2011 Set - Kansas City Royals

The Royals lineup has a few Showdown friendly cards. Alex Gordon is an early pick, in my opinion, being one of the few LF/RF cards with +2 defense. He’s also a 9 OB, Speed A bat with a solid chart – the type of card you could bat 1, 2, or 3. Billy Butler is another reasonably priced high OB bat with some power. If you’re more inclined toward low OB cards with big charts, check out Jeff Francouer and his 5 doubles starting at 12. Finally, Pennant rookie foil Salvador Perez is a solid catcher bat.

The pitching is not good, aside from a few draftable bullpen arms. All the starters are 2 or 3 Control, and none above a tier-4. Maybe Danny Duffy or Kyle Davies is your 4th starter if you want to rely heavily on bullpen days when it’s his turn to pitch.

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). 

2015 Kansas City Royals

The 2014 Royals shocked the baseball universe by sneaking into the AL playoffs, then overcoming a huge deficit against "July's World Series lock," the Oakland A's. KC cruised through a 100 win Angels team before handily defeating Buck's boys in the ALCS. In the end, Mad Bum proved to be too much and the Royals went down in 7 to San Francisco, and essentially everyone assumed the Royals would fade to the middle of the pack in 2015. Instead, they came out blazing, winning the AL Central and also taking the top seed in the AL. Despite their claim to the best record in the AL, they were huge underdogs to the 2015 Blue Jays, who KC dispatched by using their great bullpen to neutralize one of the decade's best lineups.

In the World Series, the Royals took on the fearsome Mets rotation, and didn't pause at all. Winning in five games, Kansas City brought home their first World Series title since 1985, this time without any controversy! Enjoy one of the best surprises in recent memory, the 2015 Royals!