I don't think anyone expects Beane to be perfect- but the expectations created in "Moneyball"  are pretty high.

I think the biggest manufactured, not-quite-adherent-to-reality storyline was the "Billy Beane, innovatin'-whirligig, Henry Ford in shorts and flipflops, celebrity MBA commencement speaker" myth.

Don't get me wrong: I think Beane's a supersmart guy, and one of the best GMs in the business.

But he's still a creature of habit in the same way that all baseball men are, he's still limited in the sheer number of innovations and off-the-wall moves by the quotidian exigencies of running a ballclub, and he's never been the radical innovator of Lewis's fable.

(Lewis, BTW, and this is not a criticism, essentially writes the same story with every book [which all successful authors do]: a fun-loving cerebral rebel upsets the old order and succeeds against the prejudices of the old guard, thereby ushering in a new era that sweeps the hero aside once the new prejudices supplant the old as the social order.)

No one knows what Watson would have become, but the farm production has been very good overall, and I don't see any other MLB teams chomping to get Watson. Maybe a way to approach this question is to examine if any of our AAA players who left as free-agents end up being productive MLBers (I don't count being a Royals player right now).

As for Beane's bad choices of free-agents, maybe they were bad flukes given limited choices ont he market, but it's getting to be an annoyingly consistent fluke.

In recent years, Crosby, Swisher, Dan Johnson, Watson, Jason Grabowski, Graham Koonce, and Mike Edwards all put up similar numbers in Sacramento. The difference? Crosby and Swisher were 23, Johnson was 25, and the others were all at least 26.

And the results have been to form. Crosby and Swisher are becoming stars as they continue to develop as hitters. Johnson has been pretty good, but is still considered to have a low ceiling. Grabowski (whose numbers were a little better than Watson) and Edwards (a little worse, but he can play 3B) have both gotten playing time with the Dodgers, and haven't hit at all. Koonce (the oldest) and Watson haven't had much of a chance, with the A's or anyone else, but if they were, the results would almost surely be the same.

Beane doesn't need to that this year because we have major league talent at the major league level.  Despite Watson's (or Bynum's, or Koonce's) numbers, I would rather have a Kielty or Payton who have statistically shown their ability to play hit major league pitching while playing almost every day.  Watson's departure isn't anything to cry about - we should be happy that we've assembled a team this year that can do without the him.

But, honestly, if it were JUST about putting together a team (not running a baseball organization, which I won't even pretend to be able to do) do any of you guys really think you couldn't do much of the same? I mean strictly on these fringe moves and such. My point is Billy Beane's genius is in developing and acquiring a lot of YOUNG, low priced talent. The other fringe and big moves he's proven to not be particularly adept at. Finding a guy who can put up the offensive equivalents to Bobby Kielty or Jay Payton or Marco Scutaro is EASY. Very, very easy.

Which brings me back to my point. Moneyball implies that Billy Beane sees something everybody else is missing in these transactions. That's simply not the case. When you get a Kirk Saarloos, you get an averagish innings eater. Every team in the major leagues knows this, and any dedicated fan with an internet connection knows this as well. And it's been proven by his performance. When you get a Marco Scutaro, you get a middling infield backup. Again, every team in the majors and every fan with a computer can figure this out, and no amount of scientific  data plots that Beane may or may not possess really changes that. Ditto Joe Kennedy. Ditto Jason Kendall. Ditto Esteban Loaiza. Ditto Chad Gaudin. Ditto Randy Keisler and Steve Karsay. Good moves will be made and bad moves will be made. Extending Kielty was bad, getting Loaiza wasn't necessarily so, and how they work out isn't exactly the GM's fault. But the idea that Billy must know something we don't if he's going and getting Esteban Loaiza which on the surface looks weird, is simply ridiculous. He doesn't. He thought he was getting a fine innings eater with quality strikeout rates. My connection to mlb.com or my copy of Baseball Prospectus could have told me the same thing. Where Beane separates himself, and does so very, very well, is in the arena of player development and keeping the farm stocked. Every GM has bad drafts and such, but when you can bring Bobby Crosby, Rich Harden, Barry Zito, Eric Chavez, Dan Johnson, Nick Swisher, Huston Street, and Joe Blanton (among others) out of your collective drafts and bring in other young talents like Dan Haren, Daric Barton, and Mark Ellis you're doing a very good job relative to the other GM's of putting a team on the field. THAT is where Beane knows something we don't, that's where he makes his reputation as a shark. Not for signing the likes of Jay Payton, Bobby Kielty, and Esteban Loaiza to deals for more than they're worth.

--The Big 3 stopped pitching like the Big 3; every one of them had significant setbacks in '04, giving lie to the title of Mychael Urban's new book about them.
--we lost two more free-agents--Tejada and Foulke
--Billy had a particularly bad offseason.  The best trade he made was no steal--Ramon Hernandez for Mark Kotsay was a good deal for both teams.  Lilly-for-Kielty was horrible, and the Redman and Rhodes signings eventually led us to Ramon's current pricey replacement.  

I don't think it's a matter of BB getting lazy; I agree with sentiments written above, that the book overexaggerated his genius in the first place.  

Incidentally, I think the gm who was the greatest at discovering journeyman veterans was Beane's mentor, Sandy Alderson.  Twin reclamation projects Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley--that was awesome.