Mets have plenty of ties to A’s VP Billy Beane as they pursue him to run baseball operations

There are plenty of good reasons why Oakland Athletics executive Billy Beane is among the top candidates the Mets are pursuing to run their baseball operations.

Beane has worked in the A’s front office since 1990, rising to the ranks of the organization to become GM and president. Using limited resources compared to bigger markets, Beane constructed perennial playoff teams and made Oakland a constant presence on the MLB landscape.

His long resume is more than enough for the Mets to consider him to lead their front-office overhaul. But luring Beane to New York would also mean bringing him back to where his MLB career started.

Beane was taken by the Mets in the first round of the 1980 MLB Draft, and he turned pro, rather than going to Stanford for a collegiate career out of high school.

Beane’s playing career with the Mets never panned out the way it did for fellow Mets 1980 first-round pick Darryl Strawberry, who eventually played a major role on the MLB and helped the team win the 1986 World Series. Beane appeared in just 13 MLB games for the Mets between 1984 and 1985 before heading to the Minnesota Twins for two seasons.

After two more unsuccessful campaigns with the Detroit Tigers in 1988 and the A’s 1989, Beane called it a career. But his work in baseball was just getting started, and a future Mets front office fixture helped get the next stage of his life started.

Current Mets president Sandy Alderson was general manager of the A’s in 1990, and when he re-assigned Beane to Triple-A, Beane instead asked for a job in the front office.

Beane became a scout, starting him on the path toward the top of the organization’s baseball operations.

Alderson will now have a key say — along with Mets owner Steve Cohen — in who the Mets will hire to run baseball operations in 2022 and beyond. As of this moment, Alderson can’t do much to sway Beane to come to New York, since he’s still under contract in Oakland.

But if the A’s do grant the Mets permission to speak to Beane, Alderson’s long-standing relationship with him will likely play a key role in deciding if he’s the right fit to lead the charge for the Mets.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting us with a subscription.

Chris Ryan may be reached at cryan@njadvancemedia.com.