The Trading Desk
The chapter begins by discussing Mike Magnante and his struggling performance from the last few games. He constantly is giving up more runs, hits, and homeruns. The Oakland Athletics decide they would like to trade him. This is where Billy Beane comes in to play. Billy is the one who regulates the trading cycle for the Oakland Athletics. Oakland is deciding to trade their players for better players because they are close to winning to division, so Billy Beane thinks its time to trade players. He has five rules for trading players. One rule is that change is always good and you have to go with short term solutions instead of long term solutions if you are a poor baseball team like Oakland. Another rule is the day you make a requirement for something you are not going to have much success because you will spend too much on that player. You have to know how much the player is worth as well. Also, every team should know what player they want and go after him. The final rule is that you will have to deal with public scrutiny from the media and you have to do your best to ignore their unnecessary comments. Throughout the stories, the Oakland Athletics are trying to trade with multiple teams such as the New York Mets, Boston Red Sox, San Francisco Giants, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Billy regulates the entire trading desk and does what is best for the Athletics in this chapter.
I found this chapter quite boring because it was only about trading and money. The trading desk seems like a boring process and completely aggravating. An interesting fact was that my friend's name appeared in this chapter a lot. The players discussed and the whole process is quite simple the way the described it. I was fairly educated on this topic before I read the chapter which may have been another reason I refer to it as boring. I really hope this book does not have any more boring chapters!
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