Methinks you need to take some remedial probability. A one in four chance does not mean that in seven attempts, you’re guaranteed to “make it” once. It means you’re more likely to have done so than not, but missing out all seven times is still a fairly likely outcome.
I don’t personally think the playoffs are a true dice roll - for example, having 2-3 true aces can make a real difference given the way playoff rosters vary from regular season rosters. But your logic here is, frankly, terrible.
Who said “guaranteed”? :dubious: “Should have” in this context means “the most probable result is”.
At a 0.5 probability for each series, failing to get even to the finals in 7 tries is a 13.3% probability, something you with your allegedly-superior mathematical skills obviously must know even if you don’t deign to calculate it yourself, but you still call “fairly likely”. :dubious:
There are many sayings in sports, but one is “Stats are for losers. Winners win.”
Then you left out some other teams that can sustain a high payroll. But the weird part here is that it sounds like you’re saying that it doesn’t count if a team briefly has a greater payroll over the short term. Oakland is sustainably outspent by almost everybody right now. That’s been sustained for years and years. Not all the teams spend a ton more, but a lot of them do. The only good team the A’s outspent this year was Tampa, and even the bad teams spent more than they did except for Miami and Houston, who are truly bottoming out and have no expectation of being good for a few more years. The teams that make and win the Series generally spend way more than Oakland does whether those teams are based in New York/L.A./Boston or not.
I’m not convinced it’s a problem at all.
That would be a bigger problem, yes. What is it that he’s not doing, in your view? Just getting the wrong players? Not splurging for big names, which does seem to help? Not enough hitting? Give me a clue here. Every time the team has lost in the ALDS since 2000, it’s been in a game five. I have trouble taking that as a structural flaw. They’re not getting blown out of the water, they’re losing close ones. The Tigers didn’t get lucky Justin Verlander pitched well - it’s what Verlander does - but I’m not hearing what the A’s aren’t doing. I’m just hearing that they’re doing it wrong.
Yes, you said he might be trying to redefine success or just isn’t under pressure. I have zero confidence that any of those are good theories. The luck thing wasn’t an explanation of why he doesn’t try to build a team that wins playoff series; it was an explanation of the limits of what a GM can do.
It’s one of the options you suggested, yes. It’s very silly.
Depends on the owners. Some are simply businessmen, but many are fans of their own teams too, fans who would dearly love to get sprayed with champagne and make speeches at their own victory parties and ride in their own parades and lord it over all their colleagues.
The only weird part is your comprehension. A small-market team, say Tampa Bay, can have a high, competitive payroll, even enough to win it all, for a brief period, but they’ll pay for it either before or afterward or both.
Certainly spending the money is not a sufficient condition. You have to spend it smartly, too. 
All of the above.
And that’s where getting, or developing, that one extra bat, that one shutdown reliever, that one dependable starter would have made the difference. Every time. Beane won’t fucking do it, he’ll just tell you how smart he is for *not *doing it.
Ok. That hasn’t applied to the A’s as far as I can see. Their payroll went all the way up to $80 million one season, but that’s as close as they’ve come to big spending. Their payroll has generally hovered around $60 million in recent years.
Right. If they make the playoffs pretty regularly while spending way less than most other teams, doesn’t that suggest they’re spending pretty well?
Ok. To his list of crimes we can add ‘consistently refuses to get one player he knows the team needs.’ (This also sounds kind of shaky.)
I’m seeing quite a bit of Green Lantern theory in here.
The A’s just don’t want to win enough.
Billy Beane refuses to acknowledge what thirty or forty million dollars worth of pitching would do for Oakland!!
Then it seems self-evident that the A’s brass are in the former category. (like Jeremy Jacobs of the Bruins)
A lot of that has to do with their divisional opponents sucking (Sea, Tex, Hou) or being badly built themselves (Ana), don’tcha think? Put them in the East and they’d be eliminated by Labor Day.
Ok. Give us your favorite example of his ever getting anybody significant midseason to put them over the top.
Look, guys, just because there’s a book and a movie about what a genius he is, that doesn’t actually *make *him one, 'kay?
Jacobs confuses me. He *was *just an out-of-town bloodsucker for decades, wasting Ray Bourque’s and Cam Neely’s careers along the way, but somehow it seems he’s mellowed in his dotage. He’s actually let Peter Chiarelli spend the money and make the deals and draft the players, instead of going along with the Harry Sinden approach that trading a dime for three nickels is good, and suddenly the franchise is what it used to be and should always have been once again.
But…but…but…statistics! Don’t you see? Statistics have gotten him exactly where he wants his team! Billy Beane is successful because Billy Beane *says *he’s successful! He has defined success!
The Rangers don’t suck, but sure, having some bad teams in the mix helps Oakland. That’s true in most of the other divisions, too. They’re not all stacked. And you don’t get points for degree of difficulty. Your primary competition is the other teams in your division. If you’re better than them, you get to the playoffs.
Not enough of an A’s fan (not one at all) to say.
Books are for nerds, amirite, David?
Over the top of what? The Series championship? Can’t do that. What’s your favorite Dombrowski pickup? Or did you have another benchmark in mind?
No, but you do have an easier time winning a division title, to the degree that means anything. But being a B student in a division of C students is no use when you’re up against A students, right?
Just FTR, Oakland was able to win their lame-ass division this year with half their lineup made up of guys Boston gave away.
Peremensoe, I should have added offseason pickups too. But, since you ask, my favorite *recent *Dombrowski midseason pickup is Jose Iglesias this year. I can just see him making the key play to kill a Red Sox rally in Game 7.
You know, the AL West has usually not been a pushover division. I recall hearing it called the toughest in baseball a time or two during the Beane era. The Rangers have been to the Series, the Angels have won it, the Mariners have set an AL season record for wins. Granted, adding the Astros this year boosted everybody else.
It remains to be seen whether Jose Iglesias or anyone else can put the Tigers over the top. At the moment the Dombrowski Tigers have the same number of rings as the Beane A’s, and have paid a hell of a lot more not to have them.
That’s not really how being a student works, but yes, it’s easier to win a title in a weaker division. I don’t think the AL West is especially awful, though. Last year three of the four teams were over .500 and even Seattle wasn’t too bad. This year the Angels were hurt and lousy, Seattle got worse, the Astros aren’t trying to win, so it was easier. Texas should probably be good for a while and I don’t think the Angels could have a worse year, but we’ll see.
But remember, Billy Beane, who got those guys for nothing, sucks.
Yeah, but Dombrowski, like most every other GM in MLB history, actually has a publically-stated goal of winning the World Series. Beane’s apparently content to just win the division and call it a year. So apparently, he’s redefined MLB success for himself and his ballclub, and people are buying it. Hmm, maybe he is a fucking genius.
Not winning the World Series is a deal-breaker for clubs that actually want to win the World Series, and it can cost management their jobs if losing at the same point in the post season time after time after time after time. For Billy Beane, however, he’s made losing in the ALDS business-as-usual and not his fault. Dombrowski needs to win, or he’ll be gone. Beane just needs to show up and he’s a success? Just because he’s defined success as winning the division?
Do you think Beane convinced Lew Wolff to have one of the lowest payrolls in the majors?
Or Peralta (in the lineup for his bat) failing to reach a ground ball that goes through for a base hit, sparking the winning Boston rally in game 7.
I can dream.