but not because I think his way of getting good talent cheap before was to scan the “overperforming due to PEDs” market or anything related to PEDs.

Beane’s failures, IMO, have revolved around banking far too heavily on Chavez in the face of all evidence, taking far too long to recognize that Crosby’s shortcomings had little to do with health, and focusing so much on pitching (which is generally a great idea) that the team and system both became bereft of hitting talent, actual or potential.

He also, even recently, got Cust for pennies, acquired Cunningham, Carter, and Cardenas, drafted Doolittle and Suzuki. So it’s not even all bad.

I didn’t mean to say 90’s, I meant early 00’s.

Ok Nico, for the third time, it doesn’t have anything to do with him scanning the landscape for players that could have potentially been on PEDs. It has to do with guys he signs blowing up and having career years between 1999 and 2001. Coincidentally enough (or not), those were the years everyone in the league was blowing up and having career years. It probably wasn’t even his fault he got so much attention from Lewis’s book, but Beane ended up being the one who came off as a genius over the whole thing. That so called genius then created an infallibility around here which irritates the crap out of me.

It was less than a year ago we were all sitting around here talking about how great the team would be in a couple years being anchored by Carlos Gonzalez, Travis Buck, and Daric Barton. Heck, I bought into the moves myself and was totally pumped, after all, Billy was in charge, he would never steer the team in the wrong direction. It was unfathomable to think CarGon would’ve been dealt at this time last year. We were all itching so bad to see him in the green in gold. People used to talk as if success was guaranteed in the coming years, but why? Then Harden and Gaudin get traded for Gallagher, Patterson, Donaldson, and Murton. No one really questions the move of giving up on the season. Everyone just says it will make the team better for the future. Never mind the performance and location of any of those players right now.

I hate looking back at trades and saying would’ve could’ve should’ve, but the only thing I will say is that he hasn’t really been any more successful than any other GM at coming out on top lately. Especially not enough to get the publicity, confidence, and ownership stake in the team that he has. Lets not talk about the complete depletion of the farm system that required all the trades to be made in the first place. How you can let that happen is beyond me. It’s understandable that the A’s can’t easily fill spots on the roster after guys move on from free agency, get hurt, retire etc, due to their lower budget. The thing is, Beane got the reputation for being able to weather those occurrences by finding players no one else was picking up on. He has failed to do that in a long time. Well actually, just since the league adopted a more formal PED policy.

I would be arguing against me too if I was somehow claiming Beane intentionally sought out PED users, but thats not what I’m doing. I just wanted to point out the startling effect that steroid testing had on the A’s during his tenure, and how much worse an affect it had on the A’s than the rest of the AL. The other main thing is that I think he gets way too much of a free pass, and I had my own opinion it was because he got lucky during the steroid era. I’m fine with people saying the players aren’t as good now, but not so much the injuries. Every franchise in every sport deals with that, not just the A’s. Chavez and Crosby being injured does not result in 100 fewer home runs being hit in 2008 than in 2000. When you say the players aren’t as good you have to look at who put them on the team or gave them their contract extensions in the first place. That responsibility falls on the GM. The team is in it’s third straight year of offensive ineptitude and has been GETTING WORSE during the REBUILDING years when they should be getting better. The A’s are walking a fine line between becoming the Pirates, Royals, and Rays of the last decade, and the sad thing is, no one seems to look at it that way. The scary part is that everyone is so quick to point out the weak AL West, and all the flaws that apparently befall the Angels, Mariners, and Rangers, but it’s really our own favorite team we should be more concerned about.

“…and where other organizations with lower payrolls are having success in drafting, developing, trading for, and using good offensive players…”

Nico, I’m starting to get the feeling you have an agenda to try and discredit anyone you disagree with. Heck, it might be fun to try and search through the AN archives and look at the people you’ve singled out, and then track their posting trends afterwards…

I specifically point out correlation vs. causation because it’s the trendy thing to say on AN to throw out stuff you don’t agree with it. People use that comment, but really have no clue what they are talking about. I used this same example before, but when summer comes around you’d probably notice an increase in ice cream sales, and also an increase in shark attacks. The increase in ice cream sales does not have any correlation with the increased number of shark attacks. On the other hand, the increased number of beach goers just might. Thats why there are so many types of run, time series, and regression plots. MINITAB is a super awesome statistical software package that provides dozens of tests designed to help quality control people determine the root cause of inefficient aspects of various processes. When you are looking at a string of observations and you see a run of defects or points above or below the mean, or any kind of trending that is outside the spec limits the first thing you do is try and investigate the cause for this. If you were manufacturing a gear and every day there was a run of rejected out of spec parts starting around 3 in the afternoon you’d then go and investigate whats going on, on the manufacturing floor at that time. Maybe it corresponds to a new shift of employees coming on. Maybe it corresponds to the drill bit on the end mill becoming worn out through the day.

It’s not rocket science to apply the same principles commonly used in process improvement techniques like Six Sigma to a major league baseball franchise. Thats all I’ve done here. Ohmango, the hypothesis test isn’t as accurate as I’d like it to be, because the sample size is ridiculously small. Because I noticed the data for runs tended to be normally distributed I felt it might be fun just to throw that in there, and since I’ve always had to work out those type tests by hand, I wanted to try out the software. It didn’t do much, but confirm the means were different, but it is good to know that. There are plenty of other tests to do to show that the change is more significant before and after the testing, like a regression fit, or plotting the area under the points, but I didn’t feel like anyone wanted to see more time series plots. I’m glad someone at least appreciated the work that went into it, and at least understood the results for what they are.