The backtalk keeps on keeping on. I’ll just add some of the things that have been running around in my head….
I sometimes wonder if Sabean isn’t trying to prove that he’s smarter than all of us, by building a team that is, in essence, the exact opposite of what today’s “experts” say you are supposed to look for, hitters who can get on-base, and who aren’t obviously on the downside of their careers. The list of mediocrities that have worn the orange and black the last four seasons is simply beyond belief, and virtually all of them share two things, a sub .330 OBP, and an AARP card.
Besides the horrible free agents we’ve collected, since Sabean nabbed Schmidt from the Pirates, he hasn’t made one truly successful trade. The Double Play AJ deal will haunt the team for a decade. Jeremy Accardo for Shea Hillebrand? ‘Nuff said.
He (and Magowan) signed Felipe Alou after they decided that Dusty Baker was too good, and taking away too much credit from them. At the time, I thought he was the best of the known choices, but in hindsight; it’s clear that Alou cost the Giants dearly. He destroyed the careers of Kirk Reuter, Jesse Foppert, Kurt Ainsworth, Jerome Williams, and Jason Schmidt. Schmidt was probably the most costly. Schmidt’s never been the same after that 143-pitch, 17-strikeout, 1-hitter in May of 2004. That month, Schmidt started 5 games, went 47 innings, allowed 23 hits, had 54 strikeouts, and a 1.53 ERA. Since then, he’s had a monthly ERA below 3.00 just one single time, and he’s been on and off the DL constantly.
What Alou did to Reuter beggars belief. Everyone in baseball knew that Woody was a 100-pitch pitcher. Everyone. Everyone on the Giants did, too. Krukow talked about it all the time. Alou let him go 110-plus four times in the first half of ’04, including his second start of the season. During that stretch, Sabean was putting the final touches on Woody’s $18 million dollar extension –one that he wasn’t even up for, by the way– and when the dust settled, we had another player being paid millions of dollars to watch TV.
How about the two seasons the Giants paid Robb Nen to play golf? Who made the mistake of giving a 34-year old closer not one, but two player option years at the end of his contract? Who’s on the hook for that? How about the absurd $24 million dollar deal Sabean gave to JT –saves twenty games a year with his glove– Snow, one of the worst offensive players at his position for the duration of his career, a career in which the Giants overpaid him by about 50%? Who made that mistake?
How about the $27 million we gave to Moises Alou? The rap on Alou was that he was a formidable player when he was on the field, but he couldn’t stay on the field because he was too old. Sabean made him our starting right fielder and he played less than 220 games for us, because he couldn’t stay on the field due to the fact that he was too old.
Remember the Edgardo Alfonzo deal? 4 years, $24 million dollars for a player that the entire world of baseball knew was finished due to a lingering back injury. $24 million for a guy who failed to post a .400 slugging percentage during his three seasons here. Then we gave him away and ate the rest of his contract. And you know what’s funny? Alfonzo would be the second best hitter on the team if he was here right now. At least he knew how to work a walk.
Deivi Cruz, Michael Tucker, for crying out loud, the best signings Sabean’s made in the last four seasons are Kenny Lofton and Marquis Grissom. We got one good, solid season out of David Bell, and somehow avoided signing him to an albatross deal. But even that was five years ago.
I can’t stop writing about Neifi Perez, which had to be one of the absolute worst signings I can imagine. The only thing that Sabean has in his defense is that Perez is still in baseball; which means that he’s not the only GM stupid enough to think hustle and a good attitude deserves playing time.
The current state of baseball knowledge stands on the premise that on-base percentage and power are the most important attributes a hitter can have; and that strikeouts are the clearest indicator of a pitchers ability to succeed. It’s also clear –and has been for twenty years now– that 25-year old players are a better bet to improve than 35-year old players. Sabean appears to ignore all of this as he builds a team.
He even seems to ignore himself.
After telling us for years that Snow’s defense made him worth more than his offense said he was; he goes out and signs a 35-year old shortstop to play first. After telling us that Mike Matheny’s glove and game-calling skills made him valuable even though he couldn’t get on base 30% of the time; he goes out and signs one of the worst defensive catchers in the game.
I fail to see how any of these shortcomings are going to resolve themselves. I fail to see how Sabean could possibly right this ship. Unless the Giants get really, really lucky, they are going to be a really, really bad team, for a really, really long time. The sad part is that this was predictable, and preventable, I mean, I only wrote about it three years ago:
And another thing. I’ve said it before and it seems I need to say it again. Brian Sabean’s track record is about fifty-fifty. The simple fact that the Giants have had Barry Bonds being the single most productive player in the history of the game during the entire tenure of Brian Sabean cannot be discounted whenever Sabean’s winning percentage is touted as evidence of his greatness. Bonds’ overwhelming abilities have made every decision Sabean’s made look fantastic.
But the bottom line is that Sabean has made more than his share of bad decisions. JT Snow’s big contract was a predictably bad decision, as was Marvin Benard’s. These two contracts were so expensive, the Giants were unable to afford to keep Ellis Burks, someone who was like five times as valuable as Snow and Benard. The backloaded deal given to Robb Nen, the extension given to Kirk Rueter, I mean, these are expensive, costly mistakes.
The trades he’s made have turned out well in some cases, and really poorly in others. Many times I’ve read about how he bucked the trend in trading Matt Williams for Jeff Kent, but that deal, absent the sentiment, was an obvious upgrade for the Giants and could hardly be thought of as some sleight of hand. At the time of the deal, the 31-year old Williams had missed almost half of the teams games the previous two seasons, was due for a new contract, and was a huge risk for the kind of deal he was seeking. Kent, on the other hand, was younger and had a huge upside. This is the kind of deal a big-time GM makes to improve his team.
Anyone remember the next big-time trade the Giants have made? Who was the next younger better guy we got for a veteran in the decline phase of his career?
The next one was Schmidt, and that’s pretty much it.
Girl Sucking Dicks…
Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me
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Sports Illustrated…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…
Sports News and Resources…
Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me
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Cum On Her Tits…
Sorry, it just sounds like a crazy idea for me
…
Yay Barry has 753!
Gee… looks like the sports media was WRONG when he had a 1/2 week slump and they basically said he was over and done with. Idiots…
yeah i loved seeing the speculation on espn. is the 43 year old bonds done because he hasn’t hit a hr in what was it 35 at bats or something. Magglio Ordonez, frontrunner for the AL mvp, recently busted out of a much longer hr slump than that and no one questioned his careers lifespan…granted he’s a double machine…but basically yeah, barry tells the whole world to shove it up their ass very very soon and I can’t fucking wait. As an east coast fan i’ve been hearing about how Arod will break barrys record in 7 years a whole bunch and i’m fucking sick of it, its not even barrys record yet and the haters are taking it away from him. All i can say is go barry i hope you hit 800 and that Arod takes a linedrive off the shin next skankees game and his careers is derailed so espn can once again eat their own horseshit that they pump out religiously 24/7
The Indians have filed a protest of Neifi’s 25 game suspension.
Thank God our socialized sports leagues don’t have relegation. Not only would the Giants be relegated this year, but they’d stay down for a few years before they got their shit in order.
I have absolutely no personal experience with it (even as a fan), but I think relegation would bring a fantastic element to our professional sports leagues. Imagine giving the New Orleans Zephyrs an opportunity to try their luck in the NL West.
Or maybe just make the NL the bottom tier league and the AL the top.
Wait, what? It already is?
(I kid, I kid.)
(Sorta.)
not that i don’t think sabean has been dropping the ball consistently for the past few years, but doesn’t this seem to be building to a new start? It seems like all of these old bums we have now disgracing the team are all free agents within the same timeframe. I feel like Magowan has made Sabean keep a “competitive” team around barry just to not be seen as running his meal ticket out of town. I don’t agree with this because lets face it. Any team of 24 year old scrub minor leaguers could put up the shit offensive numbers our vets are putting up. It just seems like they wanted to make sure Barry has people his own age around him for his final years. I looked at the Giants heading into this season and said yeah, we’re gonna suck bad, but that we were clearing the roster for 2 years from now. This blows but maybe this is the vision Sabean has sold Magowan on. Iunno, I’m hoping that in 2 years we still won’t be seeing the likes of feliz and fucking booty ass dave roberts on the roster, because by then we definitely won’t have a bonds caliber star to surround the team with. I can’t possibly see Sabean as wanting to field a team of entirely awful 35 year olds with no legit star…however if he is he should probably have his balls stomped in because he’s ruining my summer by making me look at our pitchers routinely put up winning lines only to lose or get ND’s because our offense can’t put up more than 2 runs a night
Which of course makes no sense… and old guy like Bonds would probably do better around a bunch of younger players – they might put a little hop in his step, and we also know that Bonds enjoys working with young hitters and helping them with their swings. Who better to teach your young players than one of the best hitters of all time? What a waste.
Actually Bonds has always got along best with veterans, just look at all of his buddies on recent teams (all grizzled vets) Dunston, Eric Davis, Grissom, Dave Roberts, Aurilia, Sweeney, etc. I hardly ever catch him joking around or even sitting near a young player on the bench. Its always with some guy around his age. Also younger players aren’t going to be able to protect Bonds in the lineup, as flawed as the philosophy the team has put together is, would you rather have a veteran (who at least at one time during his career was a good player and is still capable of mediocre play but occasional good streaks) bat in front of and behind Barry in the lineup, or a “young” player like Todd Linden, Dan Ortmeier, Fred Lewis or some other scrub from our farm system? I’d rather have Klesko or Durham, even though they suck ass.
Having said that I think its even worse having EXPECTED this to happen. This team needs such a bad housecleaning its not even funny. Get rid of the coaches, players and front office execs all in one fell swoop. I’d love to get rid of Magowan too, if only Larry Ellison would step up to buy them. At least with him we’d never get lame ass excuses about how “we can’t afford to go after so and so” and then turn around 3 years later and sign shitty Barry Zito to 126 million dollars. And offer the overrated Carlos Lee and Alfonso Soriano MORE $ then they were offered to play out west. What a joke.
I never thought I could see a franchise become more inept then the one the 49ers had under John York in his first few years as an owner, or then the Raiders under Al Davis the past few years, but apparently I was wrong. Its obvious they don’t care at all about putting a quality product on the field.
Hobbes2d, you haven’t seen Bonds recently hanging with Fred Lewis or working with Ortmeier on his swing? I believe ESPN showed him working with Ortmeier during the Bonds on Bonds era.
I think Magowan has been a good owner for this franchise, money has not held them back as much IMO as the use of the money given, and that is Sabean all the way. There’s been way too many dollars tossed down the drain with little return on the field.
Bonds salary over all his years with the Giants has been one of the biggest bargains in baseball. They’ve done a poor job capitalizing on having a centerpiece.
Which leads me to believe that if they ever actually had a legitimate chance to get someone like A-Rod, this recent history of personnel decisions will come back to haunt them. 4-5 teams will be in the hunt for him and I have to imagine the dollars will be close among all. The deciding factor after that, for A-Rod and his agent, will be which team can build around him after they’ve paid his king’s ransom of a salary.
Giants and Cubs would seem to fall back in this regard, behind the Yankees, RSox, Angles and perhaps the WSox. Just my $0.02.
I agree that Magowan has been a good owner. You’ll notice that the writers who claim that Magowan has “forced” Sabean to build around Bonds NEVER explain how this has hurt the team, or what Sabean by himself would have done differently. BTW if your answer is that Sabean would have “played the youngsters,” that’s a laugh: the Giants’ young “prospects” from the past few years have been guys like Cody Ransom, Linden, Torcato, Niekro, etc., who couldn’t play. If Sabean had relied on them we would have lost 100 games the past two years.
Bonds has said repeatedly he enjoys teaching younger players… you can still have a mix on the team, so he has some veterans to hang out with, but you don’t need ALL veterans and I’m sure Bonds would agree with that himself.
Also, I think you’re placing far too much blame on McGowan… centering the team around possibly the best player of all time makes sense, and he gave Sabean plenty of money to work with otherwise – it’s not his fault Sabean did a horrible job. However, it WILL be his fault when Sabean continues to do a bad job… the extension is ridiculous.
As for John York, I agree his early years of ownership were pathetic and I was pissed when he refused to sell the 49ers to Larry Ellison; however, to his credit, he quickly learned he needed to back off and hand over control to someone else… and the hiring of Mike Nolan and giving him authority to make personnel decisions is proving to be a wise one. So I do have to give credit where it’s due, despite previous mistakes.
No I agree that building the team around Bonds isn’t a bad idea. I was a supporter of this the entire time, especially since even at his current age he’s one of the better OF’s in the game. But its a much more complex issue that most people don’t take the time to analyze. They’d rather just look back in hindsight and bitch that so much more could have been done.
The problem to an extent has been the free agent market being devoid of talent in recent years. Why you ask? It’s due to the new revenue sharing that has helped middle and low market teams have the ability to resign their young players. This is how you get mediocre or average major league players getting inflated salaries on the open market. Teams are still always in need of talent and the market is bare. So they overpay in an attempt to upgrade their roster. And when the Giants have a HORRIBLE farm system for decades (I swear we’re cursed because of having a bunch of HOF’s come up in the 50s and early 60s) it makes it IMO very difficult to build a roster. Because your stuck with mediocre and mediocre options between using your own crappy, OLDER (25,26,27) prospects who have yet to play significantly in the majors or overpaying shitty players like Juan Pierre or Dave Roberts etc to stink it up in your lineup and in the field.
Now who gets blamed for that? Sabean is obviously a problem due to his inept scouting team. Dick Tidrow does a nice job mining and developing pitchers, but Jack Hiatt is way too obsessed with tools guys who really don’t know how to play baseball. So he’s always hoping a guy like Fred Lewis can suddenly learn how to cut down on strikeouts and learn how to catch a fly ball, even though one of them takes a lot of discipline, and the other is a NATURAL baseball instinct. So then we go with old veterans hoping there’s a little magic left in the can and obviously there really isn’t any for the majority of the people we have signed lately.
My problem with Magowan is due to things like pushing to sign Barry Zito, a complete and utter disaster, merely to appease season ticket holders that the team was still trying to win. Thank god it only took him half a season to realize that fans are ok with rebuilding (hmm maybe because its the ONLY option Peter). And his budget allocations for things like player development have been pretty lacking, not that it would matter anyway, since even if we did have a big budget, all of our prospects would start to hit a wall with injuries or just shitty play once they reach AA anyway since we have HORRIBLE coaching in both AA and AAA and on the ML level. Joe Levebre or whatever his name is is the WORST hitting coach ever. How has he not been fired yet? Dave Righetti needs to go too. Can’t we get some people who actually know baseball to teach the younger players how to play the game? Maybe we should start with ex Giants from the 80s they’ve done well. Bob Brenly, Bob Melvin, not from the 80s, but 90s, Bill Mueller is doing a good job as the LA hitting coach. This last rant about coaches has nothing to do with Magowan, I just hate our coaching staff other then Bochy who is a good manager, just we’d never know it because our team is a steaming pile of dog shit.
The player personnel people, specifically Jack Hiatt are useless as tits on a nun. Actually they are beyond useless and crossover into treacherous ineptitude. The last impact player to come out of the Giants farm system was who, 3b Matt Williams? Williams came out of UNLV, more noted for its hoops under Tark than the baseball home of current Padre 3b Kevin Kouzmanoff . Since that time we’ve been treated to Bill Mueller (who shined more for the Red Sox after the Giants determined that David Bell was a more worthy replacement), Tony Torcatto, Jeff Hammonds, Pedro Feliz, Lance Niekro, Todd Linden and other notables who more resembled the likes of Herman Munster, Calvin Klein, and Kosmos Kramer than actual MLB impact position players.
Here’s Jack Hiatt’s. credentials. The last two lines of the Wikipedia entry say it pretty much. His playing days as a Giant were the craps, except for one game where he had 7 RBIs against the Astros and drove in Willie Mays and Bobby Bonds in the same game. Thats it for a 9 year career… The sum total of his highlight reel. So it’s definitely not his playing that got him the job he has now.
“Over the course of his minor league managerial career Jack amassed a 501-599 record with only 3 winning seasons. Hiatt is currently the Giants director of player development. He has held the position for over 16 seasons.”
Well, obviously it can’t be the stellar .455 W/L percentage that qualifies him for a 16 year run as DPP, could it?
He sounds like a real swell guy on the radio. Kind of like Uncle Gus during the holidays when he is passing out dollar bills to the kids. He helps old ladies across the street. And vice versa. He was a career .737 OPS striking out 295 times in 1142 ABs over 9 season while walking 217 times. I swear, the Giants are teaching all their prospects to swing just like Jack. Maybe thats why he has the job. I say this in jest, but aside from Bill Mueller (Mueller, 769 OPS 364ks in 2781 NL ABs) its still funny to look at the OPS on the most recent Giant monstrosities.
Niekro, .719 OPS 86Ks in 482 ABs
Linden, .640 OPS 89Ks in 318 ABs
Feliz, .724 OPS 430Ks in 2283 ABS
I mean, is there anybody the Giants have put out under Hiatt, that is better than this? I can’t think of a single one, and Mueller with his mediocre numbers for a 3b is the best by quite a bit.
What has Jack Hiatt done in the last 16 years to justify his job as director of player personnel? What has he done ever actually in his entire career in professional baseball? If I didn’t know better, I would think that MLB was actually a department in the Federal Government or a teaching position in some lamer ass education factory that comes complete with GSA numbers and tenure.
This is more astounding than giving Sabaen an extension. At least one can point at Sabaen and say he was actually a GM when the Giants were winning. Hiatt has been a failure at every job he has had in professional baseball. This goes back 40 years to 1964 when he broke in with the Angels. He was a horseshit Major Leaguer, He had a losing career as a minor league manager, and he has not developed a single solitary position player worth a shit other than Mueller and he got dumped as soon as he was due some money.
Pathetic. Shame on Magowan for tolerating this crap. Worshipper of baseball cards.
At least none of this caught us by surprise… although, maybe that’s even worse. I can’t wait for football season – at least the 49ers have a guy (Mike Nolan) who knows how to build a team and turn a franchise around. He did the exact opposite of Sabean – he let older veterans leave for the most part instead of giving them large, pointless contracts, and then built around a youth movement, which then in the past off season gave him plenty of cap room to sign some free agents to fill in the gaps. THAT is how it’s supposed to be done.
Love the archives. Man, you could go back and find all kinds of (then)dire predictions (poo-pooed by others) that have largely come true.
Kent,
I hate being right about all this stuff, but Jesus Christ, it’s not like I’m psychic. These results have been so obvious, for so long, it just hurts my head.
Sabean (and Magowan and Baer and whoever else you want to include) have made decision after decision after decision that have been predictably wrong, obviously, predictably, inevitably wrong; and for anyone to have not seen it coming is ridiculous. Every position player we field today is a less effective player than when we went to the WS. For all intents and purposes, we had a better pitching staff as well, although I’ll grant you the upsides of Cain and Lincecum seem to be very high.
Nonetheless, Sabean’s performance has been absolutely ATROCIOUS. There is no argument that can sway me on this. From the decision to jettison draft picks, to the choice to stock the minors with pitchers and hope to consistently fleece GM’s by selling these pitching prospects high and getting MLB-ready position players; to the endless string of abysmal, albatross contracts; to the idea that you can somehow sign the third-tier of free agents to fill out a roster…. It goes on and on.
Bonds ran off four straight years of the best production in the history of baseball, and the Giants failed to take advantage of that. That is the only fact that matters. All the rest is smoke and mirrors. Sabean, you failed. Magowan, you failed.
You had a once in a lifetime chance, and you failed.
Fuck you and your fucking bullshit stories about how you couldn’t afford Guerrero, you didn’t like Kent, you thought Sheffield was over-priced, Bonds was too demanding. Fuck you and all of your horseshit.
YOU FAILED.
Giving Sabean an extension after the last four years is a fucking joke.
Yup, I agree entirely and am actually angry. It’s as if he’s just doing the opposite of conventional wisdom just for the sake of being different. I agree also that if you and I could find suitable and very real trade possibilities (many with players who were subsequently dealt), the Giants should have been able to as well. It’s a joke. I wrote somewhere here (half tongue-in-cheek at the time…not so much now) that I’d prefer to have any other MLB roster other than ours…I about feel that way right now. And it’s going to get worse before Angel’s got a chance to play and our draft this year is ever ready (if they’re ever ready).
Deivi Cruz, Michael Tucker, for crying out loud, the best signings Sabean’s made in the last four seasons are Kenny Lofton and Marquis Grissom.
Deivi Cruz was batting .292 in 2004 with the Giants. He was much better than Neifie Perez…Mmmmmmmmmmuch better. And he was inexpensive. He always had the timely hit. How soon you forget. The Giants paid him only $800,000. And tell me, who in the Giants lineup are having a better BA than Deivi Cruz? And let’s look at the infielders,
35 Rich Aurilia R/R 6-1 190 09/02/71 – BA – .243
5 Ray Durham S/R 5-8 190 11/30/71 – BA -.248
7 Pedro Feliz R/R 6-1 210 04/27/75 – BA -.239
21 Ryan Klesko L/L 6-3 220 06/12/71 BA – .286
13 Omar Vizquel .238 (I excuse him because most of us know he is one of the best shortstop in baseball)
I don’t even have to go any further. I thought Deivi Cruz was a Godsend especially compare to the players we have been signing for last couple of years. Just look at the stats.
Mike,
Deivi Cruz? You want to tell me Deivi Cruz is a player?
With all due respect, are you out of your fucking mind? The guy’s been out of baseball for two years. He has a career .293 OBP. Did he have a couple of moments for the Giants? Sure. Not enough that he could have ever even been considered anything more than a body, just like the litany of nobodies and never-was’s the Giants have been parading through China Basin the last four seasons.
Let’s keep the apple in front of the cart, here. The Deivi Cruz’s are part of the problem, not the solution.
Jim Adams wrote:
“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. ”
Unfortunately for Dodger fans, your guess is incorrect.
The writers for the LA Times that cover the Dodgers (Bill Plashcke, T.J. Simers, Dylan Hernandez) are a bunch of clowns that repeatedly trashed Paul DePodesta and think Ned Colletti is the second coming of Branch Rickey.
The Dodgers success so far this year is based on some great draft picks (Martin, Loney, Kemp, Ethier, Billingsley) engineered by Dan Evans and Logan White and pitchers (Penny, Lowe) traded for and signed by DePodesta.
You already know about Colletti. And for LA, he signed Schmidt for 3 yrs for 47 million, signed Tomko (a proven failure – except for when he starts against the Giants – that Colletti should know better than anyone), and Wolf (he pitched less than 200 innings for the Phillies the last two years and is back on the disabled list).
He signed Juan Pierre for 45 mil over 5 years, who while doing better lately, still has an OBP (.313) that is worse than every position player than two scrubs (Mike Lieberthal and Ramon Martinez).
But the LA writers are just ecstatic that DePodesta is gone and Colletti has saved the day.
Robert, I lived in SoCal from 1994-2004, and I agree with you that the LA Times sports writers make Bay Area writers look like geniuses. Come to think of it, there are some idiots writing sports for the NY Times, too. So perhaps my theory is wrong…
[...] Original post by John [...]