With Athletics executive vice president Billy Beane in his 20th year atop the team’s baseball department, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle takes an interesting look at his legacy. Beane’s best known as the subject of the 2003 book “Moneyball,” which has made the executive an iconic figure in business circles, Slusser writes. The author, Michael Lewis, told Slusser that Beane “made it cool to bring science into player evaluation, and because of that, every businessperson in America wants to meet him.” Lewis’ book followed the 2002 A’s, who won 103 games and were part of a run that included four straight playoff berths and eight consecutive seasons of at least 87 victories for the franchise. The low-payroll A’s haven’t been nearly that successful in recent years (they’ll finish well below .500 for the third season in a row in 2017), in part because of the trade that sent third baseman Josh Donaldson to Toronto in 2014. Beane offered an unenthusiastic review of the move to Slusser, saying: “In hindsight, that was certainly questionable — and I’m being kind to myself. There were a number of reasons why, and Josh was a good player who became a great player — but when you make as many transactions as we do, some are going to be good and some are not going to be good.”
While the Donaldson deal will likely go down as a misfire, Beane’s entire body of work has clearly earned him the respect of his peers across big league front offices, as Slusser details in a piece that’s worthy of a full read.
More from the American League:
- The Astros announced a series of front office changes on Friday, as Brian McTaggart of MLB.com details in full. The mutual parting between the team and assistant director of player personnel Quinton McCracken was among those moves. McCracken, who had been in the Astros’ front office since 2012 and even drew interest from Boston when it was looking for a GM in 2015, talked about his exit with Jake Kaplan of the Houston Chronicle. “(With) the recent reconfiguration of the front office staff, we mutually agreed it was best for me to pursue other opportunities in the baseball community,” McCracken said. “It was a mutual agreement. My contract was due at the end of this cycle, and we decided that it just wasn’t a proper fit moving forward.” McCracken’s departure comes on the heels of the Astros firing eight scouts earlier this month.
- Signing infielder Danny Espinosa and optioning Daniel Robertson to the minors is the latest example of the Rays balancing the present and the future, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times observes. While Espinosa struggled mightily this season in stints with the Angels and Mariners, both of whom released him, the 23-year-old Robertson wasn’t exactly indispensable to the Rays’ lineup during his first 223 major league plate appearances (.211/.302/.340). But if the former top 100 prospect does develop into a quality big leaguer, Tampa Bay could end up controlling him for another year thanks in part to the Espinosa signing, Topkin points out. If Robertson stays in the minors for at least 20 days, he won’t accrue a year of service time this season, putting him on pace to become a free agent entering 2024 instead of 2023.
Billy looks a little bit like nick saban in that pic.
I still root for Beane to win it all just once with the A’s. Unfortunately, until he does, his philosophy will forever be seen as a nice concept, but just not something that was practical to win a World Series. Eight straight winning seasons, yes, but that’s not what gets you a “ring” in baseball, the ultimate goal above everything else. Theo has passed him up by leaps and bounds anyway, but you don’t see him angling to have Brad Pitt play him in a movie.
Unfortunately the A’s are a feeder team to the Red Sox and Yankees. Until MLB gets a salary cap that’s all they’ll ever be.
Until somebody takes over in Oakland we’ll never know. Closest thing to them is Tampa Bay and they’ve only made it close once in their entirety. It’s pointless to compare him to Theo who is working with a payroll that is sometimes 200 to 300% more.
Payroll is a huge factor but the elephant in the room for FA’s is always playing in the dilapidated Oakland Coliseum. Both factors that prevent Beane from building a contender presently.
That and he set the team back a few years when he dealt for Lester, et al to ‘go all in’ in 2014.
It’s a little more than just a nice concept when it completely revolutionized how front offices build teams, and all the good teams today follow the same general blueprint
Beane has won exactly nothing in 20 years. Woo. (Insert someone saying the lame old “and what have you won in baseball line?”)
Billy is also working with half the payroll if not a third of what other teams are. Kinda hard to attract the big money free agents without the money…..for what he has he does a great job
Yes he has. And yet, this isn’t new anymore with the payroll limitations he experiences. Why settle when he could actually challenge himself and go to a franchise with money to show how good he can really be?
I question if he actually wants to challenge himself anymore and he’s just comfortable from still relishing on the fame of the old moneyball stuff that’s really got him nothing in terms of winning it all.
Maybe but you can kinda turn that around and say he likes the challenge trying to win it all with a low budget team. Definitely brings a challenge look at the dodgers now/ yankees early 2000s
I am pretty sure Beane owns a stake in the team now, so GM’ing somewhere else might be an issue.
That I didn’t know. Thanks for clarifying.
Amen @pelota
Donaldson has one Good Year , and he’s a really good Player !
Guy overrated and he knows it !
He’s had four years with a WAR over 6.5 and 3 years with a WAR over 7.5. He probably would’ve hit 6 this year too had it not been for an injury and massive post injury slump.
Yup, winning an MVP makes Donaldson overrated. Very clever.
what are you an A’s fan?
Billy Beane is a tremendous VP/General Manager, he is also a minority owner to an A’s team owned by Gap’s ticon billionaire
John Fisher. While Fisher is not a public figure he is more committed to get a new stadium in 4-5 years and while they get there they won’t spend the revenue to be competitive. There is only so much Billy can do simply put…
You mean ‘tycoon’?
Fisher is the *youngest of three* brothers who are the heirs to The Gap. He tried his hand at big business earlier in his career and was not successful, so he has other people deal with most business issues.
His brothers should have followed his example, as The Gap (and therefore the Fisher family) has lost 50% of its value over the last decade. At this point, he’s verging on being a billionaire in name only.
For 2018, the A’s only have $12M in committed contracts, and about the same in arb/pre-arb contracts. If they hold the free agent signings down for the next few years, they can save all that money for arbitration raises and filling in holes with FA’s when the new young core has matured … around the time of a ramp-up to the new ballpark, increasing interest and grabbing more of the market while the giants inevitably drop into a rebuild period.
Nice info. Thanks.
Billy recently said if they get a new stadium they will go into rebuild mode and try to keep their young players
Moneyball is a great read. The fact that the A’s haven’t won just goes to show how hard it is to win the World Series. The premise of the book: finding value where others don’t is inspiring and thought provoking.
Most people back then thought we knew everything about baseball. Now, we’re in the statcast era, learning new things every season.
Question: do you think the statcast era would have been so embraced had it not been for Moneyball?
A good question, but yeah, I think so. Statcast differs from what people generally tend to think of “analytics,” because it’s more about quantifying things that people have always valued (speed, arm strength, hitting the ball hard). In many ways, Statcast is more of a detailed scouting tool than any sort of advanced metric.
There’s no question, for me at least, that Moneyball greatly expedited the analytical movement though. Every front office, many fans, and even some players now feel comfortable looking beyond batting average and RBI and wins in favor OPS (at the very least), indexed statistics, and fielding – independent pitching, and I think the book was instrumental in the speed of that acceptance.
Despite Billy Beane saying this, I still feel like A’s fans will argue it was not a bad trade.