Looks like my upcoming treatise on the pros and cons of retaining the services of Brian Sabean is moot. Both the Chron and the Merc report today that both are coming back next year. The Chron's Shea is vague, except to say both will return in 2010. But Baggs writes that Sabean will get multiple years, and Bochy's deal should "dovetail" with Sabean's contract.
I'm listening to the radio broadcast right now, and Tony Bennett is singing his final "I Left My Heart" of the season after Lincecum's 15th win, all of which soothes my sour stomach a little. Unlike some of you, I think the Giants can continue to improve with S & B at the helm. It's within the realm of possibility. I would've been semi-OK with a one-year extension for both. But I wanted change, and Sabean's crap deals for Garko and Sanchez in July tipped me over the edge. Locking in both guys for multiple years is ridiculous.
I've got crazy day job to deal with this afternoon, so I'll write more tonight. Meanwhile, if you're suicidal about this, please let us know how you're going to do yourself in.
Bochy is a terrible manager. The fact that Sabean supports him shows that he is equally clueless, even if he is indeed a great pitching scout (which is questionable since Tidrow may be the real brains).
I will do myself in by eating my entire laptop (on which I watch the Giants through mlb.tv), ending with the large shards from my monitor to make sure this method of extinction is effective.
I don't care for Bochy as a manager. The rehiring of Sabes, however, can be seen as a vote of confidence in his audacious (some would say crazy) and single-minded pursuit of an unusual strategy: value pitching and defense above what the rest of the league values (Power).
Do not forget that Nuke Em has publicly advocated the creation of a Giant Way of doing things and that Sabes has consciously has moved away from valuing Power (over-valuing Power?) since the Bonds Era in order to find under-valued niches--speed, defense, pitching, and, yes, veterans in their years of decline (the last one clearly backfired).
Now--most of the folks on this site disagree with Sabes's choices. What is disappointing, however, is a lack of an attempt to understand what Sabes has been up to and why his choices make sense given his own (somewhat maverick) assumptions. I think there should be an attempt to try to understand what exactly Nuke Em thinks he is rewarding, even if you disagree with the decision.
Oh, Barton, we've made more than enough attempts to understand what he's "been up to." For example, when Sabes said that 3rd round draft picks provided better ROI than 1st and 2nd round picks, and that mid-level free agents were also worth more than those draft picks, we showed that Sabean was wrong. When Sabean said that J.T. Snow's glove was worth 10 wins, we showed that he was wrong. When Sabean tried to start an outfield with an average age of 39, we showed that injuries and retirements were the most likely outcome. When he traded three pitchers for A.J. Pierzynski, we questioned his sanity and showed how wrong he was. Basically, every bad decision he's made since 2002, we've tried to figure out if there's a grain of sense being the nonsense facade...And we've found nothing.
So why we need to continue our Kremlinology is beyond me.
Yes, Sabean was clearly and demonstably wrong when he talked about Snow's glove winning ten games. I don't think, however, you understand the choice of going with proven veterans (a choice, by the way, that I disagreed with). From his point of view (and he was probably right about this) the market clearly undervalued declining vets, knowing they were on the edge of breaking down. But fielding one of the oldest teams in baseball history was certainly a gutsy move that was all about the "win this year before Bonds leaves" strategy.
I think that was the wrong strategy but I admire the gutsiness of it. And I must admit this--it is these sorts of gutsy moves that led him to be one of the most successful GMs until it all fell apart when Bonds retired.
Sheer bullshit for which you have no evidence whatsoever.
Sabean spent $90M in 2005 (75 wins), $90M in 2006 (76 wins) and $90M in 2007 (71 wins). Those salaries were between 6th and 12th overall. A legitimate contender needs to be able to win 90 games, and if the Giants were such a team, they would have won 85 without Barry one of those years.
There was nothing gutsy about Sabean's strategy. He simply has no idea how to evaluate talent, particularly hitters.
That's why he was stupid when he was with the Yankees and recommended that they get Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada, because he doesn't know hitters.
Also, because he doesn't know hitters, he took a team that was 11th, 8th, and 9th in the NL (out of 14 teams and all with Bonds on the team), all years below league average for runs scored, and in 1997-2004, the Giants were in the top 3 5 times, 4th once, 5th once, 6th once, all years above league average.
Yeah, he don't know how to build an offense, we weren't first once.
2009: 26th in runs scored
2008: 29th in runs scored
2007: 29th in runs scored
2006: 23rd in runs scored
2005: 29th in runs scored
All evidence points to Brian Sabean not knowing how to build an offense. Surely a team that finishes 29th in Runs Scored in 2005...And then finishes 29th *two* and *three* years later is not a team operated by someone who knows how to build even a league-average offense.
Who really cares what Sabean did 20 years ago? He is incompetent *today*. Ned Colletti wrote "You Gotta Have Heart: Dallas Green's Rebuilding of the Cubs" in 1985. Maybe we should bring Dallas Green in to replace Bochy because clearly he had the skills back in '84.
nick_gee: Can you elaborate on the reason for signing Michael Tucker just hours before the deadline for offering players arbitration expired, thus forfeiting this year's first-round draft pick. Was it a mistake? Or was it just a way of saving money?
Sabean: We were able to use the first-round draft pick money to apply to our Major League payroll and figured, by where we pick in the first round, we can get the same type of player or pitcher for half the price with our second selection.
That's 2004 he's talking about, where he *intentionally* didn't have a pick until 70th - he could have signed Tucker a day later and had the pick. In 2005, convinced of the brilliance of his idea, he signed free agents early so that he didn't pick until 132nd. Sabean was convinced that even 2nd round picks weren't worth the money.
The strategy was wrong; no other team followed suit; and Sabean uses all of his picks these days.
Barton, you are right that we should examine Sabean's "maverick" style, but as gdog pointed out, we have done so all along. But, even if we give him credit for a good plan, he's not doing a very good job with that plan.
I think Sabean is being rewarded for the team finishing above .500. Since he's the one responsible for the streak of losing records, and since he didn't manage to fix the biggest problem the team had (offense), I'd say he has failed. He has proven over the years that he doesn't understand the basics of valuation of offense. What has he been up too? Like all of us, he wanted to improve the offense. The problem is, his solution involved signing Edgar Renteria, Freddy Sanchez, and Ryan Garko, getting lucky with Juan Uribe, and hoping the Panda had a good year. I understand what Sabean is trying to do ... it's just that he's so bad at it.
Although I have to give him credit for being such a maverick, he thinks you can win with crappy-hitting first basemen.
"He has proven over the years that he doesn't understand the basics of valuation of offense. What has he been up too? Like all of us, he wanted to improve the offense."
This is the real debate--although I don't see anyone engaging it. Clearly Sabes does not value offense in the same way you do -- and you haven't proven to my satisfaction that he is wrong. In fact it seems quite clear that improving the offense WAS NOT his priority; I was not surprised at all that the most significant offseason acquisition was Randy Johnson, which was an attempt not to one-sidedly value pitching over offense.
Is Sabes wrong? Perhaps, but ObsessiveGiantCompulsive has some impressive analysis on his site that suggests pitching is the dominant factor in postseason play.
If you don't get to the post-season, that analysis isn't worth the paper it's written on. Yes, a good pitching staff can make up for other deficiencies in a short series and dominate. However, it cannot mask those deficiencies in the regular season....which is why the Giants managment has failed repeatedly.
The draw back to this read explain how he gets so little for the young pitchers he has swapped in the last 3 trades he made thinking the Giants were contenders ( The 2 this July & Hillenbrand.
As a counselor in a Psychiatric Hospital, I can use all of your suicidal declarations to admit you under 5150...but only before I propogate my own demise by hanging myself with a rope weaved of the baseball cards of Randy Winn, Aaron Rowand, Edgar Renteria, and Bruce Bochy. If Sputnik was responsible for, conservatively, 10 losses then he cost this staff a playoff run and should be run out of town, regardless of the team's improvements. He didn't have much to work with, which is why Sabes should be gone too, but his ineptitude has been glaring. Ralph Barbieri would have had this team in the World Series.
Wow, really? First winning season in years and we're throwing the leadership under the bus NOW? In only just Year 2 of the rebuild?
For me, the Giants exceeded expectations and there seems to be a functional plan in place, so let's see where this goes. You have to consider FLew, Winn and Rowand -- whatever you think about those guys -- if they even hit at their 2008 level we're probably in the playoffs right now.
ELM, at the outset of the season, you had a standard that you were going to follow when it came to Brian Sabean's fate:
"Sabean haters don't want to hear it, but he's done enough the past year to give himself six months more probation. If he can draft another Madison Bumgarner in June and pull off another Ryan Vogelsong-ish for Jason Schmidt-ish trade or two in July, then I'll be the first to open the door to his biodiesel-fueled limo when he steps to the curb to sign his contract extension. As ZZ Top and their guest singer Janet Jackson once said: He's been bad, he's been good, so it comes down to this: What has Brian Sabean done for me lately?"
We can discuss Sanchez and Garko all winter long, but I think in the end it comes down to that: Sabes and Bochy kept us in the race for 158 games. You want to blow up CentCom NOW?
Hate to inform you of this but Sabean has been rebuilding this club since the 2002 season ended. He doesn't get a pass in my book for 13 years of failure because this team overachieved their talent level. He really needs to be gone.
And the Giants did not start rebuilding after 2002 - that's nice (and desperate) revisionist history. Re-configuring the team, sure, but most people term rebuilding to be the situation where a team is losing and thus should be acquiring young players who will return the team to their prior winning ways (or achieve it for the first time for the newbies).
Sure, they restructured the team after Kent left, but if you are going to use that as a demarker for when rebuilding happens, then you are saying the Giants rebuilt when they acquired Burks, they changed 3 starters and 2 starting pitchers in 1999. Heck, you may as well say a team is rebuilding almost every year there are changes, that is rebuilding too.
And 13 years of failure? He turned around a severely losing team in 1997 and kept the team winning to 2004. That is not failure.
If you are going to use winning the World Series as the litmus test of failure, then you have a heck of a lot of failures every year. I don't think that is a sensible way to define success and failure.
Sabean must be blackmailing Giants management otherwise there really is no arguement that makes sense for keeping him. I was livid 2 years ago when Mcgowan handed him a 2 year extension and here we are 2 years later and really nothing has changed with this team. We overachieved this year and without improvement which Sabes has proven he knows nothing about, next year and the following will be very similar.
I think the best way to deal with this is for someone to find out where Sabean lives and we put together a schedule of TPing, Flaming dog poo on the doorstep, spray painting, and any other annoyances we can muster performed on a daily basis until he leaves town.
Philadelphia run differential: +116
St. Louis: +99
LA: +163
Colorado: +95
Giants: +42
So the Giants were 53 runs behind the WC and 76 runs behind the average for the four playoff teams. So if Sabean had signed Mark Teixeira instead of playing Ishikawa, Garko and Aurilia at 1B, they would have made the playoffs for sure. Maybe all they needed was Adam LaRoche. Nothing special, just one of the top 10-15 first basemen in the league would have done it.
Well, I'm happy. I think everyone knows my position: Sabean deserves another couple of years to see what he can do with the team.
This is just a redux of two years ago when Sabean got his current contract: a lot of unhappy people grousing about it, I'm happy about it.
And the Giants have progressed a lot in those two years. Rebuilding is not a pretty process. Being impatient with the results only get you into a cycle of rebulid/destroy every few years. Many of you were clamoring to trade Cain for hitting; how many of you would regret that today?
What most of the people who think that a trade would solve the Giants problems forget is that this is a zero sum game. You get a better hitter by trading Cain, well, we would not have had a pitcher who could have took his place, both Sadowski and Martinez fizzled at replacing Randy Johnson, let alone Matt Cain. So we would have made the trade and probably end up right around where we are today.
We are what we are. There were no great offensive pieces on the free agent market (Teixiera only wanted to be on the east coast), so Sabean did the best he could by signing the guys he did. You can't get blood out of a stone. And you can't trade your way into more either, without a lot of luck or a stupid or desperate GM to trade with.
Sabean has rebuilt the team well. We are that much closer this year, and we have Posey and Bumgarner soon to join the team and improve it even more. We also have other nice young players who might help out too, Bowker, Bond, Noonan, Kieschnick, Neal, Pill, Crawford, Adrianza. I think we are on track to return to being a Top Dog team for a long time again.
I think most of us are going to have to try to get tickets for admission to the fantasy world that you live in. Unfortunately, for now, we are going to have to endure more grizzled veterans on the downsides of their careers that have plenty of gamerness.
Boof should keep up--or at least try to analyze and understand the strategy that he is against! The Giants are very unlikely to buy up veteran hitters--that certainly was their strategy three years ago but it certainly is not the strategy this year or next (Renteria was simply plugging a whole and an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons).
And what, pray tell, is the strategy employed by the Giants? It appears to be "build a pitching staff and ignore hitting."
As for grizzled veterans, here's who got the most ABs in August: Ben Molina (34), Randy Winn (35), Edgar Renteria (33), Aaron Rowand (31), Freddy Sanchez (31) and the young Ryan Garko (28) and Eugenio Velez (27)...Along with Pablo Sandoval, the only player in that group the Giants should bother keeping.
Did you just claim that John Bowker, Age 26, with a major-league OBP of .293 in almost 400 plate appearances, is "a nice young player who might help out"? I knew a San Francisco Giants first baseman with a .293 OBP once...His name was Lance Niekro.
First a shout out to ELM for providing excellent reading material all season long.
It's important for fans to be passionate and demanding but there is also value in patience. Our team has until recently been constructed with a "win now with Barry" mentality. That philosophy built excellent teams and even took us to the world series but ultimately it was not sustainable (no surprises there). This is the hangover, and thus far it's been pretty mild.
Sabes seems to be valuing youth more than in the past and regarding hitting, top draft choices have been spent on hitters recently. I've seen enough progress to wait another season or two and see if he can turn it around.
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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)
Posey Whiteside
INFIELDERS
Burriss DeRosa (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
Bowker Ford Lewis Peguero Rowand (13.6 M) Schierholtz Torres
How I'll do myself in: I'm going to read pro-Sabean tripe on the Internet until my brain explodes.
I expected it. I am not happy, but expected the same. Pessimism has served me well as a Giants fan.
It's the gift that keeps giving.
Uh oh.
I wonder how many others we thought were leaving will be returning.
Bochy is a terrible manager. The fact that Sabean supports him shows that he is equally clueless, even if he is indeed a great pitching scout (which is questionable since Tidrow may be the real brains).
I will do myself in by eating my entire laptop (on which I watch the Giants through mlb.tv), ending with the large shards from my monitor to make sure this method of extinction is effective.
I will play devil's advocate.
I don't care for Bochy as a manager. The rehiring of Sabes, however, can be seen as a vote of confidence in his audacious (some would say crazy) and single-minded pursuit of an unusual strategy: value pitching and defense above what the rest of the league values (Power).
Do not forget that Nuke Em has publicly advocated the creation of a Giant Way of doing things and that Sabes has consciously has moved away from valuing Power (over-valuing Power?) since the Bonds Era in order to find under-valued niches--speed, defense, pitching, and, yes, veterans in their years of decline (the last one clearly backfired).
Now--most of the folks on this site disagree with Sabes's choices. What is disappointing, however, is a lack of an attempt to understand what Sabes has been up to and why his choices make sense given his own (somewhat maverick) assumptions. I think there should be an attempt to try to understand what exactly Nuke Em thinks he is rewarding, even if you disagree with the decision.
Oh, Barton, we've made more than enough attempts to understand what he's "been up to." For example, when Sabes said that 3rd round draft picks provided better ROI than 1st and 2nd round picks, and that mid-level free agents were also worth more than those draft picks, we showed that Sabean was wrong. When Sabean said that J.T. Snow's glove was worth 10 wins, we showed that he was wrong. When Sabean tried to start an outfield with an average age of 39, we showed that injuries and retirements were the most likely outcome. When he traded three pitchers for A.J. Pierzynski, we questioned his sanity and showed how wrong he was. Basically, every bad decision he's made since 2002, we've tried to figure out if there's a grain of sense being the nonsense facade...And we've found nothing.
So why we need to continue our Kremlinology is beyond me.
gdog--
I can't agree.
Yes, Sabean was clearly and demonstably wrong when he talked about Snow's glove winning ten games. I don't think, however, you understand the choice of going with proven veterans (a choice, by the way, that I disagreed with). From his point of view (and he was probably right about this) the market clearly undervalued declining vets, knowing they were on the edge of breaking down. But fielding one of the oldest teams in baseball history was certainly a gutsy move that was all about the "win this year before Bonds leaves" strategy.
I think that was the wrong strategy but I admire the gutsiness of it. And I must admit this--it is these sorts of gutsy moves that led him to be one of the most successful GMs until it all fell apart when Bonds retired.
Sheer bullshit for which you have no evidence whatsoever.
Sabean spent $90M in 2005 (75 wins), $90M in 2006 (76 wins) and $90M in 2007 (71 wins). Those salaries were between 6th and 12th overall. A legitimate contender needs to be able to win 90 games, and if the Giants were such a team, they would have won 85 without Barry one of those years.
There was nothing gutsy about Sabean's strategy. He simply has no idea how to evaluate talent, particularly hitters.
That's why he was stupid when he was with the Yankees and recommended that they get Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada, because he doesn't know hitters.
Also, because he doesn't know hitters, he took a team that was 11th, 8th, and 9th in the NL (out of 14 teams and all with Bonds on the team), all years below league average for runs scored, and in 1997-2004, the Giants were in the top 3 5 times, 4th once, 5th once, 6th once, all years above league average.
Yeah, he don't know how to build an offense, we weren't first once.
San Francisco Giants:
2009: 26th in runs scored
2008: 29th in runs scored
2007: 29th in runs scored
2006: 23rd in runs scored
2005: 29th in runs scored
All evidence points to Brian Sabean not knowing how to build an offense. Surely a team that finishes 29th in Runs Scored in 2005...And then finishes 29th *two* and *three* years later is not a team operated by someone who knows how to build even a league-average offense.
Who really cares what Sabean did 20 years ago? He is incompetent *today*. Ned Colletti wrote "You Gotta Have Heart: Dallas Green's Rebuilding of the Cubs" in 1985. Maybe we should bring Dallas Green in to replace Bochy because clearly he had the skills back in '84.
I don't recall Sabean ever saying anything about 3rd round picks being of more value than 1st or 2nd round picks. When did he say those?
http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20040130&content_id=632454&vkey=news_sf&fext=.jsp&c_id=sf
nick_gee: Can you elaborate on the reason for signing Michael Tucker just hours before the deadline for offering players arbitration expired, thus forfeiting this year's first-round draft pick. Was it a mistake? Or was it just a way of saving money?
Sabean: We were able to use the first-round draft pick money to apply to our Major League payroll and figured, by where we pick in the first round, we can get the same type of player or pitcher for half the price with our second selection.
That's 2004 he's talking about, where he *intentionally* didn't have a pick until 70th - he could have signed Tucker a day later and had the pick. In 2005, convinced of the brilliance of his idea, he signed free agents early so that he didn't pick until 132nd. Sabean was convinced that even 2nd round picks weren't worth the money.
The strategy was wrong; no other team followed suit; and Sabean uses all of his picks these days.
Barton, you are right that we should examine Sabean's "maverick" style, but as gdog pointed out, we have done so all along. But, even if we give him credit for a good plan, he's not doing a very good job with that plan.
I think Sabean is being rewarded for the team finishing above .500. Since he's the one responsible for the streak of losing records, and since he didn't manage to fix the biggest problem the team had (offense), I'd say he has failed. He has proven over the years that he doesn't understand the basics of valuation of offense. What has he been up too? Like all of us, he wanted to improve the offense. The problem is, his solution involved signing Edgar Renteria, Freddy Sanchez, and Ryan Garko, getting lucky with Juan Uribe, and hoping the Panda had a good year. I understand what Sabean is trying to do ... it's just that he's so bad at it.
Although I have to give him credit for being such a maverick, he thinks you can win with crappy-hitting first basemen.
"He has proven over the years that he doesn't understand the basics of valuation of offense. What has he been up too? Like all of us, he wanted to improve the offense."
This is the real debate--although I don't see anyone engaging it. Clearly Sabes does not value offense in the same way you do -- and you haven't proven to my satisfaction that he is wrong. In fact it seems quite clear that improving the offense WAS NOT his priority; I was not surprised at all that the most significant offseason acquisition was Randy Johnson, which was an attempt not to one-sidedly value pitching over offense.
Is Sabes wrong? Perhaps, but ObsessiveGiantCompulsive has some impressive analysis on his site that suggests pitching is the dominant factor in postseason play.
If you don't get to the post-season, that analysis isn't worth the paper it's written on. Yes, a good pitching staff can make up for other deficiencies in a short series and dominate. However, it cannot mask those deficiencies in the regular season....which is why the Giants managment has failed repeatedly.
The draw back to this read explain how he gets so little for the young pitchers he has swapped in the last 3 trades he made thinking the Giants were contenders ( The 2 this July & Hillenbrand.
As a counselor in a Psychiatric Hospital, I can use all of your suicidal declarations to admit you under 5150...but only before I propogate my own demise by hanging myself with a rope weaved of the baseball cards of Randy Winn, Aaron Rowand, Edgar Renteria, and Bruce Bochy. If Sputnik was responsible for, conservatively, 10 losses then he cost this staff a playoff run and should be run out of town, regardless of the team's improvements. He didn't have much to work with, which is why Sabes should be gone too, but his ineptitude has been glaring. Ralph Barbieri would have had this team in the World Series.
Warm bath. Sharp razor.
Wow, really? First winning season in years and we're throwing the leadership under the bus NOW? In only just Year 2 of the rebuild?
For me, the Giants exceeded expectations and there seems to be a functional plan in place, so let's see where this goes. You have to consider FLew, Winn and Rowand -- whatever you think about those guys -- if they even hit at their 2008 level we're probably in the playoffs right now.
ELM, at the outset of the season, you had a standard that you were going to follow when it came to Brian Sabean's fate:
"Sabean haters don't want to hear it, but he's done enough the past year to give himself six months more probation. If he can draft another Madison Bumgarner in June and pull off another Ryan Vogelsong-ish for Jason Schmidt-ish trade or two in July, then I'll be the first to open the door to his biodiesel-fueled limo when he steps to the curb to sign his contract extension. As ZZ Top and their guest singer Janet Jackson once said: He's been bad, he's been good, so it comes down to this: What has Brian Sabean done for me lately?"
http://www.leftymalo.com/2009/04/theres_only_one_question_as_we.php#more
We can discuss Sanchez and Garko all winter long, but I think in the end it comes down to that: Sabes and Bochy kept us in the race for 158 games. You want to blow up CentCom NOW?
I don't agree.
Hate to inform you of this but Sabean has been rebuilding this club since the 2002 season ended. He doesn't get a pass in my book for 13 years of failure because this team overachieved their talent level. He really needs to be gone.
And the Giants did not start rebuilding after 2002 - that's nice (and desperate) revisionist history. Re-configuring the team, sure, but most people term rebuilding to be the situation where a team is losing and thus should be acquiring young players who will return the team to their prior winning ways (or achieve it for the first time for the newbies).
Sure, they restructured the team after Kent left, but if you are going to use that as a demarker for when rebuilding happens, then you are saying the Giants rebuilt when they acquired Burks, they changed 3 starters and 2 starting pitchers in 1999. Heck, you may as well say a team is rebuilding almost every year there are changes, that is rebuilding too.
And 13 years of failure? He turned around a severely losing team in 1997 and kept the team winning to 2004. That is not failure.
If you are going to use winning the World Series as the litmus test of failure, then you have a heck of a lot of failures every year. I don't think that is a sensible way to define success and failure.
Pehaps you're satisfied with mediocrity. A lot of people are not.
Getting on base generates runs.
Runs generate wins.
The have the lowest OBP in the league.
Sabean has failed at building an offense more than he has succeeded at building a staff. I see no reason to reward that type of performance.
I'm going to go out the old fashioned way - having an affair with the wife of a police officer.
Sabean must be blackmailing Giants management otherwise there really is no arguement that makes sense for keeping him. I was livid 2 years ago when Mcgowan handed him a 2 year extension and here we are 2 years later and really nothing has changed with this team. We overachieved this year and without improvement which Sabes has proven he knows nothing about, next year and the following will be very similar.
I think the best way to deal with this is for someone to find out where Sabean lives and we put together a schedule of TPing, Flaming dog poo on the doorstep, spray painting, and any other annoyances we can muster performed on a daily basis until he leaves town.
And how close were we to reaching the playoffs this year?
Philadelphia run differential: +116
St. Louis: +99
LA: +163
Colorado: +95
Giants: +42
So the Giants were 53 runs behind the WC and 76 runs behind the average for the four playoff teams. So if Sabean had signed Mark Teixeira instead of playing Ishikawa, Garko and Aurilia at 1B, they would have made the playoffs for sure. Maybe all they needed was Adam LaRoche. Nothing special, just one of the top 10-15 first basemen in the league would have done it.
But it wasn't "close".
Well, I'm happy. I think everyone knows my position: Sabean deserves another couple of years to see what he can do with the team.
This is just a redux of two years ago when Sabean got his current contract: a lot of unhappy people grousing about it, I'm happy about it.
And the Giants have progressed a lot in those two years. Rebuilding is not a pretty process. Being impatient with the results only get you into a cycle of rebulid/destroy every few years. Many of you were clamoring to trade Cain for hitting; how many of you would regret that today?
What most of the people who think that a trade would solve the Giants problems forget is that this is a zero sum game. You get a better hitter by trading Cain, well, we would not have had a pitcher who could have took his place, both Sadowski and Martinez fizzled at replacing Randy Johnson, let alone Matt Cain. So we would have made the trade and probably end up right around where we are today.
We are what we are. There were no great offensive pieces on the free agent market (Teixiera only wanted to be on the east coast), so Sabean did the best he could by signing the guys he did. You can't get blood out of a stone. And you can't trade your way into more either, without a lot of luck or a stupid or desperate GM to trade with.
Sabean has rebuilt the team well. We are that much closer this year, and we have Posey and Bumgarner soon to join the team and improve it even more. We also have other nice young players who might help out too, Bowker, Bond, Noonan, Kieschnick, Neal, Pill, Crawford, Adrianza. I think we are on track to return to being a Top Dog team for a long time again.
I think most of us are going to have to try to get tickets for admission to the fantasy world that you live in. Unfortunately, for now, we are going to have to endure more grizzled veterans on the downsides of their careers that have plenty of gamerness.
Boof should keep up--or at least try to analyze and understand the strategy that he is against! The Giants are very unlikely to buy up veteran hitters--that certainly was their strategy three years ago but it certainly is not the strategy this year or next (Renteria was simply plugging a whole and an attempt to make lemonade out of lemons).
And what, pray tell, is the strategy employed by the Giants? It appears to be "build a pitching staff and ignore hitting."
As for grizzled veterans, here's who got the most ABs in August: Ben Molina (34), Randy Winn (35), Edgar Renteria (33), Aaron Rowand (31), Freddy Sanchez (31) and the young Ryan Garko (28) and Eugenio Velez (27)...Along with Pablo Sandoval, the only player in that group the Giants should bother keeping.
Did you just claim that John Bowker, Age 26, with a major-league OBP of .293 in almost 400 plate appearances, is "a nice young player who might help out"? I knew a San Francisco Giants first baseman with a .293 OBP once...His name was Lance Niekro.
First a shout out to ELM for providing excellent reading material all season long.
It's important for fans to be passionate and demanding but there is also value in patience. Our team has until recently been constructed with a "win now with Barry" mentality. That philosophy built excellent teams and even took us to the world series but ultimately it was not sustainable (no surprises there). This is the hangover, and thus far it's been pretty mild.
Sabes seems to be valuing youth more than in the past and regarding hitting, top draft choices have been spent on hitters recently. I've seen enough progress to wait another season or two and see if he can turn it around.
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