…there is someone with a bit of a profile in baseball journalism who has come out and said it. And it goes something like this, ‘just when is Beane going to deliver on his, so called, genius label?’ Peter Pascarelli does a daily podcast, works ESPN Radio baseball and sometimes appears on ESPN Sunday Night Baseball and he has asked the question in substantially these terms. At the other end of the spectrum is Max Kellerman of ESPN New York who does believe in the genius of Beane. Kellerman prides himself in going by the numbers in his analysis of baseball, and part of the reason I enjoy his commentary is precisely because of this but I think in this instance he is missing the biggest numbers – World Series Championships during Beane's tenure;0, World Series Championship appearences;0, American League Titles;0, American League Championship appearences;0, 2nd round playoff appearences;1. If you took out the 2nd round playoff appearance I could put the rest of those numbers on my resume. From my limited knowledge of baseball finances, and the categorisation of Beane’s tenure has to be informed by financial considerations, he has been a little better than average or a lot worse but I can see nothing that elevates him to the ‘genius’ GM class.
Oakland are defined as a ‘small market team’, I don’t know if there is an official designation of this condition for revenue sharing purposes but it means we’re not in the same salary bracket as the Yankees, Tigers Mets or Red Sox and A’s fans do not have the same expectations nor is Beane being judged against the performance of Minaya, Cashman or Epstein. It’s even more difficult making an objective assessment of GM performance when he is part of the ownership group, he materially benefits from salary cost savings as do the other members of the group and there is little evidence that the ownership group as a whole has the commitment to success that’s demonstrated by John Henry, the Steinbrenners or Wilpons. And I am talking about the commitment, not the success in it’s self. Where does ownership end and the GM function begin for Beane? I certainly can’t answer that and maybe he can’t either and that could be part of the problem. I’ve tried to set this conundrum aside as far as possible and still believe that Beane’s performance is lacking and maybe the most obvious pointer to this is the Draft. In financial terms the drafting of players cost very little, multi-million dollar signing bonuses are not a feature in the MLB draft as they are in the NFL and NBA so as an ‘owner’ Beane has no reason to feel constrained by financial considerations yet the farm system has produced few players that were drafted by the A’s, Kurt Suzuki I believe is the most recent. Yet the A’s need, if we are looking to be successful in terms of long runs into the post-season has been clear for many years, hitting and in particular power bats. The draft is not sexy, if any kudos at all is to be obtained then it is short lived, pulling strings and strokes in deals is what has built Beane’s reputation and he seems unable or unwilling to move outside this comfort zone to draft to needs or take advantage of unexpected opportunities, such as that which presented itself earlier this season. As late as mid-June a run for the Wild Card was not unrealistic, the farm system was already fat with talent, rental bats were going to become available, a playoff rotation of Hardin, Duchscherer, Blanton and either Eveland or Smith backed up by a bullpen that included Street, Gaudin, Embree with the likes of Casilla, Gonzalez and Ziegler not far away in the Minors, a window was there to pursue a degree of success now. Instead Beane went back to his usual shtick of stuffing an already well stocked farm system, with the prospects from the trades of Hardin, Gaudin and Blanton, to the point of excess and the season disappeared down the pan from that point on and in the last few weeks the A’s have been all but unwatchable. There was never any certainty of a post-season place, but there never is, even $200m payrolls don’t purchase certainty in baseball, every now and again you have to go outside the numbers, ‘think’ with your heart and balls and just go for it and even a committed failure would have made the fans more inclined to watch the Oakland Triple A’s that are likely to be trotted out over the next couple of seasons.
Beane is not a genius, he manages to a level of expectation that does not seem to extend to anything more than infrequent and brief appearances in the post-season and there’s not a GM in the league that can’t do that, outside of Kansas City at least.