Welcome to life for the rest of Major League Baseball, Billy Beane.
After more than a decade of outsmarting the rest of the majors while trading for undervalued talent, the Oakland Athletics general manager sensed a pennant and succumbed to short-termism. He bet big on this season and, like so many before him, he went bust.
In one sense, Beane could hardly be blamed for wanting to turn all his build-up work of the previous years into a World Series championship. Despite playing in an awful ballpark and consistently finishing in the bottom third of league attendance, the Athletics had made the play-offs each of the past two seasons, bowing out in five games to the Detroit Tigers each time. It seemed as though the time to strike was at hand.
Taking advantage of financial wiggle room – Oakland turned a US$27 million (Dh99.2m) profit in 2013 – Beane filled up on pitching. He traded four prospects to the Chicago Cubs for Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel on July 5, and he doubled down on July 31 when he sent slugger Yoenis Cespedes to the Boston Red Sox for Jon Lester and Jonny Gomes.
In retrospect, it appears that this is where Oakland’s season unravelled. The Athletics had been coasting along with the best record in the majors for much of the season, but they stumbled after the Lester trade and won only 16 of their final 47 games. Finishing 10 games behind the American League West champions Los Angeles Angels, the Athletics were not even sure of a post-season place until the final day of the regular season. Their post-season stay was all too brief, losing in the wild-card game to the Kansas City Royals.
Beane must now experience the regret with which so many of his counterparts are familiar – mitigating the aftereffects of a failed experiment. In this new era of baseball, with defence so far ahead of offence and drug testing worthy of the name finally in place, trading hitting for pitching no longer seems like the safe route. Runs are at a premium as hitters strike out at record rates and struggle to adapt to this new, less-juicy world.
For all his working magic on a budget, it turns out Beane is just as capable of being wrong as his counterparts. The Lester trade has been a failure – the pitcher leaves as a free agent next month after accomplishing little and coming up small in the very game for which he was acquired.
pfreelend@thenational.ae