2017 World Baseball Classic Roundup

Topps still has a couple of products that are expected to be published this year but I have a hunch that they're done with whatever World Baseball Classic cards they are going to have.  And what they did isn't a whole lot.  There were only the following sets/subsets that I've seen:

- 6 "Throwback Thursday" cards
- 64 Topps Now World Baseball Classic cards
- a 10 card Topps Now Team Japan set
- a 10 card Topps Now Team Netherlands set
- a 10 card Topps Now Team Puerto Rico set
- a 10 card Topps Now Team USA set
- 5 cards in the "Paper Prospects" insert set for the Bowman set

That's a total of just 115 cards (at the moment I'm only counting "regular" cards, not memorabilia cards).  This is the same number of cards Topps did in 2013 - a 15 card insert set from the Topps 2 set and the 100 card Topps Tribute WBC Edition base set.

22 of these 115 cards feature members of Samurai Japan.  Here's a breakdown of all the members of the team who had cards - I've added the memorabilia cards in the Museum Collection and Allen & Ginter sets as well (UPDATE - I've also added in the Triple Threads memorabilia cards)

Player	Cards
Akiyama, Shogo	Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-7
Aoki, Norichika	Throwback Thursday #32, Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-9, Museum Collection Patch Relic
Fujinami, Shintaro	Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-10, Museum Collection Quad Relic, Allen & Ginter WBC Relic
Kikuchi, Ryosuke	Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-8
Kobayashi, Seiji	Topps Now #W-14, Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-3
Matsuda, Nobuhiro	Topps Now #W-6, Topps Now #W-39, Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-6
Matsui, Yuki	Museum Collection Patch Relic
Nakata, Sho	Topps Now #W-9, Topps Now #W-14, Topps Now #W-25, Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-2
Norimoto, Takahiro	Bowman #BP97, Museum Collection Quad Relic, Allen & Ginter WBC Relic
Sakamoto, Hayato	Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-5, Museum Collection Patch Relic, Triple Threads Relic, Triple Threads Relic Combo
Senga, Kodai	Topps Now #W-62
Sugano, Tomoyuki	Bowman #BP98, Museum Collection Quad Relic, Allen & Ginter WBC Relic
Suzuki, Seiya	Museum Collection Patch Relic
Takeda, Shota	Museum Collection Patch Relic
Tanaka, Kosuke	Museum Collection Patch Relic, Triple Threads Relic
Tsutsugoh, Yoshitomo	Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-4, Bowman #BP62, Museum Collection Quad Relic, Allen & Ginter WBC Relic, Allen & Ginter Mini WBC Framed Relic, Triple Threads Relic, Triple Threads Relic Combo
Yamada, Tetsuto	Topps Now #W-35, Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-1, Bowman #BP56, Museum Collection Quad Relic, Allen & Ginter WBC Relic, Allen & Ginter Mini WBC Framed Relic,  Triple Threads Relic, Triple Threads Relic Combo

Note that Topps Now #W-14 features both Kobayashi and Nakata and Topps Now #W-39 features Matsuda on the front but does not actually identify him.  Also note that the Triple Threads Relic Combo card has Sakamoto, Tsutsugoh and Yamada on it.

There are only 17 players from the Samurai Japan roster who have cards and four of them (Matsui, Suzuki, Takeda and Tanaka) only have memorabilia cards.  There are no cards for Ryo Akiyoshi, Yoshihisa Hirano, Ryosuke Hirata, Ayumu Ishikawa, Kazuhisa Makita, Hirotoshi Masui, Naoki Miyanishi, Shota Ohno, Toshiya Okada, Ginjiro Sumitani and Seiichi Uchikawa.

As far as I've been able to tell there are no Japanese cards for the WBC team.

Here's some example cards:

2017 Topps Throwback Thursday #32

2017 Topps Now WBC #W-14

2017 Topps Now Team Japan #JPN-7

2017 Bowman Paper Prospects #BP56

2017 Topps Museum Collection #WBCQR-TN

2017 Topps Allen & Ginter #WBCR-YT

I have left out the Bowman Shohei Ohtani card from this discussion simply because Ohtani was not on the Samurai Japan roster for the WBC.

While I'm disappointed that there are so few cards for Samurai Japan, it could be worse.  As far as I can tell there were only two cards for Team Korea - a Topps Now card for Tae-Kyun Kim (#W-12) and a Bowman Paper Prospects card for Hyeon-Jong Yang (#BP141).