by Jerry Feitelberg

OAKLAND-The Oakland A’s have dropped 13 of their last 15 games, the slide continues on this current road stand after dropping two out of three in Houston and the opening game of this four game series in Tampa Bay. If the A’s were totally to slide and blame gets laid at A’s General Manager Billy Beane’s door step the only ones that can force Beane to step down are owners Lew Wolf or John Fisher.

To do that Wolf and Fisher would have to buy Beane out from his minority owner status and then fire him and that just isn’t going to happen. Beane has been pretty much an economist pretty much during his reign as A’s GM since 1998 his first season. He was pretty much on his own under former A’s owners Steve Schott and Ken Hoffman.

He’s just as independent with current A’s owners Wolf and Fisher and Beane at this point has nothing to worry about to be quite honest about it. Beane is not going anywhere. Wolf and Fisher are very please with the way that Beane has kept the payroll down and the A’s are profit making operation right now.

You have to keep in mind that if it’s Beane in Oakland or another general manager in MLB when these fellas make a deal you never know how it’s going to turn out. You study the players, you look at what you have out there and you make the deal. Sometimes it works out well and sometimes it doesn’t. The A’s took a chance on Brandon Moss who is now with Cleveland.

Moss was with the Pirates in 2008-10 and at that time he was somewhat a marginal player but he turned out to be a pretty good deal for Oakland when he joined the club in 2012. Moss had three pretty good seasons which was cut short in the last part of last season. The A’s unloaded him to Cleveland. Beane felt that the trades that he made last season were going to get him to the World Series that failed to materialize.

Going forward A’s acquisitions from last season didn’t work including with former A’s pitcher Jeff Samardzija who was sent to the White Sox in the off season. Beane also brought in Jon Lester from the Red Sox and he was trying to rebuild the club on the strength of the Samardzija deal. The A’s Marcus Semien whose hitting a little over .300 has a lot of pop in his bat but his fielding has been a lot left to be desired.

Case in point the A’s have hired former Rangers manager Ron Washington to help right the A’s defensive ship, Semien has committed 16 errors this season thus far over the course of 40 games and the A’s have brought in Washington who worked with him to improve his fielding or throwing and this is something that Beane has done to get Semien back on track.

Jerry Feitelberg is a beat writer for the Oakland A’s at http://www.sportsradioservice.com catch Jerry’s podcast on the A’s below