I am. Tonight is the game of the year. After last night’s win, (a simply outstanding start by Zito, maybe the best he’s had in a Giants uniform), the Giants can close the gap to one game in the AILC (all important loss column). Matt Cain looks to reverse his recent trend of being just a little bit too hittable with men on, and the hitters hope to continue their recent trend of actually hitting.
All in all, if it’s a tease, so be it. Terrific rebound from some really bad baseball, some really bad luck, and some really bad situations. A lot to be desired from the team this year for sure, but, who’d a thunk we’d be seeing the Giants in this position with 17 games left? Not me, that’s for sure.
Let’s go Giants!
UPDATE: Nice tease. Shitty outing by Cain (pretty much exactly what I was worried about), lousy hitting by pretty much everyone, 4-0 Rockies in the seventh. And it’s just great listening to Krukow talk about how great De La Rosa pitched, as opposed to how fucking lousy the Giants hitters were.
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Don’t get soft on us Mia. Sabean may be a spear carrier/lawn jockey but he doesn’t yield to
upper management when it comes to which warm body the team intends to shell out for.
Baer is not dumb enough to leave the counting house to play rotisserie king and say to Sabean,
“I think we need to throw 60 mil at Rowand, don’t you think?”
I’m not sure if Baer does those things or not. The front office guys have always maintained that they make decisions about players jointly. I don’t think Baer cares one way or the other about who or who is not in the farm system. Guys on the farm club don’t sell seats, suites and garlic beer. The only thing fans know about prospects is what they read and most wouldn’t know a prospect from a platypus except for the cleats.
Baer has a monster ego. He reminds me of younger Bud Selig when Selig led the coup to wrest control of the Seattle out of bankruptcy and move them to Milwaukee. They both developed a knack for using other people money to reach the positions of power they both now enjoy and lord over folks. They are almost two peas in a pod, except Selig marketed used cars, and Baer came out of the communications media business.
The Giants of the last couple of years almost resemble the Brewers of years past when they were in the American League (Explain please how the Commissioner’s team is the only team to ever switch leagues by the way) Some old baseball cards picked up off the scrap heap of other teams, but go-along and get-along guys, the team floating under and over .500 periodically, and basically providing a nice little income for Selig and family, enabling Bud to be a big fish in a little pond.
Tiring of that after 20 years, he engineered the coup against Faye Vincent in a secret owners meeting, and finagled his way into getting appointed temporary commissioner for life by the other owners.
Baer really is a fan boy. He loves going to games, sitting and standing in the owners section always looking around to make sure people recognize him. Its impossible to believe, despite his protestations to the contrary, that he as team president, does not have extreme input into player acquisitions.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit to find that both Selig and Baer lobbied the other partners to appoint Neukom as the new MGP. It was the last vestige of Bonds to be wiped out. I do know that Sabean was distraught when Baker was let go, as I recall that he and Baker collaborated on all player transactions almost as equals and that Magowan felt that he was being left out of the loop.
Its only speculation really. Who knows. All I know is that the Giants front office/ownership is nowhere close to being prepared to go balls out, head to head against the teams in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston, and battle them for championships.
It wouldn’t surprise me one bit that as Selig’s retirement nears, that we don’t hear the name of Baer getting floated around for Commish. Selig solidified his hold on the commissioner’s throne and his $14Million salary by locking up all the tv contracts and other mass media and making the other owners stupendously wealthy. Baer is in that same mold and has the happy-happy, joy-joy persona that plays well to tv viewers and the general public.
Truth be told, I don’t give a fuck who the Commissioner is. Commissioners are never ball players, and are therefore extraneous to the game itself. Commissioners are about, and conduct the business of, baseball owners and are employed primarily to generate large media contracts for owners, lie about their profits, and wage war against Player Agents and the Players Union.
Front offices and Management, and the Commissioner’s office have managed to strip away so much of the fun and escapism of baseball.
I blame it all on Charlie Commisky, Ban Johnson, and Kenisaw Mountain Landis
My favorite part was, in the ninth inning with TWO men on and Edgar Renteria, Duane Kuiper just starts talking about all the grand slams that Renteria has hit off of Betancourt.
Which would be pretty hard to do with just two men on base. And then, of course, the 8-million dollar man popped up to second base. Good times.
Sigh.
About what I expected. Cain pitched so-so. Expecting 24 year olds to carry the ashen remains of Renteria, Klesko, Durham, Alfonso, Finley, Vizquel, Winn, Rowand and countless others pieces of non-hitting carcasses, around on their backs for 4 years is a little too much to expect. Even if you swallow all the bullshit coming out of Pier 39 South, it was too much to expect Sabean’s collection of pathetic over the hill hackers to do anything but what they did, which was fail. Spectacularly with zero outs, with Velez, the tying run on second, when a simple roller through the infield would have tied the game.
And pinch-hitting (correctly so) for your highest paid position player with the game and season on the line? What the fuck? Not that it wasn’t justified but shits sake. Rowand was supposed to be the team leader wiht his 5 year $60 million contract, the centerpiece of the offense according to the front office folks. The guy who in conjunction with Zito was supposed to make all the fans forget there ever was a Barry Bonds.
He’s been the centerpiece of their marketing and advertising campaign since he got here. And Bochy had to pinch hit for him against a middle of the road reliever after the Rockies closer got knocked out.
All of the failure of Sabean and the front office to secure the players that have been missing for over 5 fucking years. Not a half a season due to key injuries like the Mets. Not a reversion to form like the Tampa Rays. Not because the ownership had to jump ship because of a nasty divorce. Not because your key player was suspended for a third of the season like the Dodgers. Not because your closer and countless other impact players have hit the DL like the Rockies. Not because of anything untoward. Actually the reverse. A season to end all seasons from a pitching staff that will be unlikely to repeat this season’s effort. No But but simply because they have been assembling all the wrong pieces for all the wrong reasons at way over market prices for over 5 years.
It started in 2002 when Sabean and company decided they did not want to re-sign Kent and has wound down to the last two pathetic acquistions of Sanchez and Garko, and in between are the countless retarded and pathetic acquisitions mentioned all over the place over the years, here.
And the band plays merrily on.
+mia,
Garko sure is an integral part of the play-off run. 10 ab’s the whole month of Sept. Glad we needed to trade a top prospect for a non-impact player…and most likely will not even be on the 25 man roster next year. Great forsight.
Same old Sabean…needed to make a trade for the marketing dept…doen’t matter if it makes sense. Just make it and let Baer put a spin on it.
Mediocrity doesn’t cut it in a stretch run.
Definitely “Not in”.
Well I am convinced that these guys do not want any kind of superstar position player. This group of Baer egomaniacs just won’t tolerate any player of megastar quality in their organization. They have said as much over the years since Bonds. They told Kent they were going in a different direction and they told Bonds the same thing.
This franchise will not tolerate anybody that does not fit the corporate image. Even Sabean has complained about the owenrship bureaucracy slowing things down in terms of getting things done…following a corporate chain of command and review etc, according to KNBR this afternoon with Ted Robinson and Ralph Barbieri.
Sluggers and power hitters are the new divas of MLB. The Giants seem to have no stomach for pursuing superstars at any cost, passing on guys like Guerrero, Texiera, Abreau, and names of guys I can’t even remember over the last several years. Ellis Burks, Reggie Sanders, Andres Gallargas need not apply with the current Baer regime.
Its pretty easy to figure out. The Giants can fill up their ballpark and maximize broadcast and advertising revenues with an 80 million dollar payroll and a go-along to get-along roster of over paid over the hill old baseball cards, that plays “meaningful games” in Septemeber.
Their managing General Partner states that the Braves 14 consecutive years of division titles is the most significant achievement in professional sports and implied specifically that was more notable than actually winning only one championship. In other words, by inference, you can conclude that to him, being competitive for 14 years is more important than winning championships.
Obviously they are not going to go to the expense to compete with the Angels, Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox, Mets for pain in the ass superstars that may or may not bring them a championship. They are not going to spend $100 million on payroll to generate the same revenue that an $ 80 million payroll will. They’re just not going to do it. He said they’re going to continue to put their eggs in the pitching basket.
See my comment from yesterday for more
Same ole, same old.
+mia you are absolutely right here. The Giants are really unwilling to sign any “superstars” who don’t fit into their carefully planned marketing strategy. The fact that they have also stumbled upon Tim Lincecum and Pablo Sandoval, who by all accoutns appear to by a marketing mans wet dream come true, means that we cannot hope to see any “superstars” for a long time. I mean why would they go out and spend money on acquiring these players when Lincecum and Sandoval offer exactly the same, if not better marketing opportunities, at a significantly reduced cost.
Also, should we be starting to worry about the possobility of Sabean being back next year. By all accounts he has somehow managed to put out a team that despite having one of the worst offense’s in the history of the Giants has remained competitive all season. Not only that but we are playing in “meaningful” games and have put butts in seats in September long after we should have been out of it against a traditional low-draw team (Rockies). Is it the impressive attendance figures that managemnt are looking at when considering extending Sabean and not the actual team itself?
Mia:
You are correct that the Giants ownership will not spend $100 million in player salaries when they are able to attract the same attendance with a $80 million payroll annually. I can’t actually fault them for that. However, as just about every commentator on this site points out, I can fault Giants ownership for the way Sabean spends that $80 million each year building his roster.
His trades and signings have been consistently pathetic, unscientific, hidebound, and stupid. Sabean has scratched so many baseball backs in his tenure as Giants GM that he will never go wanting for another big league job when he moves on from SF.
True Giants fans will have paid the price for his future job prospects. Sadly, the whole Sabean era will have been transparent to Giants ownership but that’s actually the way MLB works.
Well, I am not entirely sure that replacing Sabean would solve anything, in view of the managing general partner Bill Neukom and team president Larry Baer. The more I hear Neukom and Baer the more convinced I become that a great deal of the failures of this team are not solely or even primarily with Sabean. For all intents and purposes Sabean is middle management. Thats what a general manager is. The General Manager is charged with carrying out the policies of senior management and the ownership group.
Sabean is simply carrying out those policies. A commitment to “competing”. with emphasis on young pitching–lots of it. And fill in with go-along to get-along older mediocre position players and hope that you can get lucky once in awhile with a younger system player.
Now how Sabean has implemented those policies is quite another thing. Obviously if the ownership group wanted to compete with both Los Angeles teams, the New York teams, Boston and the rest of large media market teams, like Chicago, Philadelphia and Atlanta, the Giants would have signed a Vlad Guerrero or Mark Texiera or CC Sabathia or Manny Ramirez and so on. They would be ranked in the top 5 in payroll, (commensurate with their market by the way) instead of 14th behind such massive customer markets as St. Louis, Detroit, Seattle and Houston.
And in case you think I kid when I compare the Giants to the west-coast version of the Kansas City Royals, the comparative payrolls for 2009 are $82.6 Million for the Giants and $81.4 Million for the Royals according to ESPN.
Up until 2007, the refrain of bullshit put out by Baer’s clown media hacks was that the Giants were hamstrung by the Bonds contract. After Bonds left and the Giants again failed to sign a significant impact player, the refrain changed to “players don’t want to hit in our shitty ballpark because its too hard to hit dingers”. Which of course is a total falsity. And even if it were true the Giants could have dropped a million bucks, brought in the fences in triples alley and put in “field level” novelty seats and made even more money.
Obviously just about anybody who could blow a blood alcohol content under .08% could have done a better job than the Giants multi-year free-agent acquisitions over the last 4 years. Unmitigated disasters starting with Winn in 2006, Zito in 2007, Rowand in 2008 and Renteria in 2009.
Even if the Giants freed up another $25 Million in payroll, I doubt they be much better simply because they every time one of their big dollar acquistions busts out, they ride that player until the contract is gone; unwilling to cut the anchor loose and replace him with a better player.
We have seen the Dodgers do it with Andruw Jones and Juan Pierre when they went after and signed Manny Ramirez and they have garnered 2 divisional titles in the process. We have seen the Angels do the same with Gary Mathews Jr and Darren Erstad and they upgraded to Tori Hunter and Bobby Abreu and are on the way to a second consecutive division title as well.
The Giants continue to hang on to garbage like Rowand and Renteria and Winn and will again finish in 3rd place in their division and possible 3rd in the Wild Card as well as of this writing they lead Atlanta by only a game. The Braves have won 7 in a row incidentally. One of those “winning streak” things that I think playoff teams and championship teams need to get to the post season.
Like I said, don’t look now, but here come the Braves at 78-68, 4.5 behind the Rockies and 1 behind the Giants with 10 of the remaining 16 games in the season scheduled against the Mets and Braves. Seven against the Nats with four at home to close out the season.
Geoffrey,
We should be extremely worried about Sabean returning. Sad to say…it’s almost a lock. The Bay Area is blessed with an abundance of dual income wealthy households…hence a stable drawing audience regardless of championships. Just being competitive is good enough. The Bay Area also has been spared the wrath of the economy. There is enough disposable income obviously to draw 30,000 a game with an average team. The yard will sell itself…because, unlike most who post on this site…it’s mainly an event. Winning is secondary. As long as the seats remain filled…Mediocrity is en vogue.
Maybe the Rocks will fold up shop and give us a shot.
+mia: I watched that interview with Neukom and I seem to recall he was responding to a question about retaining Lincecum and Cain when they become free agents and he brought up Atlanta as an example of a team with great pitching being able to get to the playoffs, how they always had two or three great pitchers. He also said something like ‘once you get into the playoffs that’s a different story’.
I didn’t get a sense that Neukom didn’t care about winning a championship but I was reassured that he wanted strong pitching and wanted to get to the playoffs. Getting to the playoffs 14 years in a row would be a good thing. When I think about the 1997 Marlins I realize that winning “a championship” can be pretty meaningless compared with what the Braves did all those years.
Okay, I admit it. I don’t want to win “a championship”; I want a Giants Dynasty. So sue me.
Robert:
You have to look at his comments in the context of what the Giants actually do, not what we hope we hear. Again let me repeat what he said. He didn’t say getting to the playoffs was a good thing. What he said was this, paraphrased:
” Despite a lot of people criticizing them for being unable to win the big one except that one time, the Atlanta Braves being able to win 14 division titles was perhaps the greatest achievement in professional sports”
And than he goes on to talk about their pitching staff. blah blah blah.
And this is where you, and I part company. You would rather have 14 seasons of being competitive and bullshit yourself into thinking thats a dynasty. I would rather win a world series and slam champagne all over my teammates and hold up finger and say “I’m number one, and you’re not and fuck your 14 consecutive second-places.
That was Eddie D’s motto. He hired himself the smartest guy to ever coach an NFL franchise and was never satisfied with his 14 or whatever consecutive NFL West playoff appearances. Every year he was committed to not winning the division or making the playoffs or even winning the NFC title game. His stated and practiced goal was to win the fucking superbowl every fucking year and take no fucking prisoners in the process. And he spent whatever it took and treated every single one of his players like royalty…not chattel the point where every single free-agent in the NFL would have sold their first born into slavery to play with the 49ers.
There is only one winner at the end of the season. Nobody gives a fuck about 14 times an also-ran. Its like coming in second in a presidential election. Nobody gives a fuck and certainly posterity does not. If being good also-rans is your thing the 1960s Giants were your team. Great players and “meaningful” games every September with future HOFers Marichal, Mays McCovey Perry and Cepeda. And if thats good enough for you thats fine and good for you. Thats entertainment.
But I’m more of the Vince Lombardi school, because winning is the only thing, it is everything. If you’re satisfied paying top dollar for 2nd drawer than there is nothing wrong with that. Its personal opinion and preference. Frankly, I’ve been around too long and am too fucking competitive to be satisfied with “meaningful” and “exciting” and “almost” horseshit.
The Giants have all the resources necessary to win a championship. Market. Stadium. Fan Base. Favorable Media. And they can barely play above .500 ball in the face of one of the great pitching staffs in recent memory.
Eddie DeBartolo is getting enshrined into the 49er HOF tomorrow and will be honored at Candlestick on Sunday. He is in town. Perhaps Mr. Neukom and Mr. Sabean might want to take some advice from Eddie D on what it takes to be a winner. Because right now the only fucking place these two are going to end up is in Wikipedia in some vague reference to baseball suits.
I am fucking sick to shit of people making fucking excuses for these losing suckbags. Have fucking fun striving to be an also-ran.
+mia: I don’t think we have different goals. I want a dynasty in the sense that the Oakland A’s had a dynasty in the early ’70′s. A team that returns to the playoffs again and again and subsequently wins championships. That, as opposed to a team that throws everything they’ve got at it, wins, then fades back into obscurity. There are a lot of examples of teams that do just that.
It’s not just throwing money at the problem, though I believe that it can be done (see Huizenga in ’97) at a ruinous price.
Creating a culture of winning doesn’t make it so (see the Raiders of late).
Money and a winning culture seems to do well for the Yankees but not so well for the Braves.
Giving the team every opportunity to get to the post season doesn’t assure championships (see the Braves and the Bills).
You probably need to have all of these ingredients and luck in abundance to win championships, the arrival of a genius like Walsh, a star or two or three.
And the frustrating thing is that the Giants have so very few of these things. They have a couple of stars. This season they had some unforeseen luck. They have no genius. They have the embryo of a winning culture. They have no team leader. Their coach is sleep inducing dull and an ex-Padre to boot. The general manager may as well be in the employ of the Dodgers. Larry Baer really seems only to care about filling the seats and making a buck. The new managing general partner doesn’t inspire confidence with his soft talk and bow tie. It’s hard to find a scrap of hope.
After several seasons of sickening failure it is clear that there should be some changes. The first and biggest change was McGowan. I think the next will be Sabean, and possibly Baer will be drawn back from the day to day operations he seems to want to continue to dick around with (You stick with marketing Larry, it’s what you do best. When we want your baseball opinion we’ll tell it to you). There is a good chance Bochy will stay because he is perceived as having done a lot with very little, and that isn’t entirely wrong. When it comes to managers we are all back seat drivers and will yell about whoever has the job. But even Bochy may get the boot. Isn’t it pretty to think so.
But a winning franchise, an Eddie D, is as rare a Lincacum. A Steinbrenner or an Al Davis are rare and few and far between. If it was easy, if it was common, it wouldn’t be worth it.
I remember walking in the city on a Sunday morning years ago, wondering why there was so little traffic, then suddenly hearing the sound of thousands of people, in their houses, in bars, all screaming and shouting all around and all at once. Montana had just completed a pass in the end zone.
We don’t get that every day.
Well I am glad you’re a cooler head than I Robert. And that you and others tolerate my profanity and too often absence of profundity.
You’re right. We don’t get that every day. But maybe once before I die would be nice. Seasons like this are particularly maddening to me. It is like starving for 40 days and 40 nights, you stumble upon a steak house and just as you start to enter, they slam the door in your face to go on vacation.
It just that this franchise has so much unrealized potential and that it rests in the wrong hands in terms of taking it to the next level. The Moribitos did as good a job as they could do and got three playoffs against the Cowboys in the early 70s (I can still see Preston Riley muff that 4th quarter onside kick, that was recovered by the Cowboys and kept the Niners out of Superbowl VI.
The Giants need new blood and about another $25 – $40 million a year in payroll to do the things we all want. A complete house cleaning and streamlined front office with real baseball guys in charge who are not afraid of new knowledge blended with old knowledge and not afraid to accept sunk costs like the above-mentioned and go on from there.
In my opinion the way to do this is grab as many high OPS guys in the offseason as you can and keep discarding players until you get the ones who actually perform. Yeah its expensive, but its how you win championships, and if its not championships your pursuing at 100% get the fuck out of the way and let somebody who is run things.
+mia,
You would have to bring up Preston Riley. One of the worst days in my youth.
My brothers and I burned his card after the game.
I wonder how many nights Preston wakes up screaming.
Oops. Sorry.
I was sitting there in the south endzone upper deck watching it unfold almost in slow motion. Unbelievable to this day.
+mia,
At least I was in the safe confines of my house…and much got destroyed that evening. Must have been a rough scene post game in the lot.
You’re spot on…still unbelievable.
Bochy said after the Zito win that he would be putting Renteria back in the lineup and that there would probably be changes because we would be facing a lefty. Obviously he put Nate in for Winn, which makes sense considering how terrible Winnhas been against lefties this year (.157avg/.376ops) and I didn’t really have a problem with Torres for Velez either. Renteria for Ishikawa though amkes no sense, Renteria is showing basically no significant lefty/righty split this year (vs. lefty: .237 / .645 vs. righty: .257 / .639 home: .242 / .626), whereas Ishikawa is hitting .303 / .646 vs lefties and .356 / .956 at home.
Or we can look at it like this, Panda, Uribe and Sanchez were always going to start. This leaves a space open at 1st or SS, so the choice is Edgar at short, Ishikawa at 1st or Garko at 1st. One of these hitters has a reputation for being clutch and is paid a lot of money, one of these hitters was acquired mainly for the purpose of mashing leftys and one of these hitters has shown a better split against leftys and been a monster whilst hitting at home. Guess which one Bochy picked?
Is it really all Renteria’s fault though? Perhaps not, but if I’m picking a scapegoat it sure as hell ameks a lot more sense for it to be the guy being paid $8m this year and has been consistently terrible all season
of course it is his fault – men on 2nd and 3rd with no outs in a 4-2 game is an automatic tie if you get the ball out of the freaking infield. Two fly balls do it a grounder to the right does it, but not a freaking pop up.
Baseballbriefs.com tracking back …. Sucked in?…
Baseballbriefs.com tracking back …. Sucked in?…
Junk offense. Please upgrade in the offseason, [whoever's coming in after Sabean]. Thank you sir.
i hope that bochy has a presser tonite, and there is at least one news hack who has the balls to ask why in the world he made such drastic changes to the lineup
the season is now officially over…and the gyros dont even get to play spoiler
all they can play for now is pride
after the bums play us, their season is a walk….same with the rox
Renteria needs to never wear a giants uni again
well,
despite the offense clicking with rentawreck out…bochy put him back in tonite
and moved panda back to first
if this guy is the teams manager next season…im gonna do something drastic
I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist firing off a pumped up post before this game. Sure we’re gonna head right into LA and get smoked most likely. BUT, sweeping the Rocks tonight shows a set of balls that should bode well next season when we have some young hitters come up to help and for whatever FA’s we bring in. (I say this with the most extreme caution as Sabean will be the one signing these guys.) But for tonight, screw it, make the Rocks sweat GET EM MATTY!!!
Absolutely. And, yes, I am a fan, first and foremost. Do I hate the horrible signings, contracts, drafts,et al? You bet. Am I a deep seated, insane fan? Oh yeah.