Great start to the second half so far, no?
…. “We couldn’t have had a worse start than what we had and we know it,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “To get swept here at home … we’re better than this. There’s no way that should happen. “At this point, we keep fighting and, hopefully, you get ticked off and do something about it.”
Umm, Bruce…. You’re not better than this. This is how good you are. You suck.
…. The entire lineup managed one earned run in five innings against Brett Tomko, a former Giants starter with a 1-7 record and a 6.18 ERA heretofore.
See? You suck. This team you are trotting out there is garbage.
UPDATE: Joe Sheehan agrees with me:
…. Somehow, the idea has taken hold that Brian Sabean isn’t responsible for the state of the Giants, that it’s the need to keep Barry Bonds around that has tied his hands, as if having the only guy in baseball with a .500 OBP (offer not valid at the moment) hamstrings the team and the GM. Barry Bonds is a bargain at his current price, not just for business reasons but for baseball ones. The real problem is that Sabean’s decisions outside of keeping Bonds—especially this past winter—are the reasons why the Giants are awful.
…. Sabean brought in Rich Aurilia to play first base, for reasons passing understanding; he’s at .291 (OBP). He signed Bengie Molina to a three-year deal; he’s at .295. He gave Ray Durham, who’s 2006 screamed “late-career power fluke,” a two-year deal; .320. He signed Dave Roberts to a two-year deal; .304. He brought back Pedro Feliz, who’s just an awful player; .269.
The Giants are lousy because Brian Sabean built a team around Barry Bonds that had almost no choice but to fail. He valued service time more than he did getting on base, and for that, he has a .440 team and a new contract extension.
Yup. Thanks to Jim Adams for the tip.
Jim, you could argue that Kevin Towers is a horrible GM, the Padres haven’t really developed any legitimate positional player from their own farm system in how long? Certainly haven’t while he has been there. They even sucked for quite a few years, until the past 2 or 3 years, they weren’t so good. From 99-03 they finished 4th or 5th. And that’s after going to the World Series in 1998. He turned it around, and I don’t think anyone would ever think Towers is a better GM then Sabean in terms of talent evaluation. If not for the lucky trade of Osutka for Chris Young (who wasn’t highly touted at the time) and Adrian Gonzalez, the Padres still probably wouldn’t be very good. Now they’re a playoff contender, and two time defending division champion. And on paper their team is even worse then the Giants. I still have no idea how they continue to win, having the worst offense in the NL, yet their pitching staff is so damn good they seem to find ways to win in spite of that.
The reason why the media is saying Sabean is not to blame, because people within the game of baseball know of Magowan and Baer’s influence. It’s not because the media likes him. If anything I would the media probably doesn’t love Sabean, because his relations with the media haven’t ever been friendly.
Actually, where Towers excels is in finding useful bullpen pitchers for cheap. Heath Bell was a giveaway from the Mets (traded for 2 guys who aren’t major-leaguers). Linebrink was DFA’d by the Astros. Meredith was a throw-in on the Mirabelli trade. Cameron (who has a 0.31 era) was a rule 5 pickup. Ring was part of the Bell deal. Brocail was a cast-off.
Towers has understood that a small-market team can only win within the margins (- i.e., finding value players in the bullpen and constructing a team suitable for a pitcher’s park). The best place to find marginal value is in the pen (and bench). While Sabean has been wasting his time with the Matt herges and Armando benitez’s of the world, Towers has constructed a contending team with a payroll that is the 2nd lowest in the NL West by making smart decisions about the bullpen and the bench.
And also by not retaining Mr. Bochy, the worst in-game manager in baseball. But that’s another story.
“And on paper their team is even worse then the Giants.”
Interesting. I’ll take Barret over Molina (and his sub-300 obp) at catcher, Gonzalez over Aurilia at first, Greene (most defensive metrics have Greene as one of the top 2-3 SS in baseball, and he has driven in more than twice as many runs as Omar) over Vizquel at short and Kouzmanoff over Feliz at 3rd.
Bonds is obviously better than any outfielder the Padres (or anyone else) has, but Cameron is way better than Roberts and Giles is better than Winn. How exactly are the Giants better on paper?”
As a Padres fan I’m very happy about Sabeabn’s extension. A GM who doesn’t value OBP and signs guys like Dave Roberts and Rich Aurilia and somehow signs BOTH Sweeney and Klesko is a fine GM indeed.
Hobbes2, I’m actually sympathetic to your point of view. In fact right after I posted my third set of negative comments here at OBM yesterday I said to myself, OK, enough already. I nearly posted again to state that I was probably being overly critical, then decided this would just draw attention to myself. But somebody noticed anyway…
That being said, I’m not sold on Sabean as the guy to solve our problems. Yes it’s true that the Padres are succeeding without a great farm system, and that the Giants had several good years under Sabean before the farm system’s failures destroyed the team. But I don’t see that as much comfort going forward.
It’s like, if you inherit several million dollars but then squander it because you’re bad with money, it doesn’t work to say “Well, I survived as long as I had my inheritance, so I’ll still be fine now that the money is gone.” It doesn’t work that way. Brian Sabean inherited the best ballplayer in the world, plus an incredibly valuable trading chip (Matt Williams), plus good young players in Bill Mueller and Rich Aurilia. Now all that is gone, and I see Sabean and the Giants heading towards skid row.
But there I go, being negative again. Maybe Sabean is better than I think.
From Glenn Dickey’s SF Examiner article today:
“The aging of the Giants has caused local media types to develop a theory: That Sabean has had his hands tied by Magowan and chief operating officer Larry Baer. What rubbish. Sabean has been on board with this philosophy from the start, including the decision to build the team around Bonds…”
“Sabean’s decisions have become increasingly erratic — and they are his decisions. I have had multiple one-on-one conversations with the Giants’ principal decision makers since 1992 and the pattern has always been the same: Though Magowan is more involved than most owners, it is Sabean who makes the decisions, with Magowan’s approval, which is usually automatic.”
OK, that is all, I promise. If I spend anymore time today posting my wife’ll get mad, and if you knew her you’d understand that wouldn’t be good for anybody…
Dickey is right. All three are equally worthless. A team effort. “Team Stooge”. Build a team with player recognition, in spite of player uselessness. Hope to stay close in the weak-suck West and depend on the wine/brie menagerie to continue to pony up for season tix.
Turn out the lights, the party’s over.
I’m just curious because it seems like Magowan Baer are getting an awful lot of credit on this topic.
I’m not thrilled with Sabean and most of his decisions lately but I have a hard time believing that he’s the reason for this situation. Just looking at other Bay Area sports teams the bulk of their problems are the owners. The Raiders, the 49ers and until Cohan totally stopped being involved the Warriors. All of those organizations have hands on owners who have proven they should just sign the checks and stay the hell out of the way.
Magowan forces his will on the smaller owners in the group, using his percentage of the team to get what he wants all the time. He is a hands on owner. How hands on I don’t know but he’s certainly not mailing checks from another part of the country.
We’ve seen it time and time again, the Raiders being a prime example, never fire your GM or head coach-manager unless you’ve got a serious line on someone better. Even if Sabean is as responsible as he’s being accused of do you really believe Magowan and Baer would actually hire someone better? There’s a dozen or so former GM’s who are candidates and most of them are former for a reason.
Well, unless Sabean spent high draft picks on Linden, Torcato, Niekro, Ishikawa, etc. because Magowan told him “draft position players who can’t play baseball,” I don’t see who else you can blame. And I doubt Sabean made the AJ trade because Magowan told him “trade three good young pitchers for one mediocre catcher. We find the season is more challenging if we start with a huge handicap.”
It’s a simple game. If you win, the GM deserves a fair share of the credit. And if you lose for several years in a row and there is no realistic prospect of improvement, the GM deserves his fair share of blame. Why should Sabean be exempted from the same rules that apply to other GMs?
I find it incredible disturbing that not only is the media licking sabean’s boots, they are also saying that basically this team has sucked cause of Bonds and his contract. As if having the greatest player of all time is some a detriment to your team. Yet then they are pushing for A-rod who has never been as good as Bonds and whose contract will cost us a hell of a lot more. I have no idea why anyone reads the regular media anymore. Its pure junk.
gregory, my guess is that members of the local media like Sabean personally, while they don’t much like Magowan and (especially) Baer. So they cook up this stuff about how Sabean has been “shackled” by having Bonds on the team, and more generally by Magowan’s alleged interference.
I’ve been reflecting lately on why the local media is so illogical about this issue, and more generally on why so many sports writers have their heads stuck permanently down a rabbit hole. My guess is that sports writers who are good enough to get local newspaper jobs but NOT good enough to move up to a paper in a bigger market (LA, Chicago, NY) are those who can either write entertainingly or think clearly, but not both. So we get folks like Jenkins, Ratto, and Ostler, who write well but who seem almost allergic to logic, and we also have people like Henry Schulman and Glenn Dickey who are much more logical (IMO), but whose writing doesn’t always sparkle. There’s also Gwenn Knapp who is…a very nice person, I have no doubt. Anyway It’d be nice to have someone locally who was both really smart AND a terrific writer, but then again, someone with those qualities would soon be moving on to a bigger market.
Joe Sheehan has an awsome analysis of the Brian Sabean extension on the Baseball Prospectus web site today. It’s for subscribers only, so I’ll only post 3-4 sentences. Here goes:
“Giants extend Brian Sabean’s contract. Are you kidding me?… The real problem is that Sabean’s decisions outside of keeping Bonds—especially this past winter—are the reasons why the Giants are awful…The Giants are lousy because Brian Sabean built a team around Barry Bonds that had almost no choice but to fail. He valued service time more than he did getting on base, and for that, he has a .440 team and a new contract extension.”
Amen. Why the local sports media keeps licking Sabean’s boots, I have no idea.
Getting swept is a good (but still agonizing) thing.
Should dispell any lingering front office notion that this team is anything other than a stinking corpse that needs a visit to Satriales.
[...] Original post by John [...]