The 2019 Oakland A’s Have Reinvented Moneyball
By the end of this October, the Oakland Athletics could be the only championship team in Bay Area sports. With the 49ers searching to establish a new identity in the Jimmy Garropolo era, the Giants only playing to secure Hall of Fame bound manager Bruce Bochy his 2,000th career win, the Raiders headed out of town, and the Sharks and Warriors both coming up short in title bids, the eyes of the Bay may yet turn to the unlikely campaign of the green and gold for postseason glory. One of professional sports’ most overlooked franchises, ranking in the bottom five of MLB attendance, the biggest national spotlight the A’s have gotten in recent years has been through their longtime GM and President, Billy Beane. Made a household name by the bestselling book Moneyball, and then even more so by the 2011 film adaptation in which he was portrayed by Brad Pitt, Beane is one of the most famous executives in American professional approach due to his use of advanced metrics to revolutionize the way that baseball teams have thought of acquiring players. Nearly twenty years later, analytics are ubiquitous in baseball, and have spread to other sports as well (Beane’s protege, Paul DePodesta, now works with the NFL’s Cleveland Browns). And yet, Beane is also infamous for the fact that, in his own words, “my shit doesn’t work in the playoffs.” And yet, his team is on pace to be back there again, this time with a lineup that looks decidedly different than the ones that were made famous in the Moneyball years. Will this time be any different?
Since he became General Manager in 1999, the A’s have made the baseball playoffs nine times. Only once, however, have they advanced past the first round. Beane has maintained that everything that occurs in the postseason is luck, outside of his control, but there are some identifiable weaknesses in the teams Beane constructed, even the ones that won over 100 games in 2001 and 2002. Beane’s analytic approach famously gravitated towards thicker, more unathletic players who could draw walks, which he viewed as an undervalued asset. And yet how many A’s fans would rue that when the lumbering Jeremy Giambi was cut down at home plate by Derek Jeter during a crucial postseason series against the Yankees in 2001? Oakland’s pitching staffs also suffered from never having a dominant strikeout pitcher; even when they boasted the vaunted Big 3 of Barry Zito, Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder, all three were more finesse, control pitchers, a style that tends to get exposed in the playoffs when hitters tighten up their strike zones and become more disciplined. So, if the 2019 A’s are built by that same man, will they suffer the same fate? While they operated on similar budgetary constraints as Beane faced back in 2002, this time there is a very different feel to Oakland’s roster, one that could be the difference in giving them a championship.
If one player on the 2019 Oakland A’s sums up how Beane’s philosophy of team building has changed, it would be Matt Chapman. While the third baseman does draw walks, in every other way he is atypical of the Beane approach from years past. An incredible athlete who makes highlight reel plays on a nightly basis, in 2018 Chapman won the Platinum Glove, baseball’s award for the best overall defensive player at every position. Although Chapman does draw his fair share of walks, it wasn’t his on base numbers that made Beane draft him at 25th overall in 2014. Although he was skeptical of Chapman’s numbers at Cal State Fullerton, Beane listened to his scouts, who were adamant that Chapman was a star in the making. It was a 180 from the Billy Beane of 2002, portrayed in Moneyball as the young forward thinker locked in battle with the wizened, set in their ways scouts.
Chapman sets the tone for the way that this A’s team is built- with a renewed emphasis on athletic players on both sides of the ball. First baseman Matt Olson won a Gold Glove to go with Chapman’s Platinum, and has also hit thirty four home runs so far this season. Outfielder Ramon Laureano is a strong hitter, but he also boasts an absolute cannon of an arm, arguably baseball’s best.
Oakland’s pitching staff is not quite in the same league as their offense- the club’s most obvious weakness up against their American League competitors is that they lack a dominant ace pitcher capable of racking out high strikeout numbers, such as Houston’s Justin Verlander and Gerritt Cole, or Tampa Bay’s Charlie Morton. However, hope may be emerging - young A’s pitcher Sean Manaea has missed most of the season with a shoulder injury, but he has averaged more than a strikeout per inning since his return in September. Also joining the team this month is top prospect Jesus Luzardo, who has racked up strikeouts in the minor leagues and could be the team’s ace for years to come, though this season he will only be used as a weapon out of the bullpen, a bullpen headlined by the fearsome closer Liam Hendriks, who this season set the record for most strikeouts by an Australian born MLB player.
The 2019 Oakland Athletics have a long way to go before they have a chance to change Billy Beane’s playoff luck. If they hope to do so, they will need to make their way past juggernaut teams like the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers and Houston Astros, all of whom pair Beane’s analytic-savvy approach of old with budgets that dwarf that of Oakland. But this time, Oakland will be coming at them with a mix of speed, athleticism and power not seen since the dominant late 1980s teams that boasted Rickey Henderson setting the table for Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. And it was those teams that last brought back a championship to the East Bay. The core of this current Athletics team combines the best of old and new school baseball roster construction, and is poised to have a shot at the World Series for years to come.
