Appreciate your understanding regarding the confusion over Billy Beane’s role as it related to scouting.

My point about Sandy Alderson is that he is reflective of a new generation of general managers with highly different roles and responsibilities than those of decades ago and thus with many of them the credit for the baseball matters that was once automatically attributed to them often needs to be due to others instead.

With the expansion of baseball into a multi billion dollar industry teams are now being run as a business. With that in mind, the role of the general manager has changed tremendously over the past few decades. Whereas an older generation like Gabe Paul, Johnny Murphy and those before them were able to run baseball clubs like a mom and pop small business, it isn’t so today. Whereas most general manages back then came through the ranks of careers in the game (from hall of famer Joe Cronin to Branch Rickey who spent two years as a fringe player) and concentrated mainly on player personnel, today Billy Beane is the exception and not the rule. Most all GM’s come not from the ranks of former players (minor leaguer, fringe or scout) but from the corporate world (I think there are only three former players holding that position at this time). And unlike the older general manager who concentrated mainly on player personnel along with (for example) negotiating local television and radio contacts, today’s general managers are astute corporate executives and have been hired to run the team as corporation, no longer a mom and pop business.

Some have a balance of corporate and baseball experience, others have very little. In that year, Sandy Alderson was brought on as the team’s Vice President and General Counsel. He admitted to having absolutely no professional knowledge of the game whatsoever. At the same time, Bill Rigney was brought in as the team’s Assistant to the President, Baseball Matters.

Rigney had a vast background in the game as player, manager, scout and yes, baseball announcer as well. He was obviously well versed in the game. Whereas Sandy Alderson graduated from Harvard Law School in 1976 and then worked for the law firm of Farella Braun & Martel in San Francisco, California where he then met Roy Eisenhardt.

http://www.sfgate.com/sports/article/It-Musta-Been-Rigged-Bill-Rigney-dead-at-83-2949823.php#page-2

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/ex-marine-harvard-law-school-grad-sandy-alderson-brings-toughness-mets-trenches-article-1.192497?pgno=1

Sandy started out in the business end of the organization and then became general manager based on his organizational skills. From the above Daily News article:

“The question I’m always asked is, ‘Why didn’t you hire a baseball guy to do that rather than a lawyer?’” says Roy Eisenhardt, the former A’s president who brought Alderson to Oakland in 1980.

“Eisenhardt was a partner at the San Francisco law firm Farella, Braun & Martel when Alderson came to clerk there one summer in the mid-’70s. After Eisenhardt’s father-in-law, Walter Haas, bought the A’s in 1980, Eisenhardt had a new post and hired Alderson to be the team’s general counsel in ’81. Two years later Alderson was promoted to GM, although Eisenhardt says the job title was VP of baseball operations.

“I didn’t think of Sandy as a lawyer. I thought of Sandy as a really smart guy who knows how to analyze decisions and make decisions and who had had the experience of being in the Marine Corps and (serving) in Vietnam, which is a real character-building experience. Those were the skills I was looking for because I wasn’t looking for just somebody making baseball judgments.”

While Sandy remained as Oakland’s general manager, Rigney also held the same position he was hired for until 1990 when he went into semi-retirement while staying with the A’s in a consulting capacity.

Whom was the last officially named general manager before Sandy took over? Billy Martin. Definitely a complete contrast to each other. Now, Eisenhardt says he hired Sandy for his character building skills. But when Oakland won it’s first American League pennant in 1988, Sandy Alderson had this to say about Bill Rigney:

“When you talk about people who have contributed to our success, you have to single out Bill Rigney. His contributions have been enormous. He has been involved in every one of our player acquisitions since I came here in 1982. I’ve watched 600 or 700 games with Bill, and it’s been an education.”

Hence, due to the changing role of the General Manager, and how that specifically applies to Sandy Alderson, is why I believe less credit is due him as far as decision making based on his own player evaluations just as it is for many of today’s general managers who depend so much more on the people below than in the days of Gabe Paul and others. He is a corporate executive involved in the complex running of a major business entity who should get the credit (as you point out) for hiring the baseball people below him but not for the success or failure of the team (George Steinbrenner always tried taking credit for the Yankee success (while not the failures for about a 14 year stretch of course LOL) when we know it was the baseball people below him that he always seemed to fire).

One thing I will acknowledge about Sandy is that he does want to set a tone as to the way he feels the team should be run, however, the debate there is how well he is really qualified to do that. We know how he attributed the Mets lack of run scoring in the second half to that of the lowered team PPPA – which resulted in one less pitch every twenty at bats. We also know he called himself an observer and thus could not give an opinion about what might be wrong with Ike Davis. When he first took questions from Met fans on SNY in November, 2010, he was asked about the problem with Citi Field’s dimensions as it related to the Mets not hitting a lot of home runs. His answer was that the problem was not with the dimensions but with the players having to learn to hit home runs there. Not very astute, baseball wise.

However, talk to him about the subject of business, finance, legalities and organization and he often goes way over the head of most of us – in those fields he is indeed quite an astute individual.

Again, for all those reasons is why I disagreed with giving credit to Sandy as far as the players he inherited. You are right, no general manager can handle so many things on his own and depends heavily upon those below him – much more than in the past. For example, Mike Francesa questioned why the Jets fired Tannembaum as general manager since he said it was really Rex Ryan who made the player and draft decisions with Tannembaum handling the business end of the operation.

Enjoyed the discussion and thanks again for understanding the mistake I made about Beane’s earlier role.

No problem. Yes Beane was a minor league scout not an amateur scout. Now what you’re saying about Sandy regarding draft picks can be said about every GM for every team. They do not scout amateur talent. That’s what scouts are for. I’m not sure why you would say that he shouldn’t get credit for players produced in his farm system. You are then taking away credit from every GM in baseball and that’s totally unfair since it’s the GM who puts a philosophy in place for both scouting and player development and in Alderson’s case he was the first GM to implement statistical analysis into amateur scouting. Now there’s a lot of teams doing so.

Alderson is also the one who put Bogard and Fuson in those positions to begins with. He replaced Dave Weincek with Bogard in 1985 and Fuson took over for Bogard in 95 when Sandy elevated Bogard as an assistant GM. Alderson revamped the entire scouting department in 1985 and hired more scouts and had them all follow this philosophy of analyzing their statistics as well as traditional scouting methods. It was a combination of both not one or the other. So yes he gets the credit for those players as well as the blame for those who busted.

And as far as what Bill James said, he really didn’t shed any light either way. He didn’t know if you could interpret college stats or not. GM’s seem to think you can. Walt Jocketty who was the A’s farm director under Alderson until he became the Cards GM implemented statistical analysis into his scouting staff and John Mozeliak who took over the GM role when Jocketty left for Cincy continues that today. There’s an interesting interview with Mozeliak who explains how he incorporates Stat Anlys into scouting. The Rangers, Rays, Yanks, Redsox and quite a few other teams have gone this route. Who knows it could be every team by now.

So in essence it’s really no different than any other team regarding amateur scouting. You just can’t say the GM deserves no credit for players drafted during his tenure. Especially when that GM changed the way the went about abut scouting and developing players. Something tells me though if those players were terrible you would be blaming him instead of Fuson and Bogard. It seem to be like that on this site. He gets credit for his teams failures and credit is given to others in his successes. Totally unfair and unobjective.

My feelings about Bill Rigney’s role in building the Oakland clubs is well known and no secret. While there are those who agree with me, there are also obviously those who disagree with me as well.

However, in all my discussions you are the only one to turn it into a personal vendetta and it is obvious this behavior has nothing to do with Bill Rigney, Sandy Alderson or anything else related to the subject. If you feel the need to continue acting this way, please also know there are other more important things for me to get upset over than that.

When Metro, Boomer and others who I have friendly disagreements with begin to make such accusations, that will be the time to address character assassination.

Yes, my apologies for that. I was wrong about Beane’s specific responsibilities having no need to vet further into his background more than is generally written about.

Had known that Beane had been involved in scouting after quiting as a player – that he was an advance scout and when promoted to Assistant GM scouting is often applied to his title. Since you brought out more information about the Oakland front office it took me a while to find that the scouting he did was in the minor leagues, not with draft selections. Knowing Beane’s reputation for scouting great talent, I assumed that was what was meant by Assistant GM/Scouting.

Lots of websites are vague about that and believe or not, it was Wikipedia of all places that alluded to him being the assistant GM in charge of minor league scouting.

Thanks for pointing that out about who was indeed in charge, but I still contend that the draft picks had little to do with Sandy doing the evaluation because raw talent cannot be evaluated based on sabermetrics or any advanced statistical analysis. In a web question and answer session years after Billy Beane became the Oakland GM, Bill James cited that the jury was still out applying advanced statistics to those on the college level.

QUESTION: Have you looked at interpreting college statistics, or is there too much noise there? Lewis mentions in Moneyball that the A’s are putting a lot of emphasis on college stats, though it’s not clear whether they are just eyeballing raw numbers or trying to do some sort of translation.

ANSWER: Well, there is a tremendous amount of noise in the data, and it is not clear to me that we can filter it all out and get useful data. But its not clear that we CAN’T, either; we just don’t know.

So even though I did get the names wrong, I do believe credit for raw talent inherited by Billy Beane then goes to Dick Bogard, Grady Fuson and those below them and not Sandy.

BTW – attached is the transcript of that web session. And thanks for being so polite.

http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/chat/_/id/3503

I have to say you are 100% wrong. Beane was hired by Alderson as a scout and then he took him under his wing and molded him into the GM position after serving as his assistant. Beane admitted himself that everything he learned was from his mentor Sandy Alderson. Sandy put that scouting staff together that accumulated all those players Beane won with not the other way around. Sorry but you have your facts wrong I’m afraid. Beane was never director of scouting. Dick Bogard was from 85-95 and then Grady Fuson took over in 95. Beane was only an area scout until he got the Asst GM position. Not sure where you got that info from.

He has blemishes in his career just like every other good or even great executive no doubt but before people (Not you Vinny B) kill him for Oaklands won-loss record before and after the title teams you have to look at what was going on during that time

He took over a really bad Oakland team with only Canseco on the farm and no pitching to build with, sort of along the line as what Cashen inherited with the Mets. It took him time but he built up the farm system and nearly put together a dynasty team. After 92 the pitching staff went down hill due to age and free agency and trading off a lot of youth for vets to go for it all and that’s when the team went south and throw in the fact that their owner passed away and the new owner forced him to drastically cut payroll.

During those lean years they did manage to build up the farm that set them up for another run only it was Beane who benefitted from it but the majority of that talent was accumulated under Alderson.

And I don’t think he left SD in such a mess. The did win 90 games in 2010 1 year after he left and they did make the playoffs his 1st 2 years. Not to mention the owner forced him to slash the payroll down to 40 million which is why he took off. He may or may not turn the Mets into a force like the late 80′s A’s but I think it’s ridiculous to call him the worst GM in franchise history and the worst in the game like some here do on a daily basis. BTW I agree the Freese for Edmonds trade was a head scratcher and he traded quite a few prospects in his Oakland days to try and win more titles and that’s another point that people make here that’s not true that he only trades allstars for prospects. He’s done the opposite in his career many times.

I think you are giving Sandy Alderson way too much credit for the team he “left” Billy Beane with. In 1990 Beane began his career as a scout in Oakland and after the 1993 season became the assistant general manager in charge of scouting. I think it would be more appropriate to say that Beane “left” the team to himself.

If someone called tomorrow and offered three top 10 BA Listers for him do you really think Sandy wouldn’t even try due to any reason other than Wright and his right of refusal?

If we lose 100 games and 40 Million this year meaning another set of loans to pay the bills you don’t think Wright will go on the Block?

I sure do!
Cause he is the only fat Salary left to cut….

I personally see them waiting 3-4 years before they try and trade Wright.
Cause thats right around the time this rebuild is supposed to be done (if Dickey not being worth it is any indication) and if it fails the money won’t be there to pay him.

we aren’t talking about a player in his final year on a bad team we are talking about a guy who just signed a long term contract with his home grown team…

would David Wright accept a trade 7 years from now maybe…. is David Wright going to be traded in the next 2 years, absolutely not and if were the New York Mets would join the Marlins in becoming the biggest laughing stock in the league so I’m sorry now I don’t think that will happen

It’s not just his win loss record after he left in SD that’s an issue, it’s his win loss record while he was in SD that’s an issue – They were sub .500 overall.

I’m not trying to imply that Alderson is a bad GM, I’m just skeptical that he’s a very good GM. Yes, he had a great run there with the A’s for three years, and he deserves a ton of credit for that, but that’s just three years out of many years. What about all the seasons he’s had teams that were sub .500?

What if that great run with the A’s was just a flash in the pan? I mean, that was over 20 years ago. Like I pointed out, he really didn’t have great success recently with the Padres.

All I’m saying is that maybe he isn’t as good as a lot of us think he is.

Also you guys that kill Alderson for SD really need to get together on what’s right and what’s wrong. Some of you say he shouldn’t get credit for the Padres making the playoffs his 1st two seasons there because Kevin Towers was the GM but by the same token you guys say he left them a mess. Which one is it? You do know that in both places ownership made him strip payroll down to nearly league worst in both cases right? Or do you just look at the won-loss recors after he left. You guys should really look into it. there’s a reason why he’s a very well regarded executive.
SD also drafted Chase Headley, Nick Hundley, Matt latos, Cory Luebke and David Freese in the 4 or 5 years he was there and they won 90 games the year after he left. Is that any worse than what we drafted?

Pointing out that 164 > 138 isn’t “linking” Alderson’s ass. Nor was it going through any great lengths to prove Wright’s deal isn’t a bad one. I don’t think Wright’s deal is a bad one, but I wasn’t even trying to make that argument there. The sum of KRod, Castillo, Bay, and Ollie’s contracts is pretty irrelevant in that evaluation. Your fuzzy math just caught my eye so I pointed out the inaccuracies there.

And its pretty funny that a few posts above you were calling another poster “immature” and saying it he was “pathetic” for “the constant resorting to insults ” – and now you are calling others “morons” and “Alderson ass linking ” just for pointing out your math was off.

Please Jessup you guys are doing the usual making an argument based on some rule or thing written on a piece of paper as if that paper makes it impossible when we all know and have seen players with no trade clauses get traded all the time!

You guys are just using this No Trade banter to harrass Bay and Maniac thats all…
You know full well that Wright could waive his no trade clause even if it was a 5/10 defacto at any time he wanted.

And having a no trade clause RARELY means you CAN’T be traded merely that you had better find a team who can get them a ring or they are willing to go to before you talk turkey on what you might get for him.

Go back to bed van,

Upton was able to block a trade to 4 teams Boston, Chicago Cubs, Seattle, Toronto

KRod as well had a limited no trade which is how the Mets were able to trade him since his agent messed up filing the paperwork.

Both players had absolutely no say in whether they could be traded or not – so really great example, thanks for chiming in