Yordan Alvarez

[eye4talent]

I just got a green wave for $83. I don’t love green waves, and I’m really trying to stop spending. But how could I not grab a Topps Chrome /99 for that price?


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[speedyjg13]

Originally Posted by eye4talent

I just got a green wave for $83. I don’t love green waves, and I’m really trying to stop spending. But how could I not grab a Topps Chrome /99 for that price?


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You're right! How could you not?

Congratulations!

[eye4talent]

Originally Posted by speedyjg13

You're right! How could you not?

Congratulations!

Thanks!

These prices are getting so low, I’m starting to question myself. Although, we’re really just back to normal times—like before Covid, when people didn’t throw crazy money at a player until he was going berserk at the plate.


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[eye4talent]

Superfractor countdown! T-14 minutes…


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[Skunkbush]

Originally Posted by eye4talent

Superfractor countdown! T-14 minutes…


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Over 10k!

[ddearing]

Well, I didn't get it. I hope one of you did. I was trying to enter 11,111 when it jumped above that.

[CanadianKid]

Hit this after ripping a box a couple weeks ago... /250

[eye4talent]

Originally Posted by ddearing

Well, I didn't get it. I hope one of you did. I was trying to enter 11,111 when it jumped above that.

I commend the effort. $12,700 is pretty strong. It’ll be a drop in the bucket if/when Yordan goes next level, but that’s still a strong price at this point.


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[ddearing]

Originally Posted by eye4talent

I commend the effort. $12,700 is pretty strong. It’ll be a drop in the bucket if/when Yordan goes next level, but that’s still a strong price at this point.


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Well, I was going to have to sell some Yordan's to justify buying it from a diversification standpoint. Now, I can just keep being lazy and not having a single listing in my Ebay store....

[tblood]

Originally Posted by eye4talent

I just got a green wave for $83. I don’t love green waves, and I’m really trying to stop spending. But how could I not grab a Topps Chrome /99 for that price?


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Bah! Nice pick up! I’m glad you got that one. I figured it would go low being a green wave on a 24hr sale. I bid early but never even picked up my phone tonight to see the notifications.


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[eye4talent]

Originally Posted by tblood

Bah! Nice pick up! I’m glad you got that one. I figured it would go low being a green wave on a 24hr sale. I bid early but never even picked up my phone tonight to see the notifications.


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I keep getting lucky!

I thought the same thing when I saw it yesterday, that the 24-hour listing seemed ripe for a snipe.


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[tblood]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

Two things I noticed while digging in on Yordan's numbers;

1) He is facing a higher percentage of LHP than I would think is normal (40%). I checked David Ortiz and sure enough, he only faced 30% LHP over his career. Gotta figure out if that's the new norm or something Yordan/Astros specific? Gallo is at 37% this year, Juan Soto at 35%, so it might be a little of both.

2) He is not pulling the ball nearly as much as 2019. His HardHit and FlyBall percentages are as high as ever, but his pull % is down from 32.6% in 2019 to 23.4% this year. That explains all of the drop in HR, IMO. His HR/FB is down from 21.1% to 14.2%.

If there are any interested Astros fans in this thread, both of these observations apply to Kyle Tucker as well.

I am a big fan of your posts! Better info than what can be found from many online baseball publications and no annoying ads/videos/pop ups to deal with!


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[BBases31]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

2) He is not pulling the ball nearly as much as 2019. His HardHit and FlyBall percentages are as high as ever, but his pull % is down from 32.6% in 2019 to 23.4% this year. That explains all of the drop in HR, IMO. His HR/FB is down from 21.1% to 14.2%.

None of these numbers are accurate. FanGraphs has his Pull % at 34.5 for this year and 38.5 in 2019. HR/FB was 32.9% in 2019 and 22.2% this year. His Hard Hit percentage this year is 37.8%, down from 51.1% in 2019. FB% also down from 37.1% to 35.7%

https://www.fangraphs.com/players/yo...ts#batted-ball

[tblood]

Originally Posted by BGeezy

Overall, I feel like the grades are very fair and accurate. I sent some cards in that I knew had no chance at a 9.5 let alone 10 and they often got 8s or 9s as I would expect, if you were to judge them fairly. I've also sent some in that I honestly would expect could get PSA 10s and they received min grade 9.5s. The 9 sub would be the one tiny flaw that I thought PSA might overlook and still give a gem mint grade, like a barely noticable print line. PSA has given me 10s on plenty of cards that I'm pretty sure CSG would give me 9.5s with one 9 sub. Especially when it comes to surface imperfections.

I've also submitted some of my best flagship base Yordans and they mostly received quad 9.5s and I thought that was fair, hoped for maybe one of those to get a 10, but under magnification you could see they weren't quite perfect. Naked eye they looked damn near perfect though. I also included one flagship Yordan I knew wasn't gem and it received a 9, which I thought was accurate.

The one real disappointment I had was a 2020 Sapphire Tatis that I thought would get a 10 if I sent to PSA, but CSG gave it a 9.5. All 10 subs except surface, which received a 9. I still don't really know what it was about the surface, I must've missed something, but it was still disappointing. I'm confident it would've received a 10 with PSA. I suppose a CSG 9.5 with three 10 subs is still pretty damn good.

I know not one grading company is perfect, but I feel like CSG is fair and accurate. At least with modern cards.

Thanks for sharing the insight and info! The value bump of a PSA 10 compared to a 9.5 is great, but from a collectors perspective I appreciate the accuracy more than the value. So it looks like CSG is going to get my first ever grading submission. I just wish their labels didn’t clash so much with the Astros colors.


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[gmoney328]

Originally Posted by CanadianKid

Hit this after ripping a box a couple weeks ago... /250

Nice pull. I got one myself last year in a pack. Great card to have.

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by tblood

I am a big fan of your posts! Better info than what can be found from many online baseball publications and no annoying ads/videos/pop ups to deal with!


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Thanks. Maybe I should start pimping some of my items....

[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by BBases31

None of these numbers are accurate. FanGraphs has his Pull % at 34.5 for this year and 38.5 in 2019. HR/FB was 32.9% in 2019 and 22.2% this year. His Hard Hit percentage this year is 37.8%, down from 51.1% in 2019. FB% also down from 37.1% to 35.7%

https://www.fangraphs.com/players/yo...ts#batted-ball

Hmm. I would think that this would be an area where baseball reference and fangraphs should be in perfect alignment. I wonder what's creating the difference?

Looking at his Fangraphs page it gives two different hard hit metrics. Statcast is at ~50% which is as good as every, but BIS has him down to ~37%.

ETA: Looking at Tucker his Pull% is down on FG too, just not as much as BR. His Statcast hard hit is the same as always, BIS hard hit is also same as always.

[eye4talent]

Originally Posted by rwperu34

Two things I noticed while digging in on Yordan's numbers;

1) He is facing a higher percentage of LHP than I would think is normal (40%). I checked David Ortiz and sure enough, he only faced 30% LHP over his career. Gotta figure out if that's the new norm or something Yordan/Astros specific? Gallo is at 37% this year, Juan Soto at 35%, so it might be a little of both.

2) He is not pulling the ball nearly as much as 2019. His HardHit and FlyBall percentages are as high as ever, but his pull % is down from 32.6% in 2019 to 23.4% this year. That explains all of the drop in HR, IMO. His HR/FB is down from 21.1% to 14.2%.

If there are any interested Astros fans in this thread, both of these observations apply to Kyle Tucker as well.

The lefty-lefty matchup issue is interesting. League-wide, left-handed hitters face southpaws 27% of the time. At least, that was the case last year. I can’t imagine it’s changed much in a year.

He slugs better against righties, but he actually has a higher average against lefties. Without doing a deep dive, I imagine he’s been racking up the singles while going the other way against LHP’s—which, in turn, would explain the lower pull rate.


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[rwperu34]

Originally Posted by eye4talent

The lefty-lefty matchup issue is interesting. League-wide, left-handed hitters face southpaws 27% of the time. At least, that was the case last year. I can’t imagine it’s changed much in a year.

He slugs better against righties, but he actually has a higher average against lefties. Without doing a deep dive, I imagine he’s been racking up the singles while going the other way against LHP’s—which, in turn, would explain the lower pull rate.


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Sadly I can not figure it out. LHP face 30% of the batters this year (vs 27% in 2007). You'd have to figure LHB face more LHP than the league average due to RP leverage. At the league split level LHB vs RHP is poisoned by switch hitters.

Looking at total team PA vs LHP the average is around 1300 on a range of 882 (StL) to 1653 (TBR) with Houston clearly above average at 1532. It's probably as simple as teams bring more LHP at Houston because of Yordan, Brantely, and Tucker. It should be noted that Yordan has more PA against LHP than the other two despite similar PA. They've also got Castro on the bench with 141 PA, 37% vs LHP.

In the most ridiculous stat of the day, St. Louis only has 60 PA as a team LHB vs LHP for the entire season. The only LHB regular on the roster is Matt Carpenter, but he's only got 15 PA vs LHP. I'll bet a lot of the rest is pitchers.

[BGeezy]

Originally Posted by tblood

Thanks for sharing the insight and info! The value bump of a PSA 10 compared to a 9.5 is great, but from a collectors perspective I appreciate the accuracy more than the value. So it looks like CSG is going to get my first ever grading submission. I just wish their labels didn’t clash so much with the Astros colors.


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I agree 100%.

The color clash can be irritating, but I try to be selective with what I send to them and what I save for PSA. For example, I would avoid green parrallels in the past. Now, I seek out green Yordans with the intent on sending them to CSG. I think they look really sharp. Here's a couple of my favorites:

[mbjerry]

Originally Posted by tblood

I am a big fan of your posts! Better info than what can be found from many online baseball publications and no annoying ads/videos/pop ups to deal with!


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Astros fan here. Interesting that it applied to Tucker also. Thanks for sharing.

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[Bambino22]

Mail Day! Not a huge printing plate guy but figured my Sterling collection would benefit with it.

[BGeezy]

Originally Posted by Bambino22

Mail Day! Not a huge printing plate guy but figured my Sterling collection would benefit with it.

Congrats! Not a big printing plate fan either, but at this point I think you kinda have to.

[BGeezy]

Originally Posted by eye4talent

I just got a green wave for $83. I don’t love green waves, and I’m really trying to stop spending. But how could I not grab a Topps Chrome /99 for that price?


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I missed this post for some reason, congrats! I was debating on bidding on it, but I decided not to be greedy. I actually got my copy raw for $85 in September so prices are similar to when Chrome was released and everyone was going after Robert, Bichette, and Lewis.

Just got this one in today. I didn't have a Bowman's Best auto of his yet and this had a higher starting bid. People seem scared off of CSG, especially with no subs. I've got quite a few now I'll have to send in to get subs added.

[hammertime]

Big fly #23!