Billy Beane on the A’s rush into contention — ‘I prefer to be a buyer’ (subscription)

TK: I’ve got some thought that you could really just set up for a big run in 2019. Is that possible — compete this year but plan mostly for 2019?

Beane: No, in our situation we’ve got to grasp every opportunity we can. In any sport, you can sit there, ‘oh well, we’re just going to wait,’ and it never arrives.

For us, until we have a different venue, we are going to be somewhat hand-to-mouth. The idea that we can sort of push off an opportunity because we think we’ll be better next year is just a bad approach from our standpoint. We’ve got to do everything we can.

Now, we’re not going to sell the farm for one year, because we understand that we’re still five games out. … If we were five games up, it’d be different, maybe. We have to be calculating and not go scorched earth. But also I don’t think we can just necessarily assume we’re going to be able to do this for a lot of years and just forget about this year. That’s a bad approach.

Really good interview with Tim Kawakami. If you don’t have a subscription with the Atlantic, you should get one.