing the bet, so hopefully he gets to enjoy his Yankees as well as his divisional rivals first. Also in these write ups, you may see comments from myself (Matt), or the rest of the team that worked on the set, Peter, Jeff and Bob.  So buckle up for the crazy cards of the 2020 shortened season, because like I tried to explain in the announcement post, some of these charts we have never seen before, as player percentages were all kinds of wacky from this season.

ANNOUNCEMENT ------ 2020 MLB SHOWDOWN SET IS COMING

 The opening round of the playoffs is over and has been really exciting. It may have been even more exciting for the collaborators on the 2020 MLB Showdown set because while we got to watch all these games all day long on the TV, we were chatting and charting out this extremely insane 60 game season of the players. We had multiple options, add PAs from last season to this year so it was more like the other years, OR embrace everything that 2020 is and was, and  just use the percentages of only the 2020 season plate appearances and innings pitched. This set will be like no other, and I think in 2020 we deserve that. The cards will still have the classic look, but players walk rates, strike out ratios and home runs are at levels we don't normally see because there was no chance for ups and downs of a long season. So embrace the wacky 2020 set and have some fun with these awesome cards that will be coming soon.