Let the Beane Bashing Begin

I wrote a couple of days ago that Anaheim would win the AL West and that Houston would win the NL Wild Card. I said that the Billy Beane bashing would begin as soon as Oakland was eliminated. I also took a shot at Buster Olney for his prediction that the Cubs had a clear path to the NL Wild Card. Well, heading into the weekend, my on the field predictions are plausible, given that Anaheim is tied with Oakland and that Houston is tied with the Giants. I'll stick with my predictions, but I was dead on with the Beane-is-gonna-get-bashed prediction. The other night I happened to be listening to Dark Star on WCCO here in Minneapolis. If you aren't from Minneapolis, you can't really appreciate the train wreck that is his show. Mind you, he's number one in his time slot. I listen to him occasionally because sometimes he's on after the Twins post game show and sometimes because my car radio is set to 830. He talks primarily about the local sports scene, and he's bad, he's really, really bad. He routinely says things that are flat out wrong, his opinions are often laughable (at least I think so), and he spends a great deal of time just rambling on to his producer. The other night, however was a gem of a show. He had on as a guest none other than Mr. Olney. In order to understand why this was quite the show, a little context is in required. The Yanks and Twins were playing that night (the doubleheader), which would explain how Mr. Star was able to book Olney, a noted Yankee lover. Mr. Olney has recently written a book about the Yankee Dynasty of the late 1990s and an excerpt printed on ESPN.COM and in ESPN The Magazine was absolutely sickening, in the way that only the Yankees are sickening. (Case in point: if you have a copy of the magazine, check out the diagram of the Yankee lockerroom, complete with notations of where everyone's lockers were in the late 90s and who sits where today.) Mr. Olney has also recently wrote an article advocating that George Steinbrenner be inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame without even mentioning that Steinbrenner was once banned "for life" by then commissioner Fay Vincent for paying a small-time thug named Howard Spira $40,000 to dig up dirt on Dave Winfield while Winfield was playing for the Yankees. Mr. Olney has a new agenda. He wants to discredit the recent run by the Oakland A's as "luck." Oakland has had a tremendous run over the last several years, rivalling that of the sainted New York Yankees, but Olney thinks that Billy Beane has been lucky. Only through luck have the A's been able to compete (at least in the regular season) with the Yankees. And boy did he ever find the right forum to express his views. Our buddy Mr. Star asked Mr. Olney if he had had a chance to talk with Billy Beane and Buster replied that he had talked to him "enough." Then, ol' Dark went off on a rant that would have driven our friend Aaron Gleeman to distraction. He talked about Beane and what a jerk he was. His primary beef with the A's general manager? That Beane was an arrogant jerk for writing that book about himself!!!! I thought that Dark didn't do any research for his opinions at all. Apparently, however, he must read Joe Morgan's chats on ESPN. Of course, Buster made no attempt to correct Dark, because he wanted to go into his latest rant, that the A's were lucky. Here's his rant -- which I had read before and take verbatim from one of his columns.

From the beginning of 2000 through games played Tuesday night, the Athletics' record when Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito has started is an incredible 297-156, 141 games over .500, for a winning percentage of .656. When anybody else has pitched, the Athletics' record is 179-159 -- a little better than .500 per season over a five-year span.

Olney went on to say that Oakland lucked into drafting each of these players. In fact, he stated that the A's didn't really covet any of them. He clearly stated that basically the only thing that Oakland has done right is draft these players and without them, they'd never had had success. Pardon me, but this theory sounds like it was handed to Olney by the Yankee front office. First of all, the A's have a .530 winning percentage (179-159) in games started by their fourth and fifth (and sixth and seventh and whoever else) starters over the last five years! Friends, that is a tremendous accomplishment! Olney offers this as evidence that the A's are only about three guys. I think this is evidence of the exact opposite -- that the A's can win even when their young studs aren't on the mound. I mean really, can any other team in the league say the same thing? True, their winning percentage is much greater when the Big Three are pitching, but even when they aren't the A's have been a winning team. Second, Olney completely misses the point with regard to Oakland's methods. So what if these guys weren't Oakland's first picks? The whole idea behind Oakland's draft strategies, as is pointed out in "Beane's" book is to draft college players with stats, and not to draft high school players who "look good." Guess what? Zito, Mulder, and Hudson all pitched in college. Oakland has recognized that the draft is pretty much a crap shoot especially when you draft high school players. Oakland couldn't afford to make a bunch of mistakes, so they draft college players. The point isn't that Oakland was lucky to get these guys, the point is that Oakland adhered to a system that produced these guys. But, that, apparently is beyond Olney's ken. Either that, or Olney is deliberately trying to mislead people in order to bash Beane. I don't know exactly why, but I'll speculate and say that the reason why is because it is a way to separate this highly successful low salary club from the $200 million behemouth that is the New York Yankees. Lord knows that it's not enough that the Yankees have parlayed their incredible financial advantage to win every year, they also have to have guys attempt to mislead fans to believe that they are also the smartest team in baseball. Guys like Olney will make that argument, even if it means trashing a team like the A's, and at least on Wednesday night, Dark Star let him. The fact is, the Oakland A's could not possibly have survived had they made some of the mistakes that the Yankees have made over the last several years. For example, had the A's resigned Jason Giambi, he would represent over 20% of their payroll. The Yanks can afford to sign him and put him on the shelf and still win 100 games. They can sign Drew Henson stick him the minors and write him off without a second thought. They can go out and sign Jose Contreras for $8 million a year for 4 years before he ever threw a pitch in the majors. If the A's make any of these moves, they would have been crippled. The Yanks can make all of them and more without a problem. Yet, in Olney's eyes, the A's and Billy Beane are lucky. Incredible. Oh, and as for the assertion that Zito, Hudson and Mulder are the whole team? Check this out. In 2000, the A's were 91-70 and the "big three" won just 36 of those games. The A's were second in the AL in runs scored. They had Jason Giambi (1.123 OPS), Miguel Tejada (.828 OPS at SS), Eric Chavez (.850 OPS), Ben Grieve (.846 OPS), Olmedo Saenz (.915 OPS in a part-time role), and so forth. Was it all pitching, Mr. Olney? In 2001, the A's were 102-60. True, the big three all had great years, winning a combined 56 games. But, again the A's offense was potent, scoring 884 runs, good for fourth in the league. The A's shrewdly jettisoned Grieve, the 1998 AL Rookie of the year in a trade that brought them Cory Lidle, Mark Ellis, and Johnny Damon. What luck! Grieve has never again played anywhere close to the level he played at for the A's. In 2002, the A's were 103-59. The big three won 57 games. The A's offense experienced a huge drop off, but that was primarily because they were unable to sign Giambi. It wasn't like the A's woke up one morning and said, "Damn, we forgot to sign Jason Giambi!" They basically had no choice but to let him go. The A's team still had Miguel Tejada, the AL MVP. In 2003, the A's were 96-66. The big three won 45 games. Ted Lilly obtained from the Yankees in the JEFF WEAVER trade (another Yankee mistake), won 12 games. Runs were down again, as Tejada had a dreadful first half. In 2004, the A's are 90-69 with three games left. Their big three have struggled to just 40 wins. They lost Tejada who has returned to his 2002 form for the Baltimore Orioles. They also have Rich Harden and Mark Redman in their starting staff, and they've been comparable to the big three in terms of numbers. Even though the big three have each had their worst ERAs since 2000 (and all but Mulder are worse than their 2000 number as well) the A's are right in the hunt with their small payroll. In addition to drafting Zito, Hudson, and Mulder, they also drafted Giambi, Chavez, and signed Tejada as an amateur free agent. They drafted Grieve and traded him at exactly the right moment. They have the probable AL Rookie of the Year in Bobby Crosby (of course, he wouldn't have been if Joe Mauer would have been healthy). I think it's colossally unfair to say that the A's were lucky and that it was all about the big three over these last five years. The A's had a great offense in the beginning of this run, one of the best in the American League. They also had three nice starters. While their position players have been continuously siphoned away by other bigger market teams, the A's have trudged on, making the playoffs four years straight. They've made some excellent trades, they've developed a lot of players and they've won. You'll also note that as their offense has declined, they've won less and less games. Next year, they'll likely lose at least one of the big three. I look for them to be competitive again. You can be sure that if they aren't Olney and those of his ilk will have their knives out for Billy Beane.