Have you ever wanted to see Billy Beane lure players into romantic situations using a Brad Pitt mask? Have you ever wanted to see Hiroyuki Nakajima battle Yu Darvish in a samurai versus cowboy fight? If you answered yes to either of those questions and/or want to feel like you’re on drugs, here’s the latest from Taiwan’s Next Media Animation. (via NMA World Edition)

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… Moneyball Harder.

Although I guess the idea of Moneyball is that Beane’s system found under-appreciated value in players and was able to build a team using a system nobody else knew about or understood. Moneyball 2‘s plot is just going to be Billy Beane walking into the Washington Nationals front office and saying “give me all your best young players for this one dude because you’re stupid” and Ted Lerner going “DURRRRRR SURE”. And also Jonah Hill will be there.

Via Big League Stew:

ESPN.com’s Keith Law reported via Twitter that the Washington Nationals have acquired [pitcher Gio] Gonzalez from the Oakland Athletics in exchange for four top prospects.

On their way to a future in green and gold are pitchers A.J. Cole, Brad Peacock and Tom Milone, along with catcher Derek Norris. Cole, Peacock and Norris were among the Nationals’ top 10 prospects as rated by Baseball America. And Minor League Ball’s John Sickels had Milone in his Nats top 10, as well.

I guess I’m happy that Nats GM Mike Rizzo has a talking point for his offseason, and nothing the guys who gave Jayson Werth 130 million f**king dollars should come as a surprise. Chances are they’re still going to go after Prince Fielder, too, so maybe they’re going to tie the remaining six prospects together and FedEx them to someone to thin out the competition.

Regardless, Mike Cameron should start learning the words to “The Show”.

At long last, here is your full, high-definition theatrical trailer for Moneyball, the Aaron Sorkin adaptation of the book by Michael M. Lewis (not Billy Beane). You’d think more people would know Michael Lewis wrote the book, considering that his name is in huge red letters and bigger than the title and subtitle. In case you need to be caught up, here’s a succinct-ish synopsis from ComingSoon.net.

Based on a true story, Moneyball is a movie for anybody who has ever dreamed of taking on the system. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A’s and the guy who assembles the team, who has an epiphany: all of baseball’s conventional wisdom is wrong. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer clubs. The onetime jock teams with Ivy League grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) in an unlikely partnership, recruiting bargain players that the scouts call flawed, but all of whom have an ability to get on base, score runs, and win games. It’s more than baseball, it’s a revolution – one that challenges old school traditions and puts Beane in the crosshairs of those who say he’s tearing out the heart and soul of the game.

The cast of “Major League” accomplished this exact same movie without any math or stats by using self-esteem and a communal hatred of women. You can tell this is Hollywood because then-Network Associates Coliseum is PITCH BLACK. When they show that clip of the outfielders missing a ball, I didn’t think “these guys aren’t good at baseball”, I thought “how is Eric Byrnes supposed to catch a pop fly on the deck of the f**king Starship Enterprise?” All it needed was lens flares. That shadowy Social Network filter is just as bad as the urine glaze they use for horror remakes.

Hopefully I can get my Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big adaptation greenlit (shortened Hollywood title: How Baseball). It’s just two hours and forty minutes of Karl Urban as Jose Canseco contemplating steroids in a hallway closet.

[sauce]