Detractors of A's General Manager Billy Beane, and there are plenty, have their trumpets at the ready for 2005. They are poised to celebrate if the A's tumble in their first season without the Big Three.
The reason the A's have thrived, say the skeptics, is not because of Beane's offensive wizardry but because Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito kept an otherwise ordinary team afloat. As a San Diego Padres executive put it in "Moneyball," the best-selling book about Beane's methods: "The reason the A's win so many games with so little money is that Billy got lucky with those pitchers."
That argument will soon be toast, though, because Beane traded Hudson and Mulder in off-season deals that promise to keep the G.M.'s reputation in the familiar bask of the spotlight. And it's no secret that some old-school types are rooting for Beane to fall on his famous face.
"Everybody in baseball is watching to see what happens, and I mean everybody," said one executive of an American League team.