Righting Wrongs
With all due respect to the '01-'05 sets, The MLB Showdown 2000 set is the definitive version most fans remember. The set took from the 1999 season stats for all its players, and while that gave us iconic prime years to refer to greats such as Derek Jeter, Randy Johnson, Chipper Jones or Jim Thome, and a snapshot of a lone standalone great year for otherwise anonymous guys like Jason Kendall, there was one drawback that couldn't be avoided; greats well beyond their prime were given less than stellar cards that didn't reflect the greatness of years previous. Also, rookies who would go on to have great careers from 2005 and beyond didn't have the chance to shine in the Showdown years, or guys who would only have that one standout year already had it a year or so before 1999.
Thus, I began a project with the 2000 Showdown cards and looked at the "bad" players to see if they had a season outside of the Showdown era that would have done them better. Guys like Rick Helling or Masato Yoshii who had terrible cards suddenly had acceptable replacements. That was the point of this project.
-Not all were "great" or even worth putting in any lineups, but they were all improvements over what their 1999 season represented. Mike Caruso, for example, went from "terrible" to "less terrible". I can only do so much, I can't make up the stats for these guys.
-Some went on to have great cards in the '01-'05 Showdown sets so they were safely ignored. This project was to grant players in the 2000 set with no other representation with a chance to truly shine.
-Other guys have better seasons to showcase, but their 2000 Showdown card was still elite, so I safely skipped them too. I'm sure Alex Rodriguez had better seasons than his 1999 showing, but his 2000 Showdown card was still among the best, so he was skipped.
-Players are sorted based on their 2000 Showdown card team, not on their "better" card. For example; Wade Boggs was a Devil Ray in his 2000 Showdown card, but his "better" card has him on the Red Sox, so Wade Boggs will be found in the Devil Rays link, not the Red Sox.
