Quick - name the only team who had their Opening Day five-man rotation start 161 games last season, the most in the majors?

If you guessed the Cincinnati Reds, you either really know your box scores, or you surmised it from the headline at the top of the page.

Yes, the Reds were the most hardy rotation in the big leagues last season. And the good news for Cincinnati fans is that everybody returns; well, sort of.

Last year, the rotation was Johnny Cueto/Mat Latos/Bronson Arroyo/Homer Bailey/Mike Leake. And all five are still with the Reds. But Leake will be shifting to the bullpen. That's because a spot in middle relief opened up when Jonathan Broxton was anointed the club's new closer. And that's because the moment Reds fans have been waiting for these past three years has finally arrived:

Aroldis Chapman, the possessor of the fastest pitch in the history of Major League Baseball, is now a member of the Reds' rotation.

I'll admit, I am a member of the group of Reds fans that have been calling for this since the Cuban Missile was signed back in 2010. I didn't understand what was taking so long. If you want to ease him into big-league life, then sure, keep him in the bullpen during his September 2010 call up. But why did you spend all that money and a huge signing bonus on a set-up man (which is what Chapman was in 2011, and the start of 2012).

Another thing - Chapman always seemed like the type of pitcher who needed to get going. Not from a velocity standpoint, obviously, but from a control standpoint. When he was pitching out of the bullpen, it seemed like his modus operandi was to get himself into a jam, then pitch out of it (the "Francisco Cordero method" if you will). However, as the inning wore on, and if he were called on to pitch a second inning, he got much more dominant. For this reason, as late as May 2012, I was still advocating Chapman's entry into the rotation, given Leake's early-season struggles and my general distrust of Bailey.

Of course, Dusty Baker and Bryan Price had more faith in Bailey and Leake than I did. And, as it turns out, less faith in Sean Marshall. Thus, Aroldis the Closer was born.

It was, of course, the right move. The Reds rotation proved both dominating and hardy. Chapman thrived as a closer, and Marshall was much more comfortable in his previous role as a situational lefty. He'll stay in that role this year.

However, let's play "What if?" What if, for whatever reason, Broxton flames out as the closer? Well, my money is on Chapman, not Marshall, taking over the spot, with Leake reclaiming his place in the rotation. The thinking, of course, is that the pitching staff was so good last season, why not recreate it?

The answer of course, is that you can't. And the Reds know this, or else they wouldn't have moved Chapman to the rotation in the first place. 2012 was a very good year for the Reds in general and the pitching staff in particular, but it's already gone. I hope we see a full year of Chapman in the rotation, and that he lives up to all the expectations. I hope he breaks his 105.1 mph record at some point. I hope Johnny Cueto wins 20 games, Mat Latos surpasses him as the Reds' ace, and Bronson Arroyo has one last great season. And I hope that Homer Bailey doesn't do anything that pisses me off. The past five seasons in Cincinnati have been leading up to this. Now is the time.

How strange it is, then, that the most intriguing member of the rotation, the most durable and reliable in the majors, is the one who has exactly zero big-league starts to his name.

By the way, the reason the Reds' rotation only started 161 games instead of 162 wasn't because of injury, or incompetence, or general suckitude. It was because of a double-header that necessitated a pitcher called up from Triple-A for one start. If you can name that sixth starter for the Reds last year, I'll give you a prize. Please be honest - it'd be easy to look it up, but as we all know, the internet and smart phones are the bane of trivia contests everywhere.

What's the cure for getting up at 3:30 in the morning and spending an eight-hour shift at the filling station? Opening a box of baseball cards when you get home, of course. I decided to go with one of my blaster boxes because I would open slightly more cards than a jumbo pack, plus I'm really intrigued about the Retired Number patches. I hope a get a good one.

I'm going to break this down, old school. Pack by pack, with the highlights and the interesting cards. It will take a while and make for a long post, but I view this as my triumphant return to the world of baseball card blogging. Like the title of the post says, away we go...

See, I really do have the cards. In the background you can see the binder, all loaded up with 37 plastic sleeves and ready to store some cards.


Here's the patch card. I think I'll save it for last. One year ago today, I pulled the ol' hidden patch trick. I promise I won't do that this time. No April foolin'.

No lie, the first card staring me in the face was a freakin' Yankee. Not only that, it was a Yankee who's not even a Yankee any more (Jesus Montero). This is not a good omen.



If these are representative examples of the insert sets, I won't have any problems not collecting them. Color me underwhelmed with Golden Moments and Classic Walk-Offs. Still, it's nice to get a Votto in the first pack.


Also, I'm not too impressed with the Photoshopping techniques used to blur out the other players in these two cards. They look really, really sloppy. I'd just as soon Topps didn't retouch the photos. I understand wanting to put the focus on the player whose name in on the front of the card, but there are better ways to do that than this.


Thoughts from Pack 2: The Chris Sale card was the first one I was really excited to get...Nice to see that Topps got the new Marlins logo on the front of the cards, even nicer to see they didn't feel the need to airbrush everyone's hat and uniform to reflect the change...Are Golden Moments and Classic Walk-Offs the only insert sets? Once again, I got one of each...Randy Wells really needs to get more fiber in his diet.


Thoughts from Pack 3: Nice to see Joey Bats get the coveted #100 for his card...Just when I thought the insert sets couldn't get any worse, I pulled a Gold Standard card. Worse yet, it was A-Fraud. I refuse to scan it on the grounds that doing so would violate the Geneva Convention...I think I like the gold parallels more than last year's diamond parallels, but I wasn't aware that the 61st anniversary was the Golden anniversary...I also pulled an Austin Romine card. If you're scoring at home, that's two Yankees catching prospects in three packs. Who says there's a New York bias in the checklists?


Thoughts from Pack 4: FREDDIE!!!...You can imagine my excitement when I opened the pack to see an Angels logo and the word "Albert", followed by my disappointment when I saw "o Callaspo"...I got my first Golden Giveaway card. I assume the principle is the same as the Diamond Giveaway and the Million Card Giveaway. Is the gimmick as least good? I liked the virtual rings for some reason...I forget; is R.A. Dickey called "The Thing," or is it his weird off-speed pitch, or his freakish, ulnar-ligament-free pitching arm?


Thoughts from Pack 5: I got my first Oriole (Alfredo Simon) and first Athletic (Andrew Carignan), so I'm just waiting on my first Reds base card...The one exception I have to my staunch anti-Yankees on baseball cards stance; anything that involves Jason Giambi's porn stache (RIP). Not even A-Rod's second appearance in the blaster can ruin that...Casey McGehee's 2012 card may have the best picture used for a baseball card in the past decade.


Time for a mid-blaster break. So far, I have pulled only three insert cards that I deem worth keeping. The Votto card was one. Above are the other two.

You know what? I just looked at a preview of this post. It's already pretty long, and adding the other five packs is just going to make it longer. So I'm going to split it up into two posts. See you in a couple of hours with part two.

First, the good news - I will definitely reveal the contents of my patch card in this post. Sorry about the deception yesterday but hey - it was April 1st.

Now, the bad news - the patch card has already been claimed.

There weren't near as many cards in the final five packs worth posting about. In fact, there were seven. None of them were base cards, so I only added the one to my set, leaving me 20 cards short (for now). Heck, even both of the Diamond Duos cards that I pulled were duplicates!

Here's the cards I did get that I'm keeping. And I'm being generous when I say there were seven cards because one of them is a ToppsTown card. But it's Aroldis Chapman. Might as well show you that first, since the cat's now out of the bag:

Two Kimball mini cards also spilled out of the back. I could have sworn that I already had the Starlin Castro card, but it turns out I didn't. Not that it matters, I'm not collecting the set, except for PC and team purposes.


Two parallel cards: a Jose Guillen gold parallel and a Jon Jay diamond parallel. Both are available - please make me an offer!



Here's some cards that will definitely be sticking around - 60 Years cards for Roy Campanella (1953) and Reginald Martinez Jackson (1970). I never get tired of looking at young Reggie. A fresh-face youngster who probably didn't even know what aviator sunglasses looked like. He looks skinnier than a straw, never mind being the straw that stirs the drink.



Finally, the patch card. Some of you would love to have pulled this card. But you can probably understand why I wasn't too excited:


Matt Holliday on a Cardinals patch card. Oh well, at least it wasn't an Astros card.

Like I said, the card has already been claimed. After I put up my updated 2011 want list, Richard from Dawgbones - A Phillies Phan e-mailed me to let me know that he had some cards to send. He also mentioned that if the (as yet unveiled) patch card belonged to one of the teams he collected, he had a Ichiro 1969 Seattle Pilots patch card to swap for it.

Well, I was planning on making this card available for one of the four patch cards I care about - the two Ichiros ('69 Pilots and '91 Mariners), Felix Hernandez ('82 Mariners) and Tim Lincecum ('62 Giants). Now, here's Richard offering one of those very cards for it! All we need is a match.

Of course, those of you who follow Richard's blog know that, like me, he collects five teams. And they are the Phillies, Yankees, Diamondbacks, Twins and Red Sox. Not the Cardinals. Bummer.

However...he also has some, shall we say...esoteric collections as well. And one of those is players who wear #7 or #17 on their uniform. Hey - Matt Holliday wears #7!

And thus, the seeds of a trade have been sown. I hope you enjoy the picture of somebody else's card.