Seasonal Transitions

It's been a busy summer and I have not been blogging a lot. I can't believe summer is already over and we are transitioning to fall. This time of the year means the sports calendar is pretty busy- not that the sports calendar is ever barren for us serious sports fans anytime of the year! We got our collective national obsession called the NFL in full throttle right now, college football is ramping up, and the MLB playoffs is flowing fine. We love the playoffs in any sport, but major league baseball probably has the highest bump in terms of edge-of-the-seat drama from the regular season to the playoffs. And especially this year, every other playoff game seems to be going extra innings. The drama started rather painfully for me with the Oakland A's blowing a 7-3 lead late in their wildcard contest against the Kansas City Royals and losing the game and the season in extras. That game was a microcosm of the last two months of the A's season and not a happy one at that. Their sudden and ugly reversal in fortunes can be directly traced on the calendar to the Lester for Cespedes trade - a trade I supported whole heartedly. Whether or not that's what caused the disastrous slide, we will never know. But I am ready to at least accept that the trade did not work. It was still a good gamble, but sometimes gambles don't work. Thats why its's called a gamble.

As controversial and equally loved and criticized as Billy Beane is, this season and that trade is the biggest blot on his resume to date. GMs, coaches, and other leaders will never publicly accept failure or that they made a wrong call, but I am surprised Billy is still defending the trade and is saying he will do it all over again. That's where I separate from Billy. I liked his effort and I supported his trade, but I will NOT do it all over again given that we now know what happened since the trade. If I am allowed to rewind time, I would rather try and see what happens with Cespedes. It can't be worse than what we saw since July. Billy says he saw both the Angles and the A's problems coming and thats why he did the trade. He maintains the A's would have missed the playoffs without Lester and the trade. I don't buy that only because the A's were not just a little different since July, they were flat out horrible. Sure, Billy and everybody else saw the Angles surging, but you can't tell me he predicted the A's would be this bad all of a sudden and you can't convince me that they would have been worse with Cespedes. But we will never know and the season is now over. Regardless of what Billy says, his resume is a little uglier because of this trade - fair or not. The harder truth to swallow for the A's fans is that this was their best chance to win it all and next year figures to be a lot more challenging. 

The Kansas City Royals, who put the A's out of their misery, continued their post-season brilliance on the road at Anaheim as if they do this playoff thing every year. Thats pretty impressive for a team that has missed the big dance for 25 straight years! I am totally on-board with them putting the Angles to rest in the ALDS. At least the A's fans don't have to deal with the Angels celebrating. The team across the bay from Oakland, San Francisco Giants, have won both their road playoff games as well much like the Royals and are back home to host and possibly eliminate the Washington Nationals. The Giants had a couple of horrible months much like the A's, but they picked a slightly better time for that bad stretch. They righted the ship towards the end of the season and are now rolling in the playoffs. They won a 18-inning game yesterday that they were trailing 1-0 in the 9-Th. You just can't put the Giants away that easily in this Brian Sabean era. A Giants-Dodgers NLCS will be epic, though the St. Louis Cardinals might have something to say about that. In any case, looks like we might have two wildcard teams in the championship series. The playoff games have been greatly entertaining and hopefully, the trend continues rest of this playoffs.

Billy Doubles Down

Oakland A's GM Billy Beane has already proved to us that he is all in this season, but he still found a way to double down at the trade deadline this week. Just like he did with the Jeff Samardzija trade when the A's were not really rumored to be in the running until Samardzija actually landed in Oakland, Billy scored another star pitcher in Jon Lester. This was a blockbuster, a rental, and not as popular a trade as the Samardzija trade was with the A's fans. I like both the trades and give Billy full marks as always. A's have been good in the past and Billy has gotten a lot of accolades, but they have always been a cute story and a surprising underdog. Never have they been the front-runner and a favorite to win it all and thats exactly what they are now, thanks to Billy's aggressive pursuit of star pitching. This is a  different reality for the A's and I love it as an A's fan. It's not that A's have not had star pitching in the past - who can forget Tim Hudson-Mark Mulder-Barry Zito, but they have not had trues aces since the big-3 were broken up. Even the 2006 ALCS team that lost to Detroit and a young Justin Verlander had Zito and Haren and good pitching like any other A's team, but Hudson and Mulder had already left town. Billy has finally decided he needs star pitching to win it all. Playoffs may be a crapshoot, but your odds go way up if you have Lester and Samardzija.

So why are the A's fans not unanimously excited about this trade? The reason is mostly emotional. Fans are a lot more opinionated and disappointed when big league stars are traded away as opposed to prospects even if that prospect is a stud like Addison Russell. In addition to that, all A's fans, including yours truly, love Yoenis Cespedes and thats who Billy gave up to get Lester. Cespedes is one of our own. He was the first, head-scratching, pleasantly surprising, power move by the new Billy we are seeing these days. Billy signed Cespedes for quite some money by A's standards and even outbid some big market teams for the little known Cuban transplant. Aside from being a rare, free market success story for the A's, Cespedes was good and has been the A's only highlight-reel talent. Whether it's winning the home run derby or doing well in the playoffs or throwing out unsuspecting Angels hitters at the home plate, Cespedes always had a flair for the dramatic and we loved and trusted him. But at the end of the day, he is a .256 hitter and a suspect outfielder, albeit with a hose for an arm. Also, the A's have lately been a light hitting team with good young pitching. But this year, they are leading the league on offense. So Billy is saying we should be able to lose Cespedes and still be offensively as good or even better than the last two years. And their pitching is going to be way better. Last but not the least, both Cespedes and Lester are going to be expensive free agents at the end of the season that Billy can't afford to sign anyways and if you look at them as mere rentals for the rest of this season, you have to like Lester over Cespedes. I wish Cespedes good luck and I will definitely miss him.

If A's fans put their emotional attachment to Cespedes aside and look at this rationally, they will agree with Billy. Sure, his hitting will be missed - especially considering he was the only consistent hitter the last two playoffs, but there is enough flexibility in this lineup to compensate for that and a pitching lineup of Lester, Samardzija, Gray, and Kazmir is priceless. As scary as it is to have the Angles and their 155 million-dollar payroll breathing down their necks for the division, the real thorn in the A's side has been the Detroit Tigers and their 162 million-dollar payroll. Billy has been doing a tremendous job of handling them both with a 83 million-dollar payroll, but he needs to beat the stellar pitching and MVP hitting of the Detroit Tigers in the playoffs and thats what his pitching pursuits this year is all about. Unfortunately, the biggest downer of the trade deadline for the A's came a few hours after they acquired Lester when Dave Dombrowski and the Tigers responded and stole David Price from Tampa Bay. It's a all-out arms race and that made the trade deadline fascinating and exciting. I do think both Lester and Price are a little over-rated and not quite in the class of Kershaw or King Felix, but then again, who is! These were still good trades and great arms to add to those two teams. I can't wait for a playoff matchup between Lester-Gray-Kazmir-Samardzija versus Scherzer-Price-Verlander-Sanchez.  I might still have to agree with the talking heads on TV and give a slight edge to the Tigers with their last three Cy Young winners and playoff experience, not to speak of Miggy Cabrera and that lineup. 

But first things first for the the Oakland Athletics. They are going to have to fight the Angels and their lineup all season long for the division, though the Angels pitching is a little suspect. These two teams have the two best records in all of baseball and how much more exciting can the rest of the season get for the A's. I wish them the best of luck! Nobody said winning the World Series is going to be a walk in the park. On a different note, the NFL pre-season will be off and running this weekend with the hall of game, but I wanted to give a special shout out to the MLB hall of famers inducted last weekend. It was a historically stellar class and congrats to all of the inductees. It included 300-game winners Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, slugger Frank Thomas and managers Joe Torre, Bobby Cox and Oakland's own Tony La Russa. Baseball historians are saying this was probably the third best HOF class ever.  We should definitely take a moment to appreciate these dudes we all saw perform in the recent past. Professor Maddux was the first baseball star I liked and my three-sport triumvirate when I started watching American professional sports back in the day were Dan Marino, Kevin Johnson, and Greg Maddux. KJ was the only one of those three that I had a team association with. The other two were from teams I didn't care about. Coincidentally, all three are considered under-performers as far as winning championships go. That probably says something about me and my values as well. But thats neither here nor there. The talent of those three was undeniable and congrats again to Professor Maddux on a hall of fame career.

In Billy we trust!

The Oakland Athletics have the best record in the Major leagues. They have won the AL West two years in a row and are looking even better this year. In 2012, they won the division with a nail-biting series at the end to put the heavily favored Texas Rangers away after the Rangers had gotten all the way to the World Series the previous two years. Nobody, even in the Bay Area, knew any of the players on the A's roster at that time. It was perceived as an amazing run locally and a fluke nationally. Last year, the A's won the division a little more comfortably, but they were still an anonymous team nationally and the local fans had barely gotten used to these guys. The national media was a little confused as to what to make of this team. There were no superstars, but the pitching was deep and terrific and the team just kept winning and surprising everybody. They proved 2012 was no fluke and that they are legit. Of course, both seasons, they lost to the more celebrated, higher-payroll, star-studded Detroit Tigers team in the ALDS in a five game series though they won the division over the more celebrated, higher-payroll, star-studded Angels and the Rangers. They came into 2014 with decent expectations - even nationally, and have been better than expected.

The 2014 A's have broken through. And Billy Beane went all in last week when he traded for Jeff Samardzija, one of the most sought after pitchers on the trade block. He did mortgage the future a little bit by trading his can't miss shortstop prospect Addison Russell, but he signaled finally that he wants to win the World Series and he is right in the middle of the window to do it. It may not have been a coincidence that the trade came right after a sweep at Detroit, but it was a coup nonetheless. A's were not rumored to be in the running for Samardzija, but they scored him early and comfortably. Billy decided to fortify a starting rotation that has already looked stellar so far. You could tell he was a little concerned about some of these arms - some young and some retread, slowing down later in the season. So he infused some new star arms into to mix. The pitching is so strong that the guy he demoted to the minors to create roster space was Tommy Milone, who had just pitched 6 scoreless innings! Billy is clearly getting ready for late October and he may not be done wheeling and dealing. He knows that Detroit will be around and their stars - both power hitters and pitchers, have to be neutralized. He now has the pitching to compete in any series against anyone and I love it.

The A's have often added to their teams mid-season when they were in contention. But usually, it's a rental for the remainder of the season and mostly hitters or bullpen help. Billy has rarely added a star starting pitcher via a trade and this has been a pleasant surprise to the A's fans. Samardzija started for the A's right away and gave them a gem of a start to go with a win. So life is all good in Oakland right now. Between their best record in the league, consistent winning over the last three years, Cespedes' highlight reel throws to the plate, and now the Samardzija trade, they are not anonymous anymore. The league knows them well and they have six dudes in the all-star game. They will be the fancy pick to win it all, though the Angels are breathing down their neck for the division. Billy has always maintained, I might add rightfully so, that the MLB playoffs are a crapshoot. Given his low payroll, all he can do is get them there and the rest is just luck and a pitcher or two getting hot or cold at the right moment. But this year, he has decided to do something about the crapshoot. He wants to go in with a bevy of hot pitchers and increase his odds of one of theoe guys getting hot and shutting some fools down in October. Thats exactly what he is going for.

Moneyball is so year 2000, but this team the last three years has been Billy's masterpiece and more impressive than even those moneyball teams. The A's have the fourth lowest payroll in the league and have been out-performing the big money spenders as always. The moneyball concepts have been co-opted by every other team and is nothing unique anymore. So Billy has found other ways to exploit market inefficiencies - he had to. He is loaded with pitching as always and some great signings and trades are behind it.  But platooning is the specialty of this version of the A's - the new moneyball if you will. The A's matchup their hitters against pitchers and rotate them in and out. The lack of stars gives them more flexibility to do this. Not only does it help the team to platoon these guys, it also puts them in the best position to succeed. Just to illustrate the point, they sometimes start three catchers. Aside from pitcher Scott Kazmir, outfielder Yoenis Cespedes, and now Samardzija, the other A's all-stars are third baseman Josh Donaldson, catcher Derek Norris, first baseman/outfielder Brandon Moss, and closer Sean Doolittle. Thats an impressive list of no-name stars who get the job done. It's just a matter of time before this platooning approach becomes the new fad and A's front office dudes like David Forst and Farhan Zaidi get GM jobs elsewhere, but Billy is trying to win one before all that happens. All he needs is just one World Series ring to cement his legacy as one of the best GMs ever and I hope he gets it done this year.

27-Th to First

The Oakland Athletics clinched the AL west title for the second straight year. This is the most interesting and underrated stories in Major League Baseball the last 2 seasons. The team with the 27-Th highest payroll among the 30 teams in the league has finished first in the difficult AL West. This division was supposed to be all about the high-spending Anaheim Angels and Texas Rangers. They had the money and some big name talent and I still remember the A's fans taking about their team with a sense of resignation a couple of years back. And then magic happened last season. When the movie Moneyball came out in late 2011, it looked like a bad time for a Billy Beane biopic. He had not been in the playoffs in 5 years and there was no apparent light at the end of the tunnel or a plan in sight to compete against the new found money in Anaheim and solid talent in Texas. But then he pulled a moneyball-2 in 2012 with nobody looking. The A's clinched the division title in the last series of the year behind a bunch of solid, rookie pitchers and a couple of good hitters.

Coming into this season, the Angels and Rangers added more talent and even the die-hard A's fans were wondering if last year was nothing but a fluke. The hope was that the young pitching was real and when you have pitching, you have a lot going for you. The hitting was always a question mark. And then Yoenis Cespedes and Josh Reddick decided not to show up at the level we expected them to. Given that they were the only pop in the lineup in 2012, this should have been disaster, but Josh Donaldson saved the day for the A's all season. Between him and timely home runs from others, the offense actually improved from 2012. And Reddick and Cespedes have also joined the party late in the season. The pitching was still there and old man Bartolo Colon was a true ace for a majority of the season. He slipped a little and seemed to have found his rhythm again the last couple of weeks, but his season ERA is still a robust 2.64. Both the starting pitchers and the bullpen have gone through ups and downs, but the pitching has been there as a unit all season long.

After a rough August where the schedule was difficult, the A's started rolling again in September. The rangers started slipping around the same time - bad timing for them, and when the A's swept them last week in Texas, this division was over. Now the A's have officially won the division with a week to spare after sweeping the Twins and taking all drama out of this race. This team is on a roll and I can't believe what will happen to this world if they won the World Series. Thats no dream. I think this team has enough weapons to make it happen. I have always maintained that the MLB playoffs are a crap-shoot. A team on a roll with good pitching can make anything happen as the other Bay Area team - the Giants, have shown us 2 out of the last 3 years. It would be awesome to have the national media and the baseball establishment deal with Billy Beane and the A's winning a championship. I like and respect Billy. It's about time he wins the big one. Congrats to him on building a division champion out of the 27-Th ranked payroll. Good luck to him the rest of the way this season and post-season. Go, get em all Billy.

Moneyball II

The Oakland A's swept their final series of the season against the big, bad Texas rangers yesterday and ended up at the top of the AL West standings - the only day the entire season they were at the top and not a bad day to be in that position. With a 55 million dollar payroll and a bunch of kids, they did the unimaginable against teams with twice or thrice their payroll. I don't think anybody except Billy Beane and I expected this! That's a shameless plug for myself, but I did expect this team to do better than what most people predicted. That was just based on my trust in Billy Beane's approach last off-season and had nothing do with my knowledge about these players. After all, apparently even Billy Beane didn't recognize some of these players when he crossed paths with them for the first time inside Oakland Coliseum. Of course, I would not have been surprised if they went 62-100 and finished last either because that's what the experts told us. It's a great story that the team came together and achieved this with a bunch of rookie starting pitchers. I can't remember any team succeeding at this level with so many rookie starting pitchers and pitching was and is their strength.

Billy Beane deserves all the credit for this team, even more than the original moneyball teams. He traded away kids to acquire even younger kids and accumulated so many quality arms. The pitching depth of the A's is quite impressive and I am sure most baseball fans around the country can't even name 2 or 3 of A's starters - even today, not just when the season started. All of their veteran pitchers are either hurt or suspended, but they still have enough depth to keep winning. Beane deserves a lot of credit because he seems to have acquired the right kind of arms. Pitching prospects are dime a dozen, but successful prospects who turn out to be good are rarer than you think. Beane seems to have found the prefect group and seem to be paying even less than a dime for his dozen. The baseball establishment is not on board with all things Billy because of the moneyball hype, but he earned this one the hard way. And his quote at the end of the season ain't bad either. “We set out to create a team whose future was better than its past,” Beane said. “In the process, we made a team for the present.” And this team looks good for the future too. America better get used to names like Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick, Daniel Straily, AJ Griffin, Jarrod Parker and Tommy Milone. They are here to stay.

This team had no business even being one of the 2 wild cards according to most experts, but they ended up winning the division at the end, that too after trailing the Rangers by 13 games at one point in the season. Their gift for all this - a tough series starting on the road against the Detroit Tigers and Justin Verlander. They actually have a better record than Detroit, but they still have to start the series on the road because of the unique 2-3 format this year to squeeze some time for the extra wildcard games by cutting the travel day out of the old 2-2-1 format. This new format will be dangerous for all these higher seeds opening on the road, but especially for the A's since they have to face Verlander and Max Scherzer. But they will come back home and I am sure will make a series out of it. Speaking of the one-game wildcard series, the idea made no sense to me at first, but now I realize I missed the point. Of course nobody from MLB did a good job of explaining the logic behind it either at the start of the season. Now that I saw it work through the entire season, I get it and actually love it. It totally restores the prestige and value of winning the division, which the first wild card took away back in the day. In fact, that was Bob Costas' argument against the first wildcard for years. With the addition of the second wildcard, of course teams want to win the division just to avoid that dangerous one game elimination game. Texas and Oakland swapped places on the last day and are in completely different worlds right now. The wildcard world is not fun for the teams involved.

A's are now getting ready for the playoffs to deal with Verlander and Miguel Cabrera. Congrats to Miggy on the triple crown. It's a special achievement that clinches the AL MVP for him. Sorry Mike Trout.

Billy is Back!

Oakland Athletics have won 7 straight. They are one of the best teams in the league right now. They are 16-2 in July and the East Coast is finally noticing after they swept a 4 game series against the Yankees - all one run wins, some of them walk-offs. Speaking of walk-offs, thats the specialty of this team. They have so many walk-offs that fans actually expect them to win a game if they enter the 8-Th or 9-Th inning tied or trailing by a couple of runs. They hit timely homeruns, though it's a different guy every time. Yoenis Cespedes and Josh Reddick can hit for power, but the rest of the team actually can't hit to save their lives, unless it's the ninth inning. People were confused about the Cespedes deal at that time, but Billy Beane knew what he was doing. What great pickups both Cespedes and Reddick were. The other A's hitters can't really hit, but they do take a lot of pitches and the A's pitching is phenomenal. In other words, a typical Billy Beane team.

Billy has been off the radar for a few years now. In fact, the movie moneyball did very well, but it came off as being a little untimely for baseball fans because Billy had not done much in years and the A's were pretty bad when the movie came out. They have not done much since going to the ALCS in 2006, towards the end of the big-3 era. Mark Mulder and Tim Hudson were already gone. Barry Zito was still around, but we knew he would be gone soon too. We were hoping there would be a new big-3 in Rich Harden, Joe Blanton and Dan Haren - Haren coming over in the Mulder trade. But then Billy let them all go too. He then went on a rebuilding spree as one rebuilding led to another and thats never a good sign. That only means your first rebuilding (or the second) didn't work. Territorial rights and San Jose became the defining concepts for the A's. The A's attendance and their revenues were falling and the team was spending even less than the original moneyball days. 

Billy almost looked like a sadist as he seemed to trade away anybody the fans liked and developed an attachment too. And last off-season was almost comical as he traded Trevor Cahill, Gio Gonzalez and Andrew Bailey to get even younger and cheaper talent. It's one thing to let expensive stars like Albert Pujols or Roy Halladay walk, but Billy was saying he can't even afford young guys whom the rest of America barely even knew. He was clearly trying to rebuild the big league roster while also stocking his farm system, but these things are always a hit or miss and fans were understandably skeptical. It looked like the A's were just going younger and cheaper hoping to move a decent version of the team to San Jose a few years down the road. But Billy's moves have come to fruition much sooner than expected. These kids, especially the pitchers, are winning and dominating in the bigs while there is more talent hiding in the minors. Some of these rookies got promoted due to injuries and when the injured pitchers come back, Billy is going to be loaded with pitching.

And the great thing about Billy is, he will always go for it in the middle of the season if they have a shot. It's been a while since he rented a Jermaine Dye or a Johnny Damon for the stretch run, but he didn't have a need for it. Now that they are within striking distance, he is working the phones again. He almost got Hanley Ramirez before the Dodgers stole him. It will be interesting to see what he does and which bat he gets and who he trades away. I think he wants to retain the cheap, young talent for a few years but is also interested in winning this year. His street-creed is back and it's great to hear the media singing his praises again. Billy has done a great job this season and his eye for young talent is unparalleled. I expect great things from him both at the trade deadline this year and the next couple of years. It is also a challenging situation this year with the stupid, 1-game, wild-card playoff. But like somebody said, it's better for the weaker teams than a long series - similar to march madness. I think Billy is buying this theory as he is going after it, though he knows this roster is not a legitimate contender.

One of these days, we will see Billy Beane operate with a bigger budget. It will be a fascinating sight.

Moneyball

I watch my share of movies, but am not a big movie guy. I don't think I have ever been as excited for a movie as I am for Moneyball. The movie is finally out, many years after the book and has actually gotten great reviews. This is the movie about the Oakland Athletics and Billy Beane, my favorite GM in the game. I read the Moneyball book years back and it was definitely a page-turner. I expect this movie to be equally good and hope it doesn't make me cry! I miss those Oakland teams and how good they were with those big 3 - Hudson, Mulder and Zito. They had a small payroll, actually very small. But they also had those pitchers and Eric Chavez, Miguel Tejada and what appeared to be a very sturdy farm system. All of the big 3 and Chavez and Tejada were drafted by the A's and they also had Rich Harden and Joe Blanton coming up. And don't forget closer Houston Street, shortstop Bobby Crosby and outfielder Nick Swisher - all guys homegrown and pretty good. Beane always went out and made some great mid-season trades to rent players for the stretch run. And he would let him walk after the season and accumulate more draft picks for more moneyball picks.

The book explained that strategy among many others. It explained the A's love for walks, OPS and college players. It also explained why they thought high-school prospects are risky, bunts are bad, and defense is over-rated. It all made sense to the A's fans when the book came out because they were witnessing all this in real-time. The team was full of home-grown, young, cheap talent drafted by A's and they were winning big. The book credited all this to A's love for sabermetrics and A's trust in numbers and statistics. It also ridiculed traditional drafting techniques, scouts and old-school GMs and that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. Fast forwarding to the here and now, many of those people are taking a lot of pleasure from the troubles Beane and the A's are in. Very surprisingly, all of Beane's magic seems to have evaporated. May be it's bad karma! The A's teams since 2007 have been bad, uninteresting and boring. They have really not even showcased any top, young talent to be stolen by the richer clubs. They seem to bring up young players, but none of them seem to really stick out. There was a lot of hope for their pitchers this year after last year's performance, but they seem to have all taken a step back.

The primary problem for Beane is that the entire league is now into sabermetrics and the Moneyball book is a big reason for this. Between the book and the championship success of the Boston Redsox - another moneyball team, the rest of the league seemed to have followed suit. Billy Beane was not the first or the only one to rely on stats back in the day, but the book promoted him as a genius and popularized the concepts. This has led to all the other teams following suit. Many scouts and GMs are upset with Beane because they were all offended by some of the scenes in the book. The primary criticism of Beane is that he never won anything big - the A's have not even been to the World Series under his watch. The other complaint is that the book (or the movie) doesn't give much credit to the top talent they had - the big 3 pitchers especially. Their point is, the top talent they had were all high on most people's draft boards, with or without moneyball and hence Beane can't take much credit for those. Most of the true "moneyball" picks on the other hand, have not done much in the big league. I used to wonder about that myself as the book spent entire chapters on certain players as if they were surefire diamonds in the rough that the A's and A's alone spotted. But I have not heard of those players at all since then. So the critics say the A's were successful because of Hudson, Zito and Mulder and not because of moneyball or Beane's genius.

As always, the truth is somewhere in-between. To be fair to Beane, he did pick most of those star players and they may not have been entirely moneyball picks, but I am sure Beane followed some of his drafting policies on them as well. Secondly, I think the whole point is how he was winning an unfair game and you can't dismiss all that just because he never won the big one. Boston did win big because they backed up the moneyball numbers with the most important numbers that matter - zeros on the paychecks making up that big payroll. Theo Epstein is also a moneyball guy and Beane actually recommended him when Boston was hiring after Beane turned that job down himself. I wonder if it was a bad decision on the part of Beane to have rejected that offer in retrospect. At that time, the theory was, Beane with those resources will be more scrutinized and will look less like a genius and of course, it was also going to be hard to handle that crazy east coast media and the RedSox pressures. But Theo erased the curse of the bambino and brought a championship to Boston. He will never have to pay for a drink again in Boston. If Beane had won that ring - no guarantee he would have, he would be an even bigger star just because of the name recognition. Epstein was just a kid back then and he earned his stripes with that ring. Beane on the other already had the stripes. The stripes would have only gotten brighter, thicker and deeper. Hope he doesn't regret that decision and end up going to Chicago where they are looking to hire a GM to erase their own curse and Beane is on the shortlist of candidates.

Beane does deserve credit for revolutionizing the game to some extent. He was one of the early adopters of sabermetrics and the moneyball idea has definitely "crossed the chasm" now. It's mainstream to the point the A's can't work the system anymore. Beane in some sense shot himself in the foot with the book and also his success in general. Most of his critics are just bitter and they are being sadistic in enjoying his recent struggles. Moneyball definitely had it's share of good ideas and he deserves credit for it. They have to learn to give the devil it's due. Sure, the book does mock the traditional scouts and the baseball hierarchy - sometimes unnecessarily, but thats just the arrogance that personifies the whole jock and sports culture. Beane is just an ex-jock and his critics should cut him some slack. He is now facing an uphill battle. All of his competitive advantage is gone as richer teams are doing what he is doing, but with a lot of cash that the A's don't have. He has also learned to incorporate more traditional techniques these days as he has realized pure moneyball can't do it alone. Plus, I am not even sure what the Oakland A's want these days as a franchise. They are dealing with stadium issues, potential moves etc. Sometimes I wonder if they are self-destructing for a reason - to force a move or a new stadium or something. That would be sinister, but thats all part of the business of sports. Whatever it is, I wish Beane the best of luck, I hope he stays with Oakland and I expect him to be back with a decent product on the field soon. It's time for him to re-invent himself and if anybody can do it, he sure can.

If Beane leaves the A's, there is always the option of hiring Brad Pitt as their next GM!