Which is more important: A new baseball facility to attract fans or a winning ballclub?
It seems like a lot of owners these days think that a new facility is imperative, but they then ignore the quality of their team. Billy Beane: A few years ago, I might have said a stadium would have been most important. I think now that today you probably have to combine a new stadium with a competitive team. MTG: I have followed the A’s fairly closely over the past couple of seasons, and one of the notables I have seen has been the regression of Ben Grieve. Has he become a disappointment? I know he hit a fair number of homers, but he fell back significantly in average and walks, both staples of your team (OBP oriented). What happened? Billy Beane: The biggest thing with Grieve is you have to realize he’s still just 23 years old and in just his third season. If you look at a player’s trend line, while you’d like it to go straight up, it can have small parts that go up and down. We think Ben still has the ability to hit 35-40 homers, walk 100 times and hit .300. It just may not happen r
