Mocktober, Pt. 2

November is here, which means a chance to gather all of my Mocktober designs from this year’s MLB Postseason. Just like last year, I created a unique card design for every postseason game featuring the “player of the game” for each contest. With the expanded playoff format this year, I knew I’d be doing more cards than previous years. Luckily, the way each series played out there weren’t an overwhelming number of extra games. The final count was 40 cards this year compared to 37 last year.

Jeremy Peña was the most featured with 4 individual cards. That makes sense since he was the ALCS and World Series MVP. Yordan made it onto 3 cards (with Peña getting a cameo on that final WS card). There were a couple of firsts for me this time around. Thanks to the Phillies’ historic homer-fest in Game 3 of the World Series, I did my first 5-player design. And then the following night, Cristian Javier and 3 other Astros pitchers combined for a no-hitter. In trying to figure out a way to feature them all without making another multi-player card, I focused on Javier while giving the rest of the crew the old hologram treatment. Thanks to some Photoshop tutorial vids on YouTube, I feel like I did a decent job with the hologram effect.

Looking at the whole lot now, it looks like I had better ideas as the postseason went on. I think that’s almost exclusively thanks to the number of games happening each day in the first round. That old adage “done is better than perfect” was definitely in play there. But this whole exercise is precisely about churning out ideas and trying out different things. All of them aren’t going to be great, but they’re all valuable.

2022 Pennant

There is no baseball until Friday. We have only 4-7 games of 2022 baseball left. Seems like a perfect time to get around to posting the rest of my 2022 Spirit stuff (though I’m sure I’ll be doing that well after the World Series, too). I’ve done the Spirit base set, the Clubhouse set, and a smattering of inserts for both. Next up is the Pennant design.

If you’ll recall, Pennant is the “retro” set. I use that as a vague direction to basically go for whatever non-modern vibe I feel like rather than trying to focus in on a specific era or set from the past. Anything that’s not objectively modern or contemporary will usually work for the brand.

There’s a look at the design spread across all 30 teams. White(ish) borders with team color cameo-style photo frames. I tried a few different looks for the frame details before sticking with this here. Some were too plain, some too gaudy. I think this hits the mark. I also did a “retro” treatment on the photos to make them look a bit old, though didn’t go the full Gypsy Queen route. I wanted to make sure the card were still bright and colorful.

Not sure if I’ll get around to doing inserts for this set, but I think the base design here is probably one of the most solid I’ve done. I have a couple of recurring insert themes I could easily revisit if the mood strikes. Stay tuned I guess.

2022 Spirit Award Winners

Other than when I’m remixing/tweaking previous designs, I try to do my best at being original when making new cards. Sure, there are a lot of intentional nods and references to other designs, but I usually shy away from blatantly lifting someone else’s work and calling it “my” design. But when I saw this tweet from MLB on Twitter, I couldn’t help but think what a good card design it would make.

It’s a nice presentation of two players on two different teams showing them on equal footing. Though I didn’t do it on last year’s set, I have utilized a 2-up design for the Award Winners insert in past years. This seemed like the perfect way to interpolate this graphic into a card.

Putting the AL and NL Gold Glove and Silver Slugger winners at each position back-to-back fits perfectly. I designated the AL side as blue and the NL side as red, screening back the league logos in the big color boxes on the bottom. I really liked how the original graphic had the skyline/trees in there but I don’t think every MLB city lends itself to that conceit as well as NY and LA do. Other than adding the player names at the bottom and some gold/silver to the scheme, it follows the “inspiration” pretty closely. I did run into the issues of finding photos that fit together as well as the Cole/Trout combo. The Devers/Riley card works beautifully but when it came to finding fielding photos for the Gold Glove guys, it was a bit more challenging since great fielding isn’t always well-confined to a vertical frame. Minor quibbles.

2022 Spirit All-Rookie Team

Next insert up for the 2022 Spirit set features the All-Rookie Team from the 2021 season. This is basically the Spirit version of the Topps Rookie Cup cards except they’re inserts instead of just the base card with an extra graphic to crowd the design. (This wasn’t always the case with the Rookie Cup cards but as Topps’ flagship designs have gotten busier recently, adding another little element can really be overkill).

The design here is pretty sparse with just a horizontal player photo with the background cut out and screened back in the team colors. And of course the bit All-Rookie Team text separating the two planes. I original had the “ALL-ROOKIE” fill just the regular full-color portion of the photo but it looked a little frazzled with contrasts and stuff, making the actual words hard to read. Instead, I decided to go with a partially-colored photo fill you see here.

As for the full checklist, it may look a bit familiar:

  • C - Tyler Stephenson

  • 1B - Bobby Dalbec

  • 2B - Jonathan India

  • 3B - Patrick Wisdom

  • SS - Wander Franco

  • OF - Randy Arozarena

  • OF - Adolis García

  • OF - Dylan Carlson

  • DH - Ryan Mountcastle

  • SP - Alek Manoah

  • SP - Shane McClanahan

  • SP - Trevor Rogers

  • SP - Luis García

  • SP - Ian Anderson

  • RP - Emmanuel Clase

  • RP - Garrett Whitlock

All of the guys from the Topps Rookie Cup squad make an appearance here. I decided to pad it out a bit more with more starters and relievers since there was a strong crop last year.

There are also autograph variations of these inserts. The open space between the ART text and the player name/position on the bottom is a perfect spot for an autograph

2022 Clubhouse

Time for the next release on the 2022 Spirit calendar. Clubhouse is the “fun” set geared towards younger collectors or those not so smitten by modern hobby pillars like autographs, parallels, etc.

These may look a bit familiar as they’re a re-worked version of one of the Spirit base designs I was tinkering with back in January. They received some positive feedback but I felt they didn’t fit the vibe of the Spirit base design I had established in the past 10 years. Luckily, they fit the Clubhouse vibe pretty well with bright colors, some bubbly text and an almost cartoon-ish twisting wave, though some adjustments were made. The obvious change is adding a white border to the cards which instantly places them alongside what a lot of folks consider a baseball card to be. (There’s a reason Topps has added borders back to their flagship design the past two years). Adding borders allowed me to make the team logos a bit bigger. The other change was including the accolades text in the bottom right below the position banner.

Back side of 2022 Clubhouse card for Yordan Álvarez featuring his biological info and MLB career stats.

The backs have the color ribbons at the top with the primary color bleeding off the top edge. Yordan only has 3 seasons under his belt so there’s plenty of room for his full career stats, but for longer-tenured players, they’ll probably have just 10 seasons and full career line.

I don’t have any done right now but there will be some Clubhouse inserts to follow, including the traditional Clubhouse All-Stars. Hopefully some other “fun” ideas come to mind.

2022 Spirit Team MVP

Time for the first insert design to make an appearance. I’ve been doing the Team MVP cards since the very first Spirit set back in 2012. I’m sure I’ve missed a year or two along the way but it’s been the closest thing to a stalwart for the past decade.

Once again, these are relic cards with a jersey or bat swatch comprising the M-V-P text. The design elements mirror the 2022 Spirit base set with team color tabs filled with a brushed metal texture and the same typeface. The only thing new is I set it all at a an angle to add a little verve since these are (presumably) the best players on each team.

2022 Spirit Base (Take Two)

We’re less than a week away from the actual Opening Day for the 2022 season. It’s been a long and tenuous journey but we’re finally (almost) there. A couple months ago, when the lockout was crushingly rolling along, I was desperate from some positive baseball vibes and posted my initial ideas for the 2022 Spirit Base set design.

Since I was a bit on the fence about which design worked best as the continuation of the Spirit “brand” I had established for a whole damn decade now, I also put out a call for feedback which was thankfully received. Even though the design that people had the most enthusiasm for wasn’t the one I ultimately ended up choosing, it was still a valuable exercise. It helped confirm for me which design I thought worked best but also moved me to make some tweaks that I resulted in a better final product.

I went with the “metal tabs” because it simply looks the most “Spirit” in my mind. Colorful, clean design elements, full-bleed photos, team logos, and all the pertinent information presented in a concise, satisfying manner. The aforementioned tweaks are subtle but definitely an improvement. If you need help, I extended the bar holding the player’s first name all the way to the left edge, adding a little bit of a two-tone look. The other one is the dark screened bar on the bottom right that was seen on the first draft for players that obtained some notable accolade in 2021. As I was building the cards, the non-award ones looked empty and imbalanced. So I decided to keep them around for everyone and just have the full team name listed. I know it may seem like overkill to have team logos and the team name both here but I think it’s handy for the instances where the logos don’t share all the details to newcomers (Pirates, Guardians, Braves for example).

As per usual, the card backs contain the same design motif as the front. I decided to pare down the biographical info, cutting stuff like college and draft info and use that real estate for stats instead.

Here’s to an exciting 2022 season! May your favorite players rake/deal, stay healthy and not become an embarrassment for their fans or the league at large.