Billy Beane

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There is another former major league player named Billy Bean.

William Lamar "Billy" Beane (born March 29, 1962 in Orlando, Florida) is a former Major League Baseball player and the current general manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Beane, who grew up in the San Diego area, was a first-round choice by the New York Mets in the 1980 MLB amateur draft, and played parts of six seasons as a reserve outfielder in the major leagues, with the Mets, the Minnesota Twins, the Detroit Tigers and the Athletics, from 1984 to 1989. He was on the bench for two World Series wins - with the Twins in 1987, and the Athletics in 1989. He completed his 148-game career with a .219 batting average and 3 home runs.

He then moved into the Athletics front office, becoming an advance scout, and eventually an assistant to then-Athletics GM Sandy Alderson in 1993. In 1997, Alderson stepped down as GM and Beane replaced him. Since then, Beane has crafted the Athletics into the most cost-effective teams in baseball, by applying sabermetric principles toward obtaining relatively undervalued players. For example, in 2006 they A's ranked 21st of 30 major league teams in player salaries, but had the 5th-best regular season record. This reflects a typical pattern throughout this decade of Beane's stewardship.

Despite this, the Athletics have been repeatedly thwarted in their bid to win in the playoffs under Beane. They would finally win a series when they swept the Minnesota Twins in the American League Division Series on October 6, 2006. But they were subsequently swept 4-0 by the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series.

In 2003, Beane's approach to running the Oakland A's was the subject of the book Moneyball by Michael Lewis.

[edit] Update

On January 4, 2007, NetSuite, a software company named Beane to its board of directors. "Billy's outrageously successful approach in changing the game of baseball by managing using facts to supplement instinct is very similar to the transformation our customers undergo when they move their business to NetSuite," NetSuite co-founder Evan Goldberg said in a release.[1]