As in, what happens to a GM on a team that has fallen apart after high expectations, has failed to take advantage of Hall of Fame talent for over a decade, and has no detailed –and clearly working– plan for how to keep a team competitive over the long haul. The Houston Astros just fired their GM and manager, after a two year free-fall from the World Series to one of the worst records in baseball.
…. The last two seasons, let’s face it, have been dual disasters. Remember, just two postseasons ago, in October of 2005, the Astros were in their first World Series. Everybody was happy. The city was beaming. Then came an uneven season in ‘06, when the Astros needed a late surge just to eke above .500. This year, they haven’t been above .500 since May 16. The Astros are currently 58-73, in a virtual tie for last place in the National League Central.
…. The Astros, as they stand now, are a terribly imperfect team. They are young and shaky in the rotation after starter Roy Oswalt and just as wiggly in the bullpen. Their shortstop and catcher positions are offensive black holes, and there are questions to be answered at both second and third base. They are weak defensively.
Hmmmm…. This reminds me of some other team. 
Let’s see…. The Giants starting pitchers are young and shaky after, well, by default, you’d have to say Barry Zito. Our catcher is OK with the stick, but slower than grass growing. In fact, other than Molina’s surprising –and certainly not replicable– season with the bat, our entire infield is old, slow, and among the worst offensive players at their respective positions. Our outfield is also old and slow, and can’t throw, and, except for Bonds, also can’t hit. Our farm system has exactly zero prospects who seem capable of replacing any one of these terrible, terrible stiffs that Bochy keeps running out there every day. Our pitching coach seems to have decided that the way to prepare our pitchers is to tell them to avoid throwing strikes, ever, and our bullpen is made up of only one or two players that aren’t a failed starter, a PTBNL throw-in, or a waiver wire pickup.
The Giants have 2 more wins then the Astros, after winning 10 of their last 12, but for all intents and purposes, the failings of the Astros organization are no different than the failings of the Giants organization. Missed opportunities (’01, ‘03, 04), poor trades, lack of young talent, no discernable plan or organizational strategy for either the hitters or the pitchers, shitty bullpen results…. I’d even go so far as to say the Astros are closer, far closer, to turning it around then the Giants are. They actually have young players who can hit. The Giants have none, and are facing an off-season in which they absolutely have to replace six of their eight starters.
Seriously, how Magowan decided to re-up with Sabean, after a slow –and decidedly unneccesary– free fall from the World Series to last place that has been four and a half seasons running is beyond me. Reading about how McClane has gotten fed up with all of the losing his group of classy players and coaches have been doing –you know, the proverbial nice guys finishing last– made me grit my teeth. I’m fed up with it, too.
I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Sabean saved his job. I can’t even imagine what he must have had to come up with.
21 Backtalkers
“I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Sabean saved his job. I can’t even imagine what he must have had to come up with.”
The mystery of the 21st century to me. There’s no discernible nepotism. Its not as if they were friends before Sabean came out here is it? It really makes very little sense. Is Magowan THAT sentimental? Is there even anything recently that is worthy of mentioning except maybe Lincecum? Free agent signings? What is there to talk about there?
Aside from the usual jokes about pictures and blackmail, what?
It’s sort of ironic to me how the two men differ in the way they judge talent. I don’t think Magowan is sentimental he just sees the past, Sabean had success in the past and that’s all that matters. Sabean only uses what a player did in the last couple of weeks to form his opinion. How else could he have signed the Winn, Roberts, Durham and Zito deals?
Keep your eyes open for a nice fat pay raise for Rajai Davis.
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unrelated completely….
I’m from jersey and I finally got out to ATT Park for the first time this past weekend and it was amazing, that park is leaps and bounds above any park/stadium I’ve ever seen. It really is a step above the rest. The whole area is unbelievably clean and the staff is awesome. I was even treated to a rare 4 game win streak when I was out there and a Bonds hr,which will go down as a top 10 moment in my life. You west coast fans are really lucky to be able to see that team regularly and for such reasonable prices. That being said, its to bad that after winning 10 out of 12 our record is still embarrassing. We really need to get a lineup and bullpen crackin stat.
Interesting thing I found from an Astros’ fan comment on the firings.
Drayton has become Jerry Jones Jr. in that he is a control freak. The Astros have many holes to fill with a farm system that is anemic and Drayton refuses to pay the going rate for his best 3 draft picks. In fact, those 3 would have cost less than Morgan Ensberg did this year. The Drayton McLane era has been the most productive ownership the Astros have ever had. However, Gerry Hunsicker was the reason why, not Drayton McLane. Drayton owns a grocery distributing business and is a smart, good businessman who worries about profit before performance. Several years ago, he lowered team payroll after Bud Selig made a comment to him about increasing it the year before. This year, he has repeatedly talked about how good the Astros really are. I think he should be distributing to the fans whatever it is that he’s been smoking. I know Drayton owns the team, but whoever takes over as GM must have Drayton butt out and let the GM run the team. Amazingly, attendance is up over last year. This only confirms the saying that there’s a sucker born every minute. I’m afraid the only way to get Drayton’s attention is to hit him in the pocketbook-quit going to games, don’t buy jerseys, etc.
Sounds like the Giants and Magowan. Who also coincidentally comes from a grocery business!
And an article by Jayson Stark about McClane’s meddling.
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=2993768
Granted both guys deserved to be fired, but things aren’t so cut and dry just like with the Giants.
From what little I know, what Stark writes seems to make sense. I just don’t trust much of the ESPN stuff. Rome picked up a similar theme on his radio show today. But Rome, is part of the ESPN cabal. On the other side of that coin is the allegation (you didn’t expect me to say exculpation I hope ) that McClane and Selig are friends. That alone indicates McClane is not somebody to be trusted. Selig is one of the more transparent phonies in recent memory.
As in any case. When an organization fails, you have to look at the top guy to be accountable. Its that way in war. Its that way in business. But since the Owners run MLB like the US Congress; a country club, there is no accountability. Just conspiring middle aged gazillionaires with inherited fortunes, blustering sophistry while continuing to bamboozle an otherwise preoccupied citizenery. Business as usual.
John, why do you refuse to see the positives. We have one of (if not the) best young rotations in all of baseball. Our bullpen continues to get better and with Hennessey and Wilson pitching the 8th and 9th (in any order) there is no reason why they can not become one of the best next year. We are in fact halfway done with rebuilding with youth. We have now the pitching staff for the next Giants playoff team.
With that said, yes, the offensive future does not yet look good. This year’s top 9 will all be over 32 next year and they collectively have failed this year. Many are already in serious decline offensively (Aurilia, Durham, and Vizquel) and others to lessor extent of decline (Bonds and Klesko). Only Molina, Feliz, Roberts, and Winn can be expected to stay at their current career average levels for the next two years and their current levels are hardly what is needed for the middle of the batting order on a contending team.
So the question is, what is to be done to rebuild this offense so that it can start to compete in 2009 and make a real run in 2010? It seems to me that Sabean intends to rebuild with a focus on speed rather then power. I believe that Sabean has sold MaGowan and Company that the Giants next great teams will be much more like the Cardinals of the 80’s and Dodgers of the 60’s then like the Giants of the Bonds Era. Sabean believes that speed is the current undervalued (Moneyball) commodity and thus it is cheaper to rebuild with speed then it is to rebuild with power.
I see the Giants trying to aquire and develope as many .350+ OBP with 20+ SBs players as they possibly can. Roberts, Winn, Davis, Lewis, Schierholtz, and Ortmeier can give us an outfield and possibly 1B of these types of players next year. I see the Giants agressively pursuing two serious power infield bats for the next 5 plus years. I am talking about either a free agent signing of A-Rod or a trade for the likes of M-Cabrera and maybe even both. We will look to fill in around this middle of the order with 3 or 4 young infielders that can also get on base at a .350+ pace and steal 20+ bags. I am doubtful that Frandsen will be one of these but if he is so much the better. Finally, I see that Giants not re-signing any of their free agent to be veterans (Bonds, Vizquel, Feliz, and Klesko) as none of these players will be part of the next Giants playoff team.
While I’m not sure I share your optimism about some of the bullpen arms, while good they are not exactly established yet in those roles. Albeit they have performed well of late, I agree there is a reigning sense of doomsday. Nobody has mentioned the decent prospect we got from the Dodgers in exchange for a 38 year old Pinch Hitter. A 2b, who hits for power and who has displayed very good walk rates in the minors so far and just turned 22 a few weeks ago, so he’s young and has talent. Denker isn’t great defensively, but he at least sounds more promising then Kevin Frandsen.
We do have to keep in mind that the Giants suffer from a lack of talent. True they do have several good young pitchers to build around but they have little to nothing in the way of position players. The prospect of signing A-Rod is unrealistic because of the money he’s going to command plus Bonds will be returning next season and Zito is taking up a large percentage of the payroll.
Trading for Cabrera is intruiging but the only thing of the value the Giants possess are those young rotation arms. To get Cabrera they’d likely have to give up either Cain and Lowry or Lincecum and Lowry. Florida seems to have a fairly deep farm system and the Giants frankly do not.
At this point in the season since other clubs aren’t interested in our veteran players, I have to wonder if the Lewises, Schierholtzes or Frandsenes are actually much better then what we already have. The young guys are playing more but let’s face it, no one on this site is jumping up and down with excitement for any of our young position players and the Giants front office has yet to green light playing the kids and benching the vets in preperation for next season.
Signing A-Rod is stupid, and would be a major flaw in thinking to try to rectify the sad state of this team by signing A-Rod to a 300 million dollar deal. That’s what he will get since Boras pretty much always finds an idiot team to overpay for his players. IE the Giants with Zito….
Cabrera won’t happen either, plus I’m not sure I would want the Giants to mortgage their future with a player who while extremely talented has a VERY questionable work ethic and is going the way of Kevin Mitchell/Cecil Fielder via the mid 90s. If he doesn’t watch what he eats he might not be around for very long.
The only way to really change what’s going on is to make smart trades and be able to upgrade the system, ie the Sweeney trade netted a guy who was expendable for a deep Dodgers system in Denker, but coming over here he’s quickly one of our best and at a position of need.
What sucks is that other then some power arms in the system and the more touted guys we already have on the ML roster, there is slim pickings that we can use to acquire pieces. Unfortunately all the veterans we have are such hasbeens now that they are of no value. Maybe what they need to do is get some 1 year deals to veterans like the Pirates did, who can hopefully play well enough in order to trade them away at the deadline, and in the meantime will fill the roster spots while our prospects develop in the minors. Only problem is we gave like 3 year deals to these vets so many of them are useless because nobody wants to take on a contract for a guy who’s not that good of a player anymore, even if they can still help a team. Like Kenny Lofton, he’s been traded a bunch of times, mostly because he’s only been on 1 year deals. If he had Roberts contract, I doubt he’d ever be moved.
Hobbes2d
i think you need to take a second look at denker….22 and still in a ball, and was assigned to our short season team
lets see where they put him next season before we crown him the new king of 2nd base
and enuf of the kfran bashing
He’s at San Jose, that is not our short season team. Oh and in his first game for SJ yesterday, he went 2 for 5, with a HR and 6 RBI’s. He also had a double. And that was out of the leadoff spot.
He is a better prospect then Frandsen in terms of his ability with the bat and to get on base. Something this team truly lacks in the Majors and Minors. Frandsen is a decent player, but he’s not exactly the next Robby Thompson as he was compared to earlier. For now he looks like he could be a Mark DeRosa type utility player, who can play all sorts of positions and hit for a decent average and hit maybe 10 HR’s. But as of right now he doesn’t look like an everyday player.
sorry….didnt check out the boxes
i was going by the initial report in regards denker…who, btw, has many more games logged in the minors than kfran ever did
like i said….lets see where they put denker next season, and how well he does there
if he starts out in aa and hits for avg and some power in the eastern league, maybe that will mean something
and i for one am not so ready to write off kfran as a bench player
So, if I take back writing that Noah Lowry was “mediocre” could he start back with the smoke-and-mirrors-I’m-really-good-but-not-that-good stuff of the past?
I’m under the impression Lowry has been injured since last year when he hurt his arm during his first start of the year. His velocity and command haven’t been the same since. Especially since in 2005, he was lights out for most of the year and could actually hit 90 MPH. Now he’s in Zito territory. I appreciate what a gamer he is in that he has tried to pitch through it, but sometimes its really a bad idea and can only make things worse, not only performance wise but to the injury.
I’m still under the impression that if we ever got to the postseason again that Lowry would be stellar. He has great poise on the mound and never seems to get rattled. Reminds me of Tom Glavine in that fashion.
I got a closer look at Lowry yesterday. I really have to agree with you. He’s just not right and hasn’t been right for quite awhile. Baseball in general, and Pitching in particular are so complex and have so many components. At the MLB level minute and almost imperceptible differences mechanics and pitch location can be the difference in success and abject failure.
A great pitching career is like preparing to go to the moon. Everything has to be almost perfect for a Steve Carlton, Jim Palmer, Juan Marichal, Nolan Ryan to have a long and distinguished career. Too often injury is mistaken for routine soreness. Pitchers, especially young pitchers, will try to hide injuries such is the pressure to perform. But its a numbers games. There’s 1000 guys ready to step in and take your place. Teams always say the right things about putting the welfare of the player first, but thats bullshit unless the guy is a superstar like Clemens or Bonds. They’re the ones that set up the numbers game to begin with. Players are commodities and always know, they are just one injury away from “Wally Pippdom”. Thats just the way big time sports are. Even at the high school level where only competitiveness and prestige are the rewards
I just wonder sometimes if we get so caught up in the results of each game, series, season, that we begin to dehumanize the craftsmanship and artistry of baseball and objectify the players. But that observation comes with way too many years of hindsight, which by nature carries its own brand of cynicism. I’m probably thinking too much. Anyway I really enjoy and appreciate the comments and observations of others with a different slant on things.
today is the 31st of aug…last day to make a trade of any consequence
and it looks like sabean is sitting on his fat butt, getting nothing accomplished in regards to unloading any more vets
can anyone explain to me the reasoning behind resigning the incompentent during the season?
the two “blockbuster” trades that he made couldve been done even if he was a lame duck gm
this org is run by idiots
Seriously, how Magowan decided to re-up with Sabean, after a slow –and decidedly unneccesary– free fall from the World Series to last place that has been four and a half seasons running is beyond me.
…
I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Sabean saved his job. I can’t even imagine what he must have had to come up with.
—————————————————-
Appearance, appearance, and more appearance.
This is the San Francisco Bay Area – the politically correctness capital of the world. Magowan has catered to the forces of politcal correctness that govern the city ever since he first assumed the leading ownership role.
You might as well ask why have the Giants never had a male PA announcer over the last 14 years. A woman’s voice is, by nature, overly shrill and unsuited for the position. The other teams instinctively realize this, which is why no other team has hired a woman for that job during the 14 years that the Giants have maintained one.
The high-pitched shrieks of the two female PA announcers that have worked for Magowan have inevitably been intrusive upon and disrespectful towards the many Giant moments that have taken place at home.
But Magowan is more interested in appearing to do the “right” thing by the standards of political correctness than in ensuring capable job performance.
I think that the PA example is somewhat of a microcosm of Magowan’s philosophy towards the sort of team that he would put on the field — a team with a relatively low payroll built around one high-profile superstar and a number of low-priced sidekicks that would excite the fan base, put butts in the seats of the Giants beautiful still-youngish ballpark, but would not necessarily seriously contend for a championship.
I don’t think that Sabean sold Magowan anything. I think that it was Magowan selling his vision to Sabean.
While the Giants obviously came very close to a championship in 2002, that wasn’t really by design and would have been an unexpected bonus if it had occurred.
I actually do NOT expect the Giants to re-sign Bonds. I expect them to do the same thing with A-Rod that they did during the Bonds era — sign A-Rod and fail to provide him with the supporting cast necessary to seriously contend for a ring.
But sometimes the blind pig does find an acorn. I agree with giantsrainman that the pitching situation is not bad at all, and that the Giants rotation and bullpen is gelling into a very capable pitching staff.
The Giants are likely to continue to prove — as they have started to this year — that the old maxim about pitching being 75% of the game — is a false one. You cannot win if you don’t put runs on the board, and the opposition can take the bat out of A-Rod’s hand, just as they did with Bonds. The upcoming years are likely to field a number of good-pitch no-hit teams that do not contend.
And yet, having said THAT, it’s incumbent upon all of us to display some humility by acknowledging that we can’t predict the future. The Giants ALMOST won it all in 2002.
And their late 1980’s renaissance began the very year after the Giants lost 100 games. Their 103-win season in 1993 also came on the heels of a poor 1992 season.
I agree that, while A-Rod will keep the fans coming to the ballpark, the future doesn’t look particularly bright for championship hopes. The likelihood is that the Giants will field a pretty team that doesn’t win — reflecting again, Magowan’s obsession with appearance over performance.
But I don’t KNOW this and no one else can know this.
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