Starting a Favorite Baseball Player Collection for $100

I’m all in on the the Heliot Ramos bandwagon. I’ve decided he’s my favorite baseball player and we’ll see how his career pans out. Right now, however, he’s on fire! (Note: the fun featured image for this blog post was generated by DALL-E/ChatGPT from text prompts)

Even though his BABIP (.414) is unsustainably high, his strikeout rate isn’t pretty (28.7%), and he’s had an up and down minor league career, here’s why I believe:

His WRC+ (offensive production compared to peers and leveled across playing environment) is 172, or 72% better than the average player. If he had enough plate appearances to officially qualify among league leaders, he would rank 8th in MLB.
Speaking of qualifying, it takes roughly 350 plate appearances for WRC/WRC+ to stabilize – basically if he’s still producing after 350, you can reasonably say, this is real. Today, he’s at 160 after 37 games.
He was a top talent, drafted 19th overall in 2017 – he’s not coming out of nowhere. He has also had a WRC+ of 130 this year in AAA before getting promoted (and staying) to the big club. I’ve gotten to see him play both in Sacramento and San Francisco.
His walk rate is solid at over 10%. His strikeout rate is 30% worse than average, but his walk rate is 26% better than average. In general, he’ll walk, strike out, or hit it hard.
He is a positive offensive and defensive player. He’s a good athlete – can run, throw, hit, hit for power.
He’s young (25 later in the season) and perhaps there are big holes in his swing that pitchers will start to pounce on. But I believe that because he’s had to earn his time through ups and downs (7 years in the minors), he should be mentally mature enough to figure it out.

Anyhoo, let’s move beyond self-justification and onto collecting! I started my collection of 37 Ramos baseball cards and a signed baseball, including 2 low serial number jersey cards, an autograph card, and 1 rookie card rated PSA9, for under $100 and all purchased in the last week.

Card(s)	#	Feature	Paid
2017 Bowman Draft Chrome 1st Bowman Prospect	BDC12	PSA 9	$14.73
2018 Bowman’s Best Autograph		Autograph	$3.77
2018 Elite Extra Edition Prospect Material #16/25		Jersey Patch / Serial	$9.90
2021 Contenders Prospect Ticket Cracked Ice #09/23		Jersey Patch / Serial	$12.35
33 Base Cards		Lot	$19.79
Signed Baseball		Inscription	$31.05
		Total	$91.59