I never said he did. It is very public though. Also, who are you to say that The Ms are the stupidest organization M’s organization is the stupid. What do you know about baseball organizations? The team sucks but the organization has ammassed one of the best stadiums in baseball, large media contracts both foreign and domestic and they have a solid scouting/farm system to build on. Doesn’t sound like the stupidest people I’ve ever heard of. Let go of emotion and deal in facts.

Forst, objectively, has more information than you.

More than anyone else, he knows where Beane is and isn’t going, and how much power he’d get in the near future.

I have a friend (was my boss as well) who’s been waiting to become the next plant manager where I use to work. Rumor has had it for years the plant manager is ready to become a VP. My friend is slated to take his place. I was slated to take my friend’s place. I kept my eyes open and took a promotion at a different company. My friend’s still waiting for that plant manager job. My point is no matter what look at every opportunity.

Forst in my opinion is being naive.

Forst, objectively, has more information than you.

More than anyone else, he knows where Beane is and isn’t going, and how much power he’d get in the near future.

Uh, did you actually read either one of those links? He didn’t say anything at all disparaging about the Mariners. And I utterly disagree with your premise – it makes no sense. The Ms are the stupidest organization in MLB if not all of pro sports, rivalling Donald Sterling’s old Clippers team for sheer futility and meddling management. Their peers are keenly aware of this fact. If anything Forst just showed that he’s smart enough to stay out of the Kobayashi Maru scenario that is your Seattle Mariners which is a feather in his cap to prospective employers.

Because he enjoys fresh challenges? (See my start-up comment above) Because he’s not entirely walking away from the A’s, since he still has an ownership stake and a front office filled with his proteges who will continue to run the team The Beane Way? Because this is an even bigger opportunity than running just one baseball team?

Beane has already transformed baseball about as much as one GM can, though it’ll take a generation for his influence to be fully felt in the most hidebound corners of the league (like Seattle). But with MLS, Beane has the opportunity to use his talents not just to transform a sport but in many ways to invent one, to establish American soccer as one of the major sports worthy of the same attention as (at least) Hockey and NASCAR. If Beane genuinely loves soccer, that’s got to appeal to him.

Uh, lots of people leave big, successful companies to go to work for little start ups. For someone with a lot of energy and ambition and vision — exactly the kind of person you’d want, btw — a big company, no matter how successful, is a very restrictive environment; a small start-up, by contrast, is a fun environment where every day brings a fresh and interesting challenge and you’re not hemmed in by procedures and hierarchies. (Of course, you wait for your options to vest at the big company before you leave )

The problem, however, is that the analogy is wrong. The M’s are not an 8 person start-up. They’re another big company, just less successful and less-competently run. This would be like leaving Google for Yahoo. Or like leaving Toyota for General Motors.