Billy (never) Beane (there) is good at one thing. Making excuses (i.e., low payroll, playoffs a crapshoot, etc). Nice trades recently Billy-Boy. Going to be fun watching the turnstiles at the Mauseleum (aka poopeleum). Ha! - Bill The A's fans cannot be loyal to a player or players because of beane. He is full of when he says fans come to see a player once...could be true,when he was playing..it's a wonder he made it to the BIGS. So here's the deal: come A's win a ring for this idiot. Maybe after that accomplishment he can leave town! And where are the owners in all this? This idiot [beane] is Home Alone. - Mike judgement should be based on results and in Beanes tenure there has not been success, only failure. - Commonsense58 Sick of Billy Bean - James K. A-holes could have had a world series but nope! Lets trade everybody! Psh lies lies lies - LC Iike that people are getting tired of billy boy`s act. He had his book, movie, about him. As long as he is gm, this is what we get. He wants to be the star of the show now, he never made it is a player. - JV

All these comments were AFTER the Zobrist trade was announced. This is just a tiny sample.

Lately I have seen a lot of comments like this. Not so much on Athletics Nation, which I consider a great collection of knowledgeable fans, but from die hard fans on social media, news sites, and the like. A lot of these guys and gals are legit, hardcore A's fans. But they are driving me insane.

Beane is not perfect. Of course not. He makes bad trades. He has failed experiments. The team hasn't drafted an impact position player in a long time. Disagreeing with his moves is one thing. But if one more idiot rails on and on about how Billy Beane doesn't know how to run a team and whines about Moneyball being a failure my head may explode.

Billy Beane took over in 1998. Let's do a survey of the teams that have revenues somewhere in the neighborhood of the Oakland Athletics, and see how they have done.

You "fire Beane" numbskulls want to be the Cincinnati Reds, huh? They are a lower revenue team but held on to Phillips and Cueto and Bruce and Votto and oh crap they made the playoffs twice since 1995.

No? what about the San Diego Padres? Lovely stadium, great weather, and mediocre baseball all summer long, every summer. Since they made the 1998 World Series (back when Tony Gwynn was still on the team), the Friars fans have been treated to exactly two playoff appearances.

The Pirates had a couple decades straight of losing before eking out two one-and-done years. The Royals went nearly three decades between playoff appearances before reaching the World Series last year.

The Milwaukee Brewers' entire postseason history can be listed in just four lines!

The Cleveland Indians have won their division just once since 2001.

The Minnesota Twins used to be the small market rival of the A's, making the postseason despite low budgets and the Metrodome as the home stadium. They haven't sniffed the postseason since Target Field was built.

Sort this list by revenues and look at the bottom 20 teams or so. The Mariners? Routinely uncompetitive. The Astros? Scorched earth rebuild special. The Rockies? Holding on to their stars, can't afford anything else. I could go on and on. The A's are routinely at or near the bottom of baseball in revenues. How can I get it through your thick heads that this is a real, hard limitation on what Beane can do? If revenues are low and owners don't want to come out pocket, this is what we have to work with.

Other than the Marlins, who snuck in and won a couple of titles, each followed by epic fire sales, there is no lower budget team that has come anywhere near the success of the A's. Once Beane was able to clear out the chaff from the disastrous 90's, the A's reeled off 8 postseason appearances over the past 15 seasons, along with a few other winning seasons where they fell short of the playoffs. Even in their losing years under Beane they have never won less than 74games.

Whining about Beane is entitled brattishness to the nth degree. Yes we want more. We all want a title. But would you trade places with ANY of these franchises? The reality is that the A's do not make much money. Other teams that are anywhere near the A's in terms of revenue have frankly sucked for generations at a time.

That being said, I can understand and excuse A's fans for their frustrations when their favorite players leave town. I was bummed when Cespedes was traded, and it's hard to let go of that attachment to your guys. Far worse are the dumb as a doornail "Bean doesn't know how to run a team" and "The A's play in a toilet" Giants (and other teams') fans. The outsiders looking in. In their eyes, this "Bean" is an idiot for trading away his good players and not keeping anyone. Even better is when you hear dimwits say "Moneyball doesn't work." Let me put it in the plainest of terms: YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT SO STOP OPENING YOUR DAMN MOUTH. I WOULD RATHER HAVE JOE MORGAN BE THE BROADCASTER FOR EVERY A'S GAME THAN LISTEN TO 2 MINUTES OF YOU TALKING ABOUT BASEBALL.

Maybe I need to break this down for you: If I have $5 in my pocket I'm eating at Taco Bell. If I have $10,000 I'm eating wherever the hell I want. If you want to blame ownership for not spending more or getting a new stadium built to increase revenues...fine. Whatever. But Beane has no control over his budget.

Fact is, the A's are way more fun than all these staid, boring franchises with constrained uncreative GMs. Of course making a lot of trades will lead to bad trades. So what? Is there a team that has never whiffed on a draft pick or made a bad trade? The results are there. If you want to fire Beane because the A's haven't won a World Series, you are delusional. The past 15 years have been dominated by big money teams -- Mainly the Yankees, Red Sox, Giants, and Cardinals. Somehow the A's have been able to crash the party time and again.

So, basically, to sum it up we make the playoffs on average every other year, and for the past three seasons in a row. We have dirt cheap ticket prices (even things like Free Parking Tuesdays, $2 Wednesdays, and the like), near-perfect weather, exciting offseasons, and a loud, fun, raw gameday experience brought to you buy a small but rabid fanbase. And you want to whine about it?

If we're the Brewers, Royals, Pirates, Padres or any of these lower budget teams that barely ever make the playoffs, none of you entitled morons would even show up to the games. MLB probably then pulls an Expos and whisks the team away to greener pastures.

Fire Beane? Just shut up already.