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.

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’

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.

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.

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

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.

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

SAN FRANCISCO — Freddy Sanchez is open to returning to the San Francisco Giants next season if the situation works out for both sides.

———————————————–

“Yeah, this is somewhere I would want to play,” Sanchez said before the Giants’ game against the Chicago Cubs on Saturday. “The decision’s not mine. If approached about being here, we would listen. If not, I’d be a free agent and I’m confident going into the free-agent market.

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:

Sabean said the Giants expect Sanchez to “recover to full strength and his optimum ability.”

The Giants very well might try to re-negotiate his contract and sign Sanchez to a multiyear deal before the free-agency period begins. San Francisco’s brass certainly would like to have some continuity in the infield and Sanchez provides solid defense and a reliable bat in the No. 2 spot of the order.

“We traded for Freddy for him to be a Giant,” Sabean said. “We explained to him it wasn’t an in-and-out opportunity. We want to resolve it as soon as possible.”

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)

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.

Well at least one Bay Area Sports Journalist is speaking the truth. And doesn’t give one bad shit about Larry Baer’s opinion.

By: Glenn Dickey
Special to The Examiner
September 18, 2009

SAN FRANCISCO — The Giants’ wild-card run will probably save general manager Brian Sabean’s job, but he should be fired because he’s put together an unbalanced team that won’t make the playoffs this year or next.

Everybody knows the Giants need a big stick, but Sabean hasn’t been able to get one, either in free agency or his panicky trades in midseason, because he’s overpaid for veterans.
………
Not pretty, but Sabean has a way of ingratiating himself with the men running the club, so, he’ll probably be back. For Brian Sabean, nothing succeeds like failure.

Glenn Dickey has been covering Bay Area sports since 1963 and also writes on http://www.GlennDickey.com. E-mail him at glenndickey@hotmail.com.

Couldn’t agree more.