I read a story on the thread at work last week about Red Sox pitcher Zack Kellymaybe you’ve seen it too. It also ended up on YouTube and social media.
For Photo Day at Red Sox camp, Kelly wrote a message on the paper with his name and number for identification purposes. It read: “5th year in the MLB. Can I please have a card?”
Kelly is 30 years old. He has been pitching in the Majors since 2022. In 2024, he played in 49 games for the Red Sox. He played in 28 games for them last year. He has a total of 98 MLB games. His only cards are from sets issued by the minor league team.
Dan Altavilla has been pitching in the major leagues for eight years – 152 games in total. He started with the Mariners in 2016 and played no fewer than 41 games in 2017. He moved to the Padres in 2020, then played for the Royals and played in 28 games for the White Sox last year with two saves.
He doesn’t have any Topps cards. His last non-minor league cards were in 2014 with Panini’s Prizm Draft Picks Series and Elite Extra Edition (it’s possible this is a licensing issue for Altavilla, I don’t know).
Tyler Matzek was all in the Bowman cards in 2011 and 2012. He also appeared with Topps, in the Pro Debut set and the Heritage Minor League set. And when it came time to show Matzek’s rookie card, Topps was there. He appeared in Flagship and Heritage in 2015 (don’t know why there’s no rookie logo).
Then he was deposed. To be fair, Matzek didn’t play in the Majors from 2016 to 2019. He was in the minors and in independent ball.
But in 2019, the Braves signed him. He played in 21 games in 2020. He played in 69 games in 2021, the year the Braves won the World Series, pitching in a total of 20 postseason games. Forty-two more games in 2022. Injuries have occurred since then, but he was there in 2025 and has played a total of 175 games.
His only Topps cards since 2015 are Topps Now, related to the Braves winning the World Series, and a hard-to-find 2021 Allen & Ginter mini.
I’m sure there are many more cases like this of experienced players running out of cards.
These are the players I have in mind when I write about Topps forcing an army of rookie cards into its sets.
I write about it a lot.
Often when I write about a player like Jon Moscot, who only appeared in the 2016 Topps Update because Topps was able to slap a rookie card logo on the card – and pitched a total of eight games in his major league career – someone will say that they like the idea of every player who has played in the Major League getting a card.
Yes. I do that too.
But that’s usually not the point. The reason I mention this is that Topps doesn’t really care about creating a representative set of who played in the Major League games the previous year. Yes, in the past. But now it cares about how many cards it can sell to aspiring card hunters and player collectors. Topps starts building its checklist each year by selecting the rookies FIRST and then builds the rest of the checklist around them.
This is how you get this:
Donny Sands played in three games for the Phillies in 2022. He hasn’t played in a Major League game since. But seeing another opportunity for a rookie logo, Topps appeared in the 2023 flagship set.
Another Tigers card from 2023. Another rookie logo. Brendon Davis played in three games for the Tigers in 2022. He did not play in other matches. Has been out of baseball since 2024.
I didn’t mean to single out the Tigers. I don’t have much time today. But I could have shown thirty examples without any problem. It was no trouble finding these cards. All I had to do was pick a Topps set from the last twelve years (or more) and I had a “whoozhe” at my fingertips.
Yeah, it’s great that these guys got a card. Davis bounced around in the minors for seven years before finally making it to the majors.
But what about Zack Kelly, Dan Altavilla and Tyler Matzek? They’ve all appeared in far more games than the coffee cups which, if they appeared in a set when I was collecting as a kid, would have had to share the cardboard space with two or three other potential customers. Players like Zack Kelly are being sacrificed for a new rookie logo in the set.
Topps doesn’t seem to have a way to find players for its sets who came to the majors as free agents (as in Kelly’s case) or through some other means. It’s so focused on that high draft pick and that logo that it can’t see what it’s missing, and sometimes that’s veteran Major League players that fans know and can identify and contribute to World Series titles!
Yes, I’m rooting for Joe Rock and Tristan Peters, who I’ve each signed to Topps three times in 2026 — fitting since they’ve both had three MLB gaming careers to date. But I’m more in favor of a card for catcher Chuckie Robinson, who has appeared in 52 games and has only signature issues.
Okay, this is your chance to shout, “Bring back Topps Total!”
#Exclude