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

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.

Acquired or traded

Whatever failings Beane and Forst have had to date in 2023, they did not flow from lack of activity. They obtained the services of 11 new players in transactions with other teams, at a cost of seven departures.

The problem hasn’t been quantity, but quality. In December, they completed a three-team trade with the Braves and Brewers that brought in four new faces. Outfielder Estuary Ruiz leads the league in steals (39), but his absence of power reduces his value to -1.3 WAA.

Pitcher Kyle Muller, another part of that trade, is 1-4 with an 8.04 ERA in 10 starts. That’s a -1.4 WAA. Meanwhile catcher Sean Murphy, traded from Oakland to Atlanta, may be the National League’s All-Star game starter at the position; he’s already piled up a +1.9 WAA for the Braves. And Joel Payamps is 2-1 with a 2.29 ERA and +0.6 WAA for the Brewers.

Pitcher Luis Medina, who came to the organization from the Bronx with J.P. Sears and Ken Waldichuk last summer, made his big league debut in late April. Medina may in time be a productive arm, but that time is not yet; in 10 appearances, he’s 1-7 with a 6.84 ERA, creating a -1.1 WAA..

The A’s had high hopes for outfielder J.J. Bleday when they got him from Miami for A.J. Puk last December. Thus far, Bleday is batting .205 with a 0.0 WAA; Puk is at +0.1 for the Marlins.

The one upbeat note has been the acquisition of outfielder Brent Rooker as a November waiver claim from Kansas City. Rooker is only hitting .242, but he has shown some power and halfway through the season rates +0.2 WAA.

Free agency

The A’s big free agent play was the signing of Japanese League pitcher Shintaro Fujinami to a one-year, $3.25 million deal. So far, it has backfired loudly. Shelled in his first four appearances, all starts, Fujinami has spent most of the past two months in the Oakland bullpen, where things have not gotten markedly better. He’s 3-7 in 38 innings with a 10.57 ERA and a -2.4 WAA.

Overall, Beane and Forst signed, re-signed or extended 12 players, almost all to low-budget contracts and almost all yielding sub-par results.

Alone among the 12, backup catcher Carlos Perez has produced a positive WAA..but it’s only +0.3. Utility infielder Aledmys Diaz is batting .206 with a -1.8 WAA, starter Drew Rucinski got bombed in four starts before going on the IL, and first baseman Jesus Aguilar batted .221 before losing his job and being released.

Journeymen Trevor May, Jace Peterson, Spencer Patton, Pablo Reyes, Zach Neal, Garcia, Jeurys Familia and Tyler Wade all fit that description.

Beane and Forst also fell short in deciding which players to release, although when all is said and done the losses of Domingo Tapia, Cal Stevenson and Adam Kolarek are likely to have done only minimal damage.

Overall grade

Given the A’s poor record, it’s no surprise that the scores for Beane and Forst are about as bad as you’re likely to see at only the season’s halfway point. There is not a single one of the five major areas where they have produced a positive impact.

Here’s the first-half report card on the A’s front office. Note that grades for players departing the organization are based on the reverse of those players’ WAAs with their new teams, and the overall score is calculated on that basis.

Mode                    WAA                   Grade

Acquired              -2.4                        D

Traded                 +2.7                        D

Signed                 -7.5                         F

Lost                     +0.4                         C

Rookies               -0.3                         C

Overall              -13.3                        F

Overall, Beane and Forst have made 39 personnel moves since the end of the 2022 season impacting the fortunes of the 2023 A’s. More than two-thirds of those moves backfired to a greater or lesser extent.

The argument can be made that economic circumstances forced the hand of Oakland’s front office team; in other words, that the poor results do not accurately reflect their wisdom or aptitude. Certainly Beane and Forst have had better years with little more in the way of resources to apply to the task.

The problem is that Major League Baseball is a results-oriented business first, last and always. A -13.3 game impact on team performance over half a season, even if beyond the control of management, is still disastrous.