We’ll believe it, A’s, if we ever see it
Why this time? Why should we believe Billy Beane this time?
That’s my main question after the latest departures from Oakland over the weekend and a new crop of youngsters arriving. That’s what I’m wondering after comments from executive vice president Beane that sounded oh-so-empathetic to the plight of A’s fans.
Why this time?
Beane “politely declined” a follow-up interview, according to a team spokesman Monday. So we’ll let his Sunday words speak for themselves.
“Really, what’s been missing the last 20 years is keeping these players. The frustration isn’t that we’ve had success. The frustration is that after success, we haven’t kept them. And we need to change that
narrative by creating a good team and ultimately committing to keeping them around, so that when people buy a ticket they’ll know that the team is going to be there for a few years.”
To which all A’s fans say: “Duh!”
We are supposed to believe things are different now because Beane says so. Because the A’s say they’re going to build a stadium. Because they will have the Oakland market to themselves in the next couple of years after the Raiders and the Warriors depart.
Everything is going to be great! Have faith!
My informal Twitter poll shows that A’s fans are fresh out of faith. They like their team. They know that Beane is good at acquiring talent. But faith? Belief that things are going to change? Willingness to purchase a jersey other than perhaps Rickey Henderson’s long-retired No. 24? No way. Beane says it is different this time because he has the commitment of ownership. Those words would carry more weight if ownership actually came out of hiding and pledged a commitment directly to the fans.
John Fisher owns the A’s. Fisher is worth, according to Forbes, $2.2 billion. Fisher has been the majority owner of the A’s for 13 seasons. The A’s have made the playoffs four times during his reign. For three seasons, including this one, they’ve been dead last in their division. The repetitive dismantling of the team has been happening on his watch, while he has kept both payroll and expectations quite low.
Fisher does not speak in public. Instead, he lets Beane, or A’s President Dave Kaval, or, before him, minority owner Lew Wolff speak. So Fisher’s plans for a ballpark, for the future of the team, for a commitment to holding onto players and building something that will last, are all hearsay. Speculation. Assumptions.
“I’m assured by ownership that that’s what we’re going to do as it parallels with the stadium,” Beane said Sunday of his commitment to retaining players.
“The stadium” is still completely hypothetical. There is no site yet. Which means no neighborhood fight, environmental impact report, political hoops to jump through, new threats to make about moving elsewhere. And even once a site is decided upon, said stadium needs to be built. This process, which has been going on for years and years and years, is nowhere close to being complete.
So don’t run out and buy your Sheldon Neuse jersey just yet.
The breaking point for a lot of A’s fans came after the 2014 season, when Beane dismantled an excellent team that had lost the American League wild-card game in its third consecutive playoff appearance. The trade of Josh Donaldson, who was still under the team’s financial control, seemed to go against logic. One of the last vestiges of those playoff teams, Sean Doolittle, exited Sunday for the Nationals. Another, Sonny Gray, will be close behind, heading to a playoff contender somewhere.
That 2014 dismantling looked like a rebuild at the time. But now, we are told, this is the actual rebuild. Strip it down to the studs.
It has been years of frustration for A’s fans. And it’s frustrating for them to hear Beane talk like this is a brand-new revelation, as though it just occurred to him that this isn’t a good way to connect with the community.
“There are only so many cycles that I can go through before I get as exasperated as everybody else,” he said.
Exasperation is a constant state for A’s fans. They’ll believe improvement if they see it. If young prospects come of age and are rewarded with contracts that keep them in Oakland, rather than being traded to other teams, where they can participate in postseason races and make their fans in green and gold sigh, “What might have been.”
Beane said of the team’s “new” approach, “We’re going to have to be patient with it.”
Maybe he will be. Maybe not. But the fans seem to be fresh out of both patience and faith.