Billy Beane: Case Study: Billy Beane '

Billy Bean was a young athletic kid that came from a military family. He grew to be six foot four inches at the age of eighteen. Billy was tested for his arm strength, speed, hitting, and fielding in front of major league scouts. Billy was not the suitable runner to the major leagues scouts. They looked at him and thought he too tall and lengthy for an outfielder. “He’s probably real slow,” they would say. Billy did not listen to them, he did not have a care in the world besides performing perfectly in front of the scouts and fans. He was then set to run the 60 yard dash. “Gillick drops his hand. Five born athletes lift up and push off. They’re at full tilt after just a few steps. It’s all over inside of seven seconds. Billy Beane has made all the others look slow,” (Lewis 5). Things are not always what they seem to be. Billy was a tall white kid that is not suppose to beat a sprinter who was already signed to UCLA on a football scholarship as a wide receiver. Scouts ask for a re-run, and yet again Billy kills them. Billy was undervalued as a runner and he proved them wrong by killing everyone in the

1. Briefly, what are the major developments in the history of the labor-management relationship within Major League Baseball?

“3 Nights in August Strategy”, by Buzz Bissinger is a story of strategy, heartbreak, and joy inside the mind of a manager. Baseball does not seem as complex as it really is, at first glance it just seems like people hitting a ball and then throwing the ball to any base. Bissinger though, describes the baseball as “complex and layered”. Every inning, score, number of outs, and base runners will determine what play you should make. Many people are unaware of the intensity of strategy used in baseball, so much that Bissinger says that he is still learning despite how long he has been in the scene coaching. The book is split into three sections each describing a game of the Cubs versus Cardinals series.

He knows how to take care of himself, instead of relying on his parents. Moreover Peter

Despite all these limiting factors it did not stop him from leading the team to a 20 consecutive wins. The Oakland A’s were different from other teams. They did not let anything stop them, they did extraordinary things. As their salary decreased they got better, this is very unusual. The new approach; sabermetrics helped the team change and improve in a short about of time. This new approach caused problems for the Oakland A’s. It caused problems with the team; Billy and the Oakland scouts. Some people and teams hate sabermetrics and think it does not help with winning.

Peter would be described as a companionable teenager who has a passion for art and music. Peter is a dedicated Swing Kid, and risks getting in trouble with the gestapo to do what he loves most, dance at the swing clubs. He lives a somewhat impecunious lifestyle at home with his mother, grandmother, and little brother who looks to Peter as a role

The most recent edition to the Brooklyn Dodgers, a young farm boy from Connecticut named Roy Tucker (The Kid), becomes a phenom in the League with his brilliant pitching. But a freak accident ends his pitching career, forcing Tucker to find a new place on the team. John Tunis’s work resembles the story of current Major League outfielder Rick Ankiel. Ankiel is a star pitcher-turned outfielder, same as The Kid was. Although Ankiel’s heart-warming comeback story took many years longer, the similarities are still there. Both had to face the hard fact that they just were not going to pitch in the Majors ever again. Ankiel and Roy Tucker also had to have incredible perseverance and self-confidence to reach the Majors again, as outfielders. Tunis

The sun has risen and a young boy jumps out of bed with excitement, as he knows today he gets to go to his first professional baseball game. His father had bought him the tickets for his birthday months ago, and the boy had been counting down the days ever since. He put on his favorite ‘Cleveland Indians’ shirt, and ran downstairs to eat his yogurt and waffles for breakfast. As he ate, his mother saw him happily drawing Jacob’s Field, using his brown crayon to put the finishing touches on the base paths. The boy had a penchant attitude for baseball, as it was the first game his father ever taught him to play, and because of that, he would play whenever he could; with rocks and a stick, with his friends in the yard, and in his head when he

The 2001 offseason was a critical time for the A's front office. Center fielder Johnny Damon, first baseman Jason Giambi, and closer Jason Isringhausen were all free agents and the A's knew there was no way that they could afford to keep them. Beane believes that effective closers were overpriced in the free agent market because he thinks that saves are an overrated statistic. (Lewis pgs.125-126) So when replacing the hole left by Jason Isringhausen's departure Beane traded away a solid prospect in Eric Hinske to pick up an effective but less expensive reliever in Billy Koch from Toronto. This is an example of a tactic used by

The Oakland A’s were a poor team. They could not afford to shop for costly players like teams who were considered “rich” did. So, the A’s were bound by money to find “bargain” athletes. This problem repeatable showed up in baseball’s history and baseball management continued to handle the problem the same way- by blindly trusting the system. The overall question was how could a poor team improve their standings? How can they overcome the biggest hurdle of money without being financially unstable? Can a team win games without any big names in baseball? Billy Beane, a fruitless baseball player turned thriving general manager, revolutionized the baseball industry by finding a new solution to an old problem.

1. Based on the “Billy Beane: Changing the Game” case, explain how and why the Oakland A’s economic situation after 1995 shaped its:

The A's recent success is attributed to the innovative approach taken by Billy Beane in assembling a baseball team with a very limited amount of financial resources. Billy Beane has built a successful ball club because he has found an efficient and cost effective way of measuring baseball talent thus essentially creating a loophole in this unfair game because winning percentage is a result of talent not

George et al.,(2007) provide the importance of an authentic leadership. A key focus of the article is that the leader should not only understand his values, but practice them as well. One of the most interesting values described by Billy Beane is his value of education. Major League Baseball would recognize him as one of the top high school talents in the country during his youth. He valued education so much, that he informed all Major League Baseball teams that he would not sign any professional contract so that he could attend Stanford. Even upon being convinced to sign with the New York Mets, he made his intentions of taking classes in the off season quite clear. This may have been his undoing as a player, as he did not value where his natural talents could take him in baseball. This would lead him to develop values regarding life decisions. He swore after that sequence of events he would never make a decision based on money ever again. This is a value he has stayed true to, as he turned down the opportunity to be the highest paid

Based on the “Billy Beane: Changing the Game” case, explain how and why the Oakland A’s economic situation after 1995 shaped its:

However his ineffectiveness is evident from the fact that despite making plans about writing a proposal about "Custom Chip manufacturing documentation problem" he was unable to accomplish it and he forgot to acknowledge his subordinate Bill on his fifth anniversary in the company. He also forgot to fill in the appraisals sent in by the HR manager showing his lack of self organization. As Mary Parker Follet describes "The first essential of business success is the capacity of organized thinking" . So he was not an effective organizer. He was not able to convince his Boss to hire new employees showing his lack of persuasion and fear of rejection. He also thinks that his judgments are best ones and