{"id":436,"date":"2008-05-27T21:45:17","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T20:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=436"},"modified":"2009-09-26T11:44:07","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T10:44:07","slug":"billy-beane-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=436","title":{"rendered":"Billy Beane interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

The A’s fansite, Athletics Nation<\/a>, is in the enviable position of having a good relationship with GM Billy Beane.\u00c2\u00a0 Every now and then, Beane gives up a bit of his spare time to answer questions from the site’s main contributor, Blez.\u00c2\u00a0 Naturally,\u00c2\u00a0these interviews\u00c2\u00a0will be of most interest to A’s fans, but they afford all baseball fans the opportunity to learn a little bit more about the way MLB organizations are run.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blez’s latest interview took place a week ago and is being published in three parts.\u00c2\u00a0 Part one<\/a> looks at the process of ‘rebuilding’, the reasons why Beane decided to go down this route over the off-season and how he went about it.\u00c2\u00a0 It also reveals the pressures that a small-market team is under and how they need to adjust their strategies in order to survive.\u00c2\u00a0 What really hits home to me is the importance Beane places on pitching.\u00c2\u00a0 We all know how high the free agent market has risen for starting pitching over the last two years, so finding ways to accumulate good pitching is now more difficult than ever.\u00c2\u00a0 Re-stocking your farm system with good arms by trading some of your best players (Haren and Swisher in this case) can bring short-term pain for the team and its fans, but it’s an essential course of action if you want to compete for pennants and World Series rings and don’t have oodles of cash to bankroll your efforts.<\/p>\n

The second part<\/a> contains an interesting comment by Beane about\u00c2\u00a0 the process of drafting players (apt for the time of year) and the so-called Moneyball philosophy:<\/p>\n

“When was Moneyball published?\u00c2\u00a0 What 2002, so that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s six years ago now and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still talking about it?\u00c2\u00a0 I usually let Michael and others define what they thought what [sic]\u00c2\u00a0the book was about.\u00c2\u00a0 The bottom line is that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t [think] there was anywhere in the book where we sat down and gave a manifesto on how to do things so I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the most misinterpreted thing.\u00c2\u00a0 But as far as how we do business in the draft, the more you do this job, and this can apply to almost any business job, the more you realize you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know.\u00c2\u00a0 The idea that you are going to create a template that is going to work forever in a very competitive business just doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t happen.\u00c2\u00a0 Are there some things we still believe in?\u00c2\u00a0 Absolutely.\u00c2\u00a0 There are also some things where we say, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Maybe we need to take a look at this.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the evolution of any business if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to stay on top and try and be successful.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re like that.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe seven, eight, nine years ago I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been so much like that.\u00c2\u00a0 Successes and failures are things you can learn from.\u00c2\u00a0 For us, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re constantly trying to evolve.\u00c2\u00a0 Just because we do something different that we didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily do a previous year doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe in.\u00c2\u00a0 Someone will inevitably say that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s blasphemy compared to how we used to do business.\u00c2\u00a0 We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re constantly checking ourselves.\u00c2\u00a0 And the business is changing.\u00c2\u00a0 The people running teams now, in my opinion, are as good as they ever have been.\u00c2\u00a0 There are some really smart guys running businesses.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incredibly competitive and the idea that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to have an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153intellectual edge\u00e2\u20ac\u009d anymore is, and I not sure that there ever was, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure it exists any more.\u00c2\u00a0 I can tell you the guys running teams now have some really, really smart guys working for them.\u00c2\u00a0 You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not going to outsmart too many people.\u00c2\u00a0 We all have the same information available to us”.<\/em><\/p>\n

Beane also discusses the A’s approach to the international player market and states that the A’s “just missed on signing a great kid out of Australia”.\u00c2\u00a0 If any Aussies out there know who he is talking about, I’d be interested to learn more about him.\u00c2\u00a0 Sounds like one less guy to torment the English cricket team, so that’s got to be a good thing.<\/p>\n

The third and final part of the interview\u00c2\u00a0will be published tomorrow.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The A’s fansite, Athletics Nation, is in the enviable position of having a good relationship with GM Billy Beane.\u00c2\u00a0 Every now and then, Beane gives up a bit of his spare time to answer questions from the site’s main contributor, Blez.\u00c2\u00a0 Naturally,\u00c2\u00a0these interviews\u00c2\u00a0will be of most interest to A’s fans, but they afford all baseball […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4560,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/4560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}