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Beane, Forst and the Oakland A’s front office: A mid-term grade for 2023

By Bill Felber

Jan 17, 2023; Oakland, CA, USA; Oakland Athletics general manager David Forst answers questions from the media as newly signed pitcher Shintaro Fujinami is introduced by the team at a press conference. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports
Jan 17, 2023; Oakland, CA, USA; Oakland Athletics general manager David Forst answers questions from the media as newly signed pitcher Shintaro Fujinami is introduced by the team at a press conference. Mandatory Credit: D. Ross Cameron-USA TODAY Sports /
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With Billy Beane as team president and David Forst as general manager, the Oakland A’s have one of the most experienced leadership teams in MLB. As fans everywhere know, the A’s also have the game’s worst record, just 21-60 as of their Tuesday night halfway point to the season.

Gauging the job done by Beane and Forst since the end of the 2022 season is difficult given the financial handicaps under which they labor. Much of what they’ve done was driven by exigencies as opposed to objective judgment. Still, they’re the bosses so they get the credit or blame.

Grading the Oakland A’s at the midway point of the season

What follows is a mid-term assessment of the A’s front office personnel decisions since the conclusion of the 2022 World Series with a particular focus on the extent to which those decisions have helped or hindered the team’s performance.

The standard of measurement is Wins Above Average (WAA), a variant of Wins Above Replacement (WAR). For this purpose, WAA is preferable because unlike WAR, it is zero-based. That means the sum of all the decisions made by the A’s front office impacting the 2023 team gives at least a good estimate of the number of games those moves have improved (or worsened) the team’s status this season.

A team’s front office impacts that team’s standing in five ways. Those five are:

1.       By the impact of players it acquires from other teams via trade, purchase or waiver claim.

2.       By the impact of players it surrenders to other teams in those same transactions.

3.       By the impact of players not already bound to it that it signs at free agency or extends.

4.       By the impact of players it loses to free agency or releases.

5.       By the impact of players it promotes from its own farm system.

Noting for the record that the moves made by Beane and Forst may have been driven by forces outside their control, here’s how those moves stack halfway through the season by those five yardsticks.

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