A Hair Off Square   custom cards

Here are a couple more AL shortstops; one from the AL West and one from the AL Central. Elvis Andrus and Alexi Casilla’s cards seen here might be my favorite two from the set so far. They are two fantastic pictures. I love the closeup of Andrus sliding into base with the dirt flying up in his face. The picture was originally much wider but I decided to crop it tight and try to really show the dirt and intensity of the photo. Casilla’s picture is nice as well. It appears Casilla is going airbourne to try to prevent a catcher’s throw from sailing into center field against the Yankees.

Elvis Andrus is one of my favorite players that doesn’t play for Kansas City I think. I watched him in the playoffs last year and he was great. There was a runner at second early in the game with no outs and Andrus grounded out softly to the second baseman to move the runner up. Not something that shows up in the boxscore the next day but a great play if you ask any manager. The impressive part was Andrus’ demenor in the dugout afterward, you would’ve thought he hit a long ball by the smile on the guy’s face. This showed me that he is a great team player and a very valuable part of the club that represented the AL in the World Series last year.

The Royals got Alcides Escobar in the Greinke deal this winter and I really hope he develops into the kind of player Andrus is. I think Escobar is already better defensively that Andrus but if he can model the rest of his game after the young Ranger, he could be a major part of the Royals future.