That's an odd post title to write as the 18-12 Giants kick off a big early-season series against the team just ahead of them in the standings. After all, things are going so well, and the good times are fed by the management's two great strengths.
First and foremost, the club knows how to turn young pitchers into very good young pitchers who stay relatively healthy. Not just Lincecum and Cain. I'm talking about revamping Jonathan Sanchez, drafting Brian Wilson in the 24th round, and turning guys like Romo and Runzler into bullpen weapons. Pitching: It's what the Giants do.
The team is also quite good at finding marginal veterans on the scrap heap, dusting them off and getting good performances from them. Juan Uribe and Andres Torres are flawed but legitimate players who are more than useful when put in the right situations. No one but the Giants saw that coming. Kudos.
But in the last couple days all the team's maddening managerial flaws have been exposed at once. Over the weekend Brian Sabean opened his mouth and a load of ill-advised horsepuckey flew out. He was trying to justify the team's reluctance to bring up Buster Posey from AAA -- a reluctance that right now is understandable. But Sabean said Buster's excellent AAA numbers don't mean much because "Triple-A baseball isn't very good." (Reported originally by Baggs, by the way.) "I'm going to tell you that right now. Especially from a pitching standpoint. Anybody who can pitch is in the big leagues. Most of the prospect arms, the stuff that really can neutralize hitters, are at Double-A. You look at what some of our (struggling hitting) prospects are doing there. So these guys (like Posey) are facing Four-A pitching, and you better have a lot of people see 'em at different times and write their reports and almost have a straw poll of private ballots. Because I don't know what it means anymore, in the PCL. It's almost like years ago."
Even if it were true -- and former Giant farmhand Garrett Broshius tells us why it isn't (link tip from Grant at MCC) -- it's just plain dumb and insulting to say it out loud. Broshius tells us that, too. Broshius goes on to get to the crux of the Giants' (and particularly Sabean's) habit of saying inappropriate things in public. I've been carping on this for years. Broshius writes:
Sabean could've said a number of things in defending his decision to keep Buster Posey in the minor leagues. He could've said Posey needed more time to hone his glove work. He could've said that he was happy with how both of his big league catchers were playing, as both are hitting well. Both of these things would've been believable, and they would've been benign statements.
Again, I don't know the guy at all, so I can't vouch for his mental stability, and I can't tell you whether or not he has a proclivity for listening to Michael Buble. But I can tell you that this was not a smart statement.
Another chicken came home to roost today. Mark DeRosa said he's going to have his wrist examined. Remember, he had off-season surgery, and wrists are notoriously difficult to heal. A prime-time Jayson Werth hurt his wrist with L.A., and it took him two years to recover fully. Mark DeRosa is 35 years old. The Giants signed him to a two-year, $12 million contract. When the deal went through in December, the qualifying caveat was "if he has recovered from his wrist injury." Seeing how everyone who ever played "Operation" knew that the wrist injury was a caution flag, we could assume the Giants had done their due diligence. Kicked the tires. Consulted the finest physicians in the land.
Then again, we've been bitten in the ass by those assumptions before. Remember this? The Giants have made a recent habit of acquiring veterans at a premium with screamingly obvious physical problems. Seeing how their pitching staff has stayed pretty darn healthy the past few years with Dave Groeschner at the helm, I'm going out on a limb to guess the medical staff isn't missing things such as Freddy Sanchez's bum knee that kept him out of the Giants-Pirates series...in San Francisco...just before the Giants traded for him. No, I have to assume the front office is overriding whatever cautionary reports the medical staff hands over.
The third major flaw is talent evaluation based on small sample sizes. Fred Lewis has driven the point home by getting off to a nice start in Toronto (which in itself is a small sample size, but bear with me), then tweeting thinly veiled swipes at the Giants. (Not exactly the high road, but bear with me some more.) I argued with gusto all through spring that Fred deserved a roster spot. Perhaps the bridge had burned too far and goodbye was the only word left, but the decision to keep Lewis over Velez seemed obvious. But no. The small sample sizes of Velez's brief flashy stints, and the promise of his speed, I guess, conspired in Eugenio's favor. Fred Lewis is not a world-beater. He would not be a starting outfielder on many major league teams. But, boy, would he be useful right about now with Mark DeRosa's wrist potentially a very big problem. Then again, who ever would have seen that coming?
