My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 1

Picking my #1 purchase of the year was the easiest card to select in this list. It really wasn't even close. Brett Anderson is by far the main player that I collect. My collection consists of mostly rookie cards from 2007, but I'm always looking for anything rare of his. Right now I'm working on his 2009 SP Authentic By the Name set. I currently have four of the eight letters. I'm always looking for low numbered inserts and parallels of his as well.

Anderson was drafted in the second round of the 2006 MLB Draft by the Arizona Diamondbacks. He was traded to the A's in 2007 as part of the Dan Haren trade. Anderson made his major league debut in 2009 and didn't disappoint. He went 11-11 with a 4.06 ERA and 150 strikeouts with only 45 walks. He struggled with elbow injuries last year and only made 19 starts. When he started, he was dominant. He went 7-6 with a 2.80 ERA and 75 strikeouts with only 22 walks. His slider is his top pitch. It's a beautiful thing to see him drop that slider on the back foot of a right handed batter for the third strike.

The card pictured is his 2007 Donruss Elite Extra Edition Gold Status Autograph graded BGS 9.5 gem mint. Only five of these cards exist. I purchased this raw on eBay taking a chance that the condition was as good as the seller said it was. It turned out to be an accurate description as it came back a gem from BGS. I was thrilled to just own the card, having it grade so high was icing on the cake.

I'm hopeful that Anderson can stay healthy in 2011 and show everyone that he is one of the elite left handed pitchers in the game.

My 10 Favorite Card Purchases of 2010: Number 4

Grant Green immediately became one of my prospect targets when he returned a TTM request I sent to him at USC. Any modern player that signs through the mail is alright in my book.

Baseball America recently rated Green the #1 prospect in the A's organization. That bodes well for my ever-growing collection of his cards. He'll start 2011 in AA and work his way up to AAA at some point. He's projected to be playing shortstop for the A's sometime in 2012. Green's bat is there and consistent, the concern is his fielding. His arm is on the fringe to play shortstop in the majors.

For every prospect I collect, I always try to land a Donruss Elite Extra Edition Status Autograph numbered to 5. They're obviously very hard to find, but I've been successful with a couple of the players I collect. This is another one of those cards that I saw on eBay and knew that I had to win, no matter what the price ended at. The price, if I recall, was somewhere in the $65 range, a bargain in my opinion.

2010 Topps Red Hot Rookie Redemption #10 is Brett Wallace

Well, how's that for timing? Just last night I posted about this redemption and today it was announced. I swear that I didn't have any inside information. If I did, I wouldn't have purchased two additional #10 redemption cards the day before if I had known it was going to be Brett Wallace.

Don't get me wrong, I think Brett Wallace is going to to be a solid big league player. I lived in Phoenix, AZ for a couple years and saw Wallace play for Arizona State. I liked him then and I still do. He's had just over 100 at-bats with the Astros this year, hitting just .215 in that time.

The strange thing about Wallace is his path to the big leagues. He was drafted by the Cardinals 13th overall in the 2008 draft. He rose quickly through the ranks in the minors, by July 2009 he was already in AAA. This is just about the time the Cardinals decided they needed a bat for a playoff run and traded Wallace to the A's on July 24, 2009 as the key part of their package for Matt Holliday. He lasted just under five months in the A's organization before was traded to Toronto for prospect Michael Taylor. Strange enough yet? Wait, there's more. Just over one year after joining the Toronto organization, he was traded to Houston for prospect Anthony Gose. Wallace was assigned to AAA for one day and then was immediately called up to the Astros after Lance Berkman was traded to the Yankees.

Whew, back to the redemption cards. I have three #10 redemptions. Only 10% of the cards redeemed are going to be autographed. I'm hoping that at least one of my three will turn up autographed. I'm going to redeem a full set tonight so I'll report back with my results.

Brett Anderson pitching for Oakland tonight

Brett Anderson, the 21 year old pitcher for the Oakland A's, and Baseball America's #7 overall prospect, takes the hill tonight for the Oakland A's. Anderson is an enormous talent and the A's are counting on him and the rest of their extremely young staff to lead them to an AL West title.

Trevor Cahill, also 21 years old, and Baseball America's #11 overall prospect, pitched for Oakland on Tuesday night. He went 5 innings, gave up five hits and two earned runs. It wasn't spectacular but it was enough to keep the A's in the game and they eventually won.

Oakland is relying on a pitching staff that doesn't have a starter older than 25. It's quite a risk for a team that was more active on the free agent market than they've been in quite some time. They added Matt Holliday, Jason Giambi, Orlando Cabrera and Nomar Garciaparra to their offense. This gives you an idea of how much confidence the organization has in the young staff. Some of the free agent money could have been spent on pitching but it all went to offense.

Many eyes around baseball will watching Brett Anderson tonight, especially in the AL West.

UPDATE - 10:38 PM EST: Brett Anderson had a 7-pitch first inning, then it all went wrong. He gave up five runs on 26 pitches in the second inning. Looks like he's not handling his first start as well as Trevor Cahill did.