Before the Cahill/Gonzalez/Bailey trades this offseason, we were looking at a middle-of-the-pack farm system. Thanks to the top notch pitching we traded away, Billy Beane restocked the farm, and suddenly moved the slider to win a few years away from now. As you can see, last year's Baseball America #1 prospect Grant Green has been bumped down to the second half of this list due to new arrivals of Jarrod Parker, Brad Peacock and A.J. Cole (also due to Green's shift from SS to OF).

The AN community has voted Jarrod Parker and Michael Choice at #1 and #2 in our Community Prospect list. The consensus list tallies 9 of these top prospect lists and really doesn't show too many surprises. Each prospect was assigned points based off of how they placed (#1: 10 points, #2: 9 points, etc). I've listed all the sources after the jump.

Does this match up to what you expected, or do you think there's some guys that may be more deserving of top 10 spots?

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Part I of this series featured Brandon McCarthy, Part II featured Josh Reddick, and Part III featured Seth Smith. Next?

"Pennington Station...Now boarding..."

At 27 years old, with 3 major league seasons under his belt, Cliff Pennington finds himself in the role of "grizzled veteran" on a very young A's team. Interviewed alongside the cerebral Brandon McCarthy, Pennington fielded -- cleanly I might add -- a blend of "thinking man's questions" and questions around his role as the captain of the infield and one of the few potential captains of the clubhouse.

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Community Prospect List:

#1: Jarrod Parker, RHP

#2: Michael Choice, CF

There are about 11 or so weeks until Opening Day, so we will be doing one voting thread per week until the season starts. So get ready, set and VOTE!

The Poll Option won the vote last week, so we will be going with that from now on. Please no ballot stuffing, though ;)

Please add suggestions below for players to be added to next week's poll. If you agree with a suggestion, please comment and rec it to make it more visible.

Happy voting!

One site I have long been a fan of is BrooksBaseball which has a lot of pitch f/x data, basically an encyclopedia of every MLB pitch thrown the past few seasons. They now have a new feature called "player cards" which basically gives you an entire database on any given pitcher. You can mess around with it and see for yourself how neat a resource it is. I still am familiarizing myself with some of the data they have and how it can be of utility to discovering things about our pitchers, so I decided to take a gander at some stats for new Athletic Bartolo Colon.

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I'll confess. When I'm not rooting for the A's, I'm a diehard Dallas Cowboys fan. It's a funny feeling. One franchise is known for being cheap, the other notoriously extravagant.* One franchise is left in limbo in an antiquated stadium, the other plays in a palace of Texas-sized excess.

When I thought about writing a post about baseball players with football backgrounds (and the reverse), my first thought was Drew Henson, who backed up some Tom Brady guy at Michigan, but was going to be the Yankees star third baseman before they traded for Alex Rodriguez. Then it was Chad Hutchinson, a former Cardinals farmhand. Then it was Quincy Carter. Then things got a little dizzy and I had to sit down. Henson and Carter were lauded as Dallas' quarterbacks of the future. The Mayans weren't that cruel with their predictions.

The A's recently traded for an outfielder with a football background: Seth Smith. The acquisition, and hearing that he backed up Eli Manning at Ole Miss, made me wonder who else tried football before sticking with baseball.

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I wrote Lew Wolff a short note Sunday morning and dropped it in a box, but did not hear back. Here was my comment/question, paraphrased:

"Do you plan to keep payroll at $40-50M over the next four seasons, and then splurge with a major-free agent acquisition right as a new stadium opens, pushing payroll to $80M+? If so, I'm very excited about the team's vision and future. Thank you for your contributions to this franchise."

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"I know there are a lot of people who have had questions about the moves that have been made, but I do like the front office stepping up, answering questions and showing that there is a path that we're taking and there's reasons for all of this," pitcher Brandon McCarthy said. "It's not just drunk monkeys throwing at a dartboard. People have a plan, and they're trying to do something. This whole day has been a nice surprise." - quoted from Jane Lee's most recent article on FanFest

As I went through this excellent FanPost on FanFest, and this excellent post on FanFest, and this excellent post on FanFest, I sort of remember what it was like to have a faint optimism about the start of the season. Last year was one of my toughest years ever as an A's fan; and it was probably no coincidence that Moneyball was released at the same time. Moneyball reminded us of how close we got during those years; and those so many trips to the playoffs, yet ultimately, how little we have to show for it, especially now. And last year was supposed to be the year we came back; we had the pitching; why, oh why was our team so bad?

I'd written off the whole organization; they don't possibly care about the team, the fans, the future. It might as well have been drunk monkeys drafting, signing, trading, and meeting...and yet? Brandon McCarthy has seen a plan. FanFest was a success. A large percentage of the players came out to join better than 7,000 fans. Lew Wolff spoke; and let's be honest, no one really expected him to.

From Jane Lee again:

"It was fun talking to them," Wolff said. "The fans are very important to us. People think I don't care about them, but I think the people who come here are the most loyal of all fans you can get. I don't know if I was convincing by it, but I was giving them the logic of our people. That's the most you can do. They were extra courteous, which I appreciate. I thought the dialogue was fair."

Wolff stated clearly that Oakland is no longer an option, and the only Bay Area option is now San Jose. From all accounts, he (like everyone else) is tired of the non-response from Major League Baseball.

From people I've talked to, and from what I've read, there was good energy at FanFest. An intangible to be sure, but it's something. Combine that with the legitimate starting pitching races we get to see at Spring Training, and maybe this March will be a fun one after all. Especially since the A's will be playing real baseball in less than two months. Dibs on the middle-of-the-night gamethreads! Which reminds me; only two months until Friday night game threads! For the first time in a long time, I was ready for the season to end in October. But now? There is a faint--very faint--stirring of excitement about baseball again. Who knew?

So...has your perception of Lew Wolff and the stadium situation changed since FanFest? What year will the A's move into a new stadium? Manny-yay or Manny-nay? How many games do you think the A's will win now?

Let me present to you two pitchers:

Pitcher A: 372.2 IP, 4.56 ERA, 4.92 FIP, 4.89 xFIP, 6.1 K/9, 3.4 BB/9, 1.3 HR/9, 36.5% GB%

Pitcher B: 170.2 IP, 3.32 ERA, 2.86 FIP, 3.30 xFIP, 6.5 K/9, 1.3 BB/9, 0.6 HR/9, 46.7% GB%

From those two sets of numbers, they have very little in common. The strikeout rate is pretty close, but that's about it.

Oh, and they're the same guy.

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