Billy Beane On The Struggling A’s
May 14, 2009 – 5:00 am by Michael Bean
The Oakland Athletics sported the third worst record in the American League heading into Thursday night’s MLB action. At just 13-18, the A’s and their fans can probably forget about any hopes they held of competing in the AL West this year, even if the division is down a bit from previous years. General Manager Billy Beane isn’t ready to write off his young squad just yet though.
The man behind Michael Lewis’ best-seller Moneyball (which is being turned into a movie with Brad Pitt rumored to portray Billy Beane) joined KNBR on Tuesday to talk about the rebuilding Athletics and what he thinks may unfold with his young squad as the season progresses into the early summer.
On what he thinks the major problem with the A’s is thus far:
“The bottom line is we have just got to hit. We’re not scoring enough runs, we got shut out on Sunday. And some of these guys here have track records and I think at some point obviously we have to trust that track record. But you know, hitting is contagious: either everybody’s hitting or nobody’s hitting and right now it seems like that is us.”
On the slow starts of Jason Giambi and Matt Holliday
“Jason actually hit a couple of HRs over the weekend, but Jason historically, at least the last couple of years, has started slowly. So at least there’s a little bit of a history of this happening. I expect that these guys will hit, and they’ll certainly hit better than they have. And we’ll deal with it down the road if that’s not the case.”
On the struggles of highly-paid 3B Eric Chavez, who has dealt with constant injury and swing problems:
“I think we’re all frustrated, because you saw Eric when he first came up. He won 6 consecutive Gold Gloves and was a 30+ HR and 100+ RBI guy. So, I feel bad for Eric because he’s worked very hard to try to get himself back on the field and unfortunately, his body just keeps on letting him down.”
Listen here to Beane on KNBR in San Francisco
Tags: Billy Beane, KNBR, Oakland Athletics
