Moneyball by Lewis, Michael (mobile ebook reader txt) 📕

no one else, has tried to get Youkilis from them in the past. They’ll know, also, because the Red Sox assistant GM, Theo Epstein, talks to Billy Beane as often as he can. Epstein is a twenty-eight-year-old Yale graduate who has known for some time that he’d like to be the general manager of a big league team and, when he is, which general manager he’d most like to be. The Boston Red Sox are moments away from joining Billy Beane in his crusade to emancipate fat guys who don’t make outs. All this Billy knows, and he still thinks Boston will give up Youkilis. What he doesn’t know is that Theo Epstein has new powers—new Red Sox owner John Henry listens to everything he says—and has used them to establish Kevin Youkilis as the poster child for the Boston Red Sox farm system. (“Three months earlier,” Epstein will later say, “and Billy would have had him.”)

“Billy, Steve’s still waiting to talk!” Mike Crowley again. His owner again. Billy looks around as if he’s forgotten something; he’s spent too much time on Youkilis. He needs to raise some cash. He goes back to his phone and calls Steve Phillips, the Mets GM, one last time. “Steve. Here’s the deal. I don’t want Rincon pitching against me tonight.” He listens for a bit, and hears nothing that makes him happy. When he hangs up, he says, “He has no money. He needs what he has to sign Kazmir.” (Kazmir is the high school pitcher—now the high school pitching holdout—drafted by the Mets nearly two months earlier.)

The Mets have no money to waste. This is new, too. The market for baseball players, like the market for stocks and bonds, is always changing. To trade it well you needed to be adaptable.

Every minute that passes is a minute Brian Sabean—or even Steve Phillips!—has to talk Mark Shapiro into backing out of the two-hour promise he’s made Billy. Billy hollers to Mike Crowley: “Tell Schott that if we don’t move Venafro, I’ll sell Rincon for twice the price next year. No. Tell him that I’ll make him a deal. If I don’t do it, I’ll cover it. But I keep anything over twice the savings.”

Mike Crowley doesn’t know what to do with this. His GM, who earns 400 grand a year, is telling his owner that he’ll take an equity stake in a single player. Go down this road and Billy Beane could make himself a very rich man, simply by dealing players as well as he has done. No reply comes back from the owner, and Billy assumes he is free to do what he wants with Rincon. (Later, and after the fact, the owners will indeed give him authority to do the deal.) He gives the Mets and Giants fifteen minutes more. Finally, he decides. He’ll take the risk. He picks up the phone to call Mark Shapiro to acquire Rincon.

Phone in hand, almost casually, Billy says to Paul DePodesta, now seated on Billy’s sofa, “Do you want to go down and release Magnante?”

“Do I want to?” says Paul. He looks right, then left, as if Billy must be talking to some other person, someone who enjoys telling a thirty-seven-year-old relief pitcher that he’s washed up. When he looks left he can see the Coliseum a few yards away, through Billy’s office window. It wasn’t that Mags was just four days short of his ten-year goal. He’d get his pension. It was that, in all likelihood, Mags was finished in the big leagues.

“Someone’s got to talk to him,” says Billy. Now, suddenly, there is a difference between trading stocks and bonds and trading human beings. There’s a discomfort. Billy never lets it affect what he does. He is able to think of players as pieces in a board game. That’s why he trades them so well.

“Call Art,” says Paul. “That’s his job.”

Billy starts to call Art and then remembers that he hasn’t actually made the trade, and so reverses himself and calls Mark Shapiro in Cleveland. It’s 6:30 P.M. The game against the Indians starts in thirty-five minutes.

“Mike Magnante has just thrown his last pitch in the big leagues,” says Paul.

“Sorry I took so long, Mark,” says Billy.

No problem, But since you did, do you want to wait until after the game to take Rincon?

“No, we want him now. We want to get him in our dugout tonight.”

Why the rush?

“By and large Magnante cost us the game last night and Rincon won the game.”

Okay. No big deal. We’ll do it now.

“You feel comfortable with Ricardo’s health, right?”

Right.

“We’re going to have to release a guy before the game,” says Billy. “In the spirit of speeding things up, you wanna call Joel?” Joel is Joel Skinner, the Indians manager. Panic rises on Billy’s face. “Oh shit,” he says. “McDougal. He has a little tweak in his leg. You know about that, right?” McDougal’s the player Billy’s giving up. McDougal’s also been dogging it during workouts. He’s conveyed to the A’s minor league coaching staff a certain lack of commitment to the game. But these things the Cleveland Indians are required to learn the hard way.

No problem. I know about the tweak.

Billy hangs up and dials Art Howe’s number. The A’s manager has just returned to his office beside the clubhouse.

“Art. It’s Billy. I have some good news and some bad news.”

Art gives a little nervous chuckle. “Okay.”

“The good news is you’ve got Rincon.”

“Do I?”

“The bad news is you gotta release Magnante.”

Silence on the other end of the line. “Okay,” Art finally says.

“And you’ve got to do it before the game.”

“Okay”

“I know it’s not the best way to get rid of a guy but we got a good pitcher.”

“Okay.”

Billy hangs up and turns to Paul, “Can we designate Magnante for assignment?” This is a prettier way to release a player because it leaves open the possibility that some other club will claim him, and take his salary off Oakland’s hands. When you designate a guy