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Leaf started out in the 1980s as the Canadian version of Donruss. Starting in 1985, Donruss produced a mirror set with some modifications under the Leaf name to be released just in Canada. By the 1990s, though, Leaf became more of a premium edition card set. It wasn't a simple mirror of the base Donruss release nor was it limited to just Canada.

Still, most old-school collectors immediately think of Canada when they hear the name "Leaf" and that makes the design of this card, clearly invoking the American flag, ironic.

Overall I am fond of the design of this card. Yeah, there is a lot of red and there are a lot of stripes. But they used many different colors in the set and did a great job matching card colors to team colors. Each card featured a whopping 3 unique photos, which is simply fantastic, especially since one was a posed head shot and the other two were action shots. Look, for example, at Jay Buhner's card from this set, which features two great action shots and an interesting head shot, all with a great navy and green color scheme that matched that year's Mariners colors.

This card also features some foil, on both the Leaf name on the front and the circular patch on the back. One thing I find weird is the large text that says "Card Number", which seems needless. It mirrors the position text ("Shortstop", in this case) on the left side of the card but still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Using the stripes to act as line dividers for the stats on the back was a very nice touch.

Ahh, those stats on the back. Let's take a look at those.

All the way on the right we see Valentin's career stats including both SLG and OBP...nice. What really catches my eye, however, is the monthly split data. Back in 1995, this sort of data was extremely hard to come by unless you tabulated it yourself. Monthly split data has always been interesting to me. I like to see players who are consistent from month to month. All the games count the same so ideally a player should hit the same for the whole season. It seems that a number of players have slow Aprils--Mark Teixeira and Don Mattingly spring to mind--which always bothers me.

Notice how Valentin, through 1994, had 4 to6 homers every month except May, when he had 0 career homers in 95 AB?

Here are his career splits by month, 1992-2002:

He caught up with his May numbers thanks in large part to 7 homers in May of 1995.

That brings me to John Valentin's 1995.

Check out the leaders in Wins Above Replacement (among batters) for 1995:

Yup.Valentin was never an All-Star and finished 9th in the AL in MVP voting in 1995. Valentin finished first in WAR by putting together very solid seasons both with the bat and in the field at shortstop.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 19th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Card of the Week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.