With the end in sight, the stories begin as everyone tries to understand why:
…. Bruce Bochy’s decision-making with his outfielders this year has left a lot to be desired, and in no case is that more obvious than his decision to bury Lewis in favor of Nate Schierholtz, and to a lesser extent Eugenio Velez, back in June.
Lewis is the third-best offensive player on the Giants, behind Pablo Sandoval and, oddly, Juan Uribe. He is the only regular other than Sandoval with an above-average OBP, making him water for an offense thirsty for baserunners. Yet Lewis has started just 20 games, about twice a week, since June 9, a time during which the Giants as a team have an execrable .305 OBP.
Of course, Sheehan is right. Lewis was the third best player on the team all season long, and it was Bochy’s poor handling of his weaknesses that ended his terrific start and began his slide. It was Bochy who wrote everybody’s name in the lineup except Lewis’ for such long stretches. But, in Bonehead’s defense, Lewis was terrifically bad in the field –something even I was eventually forced to concede– and with a team so dependent on preventing runs, Lewis’ “play” in the field was a problem that had to be addressed. (As an aside, Lewis did not provide the kind of offensive boost that would have mandated accepting the good with the bad here. He’s not Adam Dunn good with the bat, he’s simply the third best hitter on the worst offense in the league. There’s a difference.)
But, I digress….
The issue isn’t that Lewis was buried on the bench. The issue was that the team couldn’t figure out a way to help a player stay on the field. They couldn’t find a place for him, coach him up, and get the offense they so desperately needed in the game. So they played one dead body after another, and used him as a pinch hitter, or pinch runner; and hoped nobody would notice their failure. I noticed. And so did Joe.
I also noticed that Matt Cain seems to have faltered down the stretch. His last ten starts have been pretty bad, and I’m wondering whether he’s run down a bit, or if his earlier success was due more to luck than excellence. So, I looked it up.
At the end of July, he was 12-2, and leading the league in ERA, (2.12). His ERA was terrific, but, there were some mitigating circumstances for that stellar record. He beat some really bad offenses in the beginning of the season, notably the Mets, Athletics, Nationals, and Padres; and he won several games in which he allowed a bunch of hits, runs and home runs. He won on April 21st, against San Diego, despite allowing 9 hits in 6 innings. On May 12th, he escaped a loss when he allowed 9 hits and 4 earned runs in 7 innings, but the Giants somehow scored 9 runs and won the game. In fact, the Giants offense was certainly the reason he was 12-2 instead of a more pedestrian 8-5 or so.
At the end of June, Cain was 9-1. But he’d given up 4 runs or more four times, and he only lost one of those games. He was the starting pitcher in games the Giants scored 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, and 7 runs. He won five of those games, and got a no decision in the one I mentioned earlier. In those games, he allowed 1, 2, 0, 4, 4, and 1 runs. At the end of June, he was 9-1, and certainly could have been 6-4.
Had he started the season 6-4, instead of 9-1, his current stretch wouldn’t be so startling, because a pitcher that wins 9 of his first 10 decisions is thought of differently. He’s thought of as being a stopper, an Ace, and when your Ace struggles it’s noticed. But Cain has never been an Ace this season. His numbers have never been as good as Lincecum’s, not that that’s a reason to be down on him, nobody’s numbers are as good as Lincecum’s, but you get the point.
He was a little bit lucky early, and he’s been quite a bit mediocre lately. Since the end of July, when he was leading the league in ERA, he’s allowed 4, 5, 3, 1, 1, 4, 2, 4, and 4 earned runs. He’s gone 1-5 during that stretch, and that’s about right. He could’ve gone 3-6, which would leave him with an overall record of 15-8, which would look better than 13-7, but it’s the same, really.
He never was the best pitcher in the league, regardless of his numbers at the end of July. He doesn’t strike out enough guys, really, and he never has. He’s actually allowed more home runs this season than ever before (22), and his peripherals are decent, but in the end, his ERA is on the way to landing pretty much where it was last year, and the year before that, around 3.50. That’s very good, but it’s not great.
Matt Cain is a fine number two starter, and the Giants are lucky to have him and Lincecum at the same time, in their prime.
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BP agrees about Fred.
I stand corrected – maybe my eyes were bobbing around when I looked at him.
The Missing Man
by Joe Sheehan 9/22/09
Fred Lewis was the lead in the AP game story about the Giants’ 5-4 win over the Diamondbacks last night. Pinch-hitting with the bases loaded and one out in the eighth, Lewis hit a ground ball to second base that well could have been an inning-ending double play. He beat out the relay throw to first, however, which allowed the go-ahead run to score. The Giants’ bullpen held onto the lead over the last six outs, moving the team to four games behind the wild-card leading Rockies with 12 games to play.
It’s a nice story and a good moment for a player who I like a lot, who I’ve written about before, pushing for him to play. My question is: Why the hell was he available for use as a pinch-hitter? Why wasn’t he starting?
Bruce Bochy’s decision-making with his outfielders this year has left a lot to be desired, and in no case is that more obvious than his decision to bury Lewis in favor of Nate Schierholtz, and to a lesser extent Eugenio Velez, back in June. Lewis is the third-best offensive player on the Giants, behind Pablo Sandoval and, oddly, Juan Uribe. He is the only regular other than Sandoval with an above-average OBP, making him water for an offense thirsty for baserunners. Yet Lewis has started just 20 games, about twice a week, since June 9, a time during which the Giants as a team have an execrable .305 OBP.
Lewis opened the season not only as the starting left fielder, but as the #3 hitter. A hot two weeks (.429/.545/.571) got him promoted, in a way, to the leadoff spot, at which point he caught the other end of the variance (.215/.311/.262) for his time atop the lineup. Bruce Bochy took exactly the wrong lesson from this sequence; instead of looking at Lewis as one of his best players, with a season OBP of .398 and the only Giant willing to work a walk, he dropped Lewis to seventh, saying, “We’re just going to lighten it up for Freddy a little bit by dropping him down and see if that helps.” (Mychael Urban, MLB.com)
Lewis proceeded to play well over the next month, batting .254/.329/.492 while starting 17 of 19 games, and settling into the #5 and #6 slots in the lineup. His season line at that point was .276/.372/.417—he was basically the only Giant other than Sandoval doing anything helpful. It seems, though, that Bochy looked not at Lewis’ OBP, which his team desperately needed, but his RBI count: eight. Lewis wasn’t driving in runs, but then again, how exactly do you drive in runs behind two of the slowest players in baseball (Bengie Molina and Sandoval), one of whom is never on base? Prior to that, he’d batted third behind guys who weren’t getting on base and leadoff behind the bottom of a terrible lineup. Lewis was doing a perfectly fine job, but his manager couldn’t see past Harry Chadwick’s worst invention.
In any case, Bochy began messing with Lewis’ playing time, using Andres Torres and Schierholtz in the outfield, even playing Velez, a middle infielder by trade, in left when the latter came back in late July. Through June 5, Lewis was hitting .269/.365/.407 as more or less the everyday left fielder, with 46 starts in 53 games. He was a significant contributor to the Giants, if a misplaced one, an OBP guy without great power batting behind the productive bats with no speed and ahead of the terrible bottom of the lineup. Since then, Lewis has started consecutive games just three times and has just two starts since August 17.
Schierholtz and his half-empty batting average have gotten most of the inherited time since June 11; he’s hitting .282/.320/.435 since that date, not as good as Lewis, but with the kind of line that accumulates RBI. Velez has also played a lot at Lewis’ expense, when the team would have been better off using him at either middle infield spot in place of Edgar Renteria, who’s been awful, or in lieu of trading for Freddy Sanchez.
In a season in which his team desperately needed baserunners, Bruce Bochy took a .398 OBP guy out of the leadoff spot. In a season when he usually started seven guys with below-average OBPs, Bochy benched one of his only OBP guys because he fixated on RBIs, and beyond that, couldn’t recognize that Lewis’ lack of them wasn’t as much a failure on his part as a lack of opportunity. Bochy exacerbated the OBP issue by taking Lewis’ playing time and giving it to players who didn’t get on base as much, from Schierholtz to Velez (or the middle infielders he could have been replacing) and Randy Winn, the veteran having a lousy year.
Bochy simply didn’t use Lewis properly. He had the right idea at the start of the season, using him in the top three spots in the lineup, so that he could be on base for what power exists on the Giants. But Bochy overreacted to small-sample performances, moving Lewis to leadoff after two good weeks and then down to sixth after three bad ones. If he’d simply evaluated Lewis based on the body of work to that date—a .398 OBP on the season and a .359 career mark coming into 2009—he would have left the outfielder at or near the top of the lineup.
Instead, he then made the mistake of batting him where his skills would be the least valuable, the six hole, and finally, demoted him to the bench for not driving in runs despite having had precious few opportunities to do so in the season’s first two months.
The Giants are going to miss the postseason by a small amount of wins. Bruce Bochy’s decision to bench Fred Lewis will be significant part of the gap between playing into October and not, and when you look back at the process, you can see that it’s an embarrassing display of incompetence. A good manager would have made use of Lewis’ skills, skills unique on the Giants’ roster. Instead, Bochy jerked the player around and then used bad performance analysis to bury him.
The Giants and their fans deserve better than that kind of incompetence.
Thanks El. I really appreciated reading even more about how stupid and incompetent and primarily how fucking unfair Bochy has been.
Bochy is the epitome of the Three Ess of bad baseball managing
Stupid – Believe in obviously and provably false premises. (flat-earther syndrome)
Stubborn – Continue to pound the square peg into the round hole despitte breaking countless pegs and hammers
Sycophantic – Suck the boss off no matter what; for the opportunity to pound the pegs the boss gave you into those round holes
Baseball is a closed society. More than any other endeavor, it is who you know. Not what you know. Or how you impart what you know on others.
Bochy is the epitome of those three Ess’
Tickets to catch Pablo Sandoval and the Giants in potential National League Division Series games at AT&T Park are on sale now. Don’t miss postseason action.
The Giants, who are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, are nevertheless offering to sell fans tickets to the “potential” playoffs at AT&T Park on their website.
Refund Information
Refunds for tickets purchased via phone and Internet will be automatic and go back to the credit card used.
I am speachless.
Delusional Internet Giants Fans?
Okay. Like everybody else, I’ve heard about the second coming of Jeezuz and his name is Buster Posey. Phenomenal college catcher converted from shortstop. Minor League Numbers to die for. Al the saber doods and guys with library glasses who write about such things splooged all over themselves whenever Posey is discussed.
And after seeing him the past two games the only guy he reminded me of when he first came up was another “highly touted” “homegrown” guy name of Kevin Frandsen. Fucking Krukow and the rest of the breathless media gaspers were fawning over Frandsen with terms like “wide eyed rookie” “good baseball mind…knows his place in the clubhouse” “confident but not cocky” blah blah blah. Fucking cliches I don’t even try on high school players.
So I’m all set to see the next coming of Johnny Bench and Joe Mauer. Now granted its only been two games and 10 at bats. but what the fuck? Do the Giants specialize in adolescent, physically unimposing, overmatched kids that show absolutely nothing other than nice minor league stats. I mean this kid was overmatched at the plate, behind the plate and I don’t doubt that he got short-shrifted at the post game spread.
Now his stats say I’m wrong. And the sample size is insignificant, but for the life of me, I didn’t see one fucking thing I liked. Not one. He got the signs fucked up with Johnson and Zito both. He botched pitches. He had not clue one at the plate. He simply looked a high school kid they grabbed out of the stands at random and told him to go take a couple of hacks at real major league pitching.
I mean at least Freddie Lewis looked like, acted like, carried himself with confidence and an athletic grace. Speaking of which, only Travis Ichikawa acts like, walks like and behaves like a Major Leaguer. Guys like Bowker, Shierholtz, Torres as well as Posey all look like fugitives from a Division III College progam.
Completely unimpressive looking.
Fucking Giants. Their players don’t even look like ballplayers anymore. No wonder their so dreadful and every pitcher in the major leagues looks like Nolan Ryan or Steve Carlton when pitching against them
kfran was never overhyped
he is what he is
as for posey, he does need more time in the minors…but the team is out of it…so who cares if he plays
as for the rooks not looking like major leaguers…that is what playing for bochy and sabean will do for a kid
come on +mia….the prob is not with the players…its with the philosophy
btw, posey should never have skipped aa….pcl numbers are all inflated thanks to the hitters parks
Delusional Player and Incompetent Idiot Make strange Bedfellows
Well, Frauddie. If the decision belonged to people who were actually trying to improve the Giants and acquire somebody who could stay healthy, show some speed, excercise some plate discipline, work a couple of walks a week, maybe show a little pop once in awhile, you wouldn’t even be a fart in a windstorm. Why?
Because you are the antithesis of what a contender, not a pretender, needs in a middle infielder. And on top of everything you’re over 30 and a physical wreck. But since the Giants specialize in posers (Zito Roberts) fillers (Winn, Molina) and fakes (Rowand, Renteria) maybe some sanity will be shown and you will be given a nice $600k parting gift as you clean out your locker. Thanks for coming, we’ll be in touch, and enjoy your retirement telling all the all the little junior high school kids in Encino how you were a 3 time All-Star.
And of course the Idiot had to weigh in with his nuggets of positive wisdom:
Everything and anything said before, during and after “….a reliable bat in the No. 2 spot in the order” in describing Fraudie Sanchez should be enough to send believers of this canard back to Little League Tryouts 101.
If I was Neukom, I would sit his fat blubbery carcass down in my boardroom and I would read him this:
“Freddy Sanchez (the Barbi Doll of infielders) twisted his knee taking 4 steps to his right to retrieve Aaron Rowand’s sloppy throw back to the infield shortly after Mark Reynolds hit a 1st inning, 2-run jack off yet another Barry Zito bp fastball or hanging curve. (Hard to tell, they both look the same from the cf camera).
This is the third time Sanchez has been hurt and out of the lineup in six weeks, since the Giants traded their second best minor league prospect to the Pirates for him. Hell the guy literally limped into the Giants clubhouse and had to park his ass on the bench and in the whirlpool for the first several games before he even got fitted for a uniform. But at least he is hitting almost as well as Eugenio Othello Velezo.
Sanchez with the Giants in 102 ABs: .284/.295/.324/ OPS .619
Velez in 232 ABs with Giants 2009: .273/.321/.433/ OPS .754
And not only does Sanchez have no power, ( a sub .350 SLG is about what you expect from a relief pitcher) he has no speed, (10 stolen bases in 7 years, and only 2 walks in 107 plate appearances this year. He has 38 freeking homeruns in 7 years topping out at 11 4 seasons ago! ”
And than I would ask him to counter this. Point by point. With facts.
And that would be just the beginning.
Because I would have a laundry list of contracts that I would audit. And those audits would include players, trades, acquistions, dfa’s over the past 5 seasons with particular emphasis on the previous 12 months when he was more or less told (at leas for public consumption) to get his fucking act together. That the “Bonds contract hamstrung us” excuse was no longer valid.
I would really really like him to explain away the abject failures and travesties of the Dave Roberts, Aaron Rowand, Edgar Renteria, Randy Johnson, and Bruce Bochy contracts. I would insist he detail and document in writing his involvement in the Barry Zito contract. I would insist he explain how the Freddy Sanchez and Ryan Garko trades benefited the San Francisco short term and long term championship objectives.
And than I would execute him.
(figuratively)
as usual, I agree with mia+
I find it impossible to believe that in the whole world of baseball there isn’t someone who could’ve taught Lewis to play a better left field. He does seem to always be alert and into the game, it’s not like he’s slow, he doesn’t have bad knees… there’s just no reason. And, while I may have a higher opinion of him at the plate than most, one can’t argue with the fact that his bat would make the lineup better.
Instead, what I see day to day is an almost inscrutable use of the roster by Bochy. It’s exactly right, why on earth play Winn when he’s not part of the future? He may be done, even if he’s not, we know his ceiling. Nate would make so much more sense. Bowker makes more sense.
And I like Velez a lot and think he should be in the lineup… yet, again, there’s a cast of thousands at 2B and SS. And usually the wrong cast of thousands. God bless Uribe, but one has to acknowledge that he was a lucky accident.
The Giants constantly compound their mistakes. Okay, bad signing, these things happen, move on. Okay, bad trade, these things happen, move on. Whether those things should have happened in the first place aside, again, the use of the 25 man roster is almost insane at times, and again, for the umpteenth time, young players don’t get a chance to show what they can do. Free talent? Nope, gotta pay $8 million for it. Upside vs no upside, over and over.
I’m not about to point at any particular young player as a future All-Star, but doesn’t even random chance say that one COULD be? It seems we’ll never know, the way the team is run and managed.
We all have our assumptions about what will happen in the offseason, but though I’m semi-joking, I wouldn’t be half surprised to see Sabean trade for a 3B and a 1B and bench Sandoval. Hell, he doesn’t even have two seasons under his belt. No veteran savvy.
As you mention, Marc, the odds of drafting and signing hundreds of prospects and failing to develop an impact position player during that time are mind boggling. I cannot think of a single franchise with such a dismal track record.
Wow.
You mentioned something in your post that we talked about some time ago. It was the beginning of the discussions surrounding Sabean’s falied farm system to develop any impact position players. Until Sandoval, there had been no impact position players come out of the Giants system since Sabean came to the Giants as an assistant to Bob Quinn in the mid 90s. And even Sabean was taken by surprise, saying as late as the end of March, that he wasn’t sure if Sandoval would make the team or not, but that Aurillia and Burris were sure things.
“Aurillia and Burris for sure!” “Sandoval? Maybe. (shrug) Bengie does need a back up and maybe we’ll try him at 3b.”
In the 13 seasons as GM, the Giants have drafted approximately 650 prospects and signed dozens of foreign nationals as kiddie free agents.
Besides his pitching heavy philosophy resulting in the kinds of totally unbalanced rosters the Giants have had for years, he evaluates position players based on criteria that went out in the 1980s. He places emphasis on batting average, and certain other kinds of strictly subjective criteria…which was typical of college coaches in the mid 1980s…which he was before he got lucky as a Yankee scout.
He constantly uses phrases like grit, character, clubhouse guy, clutch, ability to play hurt. These are all ancedotal, emotional observations. He mumbles about due diligence and yet signs as hi primary offseason acquisition steaming piles of poo like Aurillia, Renteria, Johnson and Sanchez all of whom pretty much lose whatever little value they had to begin with to the DL.
All of this punctuated by Sabeans “All Star” double play combination of Frauddie and the Rentawreck going under the knife after stinking up “countless” Giants starting lineups for months by being old, over-the-hill, and damaged goods.
If Neukom re-signs Sabean after these obvious and ongoing lunacies and lies, than the Giants partnership will lose Lincecum and Cain and any other guy who can get himself a roster job with a franchise that not only says it wants to compete for championships, but demonstrates a capacity for doing so.
+mia has brought up what is, to me, the most significant concern currently facing the Giants organization; that is that they may, through a combination of factors, make the club so unattractive that they will be unable to attract or to retain talented players who are participating in the free agency market.
As a fan I was deeply concerned to see that this was the case when, following the 2006 season, the club apparently could not sign quality free agents, and in fact overpaid to sign marginal players.
At the time one of the factors was that there was a lot of media talk that Bonds’ presence had created an unhappy clubhouse atmosphere, and players are not immune to broadly expressed media opinion. Another factor was the club’s choice of managers; Alou, 71 years old, had a losing record as a manager over the course of his career, and aside from his first two years with the Giants looked to be returning to losing form during his last two years with the Giants.
Bruce Bochy also has a losing record and there were serious questions about how he handled players, even to the point that he lost his job with the San Diego Padres, even after managing that team to two consecutive division championships.
Another factor was that with Bonds’ decline the club was seen to be loaded and reloaded with more or less average veteran players and the club didn’t show signs of making any changes in their, I’ll call it ‘recruiting strategy’ for lack of a better term.
It is my opinion that in the off-season following the 2006 season the SF Giants were generally perceived around the league as a team which talked about rebuilding but was not rebuilding; as a club where mediocre management was ensconced; where aging and past their prime veteran players were overpaid and given preferential playing time; where the priority was not winning but only being good enough to attract paying customers. Scrutinizing the last half decade of the Giant’s performance shows that this perception was accurate.
The responsibility for this unhappy state of affairs rests squarely on the shoulders of the owners. It is they and nobody else who set the goals and priorities of their team. They hold the power to hire and fire, the power to spend or scrimp. They have the power and the responsibility to set the team’s direction.
Bill Neukom, as the new Managing General Partner, is the only person who can turn this club into a winning organization. Nobody else matters. Only he can make the decisions that will determine the future of the San Francisco Giants Baseball Club.
As a fan I await, with fear and awful foreboding, the decisions that Bill Neukom will make over the next few weeks. There are no contractual obligations standing in his way to making sweeping changes in the Giant’s management. There is no reason why a man of his intelligence cannot have developed accurate and informed opinions about the organization’s shortcomings. As an exceptionally accomplished attorney and team leader he should have a highly developed knack for recognizing and cutting through bullshit. He has a world class reputation for aggressive engagement in serious conflicts and, unlike the management team he has inherited, he has a winning record.
Help us Mr. Bill, you’re our only hope.
“For Brian Sabean, nothing succeeds like failure.”
Well at least one Bay Area Sports Journalist is speaking the truth. And doesn’t give one bad shit about Larry Baer’s opinion.
Couldn’t agree more.
You are absolutely right about Lewis running flatfooted and the problems that causes.
Gary Maddox was a big exponent of running on the balls of one’s feet. Another Giant
who flourished elsewhere-that was back in the day when the team had ML talant and pissed
it away as opposed to the current crew that attracts slugs like stale beer.
Brian Sabean and the Giants are choosing not to be active participants in this test phase.
Just stunningly stupid. A chance to gain an edge that they piss on.
My thing with Fred is that he seems devoid of a good outfielder’s instincts and actually seems to be getting worse. The LF job was his, but he dropped it.
Laughed when I read he was a DB like me – I had speed and couldn’t catch the ball either.
Why would anybody be surprised that Baer and Sabean would turn away from this? It is a perfectly in keeping with their “my shit doesn’t stink” personalities. Part of the Giants Way of doing things:
“No new knowledge is good knowledge”
Because everything that there was to be learned about baseball in their world was discovered by 1925.
But for Lewis, he looks worse when you are there, in person, up close. I think his problem is a really simple one to solve. He has bouncing eyeballs. That is why he can get to a ball easy enough once he picks it up, but has a hard time catching it. It comes from running flat footed. Good trackers and catchers run on the balls of their feet.
That a talent like Lewis could get this far in the Giants organization without being remedied, or at least addressed is symptomatic of everything wrong with them. They are clueless about even the most obvious of baseball fundamentals. Afterall. Grit, savvy and veteran presence trumps the necessity for talent, skill and good coaching.
What about a letter writing campaign? To Neukom and the board.
Dickweed Media. Front Office Tool. SmartAss Blog Commentary
Most folks who follow this game with at least one eye on the ball, were in the same corner as this smartass if not as stridently vocal about it:
And on the following day, in the electronic version of the Green Toilet Paper sports section, we got this overpaid, mouth-organ and Bonds hater, drenching himself with gritty gamer splooge:
And yet one more sycophantic media chump chimed in (Scott Ostler)
And even more impressive. From the Genius Skipper Grumbly formerly known as Brian on July 29, 2009:
But wait! There’s more. If you had called toll free by August 23rd you would have heard this from Skipper Jonas!
And then there was this shit disturber, disturbing even more shit about this shitty deal about a month earlier:
And a couple of hours later….
Okay kiddies. Lets spin the magic time machine forward to last night:
No Regrets Brian? No REGRETS! Well there are tools and there are fools and then there are fools with tools and tools for fools, but besides us “having a failure to communicate” there are the foolish tools who push the foolish boundries of toolishness.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am pleased to present the Foolish Tool of the Year award to the GM formerly known as Skipper Jonas Grumbly
Lawd have mercy on all Giants fans.
When I heard about Sanchez saying he knew he would need surgery even before the trade I was stunned. The quote from B.S., above, where he uses the poker terminology “all-in” is a jaw dropper. Leaving aside all the smoke and mirrors from the columnists, it is clear that the Giant’s GM knew the extent of Sanchez’s injuries when he made this deal.
The upside, if there can be any upside to this idiotic move, is that it happened so publicly, at the end of the season, and shows how poor Sabean’s judgment is. Keep your fingers crossed that this $4M blunder does not go unnoticed by Neukom. Even if Neukom is nothing but a bean counter – and you know I don’t believe he is – even a bean counter, hell, especially a bean counter, is going to notice $4M pissed away in that manner.
Nice points. You reminded me of something. Its not that I was necessarily disturbed that Sabean went “all in” on a desired player, who had maybe a 50/50 chance of making it through the season. If it had been a power hitter in the mold of Andres Gallaraga, Ellis Burks, Reggie Sanders or any kind of a difference maker in terms of pitcher disruption, I would have defended and probably even lauded the move, even if we lost the roll of the dice. Because those are the kinds of guys that can put you over the top. And anytime a guy makes the right move that will put you in a position to win, you have to do it.
But the guy making the moves has to know what he is doing, and he has to know when to pull the trigger as well as whom to aim at.
Thats the thing I am down on this management team about. They were unprepared for the early success that Sandoval and the pitching staff gave them. And when he finally decided to move, there was nothing but garbage cans available to him. Non-impact guys. Guys like Alfonso and Castillo and Vizquel ad nauseum.
When During the 6 six years that Baker and Sabean collaborated jointly on personnel moves, the Giants had those kinds of power hitters besides Bonds and consequently they were in playoff in 1997, 1998, 2000, and 2002. In the 7 years since, they have been involved in 1 playoff round in 2003 and have been third or worse in their division for 5 consecutive years starting in 2005 when the vast majority of Baker’s guys were gone.
Again. Best Stadium. Best location. Great attendance and loyal fans. Fourth Biggest Market in the Country and they spend about the same on players as the Royals.
Clearly, the current arrangement, for whatever reason, is not working. At All.
ok….bag on any of the players you want…but leave off of omar, who is a future hof
may not have had impact with the bat….but dang, he was still a magician on the field
and the owners of the fish wraps still cant figure out why they continue to lose readership?
i know more about the game than all those hacks
that sanchez knew he would need off season surgery means that sabean has hired the most incompetent medical staff in all of baseball
but we already knew that when bonds wouldnt use them and they destroyed lowry’s career
His defense compared to his peers is most likely somewhere between average and above average for his position. We’re talking about comparing Lewis to Carlos Lee, Adam Dunn, Manny Ramirez, Garrett Anderson…
Damning with faint praise.
He’s terrible out there. Try comparing him to guys who can actually catch the ball instead of the old and non athletic.
His OPS would have to rise 100pts to justify a place in a decent team’s outfield.
Your key phrase here El: “decent team”. Which the Giants are not. His stick is/was more than ample to justify his position in the top of the lineup. He’s botched some plays and also made some really good recoveries. Unlike asshat Rowand who seems to take naps between pitches sometimes, he actually has a degree of concentration and focus that one would expect in a defensive back…which he was in college.
Playing outfield is a learned skill. The Giants are not a teaching organization. Their players are some of the worst executors of fundamentals in all of organized ball, and one only has to look at the way the Giants system players cannot even lay down a sacrifice, much less a hit and run…not that either one of those ploys is worth a shit for a team that makes too many easy outs as it is. The Lewis “defense problem” is systemic. Lewis’ potential was worthy of them taking the time and making the effort to tutor him.
Most here are not old enough to remember Willie McCovey in left field. If Bochy and Sabean had been in charge in the early 60s, McCovey would have been a pinch-hitter, and traded for a bag of balls by 1963. The abuse he took from the maniacs in the left field seats at the Stick, which was fueld by the media, was enough to make me sick, such was the rancor and out and out hatred. People would boo him unmercifully for his misplays out there. And he too, like Fred Lewis, eventually got defensive about it, which gave the jackals and hyenas even more fodder.
Fortunately for Giants fans, Stoneham and Feeney (actual baseball men, not p.r. hacks and bean counters) recognized that McCovey’s bat was too important to let decay in the dugout, so they moved him back to 1b and gave him tons of instruction during the season as well.
Lewis is one of the few guys on this roster that is under 30, has speed, can hit, and can hit for a little bit of power. An actual 3 tool playerthat could get better, which on this roster of zero and one-tool tools, puts him right behind Sandoval and Uribe.
The best thing that can happen for Lewis as well as Giants fans is that 3 minutes after the last out is made October 4, is that the Giants announce the firing of Bochy and their intent to not exercise the option on Sabean’s contract.
“He’s terrible out there. Try comparing him to guys who can actually catch the ball instead of the old and non athletic. ”
But that’s exactly it, we don’t have to compare him to good players, because his position isn’t filled with good players (on defense). Lewis is much better defensively than you give him credit for. He’s fast – when Carlos Lee doesn’t get to a ball that looks out of his range, and Fred Lewis makes a routine catch because it’s within his range, you’re much less inclined to notice it then when Lewis drops a ball….yet the impact on the team is the same in both cases. Lewis gets to a lot more balls his peers wouldn’t then he misplays. He’s an above average defender in LF. Sure his bat is a little below average in LF, but not as much as you might think (OPS underrates Lewis because it overweights SLG [which already underrates Lewis' power to begin with], and underweights OBP, and relatively speaking Lewis is more OBP less SLG). Overall Fred Lewis is an a pretty average starter, which considering the fact that he costs under $500,000, makes him a great player to have. Every team needs players like Fred Lewis, even contending teams.
The very fact that the Giants (in other words, Brian Sabean) don’t realize what kind of value Fred Lewis has is the EXACT thing that’s holding our franchise back. It’s the root cause for our signing overpriced, overaged veterans and running a shitty offense out there year in and year out. It’s the root cause for our undervaluing the attributes that actually lead to runs, that is, not making an out on offense. The fact that Fred Lewis is sitting on the bench is crazy, is stupid, is beyond a fireable offense. If I was running another team in MLB who needed a corner outfielder, I’d trade for Lewis in a heartbeat, you know it wouldn’t take much to get him from Sabean. Lewis is a very good value baseball player that will help his team win baseball games.
By the way, have you heard how the Giants are letting some Mountain View company test a Field F/X system in AT&T. That is, these cameras measure everything about fielders that we can’t measure right now – how much range they cover, where they start and stop getting to a ball and how quickly they get it there, positioning, I think it can do arm strength/accuracy by measuring how fast the ball gets to its destination…we have the only stadium this system is currently in. No other team has access to information like this that can potentially revolutionize the way we evaluate defense.
Brian Sabean and the Giants are choosing not to be active participants in this test phase. We are choosing not to use the next potential source of fielding data, which is available ONLY TO US, to evaluate talent in ways nobody else can. We are choosing to pass up a potentially HUGE competitive advantage no other team in baseball has the opportunity to copy (in the present). How the fuck can you justify making that kind of business decision? I simply cannot understand how this makes sense, other than the fact that Sabean & Co. is that fucking clueless.
Can you provide a link to more info about this field effects measurement thing? It sounds interesting, and I haven’t been able to find other info about it via Google.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/18/DDNU198ABO.DTL
“Does it have a future in judging players? It’s possible,” says Giants President Larry Baer, squinting to spot the FIELDf/x cameras from the bullpen before an afternoon game. “Sportvision is not the only thing we have going. We have laboratories that are looking for edges for our talent.”
Gosh, Larry, I hope your laboratories have microscopes.
Larry Baer should not be anywhere near the field or the players. What does he bring to the table aside from marketing acumen? The thought that he has anything to do with talent assessment or development is chilling.
I sure hope he doesn’t. I don’t mind Baer as much as say…+mia…I actually think he’s pretty good at the marketing/business side of things and from an organization standpoint we do need someone like him. If he has any input into the baseball side of things, though, I would have to reverse my opinion. Baer should not be involved in baseball decisions. Let’s hope he was speaking strictly out of knowledge of what goes on in the business and not because he’s a main player in making decisions on these types of things…
By Laboratory he means Balco. Bondsian slip? LOL
Baseballbriefs.com tracking back …. And so it begins…
Baseballbriefs.com tracking back …. And so it begins…
here is the guy who the giants need to hire as the next gm
http://www.forums.mlb.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?sr=y&msg=22333.1&nav=messages&webtag=ml-padres
this post is from 4 fucking years ago
Ha, clearly that guy can see the future, so yeah, I wouldn’t mind a GM that knows what the future holds…
It makes me sad that part of his post doesn’t apply, though.
“5. When selecting playoff rosters, experience is more
important than talent or proven performance.
6. Make sure young talent in playoffs still gets no experience
so you can continue to play experienced vets who have
inferior skills.”
“Lewis was terrifically bad in the field”
Just to put things into perspective, LF is the 2nd worst defensive position in major league baseball. The only position where players are worse than LF is 1B. Fred Lewis’ peer group is not very athletic, and simiply bad, defensively. His defense compared to his peers is most likely somewhere between average and above average for his position. We’re talking about comparing Lewis to Carlos Lee, Adam Dunn, Manny Ramirez, Garrett Anderson…
Lewis should have been playing. He’s more likely to get better than get worse, and he’s already the 2nd (or 3rd if you count Uribe) hitter on the team. Randy Winn has the 2nd most PA’s on our team. Schierholtz has been just as bad as Winn, but based on his minor league numbers and the fact that while Winn is old and most likely to get worse while Schierholtz is young and most likely to get better, he is clearly the better option. The bottom line is Winn should not have started a game in the 2nd half this year, with Lewis at the top of the pecking order and Schierholtz as a better option, as well. I was unhappy Torres got PT, I’m still not convinced he’s any good, but it worked out so I won’t get worked up over it. Hell, maybe he should have been playing instead of Rowand. OF should have been Lewis + Rowand/Torres + Schierholtz/Torres, and there’s absolutely no excuse for the way Bochy’s played what he has. I’m also not sold on Velez, though I guess he has been producing at an acceptable level since he came back up so you could give him some PT in there somewhere (but not for Lewis, who is simply better).
In addition to that fireable offense, the fact that we’re still finding PT for Renteria is a joke. With Uribe’s production, Renteria should be relegated to the bench with an Ishikawa/Garko platoon at 1B. I hate Velez at 2B but with Sanchez down, it’s a better option than Renteria starting. Frandsen is better, too. I honestly don’t mind the idea of bringing Bochy back, he has his failings and between these and the Posey thing has really butchered our lineup situation so far this year, but as long as Sabean’s gone and we get a competent GM in I think Bochy’s failings are irrelevant. A good GM would not let Bochy fuck up like this – he’d fire his ass if he did. I do like how Bochy manages our pitching staff, so as long as Sabean is replaced…I think Bochy’s put on a leash so we’re good.
Either way this has really cost us. You’re spot on, John.
As for Cain, better stats like FIP + tRA weren’t buying his 1st half successes, he was pretty much at the levels he’s been at consistently for his whole career. He’s one of the most consistent pitchers I’ve seen, since he came up he’s been good and a horse, but he hasn’t taken a big step forward yet and probably won’t take that step into elite status. That’s ok, though, like you said, the Giants are lucky to have him and Lincecum.
the problem is not replacing freddy, who really was a horror in the field this season (that they couldnt fix that makes no sense to me, he was this bad in the minors or last season)
the problem was replacing him with the either pharoh or nate….nate shouldve replaced winn, who has been a joke all season….pharoh shouldve replaced the gamer, rowand
bochy’s attitude is that a vet cannot be replaced….bochy hates the kids
bochy and sabean must go
Matt Cain is a fine number two starter, and the Giants are lucky to have him and Lincecum at the same time, in their prime.
And that is about all that the Giants can reasonably count on going forward to next year.
And for all the happy horseshit joy joy blah blah nice surprise, nobody ever expected them to get this far, this is what I have to say to those morons.
This franchise ranked 14th in payroll, at $82 million, almost identical to Kansas City at $81.5 million.
For the 5th year in a row, they will finish 3rd or worse in a 5 team division
For the 5th year in a row, the Giants are last or near last in every offensive category in Major League Baseball
They are ranked 17th out of 30 teams in won loss record after the all-star break.
The Sanchez trade is the biggest fleece job since AJ. Piersynski. And it too was carried off by a small market team with no money.
The Oakland A’s have the 8th best record after the all-star break
The Giants after leading the Wild Card race for much of the season will be lucky to finish no worse than 3rd behind Colorado and Atlanta.
They will score less than 650 runs again. That is 100 runs short of what a playoff team needs. They are nowhere near that right now.
And every single one of their starting pitchers has virtually fell off a cliff in the month of September. Enough was enough.
The old bastards like Molina, Winn, Rowand, Aurillia, Renteria and even the pathetic Fred Sanchez contributed nothing but false hope and embarrassing vaudevillian displays of pseudo-baseball during September as well. Slop-hacking losers, posers and garbage cans. Frauds.
Their top Latin American free agent signing is in prison on a murder charge.
This team is even more fucked now as it was at the end of 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005 and 2004.
They don’t have any hitting. They have not had any hitting, And they have made it clear they are not going to pursue any hitting.
Really really nice job Bow Tie, and Brian and Larry and Bruce. Hope you guys are fucking proud of yourselves for the scam job you did on the fans of this team that forked over hundreds of hard earned dollars in the false hope you actually knew what you were doing.
The Giants front office for all the reasons stated above should be fucking ashamed of themselves.