Go way back, and take Tommy Lasorda. He was an awful pitcher and would be deemed unqualified, by your criteria, to be a coach or player in any organization. When the Dodgers awarded him a scout job it would, by your definition, have been simple blind cronyism. What in his track record showed that he had any business in a baseball operations position? And yet Lasorda went on to become one of the greatest managers of all time (boy does it pain me to spit those words out).

I’m not saying any of those new coaches are qualified or will be any good. I have no friggin’ clue, and frankly you don’t either. But to accuse the Giants of cronyism in this regard is to condemn every single major league franchise going back to the early 1900’s, basically.

If you knew how to read, you would know I was not drawing the comparison you are so wrongly implying. Are you as obsequious as you sound, or do you just like to see your idiotic blathering in print?

Here’s a couple of more quick shots.

Hensley Meulens: Hitting coach in Fresno. Career .220 hitter in Yankee organization. Hitting coach in the Orioles, Pirate organizations since 2003. But he did play for the Netherlands in the 2000 Olympics and runs a baseball clinic in Curacao.

Gary Davenport. Hitting coach San Jose. Starting sixth season in Giants organization. Claim to fame? Jim Davenport’s son.

If you swallowed the bullshit from 3rd and Townsend, I am sorry. Its not my fault.

Stick to whining about something you know, because it clearly isn’t baseball.

The San Francisco Giants are in the middle of the longest losing streak in the history of the franchise. It is the worst offensive team in baseball arguably. It has had no homegrown impact position players in twenty years. Its highest paid player is a laughingstock. And he is under contract for several more years and at ever increasing millions per. The second highest paid player is a punch and Judy lower part of the order outfielder who is under contract for several more years as well.

The people responsible for orchestrating this abomination are still in charge. And they haven’t changed. These are some of the guys they just announced to run their farm teams this year.

Mike Caldwell Arizona Rookie League… pitching coach. career highlight was winning 14 games for the 72-90 Giants in 1974.

Brian Cooper…pitching coach.. famous for getting sent down when Matt Cain got called up. Certainly that qualifies him to be the pitching coach in Short Season. Which is where the goofus Joe Lefay coined the famous phrase “you’ll never get a better pitch to hit than the first one.”

Tom Trebelhorn…Manager short season. Fired after 12 years as the bench coach in Baltimore. But he did play 5 years of minor league ball 35 years ago.

Steve Kline—pitching coach in Augusta. Yeah. That Steve Kline. A journeyman loggy. But a good drinking buddy and fair poker player.

Lipso Nava. 14th round draft choice of Mariners. A ham n egger minor leaguer whose extensive coaching career consists of 1 year as a hitting coach in the independent league before being hired by the Giants.

I could go on, but you get the point. There is no change. Its still the same old way of doing things. Sabean, who used to brag about not knowing who was in the farm system, is full of shit. If the Giants were as dedicated to developing young players as some of you would like to believe, they would not be putting these kinds of guys in charge of their farm clubs. Guys who have little, if any recognizable coaching successes.

Always good to see our new and improved draft choices turned over to such stellar and stalwart professionals with a long history of success in player development. No coaches or instructors raided from Minnesota, Tampa Bay, Toronto, or Atlanta or any other organization with a long history of player development. Just plenty of Renterias, Howrys’ Afleldts Finleys Alfonzos, Aurillia’s Sweeny’s Zitos, Tomkos, Durhams, Fasseros, Walkers ad nauseum to infest the MLB roster though.

The Giants are and will continue to be a farce. And if the prospect of some kids getting left behind by the asshats running the Giants farm system is enough to keep you spending money on tickets to PacBell Park, then Brian Sabean, Larry Baer, and the rest of the Giants propoganda machine is a hell of a lot smarter than you are.

Let’s start with the offense issues.

Runs Created is a good run estimator for overall team expected runs scored. I think this is the case with most run estimators, even OPS, given that the extremes between the best player in baseball (Albert Pujols) and the worst (Tony Pena Jr.?) are higher than the extremes between the best hitting team in the league versus the worst.

However, on the individual level, Runs Created gives too much credit to slugging and undervalues OBP. I didn’t figure this out; someone smarter than myself (and whom Bill James will defer to) did.

http://www.tangotiger.net/runscreated.html
http://www.tangotiger.net/rc2.html
http://www.tangotiger.net/rc3.html

Defensively… well, um, Mr. James still uses range factor, though I think he now uses a “revised” relative range factor. But in our current time, we have access to play-by-play defensive metrics that have more parameters (e.g. park adjustments, “hardness” of the batted ball, is more specific with which fielder was responsible for the batted ball). Mitchel Lichtman was the first guy to do this, and other guys, most notably David Pinto and John Dewan, followed suit with similar methodologies.

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/primate_studies/discussion/lichtman_2003-03-14_0/

http://www.baseballthinkfactory.org/files/primate_studies/discussion/lichtman_2003-03-21_0/

And regarding your response earlier in the comments section:

Damn I have communication issues.

Saving 2 extra plays per game on defense (which is really hard to do every single game, but you get the picture) is saving ~1.6 extra runs per game in our high-scoring run environment.

That doesn’t help the offense, but it helps the team overall. If a team scores (throwing out numbers) 650 runs in a season and gives up 750, then projects to produce 650 runs again but only gives up 725 runs, then that team goes from winning about 72.4 games to winning about 74.4. (I used PythagenPat for those numbers, which is more detailed than the original Pythagorean or the newer PythagenPort: http://www.tangotiger.net/wiki/index.php?title=PythagenPat).

I understand where you’re coming from, but there really is more than one way to skin a cat. And maybe you should catch up with the rest of the sabermetric community instead of lagging behind with Mr. James.

John, you always argue against signing old players who are likely to decline, which I generally agree with. Dunn isn’t old, but he has old player skills. The list of the ten most comparable players to Dunn includes Gorman Thomas, Kevin Mitchell, Jesse Barfield, Pete Incaviglia, Wally Post, and Gus Zernial, i.e. all guys who crapped out once they hit 30. Why do you rail against one group that is likely to decline, but not another? The Sexson comparison is perfect.

You want to sign Dunn for one or two years to play first base? Good luck with that. I wouldn’t quibble with a short deal but he’s probably only going to take one from a contender and there are reports that he doesn’t want to move to first base. In order for him to come here, it’d likely mean breaking the bank, and that’s just not worth it, IMO.

So you’re saying that giving $10 million per to players who actually are old, who actually already are declining, is OK; but giving that same money to a player who will contribute about 80 more runs, who is younger, and does the one thing no one on the team does is a mistake? Holy shit.

Telling me that Dunn’s not a star, and therefore not worth the same money we’re already giving to four players who are even more clearly not stars, is fucking ridiculous, to be perfectly honest.

I’m afraid you’re defending Sabean just because he’s your father-in-law or something.