The Athletics promoted their top two baseball operations executives, but their relationship basically stays the same:

The Oakland Athletics wanted to make sure they could keep David Forst in the front office after other clubs sought to hire him, so they promoted him to general manager Monday and elevated Billy Beane to executive vice president of baseball operations.

“Long overdue,” Beane said of Forst’s promotion.

Forst just completed his 16th years with the low-budget franchise and 12th as assistant GM, though Beane insists his right-hand man has been assuming general manager duties behind the scenes for some time. Forst has been committed to keeping his young family in the Bay Area and staying with an organization he loves despite the daunting challenges.

I do worry about this type of thing sometimes, because a bureaucracy that grows often becomes less efficient. I thought I saw this happening at ESPN in the early nineties. They had so many coordinating producers that they created a senior CP rank. Little did I know that they were getting ready to add a network, ESPN2.

The people in baseball operations are becoming more specialized, so a new level of management is needed for most of these teams.