AL DIVISION SERIES: YANKEES v ATHLETICS

October 2, 2000

Billy Beane

BILLY BEANE: That's the idea particularly considering that the three and four guys in this series would be Timmy Hudson and Barry Zito, who arguably the last two months of the season have been our two best pitchers.

BILLY BEANE: That's yet to be determined. We'd have a choice of either one given the rest period between their starts. This would be Tim's day on Friday. But you also have to be cognizant that you don't want to have Barry with too much time between starts. I'm sure it is something that will be discussed.

BILLY BEANE: We've had some conversations. We'll be finalizing probably some time this evening.

BILLY BEANE: That was the initial idea to probably carry 10.

BILLY BEANE: Just with the series, two games maximum back-to-back, the off-days, the only situation you have is if you go into a fifth day; but, you know, try, and more often than not, you probably are not going to need 11 pitchers because a lot of times that's your fifth starter in the season anyways. You're not going to need your fifth starter, so you'd have the same bullpen contingency.

BILLY BEANE: I think, you know, historically, we have had 11 pitchers. This is an opportunity maybe to carry a player or players who maybe bring one special talent or ability to a series, as opposed to during the season, when maybe that one -- whether it can be a guy who can run, or in our case, a guy who can bunt, who may bring something to the table that helps you win one game.

BILLY BEANE: Over my dead body.

BILLY BEANE: You know, I guess you can look at it as we've been saying the whole season with you guys here, you can look at it half full or half empty. And if you look at it half full, your two hottest guys get to play in the Big Apple. One of them has already proven that he can pitch there. So maybe it is ideal. And Kevin had a heck of a game here in Oakland against New York in the last series. Maybe this is the way it should be.

BILLY BEANE: I feel bad for the have-nots who don't have those great young players; but, yeah, I think at this point, who cares anymore. I think if you look at this with our club right now, you know, we're sort of beyond that right now. We've never used it as an excuse or a crutch. We're not about to do it now. The fact of the matter, this just happens to be a very young and talented team that just isn't expensive yet. Yet.

BILLY BEANE: Yeah, when you play the Yankees, you're in center stage. Let's face it, there's a number of playoff games going on, and I'm sure there's a reason we're playing at 8:00 Eastern time for both nights. That's great. I don't think these guys are overwhelmed by anything. If that was the case, they would have made vacation plans in October, and I don't think they ever have. Once again, you know, playing the Yankees, I guess you can view it as an opportunity to do your math homework first.

BILLY BEANE: Two things: They probably are playing Nintendo instead of watching ESPN so they are probably not quite sure. Naturally, respectfully, I think these are a very self- confident bunch. They are talented. Self-confidence has been gained over the course of the last year and a half. Most of the kids in our system have won in the Minor Leagues, so I think they feel: Why shouldn't we win here?

BILLY BEANE: I know I probably heard it ten or fifteen times, at least that many, the last couple of days. No. 1, not only is it an exciting and talented, young team, but it is a fun team to watch. I think that, you know, given the exposure that we've had with this last month of September, I think a lot of people -- not just locally, but nationally -- are starting to take a look at this club. And we're no longer the cute little team anymore, but we're a team that has the ability to play with anybody.

BILLY BEANE: I didn't know they were struggling. But I guess there's -- let's face it, they are the Yankees. They have been here. I guess if you had -- do I think it is going to matter? The long run? Probably not. But if you were sitting on the other side, I'm glad that they struggled instead of rolled off 13 wins in a row, but I don't know that it is really going to matter. Just like I'm sure from their end, its like the end of spring training. This is a club that essentially locked it up a couple weeks ago. It's hard to get that edge when you're basically playing to run the season out and get ready for the playoffs. So it probably will mean nothing. A trick. (Laughter.) There was no edge there. We were fortunate. We were in a race, and so we had to -- we had to stay on top of our game until the last minute. So it is probably not fair to judge the two clubs and the way they were playing and say that's going to be an indication of the series. Absolutely not.

BILLY BEANE: You mean as far as --.

BILLY BEANE: I think that hitting 237 home runs is the best way to manufacture runs. But no, I think that would be foolish to pretend that, you know, we are not going to take the same offensive approach that we have taken the entire season. That's what got us here.

BILLY BEANE: Me personally?

BILLY BEANE: I think that certainly people want to view that, but I think that we were on the map last year. But once again, the difference between last year and this year is we were that cute little team in Oakland. And this year we showed that -- there were some expectations on these guys in spring training. A number of national writers and people around the media picked this team to win the division in spring training. The fact is, as young as it was, they did not give into the weight of the expectations. They grasped that opportunity. I don't think that we are an unknown commodity at this point.

BILLY BEANE: I don't think anyone is going to take the Yankees for granted. We're not that young. (Laughter.)

BILLY BEANE: We had this matchup exactly a year ago today. And I think people were wondering, what was Gil doing being the opening night starter, and we won that game. And Gil, he's had a good track record against this club. He's won 15 games this year. He's one of the top winners in the American League. We're fortunate to have that option available to us. A lot of other clubs wouldn't have a third option available who won 15 games. The fact was, we had two guys beyond Timmy and Barry at the start of this game.

BILLY BEANE: It sounds crazy, when we looked at Gil, he was a middle reliever. And instead of taking one season out of context, we took three Major League seasons and melted that into what would be the Major League equivalent of a starter. If you looked at that, his middle relief combined those innings and made up one full season, you would find you came up with a pretty decent Major League starter. That was the way we looked at it. He exceeded expectations, no question. But is it a complete surprise he's pitched as well as he has and he's a very good Major League starter? No, not really.

BILLY BEANE: It goes -- I can't remember off the top of my head. We were pretty aggressive with a lot of guys like Gil and Jeff Hampton, as an example where we'd been given an opportunity and been pretty dogged in our opportunities in that category so our track record has helped us in the past signing a number of guys.

BILLY BEANE: You know, I guess if you look at it overall, I think, you know, as me and Paul, my assistant, looked at the critique of our previous season, one of the criticisms was that we had so many veterans that had career years, they were not going to repeat those. Randy Velarde, our internal response was while that may be the case, we don't have the expectation level that we are going to match those career numbers, we felt our young players were going to improve so dramatically to sort of take up the slack that was left behind from those years. So I guess the answer to your question is probably no. We've had a lot of confidence in these young players, and essentially the Randy Velardes went out and had what they normally do, a very solid, Major League season. Jaha was hurt, so we missed him obviously. But that allowed him to create an opportunity for some other guys.

BILLY BEANE: I promised my wife that would be the case.

BILLY BEANE: If I were a kid, I'd root for us. I know growing up in San Diego, had my beloved Padres been in there like they were when I was watching them, if the A's came to town, I'd love to watch them.

BILLY BEANE: Yeah. I think this is the type of team that fans and young fans can attach themselves to. It's a young team. It's an exciting team. We don't always do things right. But if you look at the aggregate season, you see that it is -- we ended up third in the league in pitching, second in the league in runs scored, and that's a pretty good two-out-of-three right now. Our defense is still a work in progress, but I think it's a function of being a young defense, as opposed to lack of ability, to be honest with you.

BILLY BEANE: No, that would have been the Reds because they won.