2021 BBM Team Sets

After almost four weeks I'm finally doing the last post on the cards that Ryan included in the latest big package he sent me.  As usual, the bulk of the package were the 12 BBM "comprehensive" team sets from this past year.  A "comprehensive" team set is a set that contains all the players on the team's 70 man roster (which is usually less than 70 players).  These sets were released between March and July of this year.

For the seventh year in a row each team set has a base set of 81 cards.  (Well, sort of - two of the sets are actually only 80 cards because they each have a card that BBM pulled from production before the sets came out.  I'll get to the details on those in a minute.)  Most of the cards in the sets (between 62 and 69) are for the manager and the players for the team.  11 of the sets (everyone but the Giants) have a card for one or more of the team's mascots - in most cases this doubles as a checklist card.  The Giants and Swallows each have a dedicated, mascot-less checklist - the Swallows card shows a team logo while the Giants card has head shots of all 61 players in the set plus manager Tatsunori Hara.  The rest of the cards in each set are comprised of several (two to four) small subsets.  Here's how each set breaks down:

Team	Player/Manager Cards	Mascot Cards	Checklist	Subsets
Chiba Lotte Marines	67	1	0	Newcomer (2), 1st Round Pick (3), Starters (3), Smash Out (4)
Chunichi Dragons	66	1	0	1st Round Pick (3), Title Holder (10), Great Comeback (1)
Fukuoka Softbank Hawks	68	1	0	Boost Up (4), The Returns (4), Landmark (4)
Hanshin Tigers	69	1	0	Set The Tone (3), Big Blast (4), Headlines (3)
Hiroshima Toyo Carp	68	1	0	Newcomer (4), Stats Leaders (8)
Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters	65	1	0	Brightest Hope (4), Strike Back (2), Mighty Guys (9)
Orix Buffaloes	67	1	0	New Wave (3), Step Forward (3), The Story (3), First Four (4)
Saitama Seibu Lions	67	1	0	L's Pedigree (5), Powerhouse (3), Cannon Ball (3), Road To 2000 (2)
Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles	69	1	0	Honor Roll (5), Outstanding (6)
Tokyo Yakult Swallows	68	1	1	2020 Titleholder (4), Go For It (4), Ikemen Election (3)
Yokohama DeNA Baystars	65	1	0	Destiny Born In 1998 (6), Flagship (4), Advance (5)
Yomiuri Giants	62	0	1	Join The Giants (3), Endeavor (7), Good Competitor (4), Overpowering Bats (4)

If you look carefully, you'll notice that the Marines and Tigers sets are the two that only have 80 cards.  The Tigers set is missing card #67 which is for Masahiro Nakatani who was traded to the Hawks in early July, just a few weeks before the set was released.  He still appears both in the checklist in the set as well as the set's checklist on BBM's website but as far as I know, the card was never released.  The Marines set is missing card #57 which I think is for Ikuhiro Kiyota who was released by the team in late May for violating COVID protocols while carrying on an affair.  The Marines team set doesn't have a checklist but the online checklist does not include the card.

Each team set includes 30 to 35 players who do not appear in BBM's 2021 "flagship" sets (1st & 2nd Versions).  As usual these include an interesting mix of Westerners (Yariel Rodriguez, Wladimir Balentien, Taylor Scott, Bryan Rodriguez, Tyler Higgins, Ernesto Mejia, Rick Van Den Hurk, Albert Suarez, Rubby De La Rosa and Thyago Vieira) and somewhat big name veterans (Daisuke Yamai, Seiji Uebayashi, Chihiro Kaneko, Seiji Kobayashi and Daikan Yoh).  Here's a card of a player from each set who was not in any of BBM's flagship sets (although obviously some of them may end up in Fusion next month):

2021 BBM Marines #M37

2021 BBM Dragons #D31

2021 BBM Hawks #H57

2021 BBM Tigers #T42

2021 BBM Carp #C37

2021 BBM Fighters #F08

2021 BBM Buffaloes #B57

2021 BBM Lions #L54

2021 BBM Eagles #E59

2021 BBM Swallows #S05

2021 BBM Baystars #DB02

2021 BBM Giants #G18

Because of the timing of trades, there's one player - Toshitake Yokoo - who appears in two different team sets.  He was traded by the Fighters to the Eagles in early March, apparently too late to be pulled from the Fighters team set which came out a few weeks later but in plenty of time to make the Eagles set:

2021 BBM Fighters #F51

2021 BBM Eagles #E52

Similarly because of the timing of trades, there are players who didn't appear in ANY team sets this year.  For example Takahide Ikeda, the player the Fighters got from the Eagles for Yokoo, isn't in either set.

There are two players in the team sets that didn't play in NPB at all in 2021.  Brandon Dixon appears in the Buffaloes set despite receiving his release from the team early in the season due to not being able to bring his family to Japan.  Dennis Sarfate appears in the Hawks set even though as far as I know he's unofficially retired due to injury - he last pitched in 2018.