After reading this Scott Ostler column, it appears that my “told you so” was warranted:
…. What was up with Jermaine Dye?
There are indications that Dye cleared waivers and the Giants could have had him from the White Sox for the price of a low-level prospect plus Dye’s remaining salary of around $2.5 million.
If so, the sticking point, possibly, was that Brian Sabean was given a cigar box full of loose cash to spend on beefing up the club, and he blew it all on Freddy Sanchez – a smart deal that hasn’t yet panned out. It’s not my money, but $2 million (or so) seems like a small price to keep your club in the wild-card race.
Managing general partner Bill Neukom, in a recent radio interview, referred to this as a “rebuilding season.” No! Look at the standings, sir. It started out as a rebuilding season, but when you steam into September with a sweet shot at the playoffs, you have forfeited your right to play the “rebuilding” card. You must, within reason, go for it, even if the price of the next dice roll is $2 million.
You owe it to your fans and your players. And to the Big Giant in the Sky.
The San Francisco Giants have never won a championship in San Francisco. For Neukom to say that money, that $2 million dollars was the reason he prevented Sabean from making a run at a difference maker like Dye would be a travesty. That would be bad enough, but it is probably worse than that. My guess is that Sabean didn’t want Dye. Sabean thinks batting average is the way to evaluate hitters, and Dye’s average isn’t as good as Garko’s or Sanchez’s. Sabean ignored Dye because he doesn’t think Dye is a valuable hitter. And for that, he should be fired, on the spot. Sabean simply ignored the value that Dye would have added to the Giants, because he could not see it. It is a failure of the highest order.
And for anyone to suggest that the Sanchez deal was a smart one is laughable. My guess/hope is that that’s just Ostler’s way of making sure he can criticize the team and not lose his press pass.
So the Giants hold the Phillies to three runs in their circus mouse-sized ballpark and lose two of three, and we hear nothing from the Giants front office. Of course. Accountability is but a word to Sabean and company. It holds no meaning. They have no understanding of the concept, of the ways a man is accountable for his actions and inactions.
Imagine if I were hired to build a house in a remote location, and needed an excavator to build the foundation. But I didn’t want to spend the money, so I tried to dig it by hand, with the expected results. So then the home owner gave me some more cash, and I bought a broken down, cheap, piece of shit excavator, one that was about ten years too old, and it didn’t get the job done either. You see where I’m headed, here? I’d be fired. Rightfully so. In my world, I’m held accountable for the success and failure of the plans I sell to the people who pay me money.
Sabean tried to build an offense, and failed. He was then given some more money, and the ability to use valuable commodities, (prospects) to again work some magic and fix the offense. He failed.
BRIAN SABEAN HAS FAILED. BRIAN SABEAN MUST BE FIRED FOR THIS FAILURE.
For that matter….. Bill Neukom has failed. He is the owner, the man who we pay money to, when we fill his ballpark. He owes the loyal fans a chance to see a world championship team. He owes us an all-in, balls out run for the title. RIGHT NOW. This team has championship-caliber pitching, right now. One or two bats could have pushed this team to the front of the wild card lead, and we’d be looking at setting up our rotation for the first round, instead of being in a steel cage, death match with the Rockies.
We passed on Dye (27 home runs, 75 RBI and 50+ walks) for one of two reasons. Because we didn’t have the money. Because that money was spent on one piece of shit ballplayer after another. Because the man in charge wastes money like a drunken sailor, money that we needed to get a real player was not there, because he’s thrown away tens of millions of dollars, year after year after year, on mediocrities. Or, we passed on Dye because the man in charge does not understand that what Dye produces is more valuable than what Freddie Sanchez produces. Either way, it is a massive, systemic failure, and it is Brian Sabean’s. It is Brian Sabean’s failure that holds us back, and will continue to do so.
The time has come….
FIRE BRIAN SABEAN.
9 Backtalkers
fucking amen.
Sabean +s: Affeldt signing, Uribe signing
Sabean -s: Renteria contract (fireable by itself), the sanchez trade, handling of the young players (burying lewis, the murder of Kevin Frandsen and taking forever to play Schierholtz), not signing any of the affordable free agent hitters (adam dunn), relying on molina to hit cleanup for a 2nd year in a row even though there was entire year of evidence that it doesnt work, rowand for how many more years? ugh, this list is getting long.
Ken Rosenthal has said that Dye’s “complicated contract” made the option on Dye’s contract become a player option in the event of trade. Making it a $12 (2010) + $2million dollar decision.
I don’t know that I would get that excited about ‘missing’ on a guy who has 3 less homeruns than Aaron Rowand (1 versus 4) and the same number of RBIs as Randy Winn (5) in the last month for $14 mil.
Are you serioulsy trying to advance the argument that Aaron Rowand and Randy Winn are better power hitters than Jermaine Dye?
Thanks dood. I needed that
the sox are a mess…which has affected everyone on the team
and trust me…if dye wanted to stay next season for 12 mil…i would pay that
Fucking A AMEN!!!!! gosh thats all i can say….SABEAN’s gotta GO!!!!! The way he is running this team you would think he is on the Dodgers payroll!!
Thoroughly disgusted in Fresno…
jenkins thinks you all are idiots
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/04/SP6F19IOHN.DTL
this fucker doesnt know shit about baseball
Jenkins is actually pretty funny…or would be pretty funny if folks didn’t take his smug sophistry seriously. I think when Glenn Dickey was making references to the rampant non-professionalism during the Bonds years exhibited by his former colleagues at the Chronicle, I am pretty sure he had Jenkins at the top of the list.
How is anybody with a baseball IQ 5 points higher than an artichoke supposed to take this without just gaping in shock and awe at nuggets of ass-wisdom like the following defense of Bochy and promoting Bochy as manager of the year (from uncle joe’s link above):
Well, yes Bruce. It actually does help. I wish we had thought of this before. You know being idiots and all. How stupid of us to not appreciate the sheer genius of Bochy. Its actually pretty enlightening now that you put it that way Bruce. Just think of the possibilities
Let us do some pretending. Just like you Bruce. We’re going to pretend that Bochy could go back in time and work his magical genius on the 1962 and 1993 teams of Giants past. Based on the pure brilliance of his management style we no doubt would have seen the following:
McCovey moved to left-field to clear 1b for Cepeda even though McCovey had never played left-field in his life and Cepeda was a butcher in the field. Than he would have benched McCovey in favor of Harvey Kuenn even though McCovey out OPSed him by almost 160 points. (OPS+ of 164 for strato-nerds) Oh wait. Thats what Alvin Dark did.
He would have platooned Willie Mays with Manny Mota because Manny Mota had even more savvy veteran presence, was a gamer but most importantly never lost his hat chasing line drives given up by Jim Duffalo
Would have asked owner Horace Stoneham to trade Cepeda to St. Louis for proven winner Ray Sadecki since they already had a proven first-baseman in McCovey.
If he had the 1993 roster he would have platooned Will Clark with right-hander Todd Benzinger. Lefty rightie matchups and so forth you know.
Bonds would have been moved down to the eight spot in the order because he could work a base on balls in front of the pitcher setting up the perfect bunt play.
Royce Clayton would have been benched in favor of Mike Benjamin because Mike Benjamin had the hot-hand once.
Matt Williams would have been shuttled back and forth between 1b, catcher, and 3b and put on a rigorous diet of Super-sized Big Macs, Milkshakes and Crisco Cream Pies.
Would have pulled Rod Beck in favor of Dave Righetti everytime Beck walked somebody if there was a left hander on deck.
Bochy would have eventually benched Will Clark in favor of J.R. Phillips because his batting average was .303 and Clark’s was only .283
So what is your point Jenkins? That you don’t need to pay attention to what actually takes place on the field? That you can just call people idiots, because they don’t like the bureaucratic good ole’ boy style of “easty-interview-bruce” without offering anything more succinct than one of the stupidest rhetorical questions ever?
Tell you what Jenks. Stick to writing about tennis mom’s, boys in tight shorts, and the tea and crumpet crowd in New York and stop polluting the baseball atmosphere with your ignorance.
Don’t miss this article on Hardball Times on Hampton/Zito/Davis.
http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/article/hampton-zito-davis/
’nuff said
Well the only thing missing was Kurt Rueter. And with all due respect to the guys there at HT, I appreciate them showing all their work and all, but shit, I don’t need 17 pages of stats and paragraphs of inductive reasoning to convince me that Zito, Hampton, Davis and guys like Rueter and even Steve Avery have been over-contracted by doofus GMs who get overly excited by “crafty left-handers”. These GMs are the same guys that cannot help themselves from paying top dollar for chia pets, pet-rocks, sham-wows and veteran left-handed pitchers with play-off experience.
But just think. Even after this year four more seasons of Zito. For some perspective 4 seasons ago, (2006) Barry Bonds put up a .999 OPS with 26 HR which would tower over every piece of garbage free agent that Sabean has signed since 2006. Four years from now, when Zito is at the end of his contract 2013, Lincecum and Cain will be close to 30 as will be Jonathan Sanchez.
And if that isn’t enough to make you sick, Aaron Rowand (who managed to hit into the first Giants triple play in over 10 years while going 0 for 6 in a loss to the forsaken Brewers) is owed 13.6 million next year, next year and the year after that. Is anybody really looking forward to that?
So John, you think Billy Bowtie was looking at the $6.5 million Sabean put him on the hook for to Dave Roberts, the $8million to Randy Johnson, and the excellent production the Giants have received from Garko and Sanchez and finally just told Sabean..”Enough!”?
Just for some perspective
2005 3rd place 7 games out 649 runs scored
2006 3rd place 746 runs scored, Wild Card from the NL West
2007 5th place 683 runs scored, Wild Card from the NL West
2008 4th place 640 runs scored
2009 3rd place 6.5 games out. 590 runs projected, Wild Card from NL West projected.
This is not a baseball team even worthy of the 2005 Giants. It is a pitching staff and Pablo Sandoval. It is about marketing the illusion of winning, not winning. Third place in a 5 team division is still third place.
The Giants do not have a single solitary starter that would start on any playoff team. None, with the exception of Sandoval. 25% of the National League teams qualify for the playoffs and the Giants, other than Sandoval, have not a single player that starts and maybe only a two or three more at most that would make it as scrubini back ups.
That is not a major league team out there. When a pitching staff only gives up 8 runs in 6 games and still gets hung with 3 losses that is not a team they are pitching for, that is a Carnival sideshow of freaks.
When a pitching staff being paid minimum wages holds opposing teams to almost a full run under the league average and you can barely play a little better than .500 for the last 2 months, you’re a failure and a disgrace in every sense of the word. If Cain, Lincecum and Sandoval (who wasn’t even on the final roster 2 weeks before the end of Spring Training such was Sabean’s uncertainty of Sanodval’s value) had not had breakout years, there is no telling how poorly the record would be. This team is hard enough to watch as it is.