Moneyball

by Lewis, Michael

  On the eve of the trading deadline, July 30, he was still pursuing two players, and one of them is the Cleveland Indians’ lefthander, Ricardo Rincon. At that very moment, Rincon is still just a few yards away, inside the visitor’s locker room, dressing to play the second game of the three-game series against the Oakland A’s. The night before, he’d only thrown seven pitches. His arm, no doubt, felt good. The Cleveland Indians have given up any hope of winning this year, and are now busy selling off their parts. “The premier left-handed setup man is just a luxury we can’t afford,” said Indians’ GM Shapiro. Shapiro has shopped Rincon around the league and told Billy that there is at least one other bidder. Billy has found out—he won’t say how—that the other bidder is the San Francisco Giants and that the Giants’ offer may be better than his. All Billy has offered the Indians is a minor league second baseman named Marshall MacDougal. MacDougal isn’t that bad a player.

  Anyone seeking to understand how this team with no money kept winning more and more games would do well to notice their phenomenal ability to improve in the middle of a season. Ever since 1999 the Oakland A’s have played like a different team after the All-Star break than before it. Last year they had been almost bizarrely better: 44-43 before the break, 58-17 after it. Since the All-Star Game was created, in 1933, no other team had ever won so many of its final seventy-five games.*

  Tom Ruane, a researcher associated with Retrosheet, which had evolved from Bill James’s Project Scoresheet, offers this calculation: the only team since 1961 with a better second-half record over a four-year stretch than the Oakland A’s in 1999-2002 were the 1991-94 Atlanta Braves, and no team over a four-year stretch has improved itself in midseason by so much.

  The reason the Oakland A’s, as run by Billy Beane, played as if they were a different team in the second half of the season is that they were a different team. As spring turned to summer the market allowed Billy to do things that he could do at no other time of the year. The bad teams lost hope. With the loss of hope came a desire to cut costs. With the desire to cut costs came the dumping of players. As the supply of players rose, their prices fell. By midsummer, Billy Beane was able to acquire players he could never have afforded at the start of the season. By the middle of June, six weeks before the trading deadline, he was walking into Paul DePodesta’s office across the hall from his own and saying, “This is the time to make a fucking A trade.” When asked what was meant by a “Fucking A trade,” he said, “A Fucking A trade is one that causes everyone else in the business to say ‘Fucking A.’”

  By late July—the trade deadline was July 31—Billy’s antennae for bargains quivered. Shopping for players just before the deadline was like shopping for used designer dresses on the day after the Oscars, or for second-hand engagement rings in Reno. His goal at the start of the season had been to build a team good enough to remain in contention until the end of June. On July 1, the American League West standings looked like this:

  Wins Loses Games Behind

  Seattle 52 30 —

  Anaheim 47 33 4

  Oakland 46 36 6

  Texas 35 45 16

  Having kept the team close enough to hope, Billy could now go out and shop for whatever else he needed to get to the play-offs. When he set off on this shopping spree, he kept in mind five simple rules:

  “No matter how successful you are, change is always good. There can never be a status quo. When you have no money you can’t afford long-term solutions, only short-term ones. You have to always be upgrading. Otherwise you’re fucked.”

  “The day you say you have to do something, you’re screwed. Because you are going to make a bad deal. You can always recover from the player you didn’t sign. You may never recover from the player you signed at the wrong price.”

  “Know exactly what every player in baseball is worth to you. You can put a dollar figure on it.”

  “Know exactly who you want and go after him.” (Never mind who they say they want to trade.)

  “Every deal you do will be publicly scrutinized by subjective opinion. If I’m [IBM CEO] Lou Gerstner, I’m not worried that every personnel decision I make is going to wind up on the front page of the business section. Not everyone believes that they know everything about the personal computer. But everyone who ever picked up a bat thinks he knows baseball. To do this well, you have to ignore the newspapers.”

  His complete inability to heed Rule #5 Billy Beane compensated for by fanatically heeding the other four. His approach to the market for baseball players was by its nature unsystematic. Unsystematic—and yet incredibly effective.

  The absence of cash is always a problem for a man on a shopping spree. Ricardo Rincon would be owed $508,000 for the rest of the season, and that is $508,000 the Oakland A’s owners won’t agree to spend. To get Rincon, Billy must not only persuade Indians GM Shapiro that his is the highest bid; he must find the money to pay Rincon’s salary. Where? If he gets Rincon, he doesn’t need Mike Magnante. No one else does either, so he’s unlikely to save money there. No matter what he does, the A’s will wind up eating Magnante’s salary. But he might well be able to move Mike Venafro, the low-budget left-handed reliever he had just sent down to Triple-A. Venafro is a lot younger than Magnante. Other teams might be interested in him.

  This gives Billy an idea: auction Mike Venafro to teams that might be competing with him for Ricardo Rincon.

  He knows that the San Francisco Giants are after Rincon. He knows also that the Giants don’t have much to spend, and that, if offered a cheaper option, they might be less inclined to stretch for Rincon. “Let’s make them skinnier,” he says, and picks up the phone and calls Brian Sabean, the GM of the Giants. He’ll offer Venafro to the Giants for almost nothing. In a stroke he’ll raise cash he needs to buy Rincon (because he won’t have to pay Venafro’s salary) and possibly also reduce his competitor’s interest in Rincon, as they’ll now see they have, in Venafro, an alternative.

  Brian Sabean listens to Billy’s magnanimous offer of Mike Venafro; all Billy wants in return is a minor league player. Sabean says he’s interested. “Sabes,” Billy says, after laying out his proposal, “I’m not asking for much here. Think it over and call me back.”

  The moment he hangs up he calls Mark Shapiro, current owner of Ricardo Rincon, and tells him that he has the impression that the market for Rincon is softening. Whoever the other bidder is, he says, Shapiro ought to make sure his offer is firm.

  As he puts down the phone, Paul pokes his head into the office. “Billy, what about the Mets on Venafro? Just to have options.” Sabean is the master of the dry hump. Sabean is always expressing what seems like serious interest in a player, but when it comes time to deal, he becomes less serious.

  “The Mets could be after Rincon,” says Billy.

  The phone rings. It is Mark Shapiro, calling right back. He tells Billy that, by some amazing coincidence, the other buyer for Rincon has just called to lower his offer. Billy leans forward in his chair, chaw clenched in his upper lip, as if waiting to see if a fly ball hit by an Oakland A will clear the wall. He raises his fist as it does. “I just need to talk to my owner,” he says. “Thanks, Mark.”

  He puts down the phone. “We have a two-hour window on Rincon,” he says. He now has a purpose: two hours to find $508,000 from another team, or to somehow sell his owner on the deal. Never mind that his owner, Steve Schott, has already said that he won’t spend the money to buy Rincon. He shouts across the hall. “Paul! What’s left on Venafro’s contract?”

  “Two hundred and seventy thousand, eight hundred and thirty-three dollars.”

  He does the math. If he unloads Venafro, he’ll still need to find another $233,000 to cover Rincon’s salary, but he isn’t thinking about that just yet. His owners have told him only that they won’t eat 508 grand; they’ve said nothing about eating 233 grand. He has two hours to find someone
who will take Venafro off his hands. The Mets are a good idea. Billy picks up the phone and dials the number for Steve Phillips, the general manager of the Mets. A secretary answers.

  “Denise,” says Billy, “Billy Beane, Vice President and General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. Denise, who is the best-looking GM in the game?” Pause. “Exactly right, Denise. Is Steve there?”

  Steve isn’t there but someone named Jimmy is. “Jimmy,” says Billy.” Hey, how you doin’? Got a question for you. You guys looking for a left-handed reliever?”

  He raises his fist again. Yes! He tells Jimmy about Venafro. “I can make it real quick for you,” he says. He knows he wants to trade Venafro, but he doesn’t know who he wants in return.

  How quick?

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  Fine.

  “I can give you names in fifteen minutes,” says Billy. “Yeah, look I’d do this if I were you. And I’m not shitting you here, Jimmy. I’m being honest with you.”

  Paul sees what is happening and walks out the door before Billy is finished. “I gotta find some more prospects,” he says. He needs to find who they want from the Mets in exchange for Venafro.

  Billy hangs up. “Paul! We got fifteen minutes to get names.” He finds Paul already in his office flipping through various handbooks that list all players owned by the Mets. He takes the seat across from him and grabs one of the books and together they rifle through the entire Mets farm system, stat by stat. It’s a new game: maximize what you get from the Mets farm system inside of fifteen minutes. They’re like a pair of shoppers who have been allowed into Costco before the official opening time and told that anything they can cart out the door in the next fifteen minutes they can have for free. The A’s president, Mike Crowley, walks by and laughs. “What’s the rush?” he says. “We don’t need Rincon until the sixth or seventh inning.”

  “What about Bennett?” asks Paul.

  “How old is he?” asks Billy.

  “Twenty-six.”

  “Fuck, he’s twenty-six and in Double-A. Forget it.”

  Billy stops at a name and laughs. “Virgil Chevalier? Who is that?”

  “How about Eckert?” says Paul. “But he’s twenty-five.”

  “How about this guy?” says Billy, and laughs. “Just for his name alone. Furbush!”

  Anyone older than about twenty-three who is desirable will be too obviously desirable for the Mets to give up. They’re looking for a player whose promise they have a better view of than the Mets. Someone very young. It will be someone they do not know, and have never seen, and have researched for thirty seconds.

  “How about Garcia?” Paul finally asks.

  “What’s Garcia? Twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-two,” says Paul.

  He shows Billy the stats for Garcia and Billy says, “Garcia’s good. I’ll ask for Garcia.” He gets up and walks back to his office. “Fuck!” he says, on the way. “I know what I’ll do. Why don’t we go back to them and say, ‘Give us cash too!’ What’s the difference between Rincon and Venafro?”

  Paul punches numbers into his calculator: 232,923.

  “I’ll ask him for two hundred and thirty-three grand plus the prospect,” says Billy. “The money doesn’t mean anything to the Mets.”

  Being poor means treating rich teams as petty cash dispensers: $233,000 is the difference between Venafro and Rincon’s salaries for the rest of the season. If he can get the Mets to give him the $233,000, he doesn’t even need to call his owner. He can just make the deal himself.

  He pauses before he picks up the phone. “Should I call Sabean first?” He’s asking himself; the answer, also provided by himself, is no. As Billy calls Steve Phillips, Paul reappears. “Billy,” he says “you might also ask for Duncan. What can they say? He’s hitting .217.”

  “Who would we rather have, Garcia or Duncan?” asks Billy.

  The Mets’ secretary answers before Paul. Billy leans back and smiles. “Denise,” he says, “Billy Beane. Vice President and General Manager of the Oakland Athletics. Denise, who is the coolest GM in the game?” Pause. “Right again, Denise.” Denise’s laughter reaches the far end of Billy’s office. “Billy has the gift of making people like him,” said the man who had made Billy a general manager, Sandy Alderson. “It’s a dangerous gift to have.”

  This time Steve Phillips is present, and ready to talk. “Look, I’m not going to ask you for a lot,” says Billy generously, as if the whole thing had been Phillips’s idea. “I need a player and two hundred and thirty-three grand. I’m not going to ask you for anyone really good. I have a couple of names I want to run by you. Garcia the second baseman and Duncan the outfielder who hit .217 last year.”

  Phillips, like every other GM who has just received a call from Billy Beane, assumes there must be some angle he isn’t seeing. He asks why Billy sent Venafro down to Triple-A. He’s worried about Venafro’s health. He wonders why Billy is now asking for money, too.

  “Venafro’s fine, Steve,” says Billy. He’s back to selling used cars. “This is just a situation for us. I need the money for…something else I want to do later.”

  Phillips says he still wonders what’s up with Venafro. The last few times he’s pitched, he has been hammered. Billy sighs: it’s harder turning Mike Venafro into a New York Met than he supposed. “Steve, me and you both know that you don’t judge a pitcher by the last nine innings he threw. Art misused him. You should use him for a whole inning. He’s good against righties too!”

  For whatever reason the fish refuses the bait. At that moment Billy realizes: the Mets are hemming and hawing about Venafro because they think they are going to get Rincon. “Look,” says Billy. “Here’s the deal, Steve.” He’s no longer selling used cars. He’s organizing a high school fire drill, and tolerating no cutups. “I’m going to get Rincon. It’s a done deal. Yeah. It’s done. The Giants want Venafro. I’ve told them they can have him for a player: Luke Robertson.”

  “Anderson,” whispers Paul.

  “Luke Anderson,” says Billy, easing off. “We like Anderson. We think he’s going to be in the big leagues. But I’d like to deal with you because Sabes doesn’t have any money. You can win this because you can give me two hundred thirty-three grand in cash, and he can’t. I don’t have to have the two hundred thirty-three grand in cash. But it makes enough of a difference to me that I’ll work with you.” He’s ceased to be the fire drill instructor and become the personal trainer. You can do it, Steve! You can win!

  Whatever place he’s reached in the conversation, he likes. “Yeah,” he says. “It doesn’t have to be Garcia or Duncan. I’ll find a player with you. If it makes you feel better.” _] “Okay, Steve. Whoever calls me back first gets Venafro.” [(But if you drag your heels you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.)_]

  Billy’s assistant tells him that Peter Gammons, the ESPN reporter, is on the line. In the hours leading up to the trade deadline Billy refuses to take calls from several newspaper reporters. One will get through to him by accident and he’ll make her regret that she did. Most reporters, in Billy’s experience, are simply trying to be the first to find out something they’ll all learn anyway before their deadlines. “They all want scoops,” he complains. “There are no scoops. Whatever we do will be in every paper tomorrow. There’s no such thing as a paper that comes out in an hour.”

  It’s different when Peter Gammons calls. The difference between Gammons and the other reporters is that Gammons might actually tell him something he doesn’t know. “Let’s get some info,” he says, and picks up the phone. Gammons asks about Rincon and Billy says, casually, “Yeah, I’m just finishing up Rincon,” as if it’s a done deal, which clearly it is not. He knows Gammons will tell others what he tells him. Then the quid pro quo: Gammons tells Billy that the Montreal Expos have decided to trade their slugging outfielder, Cliff Floyd, to the Boston Red Sox. Billy quickly promises Gammons that he’ll be the first to know whatever he does, then hangs
up the phone and says, “Shit.”

  Cliff Floyd was the other player Billy was trying to get. “There’s more than one season,” Billy often said. What he really meant was that, in the course of a single season, there was more than one team called the Oakland Athletics. There was, for a start, the team that had opened the season and that, on May 23, he’d booted out of town. Three eighths of his starting lineup, and a passel of pitchers. Players who just a couple of months earlier he’d sworn by he dumped, without so much as a wave good-bye. Jeremy Giambi, for instance. Back in April, Jeremy had been Exhibit A in Billy Beane’s lecture on The New and Better Way to Think About Building a Baseball Team. Jeremy proved Billy’s point that a chubby, slow unknown could be the league’s best leadoff hitter. All Billy would now say about Jeremy is that walking over to the Coliseum to tell him he was fired was “like shooting Old Yeller.”

  There was a less sentimental story about Old Yeller, but it never got told. In mid-May, as the Oakland A’s were being swept in Toronto by the Blue Jays, Billy’s behavior became erratic. Driving home at night he’d miss his exit and wind up ten miles down the road before he’d realize what had happened. He’d phone Paul DePodesta all hours of the night and say, “Don’t think I’m going to put up with this shit. Don’t think I won’t do something.” When the team arrived back in Oakland, he detected what he felt was an overly upbeat tone in the clubhouse. He told the team’s coaches, “Losing shouldn’t be fun. It’s not fun for me. If I’m going to be miserable, you’re going to be miserable.”