January 10, 2006
Blez and Beane
Blez at Athletics Nation sits down with Billy Beane. I thought this bit on minor league philosophy was interesting:
Blez: Talk about the A's minor league clubs for a few minutes. The Rockhounds wound up Texas League champs. The Sacramento team ran away with the division and made the playoffs again. Stockton also had a great first season as an affiliate. How important is winning as a part of the organization in your estimation?
Beane: It's huge. It's something we demand. Keith (Lieppman) demands it. Winning is a habit, in my opinion. And losing is a habit. Our philosophy is that this is a team game. The one statistic shows it's a team game is team wins. If you emphasize just purely individual development, I think in many cases what you're doing is creating a situation where a player might know he's the one prospect on the team and when he gets here, that mentality is established that it's about me and not about the team. I think there is something to say about guys even being in minor league playoffs. You know, having them in situations where doing things to help the team are important. It was something I learned coming up with the New York Mets in the 80s. Those minor league teams won everywhere. So when most of those guys got to the major leagues the expectation was they were going to win there. Now whether it's true or not, I don't know, that's my only guide of reference. But it was something that I felt was important when I got in the GM office. We tried to carry it over the last decade and I think it has had an impact. You take a guy like Eric Chavez. The worst year Eric has ever had in the big leagues is 87 wins. That's saying something because Eric came up in a minor league system that won. He demands a lot of himself, but he also demands a lot of the team. It's nice to know that after 88 wins last year, that's a disappointment because the guys are used to playing into October or in the minor leagues, September. I do think it creates a positive mentality and feeling throughout the organization. Every win you get always makes you feel good and I do think it's contagious
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A winning minor league organization is often a sign of an improving major league club.
Posted by David Pinto at
07:15 PM
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That's a good attitude. A lot of times it seems the parent clubs think that the player development in the minors is completely unrelated to actually, you know, winning the games.
Interesting point about the '80s Mets. Too bad it ended with Gregg Jeffries.
I'd also think that being a part of a winning ballclub in the minors is being a part of a team that cares more often, being part of meaningful situations. This not only theoretically leads to better players (training them to play in these situations), but perhaps makes evaluating players more accurate. i.e., playing for a winning minor league team is more like playing for a major league team, and perhaps performance is more easily gauged than it would be if the player were playing games that 'don't matter'.
is Bean saying that "clutch" is a learned trait?? like hitting a breaking pitch or turning a quicker double play?