Jamey's Writing

When it comes to the American League West this writer pulls for the Oakland A's. I most definitely was one of those who fell hard for the Michael Lewis classic Moneyball. His portrayal of the A's as a finely tuned, low-budget organization that was constantly striving to get out in front of the other twenty-nine teams by finding baseball's next market inefficiency was intellectually captivating.

Two other teams in the division come in a close second when it comes to likability and interest factor. Much like the A's, the Angels of Anaheim are an organization that puts a premium on maintaining consistent organizational principles for the type of game they want their players to play. What makes both of these teams being in the same division so interesting is that their offensive principles are so different. The A's preach station to station basepath movement, high at-bat pitch counts and high on-base percentages. Angel players are taught to be aggressive on the basepaths, use their at-bats to move runners along early in the count and get on base through base hits rather than walks.

My other team of interest, the Texas Rangers, thought they'd have a shot at competing in the West this year but fell flat out of the gate. Under new manager Ron Washington the Rangers have stumbled to the second worst record in the American League this season. My interest in them started at the beginning of the season when Washington was hired as their manager. He's one of baseball's true good guys, a great teacher of the game and someone who had to wait well into his 50's to get his first managerial job. Add in that he came over to the Rangers from the Moneyball A's and things just got a little more interesting.

As third base coach for the A's throughout the late 90's up through the 2006 season, one of the indelible memories I have of going to Camden Yards was Cal Ripken playing third base and chatting up Washington between innings during infield warm-ups. More than any pitcher mound conference or umpire-manager argument, the Ripken-Washington chatter is the one thing I wish I could've heard on a major league baseball diamond in all my years watching the game. Two baseball lifers talking about the intricacies of the game. Or maybe they were talking about investments or women. Who knows, but it would've been cool no matter what the chatter was about. (Just recently I read that it was Washington who was sent in to replace Ripken in the 1987 game that stopped his mega innings played streak at somewhere around 8,200 innings.)

So I'm a Ron Washington rooter. As the Rangers sputtered to start the '07 season the machinations to start building the farm system were getting in gear and this summer a bevy of prospects have come to the Rangers organization through the channels of three separate trades. The biggest one, of course, being the trade that sent Mark Teixeira to the Braves for three minor league prospects.

This brings me to my second reason for finding the Rangers interesting. Jamey Newberg has a MLBlog named the Newberg Report. It's a prolific blog on the Rangers that is so detailed and interesting a read that I've found myself following this sputtering organization on a near daily basis. Newberg's passion comes through on the pages of his blog due more to the thought and effort he places into his knowledge of the organization than any homerism that so many team-centric blogs descend into. I have yet to read another baseball blog where you can find this level of daily excellence.

In Newberg's August 4th installment he delves into the vastly improved Rangers farm system. It's a farm system that can give Ranger fans great hope for the future. He starts by noting that Jim Callis of Baseball America estimates that the Rangers have moved from their pre-season ranking of the 28th best farm system in the game to approximately middle of the pack or a touch better than that today. That's a remarkable improvement in six months.

I just hope that Washington gets the chance to guide the Rangers through the next few years as these prospects filter onto the big club.