Why does Billy Beane get so much respect for the A's success

morgoth said:

Because he was hailed as a visionary for fielding a team at a payroll much less then what the Yankees or Red Sox were doing. At the time there was talk of contraction due to the competitive imbalance in the league.

It was assumed you couldn't win without a big payroll but the A's were "one" team that didn't follow that mantra.

Michael Lewis wrote a book to find out why, used Beane as his hero along with statiticians and bam you had the making of a myth.

Nevermind that there were a bunch of other facts out there such as

1. The Twins were much better at doing the "moneyball" thing than the A's ever were. Even so they were one of the teams considered for contraction.

2. The main reason for Oaklands success was the very rare occurance of having 4 starting pitchers all mature and become dominant in a very short time frame. This was the single reason for their success in the early 2000's.

3. Once other teams, like the Red Sox, started employing similar methods of evaluation that Beane did, their slim "advantage" of moneyball was gone. Publishing a book about it probably didn't help much either as it basically was a blue print for how the A's did things.

4. It ended with the draft of Nick Swisher and the touting of how smart the A's were in drafting players like Jeremy Brown. Nevermind that all those number one picks outside of Swisher became busts, and Swisher himself never lived up to his hype in a A's uniform.

5. Beane when forced to trade his starters due to costs, didn't do much better than any other GM unloading vets for prospects. The team faced the real life issue of prospects not panning out or being much less than the players traded for.

Lewis ended the book basically that with the strategy of Moneyball the A's would always compete at their cost structure and that it was foolish to say winning was dependent on how much money spent.

I think now we can look back and say that any team who has 4 cy young caliber pitchers mature in a 3 to 4 year window is going to be really good but without the funds to resign the players, trading them away for prospects and younger players will only start a cycle of competing for a couple of years followed by many years or rebuilding.

IMO Beane didn't do a very good job drafting (due to not drafting best high school players) and in some of his trades which has left the A's out of the playoffs for what 7 straight years?

Click to expand...

morgoth said:

Because he was hailed as a visionary for fielding a team at a payroll much less then what the Yankees or Red Sox were doing. At the time there was talk of contraction due to the competitive imbalance in the league.

It was assumed you couldn't win without a big payroll but the A's were "one" team that didn't follow that mantra.

Michael Lewis wrote a book to find out why, used Beane as his hero along with statiticians and bam you had the making of a myth.

Nevermind that there were a bunch of other facts out there such as

1. The Twins were much better at doing the "moneyball" thing than the A's ever were. Even so they were one of the teams considered for contraction.

2. The main reason for Oaklands success was the very rare occurance of having 4 starting pitchers all mature and become dominant in a very short time frame. This was the single reason for their success in the early 2000's.

3. Once other teams, like the Red Sox, started employing similar methods of evaluation that Beane did, their slim "advantage" of moneyball was gone. Publishing a book about it probably didn't help much either as it basically was a blue print for how the A's did things.

4. It ended with the draft of Nick Swisher and the touting of how smart the A's were in drafting players like Jeremy Brown. Nevermind that all those number one picks outside of Swisher became busts, and Swisher himself never lived up to his hype in a A's uniform.

5. Beane when forced to trade his starters due to costs, didn't do much better than any other GM unloading vets for prospects. The team faced the real life issue of prospects not panning out or being much less than the players traded for.

Lewis ended the book basically that with the strategy of Moneyball the A's would always compete at their cost structure and that it was foolish to say winning was dependent on how much money spent.

I think now we can look back and say that any team who has 4 cy young caliber pitchers mature in a 3 to 4 year window is going to be really good but without the funds to resign the players, trading them away for prospects and younger players will only start a cycle of competing for a couple of years followed by many years or rebuilding.

IMO Beane didn't do a very good job drafting (due to not drafting best high school players) and in some of his trades which has left the A's out of the playoffs for what 7 straight years?

Click to expand...

ballerskrip said:

Great posts so far.

The other issue that Beane is facing is that Oakland is known as the land of the rental player. Sign em, or trade for em, use the players up, and trade them at midseason or near the trade deadline. What established player wants to be on a team that does this EVERY SINGLE YEAR. It willl be you, or your teammate who is our the door. Why not take the same amount of money and get some stability.

I have to also agree that Oakland has done a fairly poor job of drafting and has been very hit or miss on player development and player evaluation. Think they might regret trading Carlos Gonzalez?

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markakis8 said:

Good post, but to rain on your parade a little, the Athletics were in the ALCS vs the Tigers in 06.

morgoth said:

Because he was hailed as a visionary for fielding a team at a payroll much less then what the Yankees or Red Sox were doing. At the time there was talk of contraction due to the competitive imbalance in the league.

It was assumed you couldn't win without a big payroll but the A's were "one" team that didn't follow that mantra.

Michael Lewis wrote a book to find out why, used Beane as his hero along with statiticians and bam you had the making of a myth.

Nevermind that there were a bunch of other facts out there such as

1. The Twins were much better at doing the "moneyball" thing than the A's ever were. Even so they were one of the teams considered for contraction.

2. The main reason for Oaklands success was the very rare occurance of having 4 starting pitchers all mature and become dominant in a very short time frame. This was the single reason for their success in the early 2000's.

3. Once other teams, like the Red Sox, started employing similar methods of evaluation that Beane did, their slim "advantage" of moneyball was gone. Publishing a book about it probably didn't help much either as it basically was a blue print for how the A's did things.

4. It ended with the draft of Nick Swisher and the touting of how smart the A's were in drafting players like Jeremy Brown. Nevermind that all those number one picks outside of Swisher became busts, and Swisher himself never lived up to his hype in a A's uniform.

5. Beane when forced to trade his starters due to costs, didn't do much better than any other GM unloading vets for prospects. The team faced the real life issue of prospects not panning out or being much less than the players traded for.

Lewis ended the book basically that with the strategy of Moneyball the A's would always compete at their cost structure and that it was foolish to say winning was dependent on how much money spent.

I think now we can look back and say that any team who has 4 cy young caliber pitchers mature in a 3 to 4 year window is going to be really good but without the funds to resign the players, trading them away for prospects and younger players will only start a cycle of competing for a couple of years followed by many years or rebuilding.

IMO Beane didn't do a very good job drafting (due to not drafting best high school players) and in some of his trades which has left the A's out of the playoffs for what 7 straight years?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

morgoth said:

Because he was hailed as a visionary for fielding a team at a payroll much less then what the Yankees or Red Sox were doing. At the time there was talk of contraction due to the competitive imbalance in the league.

It was assumed you couldn't win without a big payroll but the A's were "one" team that didn't follow that mantra.

Michael Lewis wrote a book to find out why, used Beane as his hero along with statiticians and bam you had the making of a myth.

Nevermind that there were a bunch of other facts out there such as

1. The Twins were much better at doing the "moneyball" thing than the A's ever were. Even so they were one of the teams considered for contraction.

2. The main reason for Oaklands success was the very rare occurance of having 4 starting pitchers all mature and become dominant in a very short time frame. This was the single reason for their success in the early 2000's.

3. Once other teams, like the Red Sox, started employing similar methods of evaluation that Beane did, their slim "advantage" of moneyball was gone. Publishing a book about it probably didn't help much either as it basically was a blue print for how the A's did things.

4. It ended with the draft of Nick Swisher and the touting of how smart the A's were in drafting players like Jeremy Brown. Nevermind that all those number one picks outside of Swisher became busts, and Swisher himself never lived up to his hype in a A's uniform.

5. Beane when forced to trade his starters due to costs, didn't do much better than any other GM unloading vets for prospects. The team faced the real life issue of prospects not panning out or being much less than the players traded for.

Lewis ended the book basically that with the strategy of Moneyball the A's would always compete at their cost structure and that it was foolish to say winning was dependent on how much money spent.

I think now we can look back and say that any team who has 4 cy young caliber pitchers mature in a 3 to 4 year window is going to be really good but without the funds to resign the players, trading them away for prospects and younger players will only start a cycle of competing for a couple of years followed by many years or rebuilding.

IMO Beane didn't do a very good job drafting (due to not drafting best high school players) and in some of his trades which has left the A's out of the playoffs for what 7 straight years?

Click to expand...