I guess Vlad is getting to the age now, 35, where he will be a Giant soon. Watch for this signing this off season. Isn’t this Vlad’s free agent year? Perfect Sabean move.

Q: Did you ever make an offer for (Impact Position Player)?

Sabean: In a word: No. If we had signed Impact Position Player we would have been without Taschner, Walker, Misch, Howry, Chulk, Matheny, Roberts, Garko, Winn, Rowand and Randy Johnson–obviously not being able to field a competitive team, especially from an experience standpoint, given our level of spending.

the man shouldve been terminated the day after making that absurd statement

Fun to watch? Are you kidding somebody?

Watching paint dry is more fun than watching this team hit. Try switching channels when the Giants pitchers get the final out of an inning. If you turn on the Discovery channel, and spend even one minute watching some bear eat a salmon, by the time you switch back, the next commercial set is on, and the Giants are back on the field. That happens ALL THE TIME.

Fun? Not to me. It’s fun watching a team full of players who actually know what to do.

I thought to look at some numbers since the All Star Break. This eliminates the vagaries and unevenness of inter-league play, even though it represents a small part of the schedule. But more importantly, this view tends to reflect how a team is playing right now, after 40 games since the ASB, with another 30 left to play — plus or minus a couple of games.

On July 9th we were talking about the odds of the Giants making the playoffs at their current run scoring rate. “Current” meaning the last several years. So just how likely is it?

Well lets look at this way. The wild card was introduced in 1995 (94 was strike-shortened). The 1995 season only had 144 games as they got a late start resulting from the prior year’s strike. That leaves 1996 through the 2008 season. That is 13 complete seasons of 162 games. Six divisions and 8 playoff teams per year. 104 playoff teams. Do you know how many of those teams scored less than 700 runs? Exactly two. The Padres (684) and Astros *693). That’s 1.9%. I don’t know of anybody that thinks a 1.9% chance of winning something is a potential eventuality in a rational world.

And so here is your Brian Sabean-assembled offensive juggernaut in 2009; five seasons into the post-Dusty Baker era.

Pre All Star: 368 runs in 88 games– 4.18 runs per game.
Post All Star: 143 runs in 42 games–a hefty 3.64 runs per.

Thats going to be about 640 runs or so for the year. That’s nowhere near the 2005 Padres or Astros, let alone 750 which is the minimum one should expect. Even when you have two guys competing for a Cy Young with Brian Wilson not too far behind for Closer recognition.

Well, maybe they’re just hitting in bad luck you may think? Think again.

OPS you ask? Sure thing.

Pre All Star: .705.
Post All Star .691

The Giants run production has been worse. Not better. Those Garko and Sanchez trades at the end of July look really good now, don’t they Sabean fans? I mean, what the fuck, it only cost a couple of pitching prospects, one of whom was the no. 2 guy in their system, in spite of the spin the Giants PR machine is trying to put on it.

And speaking of pitching, how has the pitching been? I mean Zito pitched his ass off last night, right? He’s actually been a horse since the All Star Break. Pitching to a sub 2.00 ERA and putting up a nice 7+/k per 9 innings, cutting down on his walks and homeruns allowed. But what about the team overall and more importantly, where do they stack up with their competitors?

How about team ERA and Runs per game? That’s a pretty good indicator of how many runs your opponents are scoring, and we know the Giants are scoring a little under 4 per game.

Pre All Star Break: The Giants team ERA: 3.51. Good for 1st in the NL. Total runs allowed during this period was 324 or 3.68 runs per game. Again. Good for 1st in the NL.

Post All Star Break: The Giants team ERA has slipped a little to 3.59. No big deal you think? Well how about it is only good for 5th in the National League; behind Philadelphia, St. Louis, Atlanta, and Los Angeles, with Philadelphia checking in with a mind-boggling 3.10 ERA. Their plus 44 runs at the ASB is now plus 30.

They are simply treading water. Wild Card teams do not tread water and back into the playoffs. Just the opposite as everybody knows. The hot team at the end is the one team that gets in. It is no accident that there are so many frequent appearances by Wild Card teams in the World Series. The team that is playing the best at the end is the team most likely to advance and prevail in October.

So here’s some perspective. At the All-Star Break the Giants were 49-39, had a plus 40 in run differential, were leading the Wild Card and were 6.5 games behind the Dodgers for the Division League.

It is now August 30th. The Giants are 71 and 59, 6 games back of the Dodgers, but more importantly they trail the Rockies in the Wild Card, with the Marlins, Braves and Cubs close behind.

The pitching while still excellent thanks to Zito’s stellar second half performance has kept the Giants at around .500 ball.

Now many have said and the media spin has been, this season has exceeded expectations. And it is a surprise. And that we should all be happy just to have this much. Glad to be here and having gotten this far, but oh boy wait til next fucking year when all our guys go straight from San Jose to Cooperstown!

Because thats the way it looks on paper to the baseball-mogul-strat-o-matic, math club crowd and their yammering sychophants. The problem is that the game is played on the field and one never knows what is going to happen. But smart people prepare for the best as well as the worst. Smart people anticipate that they will go into each season prepared to do what is neccessary to win.

Seven months is too long for successful folks to sit around and wait until next fucking year. For too many dopes, next fucking year never comes. And thats why smart management and heady management and front offices that know the difference between a 3 run homer and a 2nd inning bunt try to prepare themselves with the expectation that they can fucking win. Winners are not satisfied with fucking garlic fries, quiche and cameos of Kung Fu Fucking Panda mascots in the cheap seats!

If I’m a partner and $82 million dollars of partner money is going to player payroll, this team sure as fuck better compete with the expectation of winning. Especially when $62 million of it is being spent on huge Free Agent Signings like Aaron Rowand, Edgar Renteria, Randy Johnson, Barry Zito, Randy Winn, Bengie Molina. And if they don’t win, there sure as hell better be some fucking heads rolling down 3rd street.

What has happened though is that the pitching, which is starting to fray under the stress of having to be almost fucking perfect to have a chance to win, has revealed how intellectually bankrupt Sabean’s thinking is when it comes to offensive acquisitions. The Giants have not had 3 starting pitchers like this ever. And with Zito pitching to a 1.92 post ASB ERA, the Giants are actually further behind since the trading deadline, struggling to play .500 ball since Sanchez’ no-no on July 10 when they got to 48-38.

The pitching has revealed how utterly futile the high priced acquistions of Sabean’s (Rowand, Renteria, Winn, Molina, Roberts and now Garko and Sanchez) free-agent position players have been at contributing anything even remotely resembling anything other than roster-filler performance.

When Bonds was here, Sabean used his presence as an excuse for being hamstrung in his quest for better players. Remember, this is the guy who before the 2004 season, when posed with this question about replacing Jeff Kent’s bat, repsonded thusly:

Q: Did you ever make an offer for Vladimir Guerrero?

Sabean: In a word: No. If we had signed Guerrero or Sheffield, we would have been without Brower, Eyre, Herges, Hermanson, Tomko, Pierzynski, Feliz, Snow, Hammonds, Mohr and Tucker–obviously not being able to field a competitive team, especially from an experience standpoint, given our level of spending.

Sound familiar?

New Sabean, same as the old Sabean

You know, this is one hell of a fun team to watch. Even if we don’t make it to the playoffs, even if we fall apart (which I tend to doubt), we’ve seen Sandoval emerge as a scary mofo, we’ve seen our first no-hitter since the 70’s, we’ve got the scariest starting rotation in baseball, we’ve exceeded expectations in general, and I’m smelling a tie for the wild card by some time tomorrow afternoon. Go Giants.