Who Got a Silver Pack Card in Both Series One and Two?

 

Yesterday I mentioned my surprise that PCA has a silver pack card in both series one and two.  I thought that didn't make any sense.

Then I looked at the checklists to see if there were other players that were in both series.  It turns out that there are quite a few, 23 to be exact.

The players can be divided into three categories, retired, stars, and rookies.

Retired (1): Miguel Cabrera

Stars (10): Ronald Acuña, Sonny Gray, Vladimir Guerrero, Bryce Harper, Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Julio Rodríguez, Fernando Tatis, Mike Trout, and Bobby Witt

These are some of the biggest names and if any players deserve to be in both series, these make sense.

Rookies (12): Junior Caminero, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Elly De La Cruz, Jasson Domínguez, Zack Gelof, Jordan Lawlar, Marco Luciano, Ronny Mauricio, Ceddanne Rafaela, Nolan Schanuel, Tyler Soderstrom, and Masyn Winn

It looks like PCA wasn't the only player that Topps was taking a gamble with.  But at least he's spent some time in the big leagues.  Four of the twelve (Caminero, Dominguez, Lawlar, and Mauricio) have yet to appear in a big league game in 2024.  They have more cards in the silver packs, two, than appearances in a 2024 MLB game, zero.

Of the eight with big league time in 2024, only three have an average above .250, De La Cruz (.252), Luciano (.375 over ten games but then got hurt and is back in AAA), and Winn (.288).

None of the twelve are doing anything worthy of inclusion in both series one and two.

2024 Series Two 1989 Silver Packs Cubs

The silver packs were back in series two, adding another 100 cards. While they use the 1989 design, they do not use the same picture if the player has a card in the basic 1989 insert set.  So that is a good thing.

 Four of the 100 were Cubs.

 

 

The biggest surprise here is that there is a card for Crow-Armstrong, because he has one in the first series too.  

2024 Cub #43

 The Cubs had a roster spot open up on Friday when starter Javier Assad was placed on the 10 day IL with a forearm strain.  

Taking his place was reliever Jorge Lopez.  He was picked up off of the Mets' scrapheap on June 10 and given a minor league contract.  He spent the past 2½ week in Iowa before getting called up.

He made his Cubs debut against the Brewers on Friday, pitching a scoreless 7th inning, becoming the 43rd player to take the field for the Cubs this season.