Major League Baseball

A Winning Hand 1

A Winning Hand

Daniel Habib

Keystone College

A Winning Hand 2

A Winning Hand

In all professional athletics a team's general manager is a huge piece of their overall success. In this particular situation we are dealing with baseball, where a team's general manager is huge. There are some excellent general manager's in Major League Baseball such as the Dodgers Paul Depodesta and the Red Sox Theo Epstein. But in this article the author specifically focused on the one GM who everyone that is familiar with sports knows of, the Oakland Athletics Billy Beane. Beane has always been a big time GM of the A's Sandy Alderson. Alderson was the general manager of the Athletics back in the early 90's when Billy Beane was just an Oakland scout. Beane has always been a part of big time free agent pick ups, trades, bring in rookies, or unloading franchise players. In 1992 while being a scout he and Alderson following an American League West title unloaded pricey free agent super stars, no wait resigned them. Now that does not sound like the Billy Beane of today. Ron Darling, Mark McGwire, Ruben Sierra, and Terry Steinbach all were given long term deals. So why to this day does Beane get rid of high priced star players rather than resign them like he and Alderson did in the past. Well maybe it's because their decision to resign those players was merely an emotional decision, or maybe it's because the team suffered six consecutive sub .500 seasons since all those re signings.

That was chapter one of three in the Billy Beane era. Chapter two occurred a few

A Winning Hand 3

years back when the A's climbed back out of the AL West cellar and became a first place team again. Oakland now had a new GM, (Billy Beane) who succeeded alderson. Boy has he done an incredible job since acquiring that position in rank. Beane and the Athletics payroll is about $60 million, which is considered to be very small market. Billy Beane first created a star in now New York Yankee's first baseman Jason Giambi. Giambi's career sky rocketed in Oakland where he won the American League MVP award with Oakland. Now you would think a GM with any brains would resign a player like that immediately, not Beane. Giambi left and is now a Yankee, battling parasite sickness, and busy apologizing to the sport and fans of baseball because he used steroids. The A's posted two 90 plus win season's after Giambi's departure, and one 80 plus win season. Giambi may never start again and be the player he once was. Winner Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics. Next in chapter two is another young superstar player to step up and take the show since Giambi was now gone. This new superstar was shortstop Miguel Tejada, who also won an MVP award with Oakland right after Giambi left. Giambi leaves and Tejada stays two years win's an MVP award and has a solid encore season. It's now time for his big lucrative contract he has earned. Well Billy Beane said you can have that