Billy Beane Character Analysis

If the only path to leadership is emergence, no one will remember Billy Beane. When he was a first round draft pick for the New York Mets, it seemed he was fated to leave his mark on the MLB. And that is exactly what he is doing - although not as a player (a lifetime batting average of .219 made sure of that). For Billy Beane to become a successful leader in the MLB, he needed to be appointed. In fact, he literally had to walk from the dugout to the Oakland A’s front office and beg for a scouting position. While Billy Beane does not fit the mold of the traditional MLB star, there have been very few people in baseball history who have changed the game as he has.

Billy Beane is the quintessential ‘transformational leader’. While it is easy

for a general manager (GM) in professional sports to become strictly transactional, Billy Beane has always been concerned with drafting and then developing the right players. It is profoundly important to Beane that they build towards their mutual goals and grow together. If Billy Beane was only concerned with his own professional success he would have became the GM for the Boston Red Sox. Because, in the world of professional baseball, money matters; when a team like the Boston Red Sox offers you a job - you take it. Not only do they average in the top five in payroll annually, it has been over a decade since a team outside of the top-15 in payroll has won the World Series. However, while the Oakland Athletics’s (the A’s) themselves have never been able to secure a World Series trophy under Billy Beane’s tenure, he continues to lead the organization to undeniable success. One season, Billy Beane took a team with the sixth lowest payroll in the MLB and provided the fifth most wins in the league. Beyond that, Beane manages to fight off the much larger payrolls within the division (the Los Angeles Angels, the Texas Rangers, and the Seattle Managers) and has made the playoffs in four straight seasons. But how does Billy Beane manage this team to such profound success?
While Beane didn’t possess the necessary skill set to succeed in the baseball as a player, it is his leadership skills as a GM that makes him stand out. Specifically, Beane excels at implementing his vision. When he first became a GM, baseball’s most important statistics were batting average, RBIs (runs batted in), and home runs. However Billy Beane was able to step back and say, hey maybe this is not the best way to value a player, especially for a small market team. What if instead of hits, it was a success whenever they got on base (On Base Percentage)? What if it was not just how many times a player got on base, but how many bases they got (Slugging Percentage)? Billy Beane was able to conceptualize sabermetrics, or the “empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity,” and use his foresight in baseball economics to understand how to build a better team on a tighter budget. He recognized his team’s capability to succeed (which was nonexistent in using traditional baseball) would drastically improve if he went down this path - and he stewarded his team to success. In that time, Billy Beane’s farm system produced one Cy Young Winner (for the best pitcher in baseball), two MVPs, and over ten All-Stars in the span of five years. However while success has come to Billy Beane and the Oakland Athletics, new challenges continue to roar their heads.
Since author Michael Lewis published his book Moneyball, virtually every team around Major League Baseball has begun to adapt sabermetrics and statistical and economic analysis of baseball statistics.

When the A’s came into town, the GM of baseball’s richest team, the New York Yankees, stated, “It’s like Coke and their secret formula – you don’t let the secret formula out” . Sabermetrics have become such a normal part of the baseball scouting process that now ex-Phillies GM Ruben Amaro was fired in part because of his refusal to adapt to this new reality. Michael Lewis himself has admitted, “the book probably cost the A’s an opportunity or two” . While this poses as a problem, Billy Beane continues to demonstrate another leadership skill he has up his sleeve: addressing change. Despite the fact that the A’s have lost those two MVPs, and many other All-Star quality players; despite the fact that everyone around the league is doing what the Athletics have been doing somehow Oakland finds a way to succeed with their relatively empty wallets. Oakland has catapulted itself back into the playoffs each of the last three years. Understandably, Billy Beane has kept his cards closer to his chest, and exactly what he has done to promote this new era of success is less transparent. One could point to the hiring of Bob Melvin, who won the 2012 AL Manager of the Year with the A’s, as Billy Beane once again brilliantly noticing a diamond in the rough. However if you take a closer look, you

can see that Billy Beane possesses key building blocks in John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success.
Looking at Billy Beane’s tenure as a General Manager, he evidently embodies the cornerstones of the pyramid. He’s devoted himself to a life of baseball, as a player and as an executive, showing his Enthusiasm. To levitate himself to such a successful career, he also displays great Industriousness: he had to work hard to learn the ins and outs of being a baseball executive. However, while these two blocks are evident, Billy Beane also epitomizes many other blocks that Wooden himself values. Billy Beane is fiercely loyal: he has received dozens on dozens of job offers throughout his decade, from noted jobs with the Red Sox, to becoming an executive of Premier League soccer teams in England, Beane’s success has opened doors he would have never been able to imagine. However he has decided to stick with the Oakland Athletics. While this essay just touches on three of Wooden’s pieces of success, it is clear he is a great representation of the pyramid.
However, while Billy Beane has shown us one way to become a leader in the MLB, it is interesting to contrast his career with that of Theo Epstein, the man who ended up receiving that same Boston Red Sox GM job.

With the acquisitions of now baseball legends David Ortiz and Curt Schilling, Epstein did something arguably more substantial then even Beane has done: he broke the ‘Curse of the Great Bambino’. Like Beane, Epstein shows great enthusiasm and industriousness and while one may argue that his willingness to jump teams to the Chicago Cubs in 2011 undermines his loyalty, this is not the case. Instead Epstein shows great loyalty to the game of baseball. He has already taken down baseball’s third largest World Series droughts, now he is trying to bring a title to fans who have been starved for well over 100 years. He resembles all three of these same blocks (and many more) that Beane himself does just in a different way. Just because he has been able to grab the Red Sox a couple of World Series titles does not change what Beane himself has done. Similarly, the way Beane exerts his leadership does not undermine Epstein’s

success.
Billy Beane changed the MLB. His achievement in implementing sabermetrics into the highest level of professional baseball, and even professional sports directly correlate to the leadership skills he possesses. He uses his ability to both implement his vision, and adapt and spearhead change to captain the Oakland Athletics through the gargantuan problems of a small payroll and the release of the novel Moneyball. Despite those challenges, he continues to guide himself with values that John Wooden himself would be proud of. These examples serve as proof that Billy Beane is a modern leader in not just baseball but sports as a whole. While the Oakland Athletics may not make the playoffs this year, it would be foolish to believe that Billy Beane isn’t already plotting a rise back to that top.