Billy Beane Case Study

As the Oakland A’s begin their 2002 baseball season, they are immediately faced with a lower amount of money than any other team in the league. With the amount of money given, Billy Beane was on a mission to take risks and fought many battles along the way.

The Oakland A organization was under new ownership, this limited Billy’s budget for his recruiting. With this budget, he will not be able to recruit the “normal players” but only the “oddballs” of the group. “On the long cafeteria table in front of Billy sat an invisible cash register, and inside it the $9.4 million his owner had given him to sign perhaps as many as thirty-five players. The A’s seven first-round picks alone, paid what their equivalents had received the year before, would
On this checklist, there were a list of “tools” that made a player become great. “there are five tools: the abilities to run, throw, field, hit, and hit with power” (Lewis 3). The players with all of the “tools” in his “tool bag” was specifically the player Billy wanted to stay away from. Billy was on a restricted budget and did not want to waste money on players who may or may not be successful straight out of high school. Instead, Billy wanted players who were mature and talented and had the numbers to prove their skill set. All Billy really cared about was the players on base percentages rather than the players batting averages. He would rather have a kid who patient and smart hitter rather than a hitter who just swings at everything. One of those players that Billy showed interest in was Jeremy Brown. Brown was considered to be a first-round pick for the Oakland A’s, according to Billy. Brown was on the last page of any other scout’s lists. No one was considering him until Billy. All of the other older scouts considered him to be “a bad body catcher” (Lewis 33). The only thing that Billy cared to see was the fact that Brown had three hundred hits and two hundred