1992 Topps #973 Mike Piazza/Carlos Delgado/Dan Wilson/Javy Lopez Top Prospects

 Today's missing Topps card is #973 Mike Piazza/Carlos Delgado/Dan Wilson/Javy Lopez Top Prospects.

This is the first Top Prospects card we find in our ‘updated’ part of the 1992 Topps set. None of these guys would’ve made the regular 1992 Topps set except for maybe Dan Wilson, but that’s part of the fun of making cards years after these sets come out- you have hindsight as help, so you can put some star-studded cards together in prospect subset cards, especially the ones with multiple players on them. The 1992 set was the first year Topps made these multi player prospect cards since the 1982 set. This first year back with the multi player prospect cards. Topps seemed to put guys who were a year or two from making it to the Majors (for the 1B prospects in the regular set, Ryan Klesko, Rico Brogna, and John Jaha made their MLB debut in 1992, Dave Staton in 1993, and for the Catcher one, Dave Nilsson made his debut in 1992, Brad Ausmus did in 1993, and Doug Robbins and Jim Campanis never made it out of the minors). For the next 3 years, Topps put a player from single A ball, double A, triple A, and a draft pick on each card. While I haven’t gone back and checked each 1992 Topps Prospects card to see if it was the same way as in the 1993-1995 Prospect cards, I know none of the 1st Base guys on the 1992 card were drafted in 1991, so I have a feeling the rest of the cards are like that. These 4 catchers represented the 4 best prospects I could put on the card that had not made their MLB debut in 1991. I’m not going to list all of these players missing Topps cards, but I will note that only Dan Wilson got a card before this one, a Draft Pick in the 1991 Topps set. 

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-Jeremy