2015 BBM Rookie Edition Set

BBM released this year's edition of the Rookie Edition set a little over a month ago.  This is their annual draft pick set, featuring pretty much all the players who were taken in last October's draft (looks like the only guy not in the set is Yuichi Sato who was taken in the first round of the ikusei portion of the draft by the Dragons but did not sign with them).

I find myself running out of things to say about this set every year - other than the players featured, it's pretty much the same set year after year - especially the last couple which has had the exact same subset to go along with the player cards.

So let's get on with it - there are 103 player cards covering all the players who signed out of the draft, including those in the ikusei portion of the draft (who you may never see another card of again unless you get the team's BBM team set).  There are two cards that are kinda-sorta checklist cards - they show a head shot of each of the 103 draftees.  One card is for the Pacific League teams and the other is for the Central League teams.  There's a 12 card subset called "Then & Now" that features two players on each card - the top draft pick for each team paired with another player from the past (some still playing, others retired).  It's not entirely obvious what the connection between each pair of players is - the only one I know for sure is that Sachiya Yamasaki of Orix shares a card with his father Akihiro, who played for the Giants and Fighters from 1980-91.  For the third year in a row Masahiro Tanaka is paired with the Eagles top pick - this year it's Tomohiro Anraku.

For all my comments about the sameness of this set from year to year, it's not a bad set.  BBM used a thicker stock on the cards this year so they have some nice heft to them.  The design of the player cards is a little busier than in the last few years - normally I don't like those kind of designs much but it's a nice departure for this set.  I will voice my standard complaint about this set - it would be nice if the player pictures were something different than posed shots wearing the uniform of the team that drafted them.  The best would be photos of the players in their high school, college, industrial league or independent league team uniform, but I'd settle for the senior prom/high school graduation photos like Topps used in the early 90's on their draft pick cards.  Something other than the kinds of photos that BBM has used for 13 years now (16 if you count the draft pick cards in the 2000-02 Preview sets).

Here's some example cards:

#025

#048

#073

#095

#105

#109

Coincidentally, Ryan did a post on this set today also.  And as always you can see all the cards over at Jambalaya.