Yes, another Moneyball post.
Rob Neyer's most recent column focuses on Larry Dierker's new book. The book, and Neyer's interview with Dierker, contain some fascinating - and distressing - revelations:

In his book, Dierker writes about the usefulness of OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage), and he even includes a matrix listing the various run-scoring probabilities, depending on the number of baserunners and outs.
Where did Dierker come by this information?
"When I was broadcasting," Dierker remembers, "there was a guy named Steve Mann who came down here to work in our baseball operations department, and he was deeply involved in what the club was doing. I made friends with Steve, and we spent many a night having a beer and talking about the game -- about which strategies were antiquated, and which ones were still applicable. I also read a lot of the Bill James stuff, and so I learned what people who didn't have a personal investment in the game had to say about it."
This is, for most baseball players, revolutionary stuff. And Dierker knew it.
"When I became the manager, I kind of knew what were the smart things to do. But I also knew that if I did all of them, it would be at the expense of my credibility with the players. With that in mind, I just had to use my instincts to both win the game and keep the whole team in the spirit of pulling together. I didn't want to come off as an egghead guy who was just looking at numbers and ignoring people, and sometimes those considerations ran into each other."
"For example, Brad Ausmus felt like we should walk the eighth hitter most of the time, with the pitcher coming up next. As an ex-pitcher, I'd rather have the pitcher leading off the next inning. So Brad and I had different opinions a lot of the time. The eighth hitter would come up, he'd look into the dugout for the sign, I wouldn't do anything, and I could see that he wasn't real happy about it. I remember once, we retired the eighth hitter 10 or 15 times in a row. And then Kelly Stinnett reached out and slapped an outside pitch for an RBI single, and Ausmus was really mad."
That sort of thing has to wear on a manager -- especially on a team that's run by veterans like Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio -- and so it did. Fans often think that a manager shouldn't care what the players think, but managing's just not that simple.
"Whenever I was in a flip-a-coin sort of situation," Dierker says, "I'd usually make the move that I thought the players wanted me to make, because it really doesn't make that much difference, one way or the other. And you have to consider what the players are going to think."

These factors help explain why, as part of Billy Beane's quest to impose reason on his organization, the Athletcs' front office felt that it had to concentrate as much power as possible in the general manager's office, including over matters of game management that had traditionally been within the manager's purview. According to Beane's predecessor, Sandy Alderson (quoted on p.61 of Moneyball), the hapless Art Howe was hired specifically because he would be a figurehead.
But it stands to reason that Beane wouldn't mind having a manager like Dierker, who would commit to the sabermetric program out of intellectual conviction rather than career preservation. So who would be the best candidate?
As readers of Moneyball know:

Reason, even science, was what Billy Beane was intent on bringing to baseball. He used many unreasonable means - anger, passion, even physical intimidation - to do it.

Not to mention liberal uses of each variation of the word "f$%#."
The perfect managerial match for Billy Beane would share his intellect and volatility. He would not be afraid to cause controversy in his commitment to doing what he felt was the right move (in baseball terms: to tell his detractors and the media to go f$#% themselves). And a connection to the Mets wouldn't hurt.
Bobby Valentine, would you like to move to Oakland?
Think of it like Chazz Palmienteri berating Kevin Spacey at the end of The Usual Suspects: A man who could run Todd Hundley (and other unproductive veterans) out of town! A man who can use the word "sabermetrics" on national television! A man who can tell the New York media that batting order really doesn't matter!
At the very least, the sequel to Moneyball would virtually write itself.
Seriously, I think that Valentine's intellect and fearlessness would be an ideal combination for an organization committed to analytical principles. And I think that Billy Beane would respect the viewpoints of someone like Valentine even in disagreements, which would not be the case for an establishment cipher like Art Howe.
It could happen. Right?