By Eric Katz

Billy Beane will probably go down as one of the best general managers in the history of baseball.

He always has new ways to win with very little money most notably with the moneyball theory. Every year the Athletics are forced to give up some of their key players because of money trouble.

But time after time the Athletics seem to always find replacements for their loses. As of June 18^th the A’s are in first place by two games over the Texas Rangers and a good 10 games over the “dream team” Anaheim Angels.

Heck they even got a steal by signing Yoenis Cespedes who is looking like their next all star. Besides the players playing well the A’s have to give credit to their great General Manager in Billy Beane. He is the one who acquired these players to make the team better. Most talk show hosts will talk about the manager or coach that makes the team better. In this case you have to give all the credit to the GM here.

Last year was probably Billy’s best year since 2002. They simply took advantage of Texas’s errors and took over the AL West on the last day of the season. That doesn’t happen very often in baseball. Last year in the playoffs they were the only ones that put up a fight against the Detriot Tigers before the World Series. No matter who he loses Beane will find new ways to keep Oakland on top.

The strategy Billy uses in finding players is looking at the statistic of on base percentage. I know that most people only look at home runs, hits, and run batted in and maybe stolen bases. But Billy looks at it differently. As a matter of fact he was the first one to actually use Bill James theory on statistics. Billy is right in one thing the score board doesn’t tell the whole story in a game.

Because of his innovations in baseball I bet one day we will see a plaque of Billy Beane in Cooperstown as an executive. In my opinion Billy ranks high on the list of GM alongside Branch Rickey. Billy stands in a very unique place as a Major League GM.