6-4-2 — an Angels/Dodgers double play blog: Blez Interviews Beane

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Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Blez Interviews Beane

Another AN interview of Oakland GM Billy Beane. (Hint, Blez: get an editor. This one's a long sumbitch.) Interesting bits:

Blez: Moving forward then, you'd say power is one area where you'd like to upgrade?
Beane: Yeah, but it's not easy to find and it's expensive. That's why we no longer have it. Because when we develop it, we lose it through free agency. We lost Jason (Giambi), a 35-40 home run guy and Miguel (Tejada), the same thing. Now, there's going to be power developed from some of the guys within, like from Crosby. But he's a second-year player. You don't expect him to go out and hit 30 homers. It's going to come over time, but in the short term, waiting for it is going to be difficult. You go to the team stats of every team and the teams that hit home runs are going to score runs. The one consistent thing for scoring a lot of runs is getting on base and slugging. You can have 1,000 stolen bases, but if you don't have power to go along with it you're not going to be bringing those guys home. And that's why Boston is so deadly. You look at those two games there. Home run. Boom, boom, game over, see you later. You're never out of a game if you have the ability to hit one over the fence.

...
Blez: With the team's early-season struggles, so many fans and columnists began pointing at Chavy and the decision to sign Chavy to a long-term deal reportedly over Miguel Tejada. Do you care to respond to the people who said this?
Beane: First of all, we signed Chavy during last spring training. Then he goes out and wins another gold glove, leads the league in walks, misses six weeks and hits 29 home runs. So no one writes anything then. What they do is they take, out of context, two months of struggling. We've always said Miguel is a spectacular player. It would take too long to explain, but the revisionist history of what went on is just wrong. The fact of the matter is that I'm happy that we have Chavez at third and Crosby at short. That's my choice. It will be my choice. I have absolutely no doubt that it will be the right choice. But Miguel is a marvelous player and who wouldn't say that? There was never a choice given at the time.