MLB Showdown 2021 Set: THE HOT STOVE

 Welcome to the first bunch of cards for the 2021 Set!!! The dream that Matt and I had in the midst of the wait for the 2020 season is finally being realized, as we anticipate releasing the 2021 set in three installments: (1) HOT STOVE; (2) PENNANT RUN; (3) MAIN SET.

Now, this "HOT STOVE" collection of 55 cards functions like the original "Pennant Run" cards of the 00/01 sets -- the hottest players on new teams via free agency/trade, players returning from injury who weren't in the previous set, and expected rookie of year candidates with (optimistic but not completely unrealistic) projected cards. That's right, below you can expect Lindor, Bauer, Tatis, etc etc plus hot prospects like Dylan Carlson and Wander Franco. 

For the Pennant Run, we're going to release some cards shortly after the 2021 trade deadline showing how good the moved players have been, with cards made for their stats at that point in the season. For example, if Kris Bryant gets dealt at the deadline, he'll have his card at that point made with him on the Cubs. This let's fans have one last card with a former player and let's the new team see what the expectations should be, and then that player will have his full season stats in the Main Set at year's end on the team he ended the season with.... overall, I like this because it let's bad teams (usually sellers) add some more good cards to their bunch from the season and it lets Pennant Run live up to its name, featuring players who're actually helping during the stretch run! But that's enough of our scheming and what's to come, let's get to the cards y'all really want to see -- the 2021 HOT STOVE collection!!!

STAR PLAYERS

Announcing the 2020 Central Division League

 Peter and I are happy to announce our plan for our Central Division league that we are going to be running. Now we came up with a pretty fun schedule where each team will play 6 games vs their in division opponents and 3 games against their opposite division opponents. When we made the 2020 set it was noticeable how close all the teams seemed to be and we wanted to watch the season play out in a 39 game season. We will be tracking full stats, and a secondary sheet was made to act as our "league website" which I am pretty excited about. With the two of us playing games, we are hoping to keep the season moving along at a decent pace and it will be fun to see how the standings shake up in the showdown world. 

MLB SHOWDOWN --- TOP 50 BATTERS OVER THE LAST 3 YEARS COMBINED

 While many of us are getting ready to or hopefully already enjoying the 2020 set, I always find myself scratching more itches on card ideas and concepts. I was comparing all the players over the last three years and looking at who had the highest averages of points per the 3 years. It got me thinking, because each season is different, what if I took all the players stats from the last three years and combined them together to have an even deeper data set to run our numbers against. A few trips to fangraphs and back, led me to a master sheet of how these guys would look. The ultra consistent players churned out the best cards as expected. The think that really stood out to me was the fluctuations between OB % for some of the players and seeing them drop to a lower OB and guys that stayed consistent maybe even going up an OB because of where they fell in the rankings. This also gives us a 58 more cards to add to our blind drafts and games so why not look at the great three years of showdown sets, combined into one big group. 

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. 

Introducing the New NBA Showdown: Rules

Hey guys, time to throw everyone off a bit with my introductory post to my reinvention of NBA Showdown. Yes this is still the Greatest MLB Showdown Blogspot, but Peter has been pressing me for months to get this new game out there, and is kind enough to allow me to post it on the MLB page. We are all here because we love the great game of showdown, but maybe some of you enjoy basketball as well but never got into the one year game, that I believe would be way more popular today than it would have been back in the early 2000s. I wanted to make the game a little more simple to rate -- so instead of Power vs Speed, I did straight-up offense vs defense as the player's two rating.

In creating these cards, I had a lot of success with my play testing and found these cards are tons of fun to play. Now, in this post I am going to re-explain the rules of NBA Showdown, but with my twists of playing the game.  The best thing about this post is, that once it is posted, and you understand the rules, the cards will follow. You don't have to buy packs to hopefully get the guys you love to build your team. You can just print them off and build a team of your favorites, or just play with your favorite team. Much like our version of MLB Showdown, no strategy cards, so it is just straight basketball action with decisions to be made by the coach.