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
Having too many players that deserve to play is not a bad problem to have. We've certainly been on the other side of it. We've never been a club that's had a tremendous amount of depth. (Trading a player) is not something that's on our list to do.
I don't view having too many good players as a problem.
(Macha) did a fine job. We obviously had significant player turnover and injuries. The end result was good. It was great to see the young guys make the progress they did.
Trying to build a team over the course of the winter to put on the field is really just half the job. Because if your best players go down, it's not so much him going down as who you replace him with, which ultimately might have the biggest impact on how you end up finishing. So you want to have both a belt and suspenders for support.
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.
Paul has seen the ups and down of developing young players and trusting the three, four years they've had in the minor leagues and discounting their first few months in the majors. Developing young players can be a lot of fun, but you've got to have the discipline to live with their mistakes and understand their trend line isn't always going to go straight up.
For us, it was an opportunity to add a player without subtracting a player. Our history here, usually we're trading a player to acquire a player.
He is one of the greatest offensive players of his generation. He is nirvana for us as far as what we look for in an offensive player.
If there is any player who you couldn't be happier for signing a guaranteed multiyear contract, it's Mark Ellis, particularly because of what he went through.
There was a real sense of determination in talking to him. You could get carried away with superlatives with Frank Thomas. Arguably, he is one of the greatest offensive players of his generation.
You could probably get carried away with superlatives when it comes to Frank Thomas. He's arguably one of the greatest offensive players of his generation.
It would be malpractice not to do research. Of course, it would also be malpractice to make a foolish trade.
It was an emotional time for the family, a life decision for them. The fact that we didn't agree right away wasn't unusual, given the magnitude of the decision.
Essentially this has been a business that's been around for over a hundred years and it really hasn't changed much so any time someone's doing something differently, its probably going to create some friction.