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It seems to be the day for interviews.

A few snippets that might be of interest to Jays fans:

On how much credit Beane should get: "... well, I don’t say Billy was responsible for rethinking the game at any point. Sandy (Alderson) introduces him to Bill James, Paul DePodesta does most of the actual thinking, so I felt I had to make that clear."

DePodesta was one of the candidates for the Jays' GM job - not that I would have preferred him to J.P. With all the fancy metrics, the most important single skill is the ability to judge talent - J.P. might be among the best in the business.

On Beane's relationship to his players: "... They fear him, he doesn’t fear them, almost on the level of physical intimidation. And when you’re trying to take such a intractable, unchangeable culture as a major league baseball team, and change it, there’s a kind of violence involved there. And he’s very well suited to practice that violence."

Probably with a lesser degree of violence, J.P. has stamped our club with his philosophy of how the game should be played. The guys who weren't deemed suitable were shipped out and only a few "relics" remain. By spring of next year, this team figures to be completely on board with J.P.'s thinking.

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_Chuck Van Den C - Tuesday, June 10 2003 @ 02:11 PM EDT (#100454) #
I enjoyed this comment (about Beane, of course):

The big thing about him is, there was all this intellectual property freely available that could be used as a weapon. And he was perfectly suited to use intellectual property as a weapon. He was perfectly designed to take ideas and turn them into action, because he was able to grasp and understand the ideas...
Pistol - Tuesday, June 10 2003 @ 02:16 PM EDT (#100455) #
According to the book DePodesta was not only a candidate, he was offered the GM position.
robertdudek - Tuesday, June 10 2003 @ 02:17 PM EDT (#100456) #
I think that if someone like Beane had been a GM around 1990, the Beane "revolution" could have come a bit earlier. Alderson did that to some extent.
_Chuck Van Den C - Tuesday, June 10 2003 @ 02:54 PM EDT (#100457) #
According to the book DePodesta was not only a candidate, he was offered the GM position.

Of course I have no idea what really happened, but I believe it was reported at the time that the Jays were interested in interviewing DePodesta for the job, but he told them he wasn't interested in even being interviewed. So he turned them down before anything was really offered. You get the feeling an offer would have come since the Jays ultimately turned to the next man on the A's totem pole.
_benum - Tuesday, June 10 2003 @ 03:22 PM EDT (#100458) #
Sportswriters:

The bad ones are really bad—it’s just how bad the bad ones are that I can’t stand. I’ve run across a dozen of these guys whose stuff I’ve read, who I can’t find a single redeeming trait, not in spirit, not in their ability to craft a sentence, not in the freshness of their observations, not even in their ability to get an original quote. And yet they maintain their little corner of the newspaper.

And some of them don’t even seem to be enjoying what they do. Well, clearly, they don’t like what they’re doing. How could they like what they’re doing? There’s no excellence there; it’s just horrible.


Remind you of anyone?
Coach - Wednesday, June 11 2003 @ 11:37 AM EDT (#100459) #
next man on the A's totem pole

Chuck, I wasn't there either, so this is all speculation on our part, but I think you're looking at that pole upside down. Going back a few years, J.P., who people often forget was with the A's before Beane arrived, was the GM's self-described right hand and best friend; they had known each other since about 1980, when they were teammates in the minors. Ricciardi would have been very involved in hiring DePodesta, whose Oakland profile was considerably lower until J.P. departed than it is now.

From the Jays' perspective, I'm pretty sure that Paul Godfrey wasn't making any offers until he interviewed all the candidates on his list; maybe J.P. wasn't chronologically first, but it's not like he was a compromise or second choice. Whatever the exact procedure was, Toronto fans should be very happy they found the right man.

Remind you of anyone?

Sure. That's a fine description of (at least) one veteran baseball writer in almost every city. Lewis went on to say, "...this is going to force them to actually do some work. They’re going to have to actually learn something here."

It's threatening, when you're posing as an expert, to realize there are huge changes in your field that you don't understand. Not just lazy writers, but a lot of front offices, find it easier to ridicule the revolution than to keep pace.
_benum - Wednesday, June 11 2003 @ 12:02 PM EDT (#100460) #
Well said Coach.
_Jurgen - Wednesday, June 11 2003 @ 06:15 PM EDT (#100461) #
These things always come in threes.... Slate's got a good interview with Bill James.
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