Sorry to be so Yankee-centric lately. I’ve been in NY visiting family for most of the last three months, and it’s hard not to pay attention to all of the hoopla. Of course, it hasn’t helped that the Giants have essentially done nothing for the whole time I’ve been gone, other than to make an obviously ridiculous offer to Greg Maddux, one that took about ten minutes for him to reject.
Anyway, I was over at Steve Shelby’s Giants Diary, and I found this Bruce Jenkins column in which Bruce writes the following about the Giant’s GM Brian Sabean:
This is a man, remember, who didn’t make one false move with the Giants — save, perhaps, the Marvin Benard contract — until the unfortunate sequence of pitching deals involving Russ Ortiz, Damian Moss, Kurt Ainsworth and Sidney Ponson. Even at that, Sabean’s record is phenomenal.
Sabean’s record is phenomenal?!?! Phenomenal?!?!
That is, quite frankly, preposterous. As I’ve stated before, Brian Sabean has presided over some of the worst, unluckiest, poorly timed; trades, signings and roster moves imaginable. Marvin Benard is exhibit A in the alphabet of monstrosities. JT Snow’s albatross of a contract, (4 years and $24 million dollars for 41 total home runs!?!), the ridiculous contract’s given to Neifi Perez and Shawon Dunston, the horrible decision to pay Kirk Reuter (27 starts, 10-5 record, 4.53 ERA) instead of Russ Ortiz (34 starts, 21-7 record, 3.81 ERA), trading Jesse Foppert (editor’s note: many of my readers reminded me that it Kurt Ainsworth, not Jesse Foppert. D’oh!) for Sidney Ponson, allowing Jeff Kent to leave…. Phenomenal?!?! What about the contract he gave to Livan Hernandez, a player who refused to assume the mantle of ace, no matter how many times he handed it to him? Not to mention Damian Moss.
Has Sabean made some good, even great moves? Absolutely. Figuring out how to keep Barry, magnificent. He deserves credit for a lot of really smart decisions, no doubt. Is it tougher to work within a $90 million dollar budget than a $200 million dollar one? Absolutely. He’s made a lot of great moves; I am not saying he hasn’t.
But he’s made as many bad decisions as a GM can get away with, moves that would have almost certainly cost him his job if he didn’t have Superman to make him look smart. That’s a fact. To say that he’s only made one bad move in eight years is absurd. Look it up.
