2014 Topps Nationals Factory Team Set

Last week I posted 2014 Topps Cubs Factory team set, which makes sense as this is a Cubs oriented blog. But I’ve stated that this year that I intend to build as big of a 2014 Topps set as possible which will include the factory team sets as there are usually some cards (like the ballparks) that for one reason or another show up in these team sets but nowhere else along the way.

When I was doing my grocery shopping, I stopped by the Five Below store next door to browse the repacks but came across the 2014 Nationals team set. I don’t know that I’ve ever purposely picked up a set for another team with the intent to keep it. I guess you could count the Potomac Nationals team sets that my kids got signed. Anywho, I’ll do a basic breakdown of the set (and any other I pick up in the future) here but the detailed breakdowns will be on my other blog (2014 Topps). If you can help me with teams local to you, please let me know!

Let’s start with the cards that appeared in Series 1. The Nats had seven cards in that series and all of them showed up in the team set with no changes except for the card number.

Ross Detwiler was the only player from the team in Series 1 not to be carried over to Opening Day. But in addition to the other six players, the Topps added an additional four Nats to the 220 card OD release.

Doug Fister was an offseason acquisition and is the only one so far to be Photoshopped into a new uniform. But unlike the Jose Veras debacle from last week, Fister carried over his #58 to the Nationals.

We’ve got eleven different cards so far and since the team sets come with 17, in theory these next six cards will be showing up in Series 2 or the Update Series.

No real surprises there. Span played in 153 games last season. Ramos was the primary catcher when he wasn’t hurt. Gio was probably the #2 starter behind Strasburg. And Storen and Clippard are the big name bullpen guys. Nationals Park was involved in exactly half of the Nats games last season.

After looking at the Nationals roster from last season on Baseball Reference, Steve Lombardozzi, Dan Haren and Kurt Suzuki were probably the biggest names left out of the set based on games played. However, none of them are with the team this year so they shouldn’t be appearing in Series 2 or Update as Nats.