https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/ostler/article/Good-time-for-Billy-Beane-Bob-Melvin-to-walk-16539464.php"It's time for Billy Beane and Bob Melvin to leave the Oakland/Las Vegas A's.
Not because the A's executive VP of baseball operations and the field manager are doing a bad job.
Au contraire. They should leave because they are doing a great job. Which makes them part of a snow job.
Beane and Melvin lend legitimacy and credibility to an organization otherwise lacking in those attributes. They provide cover for owner John Fisher and President Dave Kaval, who really know how to run a franchise ... right into the ground.
This is not new, but the situation is deteriorating fast.
Off the field, the A's are spinning their wheels as far as their alleged dream of building a stadium in Oakland, and trying harder and harder to chase away their remaining loyal fans.
A's ticket prices for the 2022 season have been goosed, a decision not likely to move the team up from this season's 29th place in MLB's average attendance (8,660). But it might help pay for Fisher and Kaval's frequent expeditions to Vegas.
Fisher and the A's use the lack of a decent ballpark as a convenient excuse to keep payroll super-low, and there is no new ballpark in sight for at least three years, so players like corner infielders Matt Olson and Matt Chapman can keep their bags packed because this team isn't likely to give them long-term extensions.
Beane and Melvin are a great team. They have worked together 11 seasons now, overachieving like crazy. Going into 2021, the A's made the playoffs six of the previous nine seasons, splendid for a tiny-payroll team.
Melvin has been Manager of the Year three times, and would be a strong candidate for Manager of the Past Decade.
Beane and Melvin are the poster guys for New Baseball. Beane took the analytics of his predecessor, Sandy Alderson, to new levels of efficiency. Melvin adapted to the new way of baseball, in which the manager takes heavy input from the general manager. Melvin's deep use of his roster and his communication with his players are superb.
However, Beane's and Melvin's excellent work divert attention from the true state of the franchise.
On that side of the ledger, embarrassments pile up. In 2020, Fisher, whose personal worth increased by $1 billion during the first year of the pandemic, tried to cut off a $400 weekly stipend for A's minor-leaguers. One A's minor-league team was caught providing players with meals at which a hungry dog would growl. Fisher has reaped huge dividends from the growth of MLB without contributing to that growth.
Letting shortstop Marcus Semien, an East Bay native, walk away last offseason to save a few bucks, then watching him hit 45 homers in Toronto, was max cringy. (This isn't second-guessing, I called it a tragic decision at the time.)
Fisher and Kaval staked the A's future in Oakland to a risky waterfront project with a thousand major hurdles, and now act insulted because those hurdles don't topple when the owner and his sidekick huff and puff.
This would be a perfect time for Beane and Melvin to exit, before they begin to look less like victims and more like enablers. (Webster's definition of enabler: "One who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior.")
There is speculation, sparked by Ken Rosenthal of the Athletic, that Beane and Melvin might escape the A's collapsing house of cards and take their talents to the New York Mets, with whom Beane would be reunited with Alderson, his first boss and mentor. Beane and Melvin are both under contract to the A's next season, but the Mets and other clubs could make the A's a deal they can't refuse.
Short term, the departure of Beane and Melvin would be sad for the ball team and its fans, and for the media. It would be a neon sign of the apocalypse.
But their departure would further expose the A's. It might even be a last straw, leading to the best possible outcome for Oakland and for A's fans: Fisher, his cash cow drying up, sells the team to a new owner who keeps the A's rooted in Oakland (sorry, Vegas) and builds a ballpark."
