Billy Beane
Billy Beane
William Lamar "Billy" Beane IIIis an American former professional baseball player and current front office executive. He is the Executive Vice President of Baseball Operations and minority owner of the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball. Prior to his front office career, he played in MLB as an outfielder between 1984 and 1989 for the New York Mets, Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, and Oakland Athletics. He joined the Athletics front office as a scout in 1990. He was named general...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth29 March 1962
CityOrlando, FL
CountryUnited States of America
I hate this idea that I've somehow become detached. It's like I can't win. I'd been hearing all these years that I was too hands-on: that I was the guy writing out the lineup card. Now, I'm not present enough. How is it possible to be a detached micromanager?
I don't want a lot of guys like me who played the game. Quite frankly, I want blank canvases; I want people to come in with new ideas. I don't want the biases of their own experiences to be a part of their decision-making process.
We can't do the same things the Yankees do. Given the economics, we'll lose.
The bottom line is that any business should be a meritocracy. The best and brightest. Period.
Smaller markets teams, when you hit bottom, you hit with a thud.
I may not be as visible as I used to be, and by that I mean being in the clubhouse or on the field. But I'm just as invested as I've always been.
The math works. Over the course of a season, there's some predictability to baseball. When you play 162 games, you eliminate a lot of random outcomes. There's so much data that you can predict: individual players' performances and also the odds that certain strategies will pay off.
We've got to use every piece of data and piece of information, and hopefully that will help us be accurate with our player evaluation. For us, that's our life blood.
I love what I do. That's one of the reasons I've stayed. I love the community; I love driving to work.
What a special kid. No one deserves this more.
Both (Williams and Thomas) are highly competitive, highly successful people. It's temporary noise.
We have four very good rookies, but at the risk of saying it before the season is over, it would be pretty tough to find an explanation for choosing somebody else.
Obviously we're pleased, we're very excited about having someone with his talent. We look forward to seeing him in Oakland very soon.
But we've always been obsessed in Oakland with not being the cute small-market story that came and went.