 |
 |
When the Giants Come to Town, It's Bye-Bye Baby | |
|
|
When the Giants Come to Town, It's Bye-Bye Baby | |
|
Giants 40-Man Roster
(w/2010 Salary, if known) PITCHERS
Affeldt (4.5 M)Bumgarner Cain (4.5 M) Hinshaw Joaquin S. Johnson Lincecum J. Martinez Medders (.85 M) Pucetas Romo Runzler J. Sanchez (2.1 M) H. Sosa B. Wilson (4.4 M) Zito (18.5 M) CATCHERS
Molina (4.5 M)
PoseyWhiteside INFIELDERS
BurrissDeRosa (6 M) Downs Frandsen Gillaspie Huff (3 M) Ishikawa Pill Renteria (10 M) Rohlinger F. Sanchez (6 M) Sandoval Uribe (3.25 M) Velez OUTFIELDERS
BowkerFord Lewis Peguero Rowand (13.6 M) Schierholtz Torres OTHER
Bonds ($5 M deferred from '05 + interest)Gigantes
McCovey ChroniclesObsessive Giant Compulsive Only Baseball Matters Bay City Ball Giants Win Paap Fly Croix de Candlestick The Dodger Hater Give 'Em Some Stankeye Skaldheim Say Hey, It's Mays Field! The Cha-Cha Bowl Jay's Giants Blog FanBunker Giants page Giants Cove Cot's Contracts - Giants page The Old Lefty Malo Ligas Menores
Fresno Grizzlies Stats Norwich Navigators Stats San Jose Giants Stats Augusta GreenJackets Stats Otros Beisboleros
Soxaholix Aaron Gleeman (Twins) The Soul of Baseball Batgirl (Twins) Tiger Tales The Cub Reporter Dodger Blues Cardinal Diaspora Athletics Nation The Pinstriped Blog (Yanquis) Futility Infielder (Yanquis) USS Mariner Phillies Phlow The Score Bard's Humbug Journal Fire Joe Morgan Free Agents: Post-2006 and Beyond Dugout Dollars Diccionario del Beisbol Non-Baseball Links
Live From MontrealDC Metalwork El Commandante Batista The View from Fort Miley Toshikomi The SFist The Bistro Hugo Archives
February 2010January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003 
|
My favorite quote from Sabean:
“The longer I do this the smarter I get”
Cool. Then you only need a few more years to learn not to trade away top prospects for injured players that don't fill the most important deficiencies on the team.
Dead on.
Hey, this is good news. By 2024, he should be smart enough to put a league-average offense.
"The more I practice, the luckier I am." -Arnold Palmer
"I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then." -Bob Seger
"Is a dream a lie if it doesn't come true, or is it something worse?"-Bruce Springsteen
"Nothing from nothing leaves nothing and you gotta have something if you want to be with me."-Billy Preston (?)
"Got to be good lookin' 'cause he's so hard to see." - John Lennon
Oh, wait. That's my favorite quote from Abbey Road.
Well "Come Together" could describe the situation poetically enough:
He One Holy Roller
Got to be a Joker
He just do what he please
You can feel his disease
JOHN 1969: "'Come Together' changed at the session. We said, 'Let's slow it down. Let's do this to it, let's do that to it,' and it ends up however it comes out (Sabean?). I just said, 'Look, I've got no arrangement for you, but you know how I want it.' I think that's partly because we've played together a long time
Joey, don't you know that Sanchez is a 3 time all-star! Don't expect any big changes to this offense and I wouldn't be surprised if Sabean finds another past his prime vet to play a position that blocks one of our younger players like corner outfield. The more I think about it the more it makes sense to trade for a bat since they have all but come out and said that there will be no big offseason signing. I would even be open to seeing them trade Bumgarner as I think we are good with Timmy and Matty anchoring the pitching staff. At this point it wouldnt matter if we had 5 ligitimate aces in our starting rotation if we can't score them any runs.
I'm not sure of Sanchez's stats when he was an allstar but I keep thinking about how EVERY TEAM must be represented and have at least one player chosen. We're talking about THE PIRATES here. Who the hell else could it have been?
What kinds of things was he learning from 2005 to 2008?
Everything Joe Morgan knows.
Nah, even Morgan knows about table setters ( old speack fo OBP).
Did anyone hear Keith Law of ESPN talking about this? While driving home last night I heard him on the JT the Brick show. Law was brutal talking about these guys. He said Bochy doesn't understand simple things in baseball like the double swap and when to do it. He call Bochy one of the worst tacticians in baseball and one of the 5 worst managers in baseball overall. He was equally negative about Sabean saying he wouldn't be very happy right now if he were a Giant fan.
As to the re-signing, it should have been expected, blog rants notwithstanding. As to the almost dismissive quote, here is what Sabean said in his letter to Giants fans, "Most pressing will be....to improve our offensive production and on base percentage and to create a more consistent one through five line up." I think I would be dismissive in response to Chron columnist questions, too, given the chance. Not that this makes me hopeful, merely resigned to the obvious.
Two things to note. Sabean's letter to Giants' fans was filtered through the PR staff. Sabean's comment to Hank Schulman was unfiltered. Which better reflects his true mindset?
>I think I would be dismissive in response to Chron columnist questions, too, given the chance.
Nitpicky on my part, but Schulman's a reporter, not a columnist. More importantly, why would you be dismissive? Why not just give an honest answer? If Sabean hates Schulman and was reflexively sarcastic to him (ie, he didn't want to give Schulman the satisfaction of hearing Sabes talk positively about OBP), maybe he should get over it.
Good points both - Schulman is a pretty good reporter, and for all I know, the Giants could have some lowly Fremp-like stat-minder that snuck into the publishing office before Sabean's missive went out. I get the impression that Sabean is always somewhat dismissive of the press. He never seems entirely comfortable answering questions, and gets prickly pretty quickly when he thinks he is being second-guessed.
The Sabean quote in his letter wasn't something someone else inserted as he said the same thing in his season wrap press conference with Bochy the Monday after the season ended.
"As Boch pointed out to me at the end of the year, which makes sense, a lot of times when you have players like Pablo and Bengie who are free swingers, sometimes, especially with a younger team, or a team challenged to score a lot of runs, they’ll take on that personality. In a selfish way you’d like to find somebody who’s different from them who can calm things down or act in the middle of the order in a different way."
I think it is far to say that Sabean knows the Gaints need to add a middle of the order bat that is not a free swinger, works counts to get better pitches to hit, and is not just willing to walk but understands and practices the value not making an out.
Actually, they need more plate discipline from all their hitters, not just the middle of the order bat.
Sabes' point seems to be that adding such a hither in the middle of tyhe order would change the team personality and make it likely that some other hitters in the order would follow this new lead. Last year all the leaders were hackers the goal is to replace at least one that leaves (Winn for sure, Molina likely, and Uribe possible) with a hitter that have this needed different personality.
So you (and Sabean) are pinning your hopes on a big maybe other hitters will learn form soemone else? That's part of what's wrong with this organization. Plate discipline and developing an intelligent approach at the plate is something that must be taught organization-wide and drummed into your hitters at their earliest stage of development.
Two problems: (1) Clearly, the head people of the organization do not understand this concept because it obviously is not taught and (2) even if they did understand this concept, this organization has not developed very many hitters over the last 13 years of Sabean's tenure that they could've taught this concept to. Either way, it's a huge and continuing failure.
There is little doubt that throughut the MaGowan era OBP was not a focus in either player selection or development and that Brian Sabean is as much to blame for this as anyone. That said, I also think there is much reason to believe that this has changed with MaGowan's departure, that Sabean is on board with this change, and that not enough time has passed to see the effects of this change.
Adding a middle of the order bat that has this personality and assumes a leadership role can help expidite this change at the MLB level. Having Bengie and Uribe as the two veterans the Giants youngsters most looked up to for leadership just did not help with this regard. This is why I am ok with bringing back Uribe only if we are also adding such a bat and i do not what Molina back under any circumstances.
I think the fact that you're calling it OBP shows that you're missing the point. The Giants have no plate discipline. In other organizations, they teach their young players pitch recognition - and to swing at what they can hit, and lay off what they can't.
The Giants have no such thing. Hitters don't improve their walk rates as they come through the system, and they end up in the mold of Torcato or Ortmeier or Niekro or Bowker or (at best) Schierholtz. The guys who showed some basic plate discipline in AAA - Lewis and Linden - were almost always shunted away for shitty veterans in the pursuit of third place. What's the value of playing Alex Sanchez (!!!) in place of a guy from your own organization who might have a 5% chance of turning into something?
And at the major-league level, they play way too many guys who never learned to hit, like Pedro Feliz and Bengie Molina, but have superficially acceptable hitting numbers. It's not about OBP.
>>Sabes' point seems to be that adding such a hitter in the middle of the order would change the team personality and make it likely that some other hitters in the order would follow this new lead.
Generously speaking, that's magical thinking. Plate discipline is a virus that one hitter can infect the others with? Albert Pujols would suddenly make Eugenio Velez turn into Chone Figgins? If you believe it, rainman, you better start shoveling.
I am not saying it is a magic bean (solution) but I am saying that adding a player like Abreu to the Giants to conteract and replace the influence Molina had last year can help. I believe it did just that with Abreu's influence on Figgins for the Angels.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. -- Yogi Berra
Incidentally, is it "sabermetrics" to figure out what a player is actually worth, and pay him accordingly? Is it "sabermetrics" to figure out what the injury risk for a 39-year-old guy is?
Coming off of a successful season, I fully expected both to be back, so I can't say that I am "disappointed."
My sense is that the media and the fans harped so much on the team's obvious lack of offense that Sabean has been defensive since June. I have no doubt that Sabes recognizes the team's glaring weakness: what I doubt is that he has the creativity/foresight to fix it. His efforts this year (Sanchez, Garko) were less than fulfilling, and he dealt two of the top 5 (3?) pitching prospects in those deals. So absent a monster FA signing that would take the team into the $95 mil+ payroll range, can he pull off another Jeff Kent type deal?
Speaking of which, here's who is playing in the Championship Series:
NL: Phillies ($113 mil payroll, #7 overall) v. Dodgers ($100.4 mil payroll, #9 overall)
AL: Yankees ($201.5 mil payroll, #1 overall) v. Angels ($113.7 mil, #6 overall). Red Sox were #4, Tigers were #5.
Giants were 13th.
So while money isn't everything (i.e., Mets, Cubs, Astros), it's pretty clear that in order to contend year in and year out a team needs to be willing to get up to $100 mil. Are Neuk and the 'vestors willing to go there?
I look for Sabes to bring in Jim Thome with a 3-year deal starting at 10 million with 25% salary escalation in years two and three. (Enter 10 years of outstanding stats here).
I just ordered a gross of barf bags.
I know you're kidding, Ed, but in case you've scared anyone, Thome isn't going to stay in the NL. He'll go back and DH in the AL.