Cole Tucker Auto

I have added a few Cole Tucker autographs in the past few months and many of them fall under $10. Today's card ran me $3.66 which is a steal if Cole can recover from his season ending surgery he suffered last season.

Cole possesses a few above average skills (defense and running) and could become a better than average hitter. His personality and work ethics are above average too.

Hanging out with Cole

I've been so busy adding cards to my collection that I completely forgot to post about my vacation earlier in the month.  My girlfriend and I went down to Florida to celebrate our birthdays (we are 2 days apart). 

One of her bucket list items was to swim with manatees (an endangered species that can only legally be swam with in certain parts of Florida spring waters on the Gulf Coast.  It was a lot of fun, but my snorkeling skills left a lot to be desired.  I struggled with it. 

In addition to spending several days at Sanibel Island, we swung by Bradenton for their final home game of the season.  I put in bids to try and win several of the players jerseys, but lost out on Austin Meadows, Reese McGuire, and Harold Ramirez. 

While we were at the game, I heard a young man poking fun at one of the players for the Marauders.  I laughed and turned around and thought it was Cole Tucker.  It made sense that Cole would be in Bradenton because only a few days prior he had undergone surgery at Pirate City. 

I pulled up some Google images of Cole and asked my girlfriend if that looked like him.  She said "I will have to see him smiling.  All these pictures of him he's smiling in"

About 5 seconds later, Cole smiled as the Marauders had gotten a base hit.

"Yup" that's him she said.

There were plenty of empty seats around him as the day had been constant rain showers all day which makes me think that most fans decided not to come out.  I approached him and asked if he was Cole Tucker.  He acknowledged he was and started making small chat with me.

I wished him a speedy recovery from his surgery and told him how thankful I was for him to take the time to chat with fans and how much I appreciated him signing a baseball for me earlier in the year when the West Virginia Power were playing the Lakewood Blue Claws (Phillies A team about 20 minutes from my house). 

He asked what brought me to Florida and I told him how my girlfriend were on vacation. I told him I wanted to catch a game for my birthday.  After a quick selfie with Cole, he also signed my ticket stub and personalized it and inscribed it "happy bday"

Such a great young kid who I will be rooting for in the years to come. 

Before the game I was able to get autographs from Wyatt Mathisen and Frank Duncan on their team issued cards.

I also won two game used bats from Rays Center Fielder Kevin Kiermaier and Pirates Top Prospect Josh Bell.

My second Cole Tucker Team USA card

One of my recent COMC purchases had another Cole Tucker Team USA jersey patch in it.  The card ran me just north of $2 and features a great image of Cole sporting his awesome fro.

I'm looking forward to picking up a lot of Cole's parallels when he appears in a Bowman release next month.  Despite a slow start to his career, I think this kid is going to be something special.  He batted .267 with 48 hits in 48 games as a 17 year old playing in the Gulf Coast League.  He's still probably 4 years away, but with his ability to stick at shortstop, bat from both sides, and speed he will likely be a very good baseball player.

My Newest PC is a 2014 MLB Draft Pick

Cole Tucker was viewed as a reach on draft day and I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I heard his name instead of Jacob Gatewood, Monte Harrison, Michael Chavis, Michael Kopech, or Spencer Adams.  To be perfectly honest, I had never even thought of Cole Tucker as anyone prior to round 4 due to where Baseball America, MLB.com, and other analysts were expecting him to go.

That all changed an hour after he was drafted by the Pirates with the 24th overall pick in 2014.  After viewing a picture of him from his little league days wearing a Pirates cap and jersey on Twitter with the caption, "I've been waiting my whole life to be a Pirate." he instantly became one of my favorite players.  The  day in the life of Cole Tucker documentary helped too.

He was one of the first first rounders to sign from the 2014 draft class and one of the first Pirates to sign.  He signed for slightly below slot and there are numerous sources stating that the A's would have selected him with pick #25 if the Pirates hadn't drafted the fast switch hitting defensive teenager.

Because of all this, I am adding Cole Tucker to my latest player I hope to PC.  This is in addition to being a supercollector of Charlie Morton and having nice size collections of Andrew McCutchen (I've been lacking with this due to the massive amount of cards produced over the past few years) and Tony Sanchez.

The first card in my PC is a gorgeous 2013 Panini USA Baseball 18U Auto and Dual Patch card numbered 1/10.

This is hopefully the start of a very nice PC of one of the Pirates most exciting young middle infielders.