The Athletics announced this afternoon that they have promoted general manager Billy Beane to the role of executive vice president of baseball operations. Additionally, David Forst has been promoted from assistant general manager to the role of general manager, thus filling Beane’s previous title. The moves were not unexpected, as the San Francisco Chronicle’s Susan Slusser reported them to be likely back in early August.
By making this pair of promotions, the A’s gravitate toward the increasingly popular dual executive model — specifically, a president of baseball operations and a GM working beneath him — that is employed by the Cubs, Dodgers, Red Sox, Marlins, Giants and others.
Beane has been the Athletics’ top baseball decision-maker since 1998, whereas Forst has been with the organization in a variety of capacities (first as a scout) since 2000. The promotion ensures that Forst, for the time being, won’t seek other general manager vacancies elsewhere, as he’s now been promoted to the same role within the Oakland ranks. Forst has been mentioned as a GM-in-the-making previously, as has fellow AGM Dan Kantrovitz. The A’s lost one of their top assistants last offseason when Farhan Zaidi joined the Dodgers’ front office to serve as GM under president Andrew Friedman.
The 53-year-old Beane has a reputation as one of the game’s most aggressive GMs and has taken his fair share of heat recently due to last offseason’s trade of potential AL MVP Josh Donaldson and the team’s subsequent last-place finish in the AL West. He’s also, however, navigated the Athletics to eight playoff berths since taking over in ’98 despite notorious payroll constraints that limit his ability to retain star-caliber players and aggressively pursue upper-echelon free agents.
Beane and Forst further bolstered the Oakland farm system this summer by trading Scott Kazmir, Ben Zobrist and Tyler Clippard for minor league talent, and they’ll look to re-tool the Oakland roster this offseason in an effort to return to postseason play for what would be the fourth time in a five-year span.
When they make movies about you, you should be promoted eventually.
Gotta wonder how the moves will differ now. I think Beane was the best general manager in the bigs. Let’s see how his successor handles the role. The movie probably should have made mention of having The Big Three though haha.
I’m starting to get a little confused about what a GM is and what a president of baseball operations is. Every team of course has a little different hierarchy, different levels of owner involvement, and what not, but obviously the trend these days is towards this, having that president of baseball operations with a GM under him. What’s the distinction supposed to be? It’s not like this hasn’t been Billy Beane’s operation for years.
Don’t worry, everyone is confused.
I think the only big difference from team to team is how directly the chief roster builder answers to the owner.
Seems like soon we’ll end up with a draft for executives. Maybe an MLB Executives Association.
I always saw it as a way to keep and hoard executive talent.
President of baseball operations was a way to promote or steal attractive GMs. This then opened up the GM role for new candidates.
In my mind the President of Ops>GM model is no different than the GM>AGM model, it just gives everyone a better title and appeases their ego. The top young execs don’t want to stay as an AGM, and so this gives you a place to promote them to.
In other words, nothing’s changed but the title on their office door and the zeros on their paycheck.
Beane is not 62 years old, he was born in the 62 making him 53 years old.
Thanks. Got the birth year stuck in my head when I was double-checking his age, apparently. Appreciate the heads up. It’s been corrected.
Interesting move but was Beane all that good as a GM anyways?
Nothing has changed. Title inflation.
Which means he will still flip players before they get too expensive for younger controlled players, just to flip them in a few years. I get the who sabermetric aka moneyball era he ushered in, but I’m about ready to call Beane and his version of it in Oakland a failure. Kudos for getting a good book and movie out of it though.