When I first heard the news that MLB was sending two teams to Japan to kick-off the 2012 season I didn’t think much of it.  Now that I am stuck in a classroom full of 6^th graders taking state mandated tests, I have some time on my hands.  Major League Baseball is a monster-sized, multi-national, money making operation.  This is fine.  As a matter of fact, this is great.  I have no problems with this whatsoever.  But hosting Opening Day in a different country…that’s some bull!

You can talk all you want about how Japan is a great consumer of all things MLB.  You can praise them over and over for what they have done for the game.  And don’t get me wrong; they have done positive things for the game of baseball.  But they are still number 2 when it comes to fans.  I know how much it sucks to be an Astros fan right now.  Bud Selig publicly humiliated us.  Try being an A’s fan today, though.  They couldn’t even watch their team play on opening day.  Seriously.  Imagine how it must feel to know that you woke up to catch the 3 AM start time, only to see that the Oakland regional network was not carrying the game, the MLB channel would be playing it on tape delay 3 hours later, and then trying MLB.com to see that the game has been blacked out despite any amount of money you have already paid.  This is where the beef lies with Opening Day held across the world.

Bud Selig and Major League Baseball will try to tell you different.  They will try to explain to you that once every 4 years (Baseball has opened up the season in Japan in the years 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012.) baseball needs to make its way over to Japan to help expand the game.  They will try to tell you that we still have Opening Night this season- April 4- and Opening Day- April 5.  Malarky, I say.  That rhetoric is purely diarrhea of the mouth.

If it is so damned important to make sure games get played in different countries, does it really have to be the first game of the season?  Certainly not.  Bud, you do know it is called America’s Pastime, right?

Give the people what they want.  All we want here is this American sport of baseball to hold its Opening Day in America.  This is hardly asking too much.  Expansion of the game is great.  I really do believe that, and so do most of you readers out there.  Keeping American fans from not being able to go to the park to watch their team’s opening game is horse manure.  Making it so that fans of a team playing their Opening Day game in a different country can’t watch said game is down right blasphemous.  And hosting the very first baseball game of the season in a different country is just the worst idea ever.  Figure it out, Bud Selig.  You’re really starting to wear out the knees in those pants…if you know what I mean.

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#15 Jarrod Parker

Oakland Athletics

DOB: 11/24/1988

Previous Rank: 8

ETA: 2011

Parker missed 2010 due to Tommy John, and it took him several months of 2011 to really begin to look like he did before the surgery.  Still, his second-half and track record prior to TJ were enough to sway Billy Beane to pull the trigger on the deal that recently sent All-Star Trevor Cahill to Phoenix.

On the year, Parker posted a 3.79 ERA with 112 strikeouts to 55 walks in 131 innings pitched.  Obviously we’d like to see him striking out more hitters than that, but he still received the call to the D-Backs in September and had a very impressive six-inning start and even earned a spot on the NLDS roster.

Parker has a classic mix of fastball, breaker, and changeup, all of which grade as at least solid-average offerings.  His fastball has neared triple-digits before, but he typically works in the 93-96 mph range with his 4-seamer.  He throws a heavy sinker about two mphs off of the 4-seamer, but it digs well and even gets some swings-and-misses.  Parker’s bender is a slider in the mid-80s with tight break and good shape as well as solid command.  His change is behind, but it’s going to be an above-average offering for him and is definitely a pitch that will play in Oakland to both sides of the plate.

Parker is an ace and immediately jumps to the top of the A’s prospect rankings list.  Brett Anderson, Parker, Sonny Gray, and Dallas Braden should make a very young and formidable rotation in 2013 and beyond.

#44 Sonny Gray

Oakland Athletics

DOB: 11/7/1989

Previous Rank: N/A

ETA: 2013

Sonny Gray receives constant knocks for being undersized, having a high-effort delivery, and lacking an average or above third pitch. We at The Sombrero have never shied away from guys with sound yet high-energy deliveries. In fact, in some cases we prefer them. Gray is one of those cases.

He is extremely athletic and has never given anyone reason to fear injury beyond the fact that he is small-bodied and very explosive. His breaking ball was the best one in the 2011 draft class, even at only 5-foot-11. His fastball can reach 97 mph, and he sits at 93-95 mph most starts. His fastball, like most short righties, has phenomenal carry and explodes through the strike zone.

Gray reached Double-A by his second professional start and only allowed a single run in 20 innings. His peripherals were solid despite being low in quantity (18 strikeouts vs. 6 walks). Gray was one of the best pitchers in the history of Vanderbilt, and, while many scouts see a reliever or mid-rotation starter, we see two 60 pitches with a chance at a 50 third pitch, a fast mover, and ace potential. The only obstacles to overcome are public opinion and minor command issues. The Bay Area has been pretty accepting of small-bodied righties with explosive fastballs and hammer benders recently, so we think Gray will be able to solve at least one of these issues fairly easily.

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#46 Michael Choice

Oakland Athletics

DOB: 11/10/1989

Previous Rank: N/A

ETA: 2013

Choice had a terrific first full season of professional baseball as a 21-year-old. He had an outstanding career at UT-Arlington and was deservedly selected with the tenth overall pick in 2010. With Stockton this year in the California League, Choice slashed .285/.376/.542 and went deep 30 times. He struck out 134 times but walked enough to justify it.

There is some swing-and-miss with Choice, but no part of any park can hold him, and his defense is far better than one would expect from this kind of power bat. There is a realistic chance that Choice can stay in CF, and if he can, then he will be an all-star year in and year out. While his speed is a 60, he doesn’t necessarily use it very well stealing bases. It is better reflected in the field and moving from base to base on contact.

The down tool with Choice is his arm, so his value drops considerably if he is forced to move away of center, but by no means is that move imminent or even likely. Michael Choice can take a huge step forward perhaps even into the top 10 with a big 2012 in the high Minors.

With Moneyball opening this weekend nationwide, I have received several questions from friends and classmates about the movie since the cast is pretty loaded and the reviews so noteworthy.  I calmly have explained to them that Moneyball is the most important piece of literature ever created.  They quite obviously are skeptical and find such a claim laughable.  This is Texas after all and I do live across the highway from SMU.  I do firmly believe, though, that no book could have possibly influenced my life more profoundly than Moneyball did and continues to do.

I purchased Moneyball for my father as a Father’s Day gift shortly after it was released.  I saw a book with a baseball on the cover that allegedly was about the economical side of the game.  It sounded perfect for my dad who both loves baseball and reads the Wall Street Journal daily.  He enjoyed it, but I think he resented it too and continues to do so somewhat today.  When he was done with it, I read it.  I couldn’t put it down.  I was in high school and the books we read for school were what most would probably call classics.  I thought they were exceedingly boring and for the most part, I just read Cliff’s Notes.  Moneyball was quite possibly the first book I ever loved.  I think I understood immediately that my father and I would never see the game the same way again, and because of it I’m not sure I really began growing up and being my own person until I read it.

Moneyball represents in certain ways the game’s steps into adulthood as well.  The way the scouting side of the game is represented in the book reminds me of a screaming child who refuses to listen to reason and instead throws a tantrum.  This is obviously a dramatized version of the way the situation during the early 2000s actually was, but I did not know any better at the time and I doubt many did.  Nevertheless, Moneyball identified that the game had evolved and did so by pinpointing the exact time that outsiders took notice.

I have read Moneyball several times since then, and Whitney even agreed to read it to me after I graduated from Grinnell while we drove back to New Mexico from Iowa, stopping along the way for a buddy and teammate’s wedding.

Moneyball showed the baseball community and even those on the fringes of it that baseball players don’t have to look like Griffey or A-Rod.  They can look like Pedroia.  He won an MVP and might have gone undrafted without smart folks pointing out that “the good face” is a luxury with no bearing on whether or not someone can ball.  Balling is about finding out how to maximize every single attribute each of us has.  It’s not just the five tools and it for damn sure isn’t about being tall and lean.  It’s about barreling up, playing clean, and taking a walk if it’s offered.  More than any of that, though, it’s about understanding what makes a real, honest to God winner on the diamond and away from it.

The book opened the door to front offices and even the dugout to intellectual types who may not have signed a professional contract or even touched the diamond in an NCAA-sanctioned game.  Beyond that, though, it encouraged and maybe even forced baseball types to listen to those who had not been educated within baseball culture.  The revolution that Moneyball identified and displayed to the masses aided (maybe more so than anything else) us in realizing that there existed valuable and measurable attributes going virtually unnoticed by those who were paid to find them.

It’s not so much that Moneyball defined the revolution.  It is more that it provided it with names, faces, and a narrative.  It supplied the emotion and passion that were felt by so many as we began to understand what the implications of these new metrics really were.  The way we evaluate everything has changed since then.  For everyone at The Sombrero, its implications extend far beyond the diamond.  Moneyball is about an ideology based in critical and objective evaluation of data used to guide our decisions and our emotions.  Yeah, it taught me to take a walk, but it also taught me why I should.  It taught us that as baseball players, fans, men, friends, and whatever else we might call ourselves, we have never learned enough.  There is always ground to be gained and always a reason to know more than we do today.  Moneyball meant that the game had a future to me.  I would not be writing any of these words without what Michael Lewis and Billy Beane gave us.