One of the excellent backtalkers posted a link to the full Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy interview that Andrew Baggardly did. I read it, and wanted to bring some of it to the front page:
Sabean: “The thing I do know about Bengie’s situation is going into free agency he’s going to be in pretty darn good stead. There’s going to be more than the Giants interested and there are going to be teams that may be able to offer more years or salary than we at the end of the day may be able to compete for. So it’s a complicated issue but he certainly did his part and he deserves due consideration.”
Translation: “we’re gonna overpay him on a two year deal.”
Sabean: “…. it’s safe to say we need some more power, quite frankly. The team is going to have to take on a little different personality. As Boch pointed out to me at the end of the year, which makes sense, a lot of times when you have players like Pablo and Bengie who are free swingers, sometimes, especially with a younger team, or a team challenged to score a lot of runs, they’ll take on that personality. In a selfish way you’d like to find somebody who’s different from them who can calm things down or act in the middle of the order in a different way.
Translation: “I failed to sign Adam Dunn or Bobby Abreau, and we were fucked all year long because of it.”
Bochy: “I thought as hitters that we weren’t aggressive enough in certain counts, especially ahead in the count. I want these guys to let the bats go. I thought we were late a lot on fastballs in hitter’s counts. We want to work on that too. That’s a big part of the game. Power comes from being aggressive.
Translation: “I don’t know what I am talking about.”
Bochy: …. “I don’t think we’ve seen the best of Edgar (Renteria). I really don’t. This guy is a pro and he had a down year, I think, because of how much that elbow was bothering him. It didn’t just bother him throwing. It bothered him hitting. And this game’s hard enough to play when you feel great, but when you’re hurting and you’re trying to hit major league pitching, it’s not that easy.”
Translation: “I don’t know what I am talking about.”
Sabean: “Our aim is to try to get something done with Freddy (Sanchez) and I expect that probably will happen.”
Translation: “I don’t know what I am talking about.”
Sabean: “The one thing that didn’t happen was, collectively as a group, we just couldn’t get marginally better. …. Whether it’s moving runners over or the bunting game, in some ways, we might have gotten caught in between. We were waiting for guys to hit three-run homers. We were waiting for guys to hit a double with the bases loaded. The more we found out we couldn’t do that, later in the year, we decided that we were going to have to do some other things — bunting guys over or running a little bit more.”
Translation: “I don’t know what I am talking about.”
Seriously, though, the comments from these two are especially revealing. First off, they show that they really do have significant flaws in how they evaluate players. On the one hand, they are saying that a player is who he is, as in the comment about Sandoval and Molina. But in the next minute, we hear how they didn’t seem to know that they had a power-less team of hackers, and that they were surprised that none of these bums couldn’t hit three-run home runs at will. Bochy wants us all to remember that Renteria is a pro and a gamer and all that, but he fails to even mention how he’s also gonna be 35-years old, and has been injured and on a decline for most of the last four seasons.
Just like Sabean wants us all to know that Sanchez is a gamer and a pro and he expects that he’ll do better than last season, even though he’s 32 years old, and injured, and right smack in the middle of his decline phase.
Additionally, they demonstrate that they either haven’t been paying attention, or are actually that clueless when it comes to knowing what is actually happening. Did Bochy actually say, “I thought as hitters that we weren’t aggressive enough in certain counts.”? Really? That’s not what I thought. It’s not what any close examination of the teams hitters shows. It’s not what any of us who watched the games saw.
And, finally, the piece de resistance:
Sabean: …. “I’ll mention this, not in any way of being defensive, but the (two-year, $18.5 million) Renteria situation: We made a management decision on all levels that we needed a veteran shortstop. Looking back, the choice internally would have been somebody like (Emmanuel) Burriss, which as we all know sitting here today, wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.
Secondarily, no matter what the contract threshhold ended up being, if you talk to Tony LaRussa, if you talk to Bobby Cox, if you talk to anybody around baseball who’s had this type of player and you listen to how Boch witnessed what he was able to do on and off the field, including or especially just with somebody like Pablo, who he took under his wing in Spring Training and carried that out through the season and let alone how he went out there most days not at 100 percent, probably 75 percent.
Yeah, right. Sandoval is who he is, but also, he wouldn’t have been shit if it wasn’t for Renteria? The Tigers threw Renteria away, he was such a great fucking teammate, (and they instantly improved by about fifteen games, by the way). The right thing to do is to put your team in a position to win, and to do that, after last season; you needed to acquire some real hitters. If you’re really interested in developing a championship team, you don’t surround your twenty-something superstar pitchers with a bunch of senior citizens, you surround them with good, young talent. If you’re interested in making sure you don’t lose too much, you sign cast-offs like Renteria and Molina and try to pass them off as valuable.
Letting Burriss run out there all season would have been $18 million dollars cheaper –money that could have, should have been spent on a home run hitter– and would’ve been just as productive, something that was obvious to anyone who spent any time looking at the track records of the players involved.
And let me say this; Freddie Sanchez will never hit enough to justify his contract as he enters the prime seasons of his decline phase. He will never be healthy enough to be an everyday player again, and his contract will be just one more albatross contract in the endless succession of albatross contracts that are the defining characteristic of Brian Sabean’s reign.
UPDATE: I wanted to also highlight this comment by Sabean:
…. “I don’t feel particularly good about a colleague of mine like Kevin Towers being let go the way he was, but that’s the business.”
Towers is another failure of a GM, a guy mired in the past, with little appreciation of how the game has changed. Of course, Sabean thinks it’s terrible that Towers was fired after 14 years of failing to deliver a championship. That’s what Sabean must think about as he watches Molina swing at one pitch after another and wonders how come he’s not hitting three-run home runs every time.
Hey very nice blog!! Man .. Beautiful .. Amazing .. I’ll bookmark your website and take the feeds also…I am happy to find numerous useful information here in the post, we need work out more techniques in this regard, thanks for sharing. . . . . .
I don’t have the time to draft something so perfectly fitting of my thoughts at this moment. My fandom doesn’t have anything on Candlestick Mike’s, but I feel the exact same way and the news today also drove me to pull the plug. I think I knew it was coming–the Bochy and Sabean news I mean–but it still floors me that both would be rewarded (with new contracts and a shitload of money) for their…we know where I’m going. I will not spend money on this pathetic franchise any longer. The Giants are uninterested in winning and have been (and will continue to) merely taking Giants fans for a financial ride. Good luck keeping Cain and Lincecum around.
want you guys to read something by a fan…posted on the main giants board
Dear Mr. Neukom
Today, somewhere in the world, a kid is discovering baseball. This kid will soon begin to follow the sport at the Major League level, find a team or teams to cheer for, find some players that he will worship, put pennants on his wall, collect baseball cards, join Little League and begin a lifetime affair with the great, true American pastime.
Over 40 years ago, I came home from school in late March, went into my room and sifted through my fledgling shoebox full of baseball cards. I had started reading the “Green Sheet” each morning at breakfast and knew the lineup of the San Francisco Giants by heart. Despite my parents orders to go to bed and go to sleep, I had a small transister radio with an earpiece under my mattress which I would turn on and listen to Russ and Lon announce the games on the radio. Back then, the Giants were on TV (black and white) only when they travelled to Los Angeles. There was absolutely nothing more exciting to me than to sit with my dad in front of that small TV on a Friday night and finally get to see the “real Giants” on the tube. As I looked at my cards I noticed something on my pillow. There were two tickets. Two tickets to see the Giants play the Dodgers at Candlestick Park. To this day, I can remember how I felt. I ran out of my room and gave my dad probably the biggest hug of my life.
A few weeks later we drove to Candlestick Park. I had travelled by it many times on the Bayshore Freeway when my dad would take me to his office in San Francisco from our home in San Mateo. Now, we drove up and the anticipation was amazing. I had my glove. We got out of the car and I heard the New Orleans style dixieland music. The smell of cigars, popcorn and cooking hot dogs was everywhere. We walked up the ramps of that barren concrete park and I saw people from walks of life that I had been sheltered from. We came to the top and suddenly it was like I had been transported beyond Earth. There through the opening was the greenest grass I ever saw. We walked down the aisle to our seats between home and first base. Willie Mays, Willie Mac, Jose Pagan, Jim Davenport……all on the field warming up. The Dodgers were out on the field as well. I hadn’t developed what would eventually become a pathological hatred of them and their city. I was too enthralled with the moment.
Fast forward over 45 years. I have been a devoted fan since. I went to the Stick with my dad throughout the 60′s. Went with my pals in the 70′s until I moved away. Would come back in the 80′s and 90′s. Went to see the Giants in Chicago, St. Louis, Colorado, San Diego, Minneapolis. Oh, did I forget to tell you of the two years I lived in LA? Hardly missed a game let alone a series at the Latrine when the Giants came to town. Got spit on, beer poured on me, threatened. I cold cocked a Dodger fan before a game even started when I caught him wiping his snot on my Giants jersey and was thrown out of the park.
I started a “Giants hotline” as a joke when I lived in Wisconsin in the 80′s, using my answering machine to give a synopsis of the prior days game and had strangers calling to hear it. I held a party in my Madison, Wisconsin apartment for the 1989 World Series, only to listen in horror all the misinformation about the Bay Bridge having “collapsed” and then calling friends to see if they were alive.
I took my aging dad to the Stick in 1999 for the final series at the Park and saw him cry in the parking lot after the game as a long era in our lives closed.
I can’t tell you how many hours of my life I’ve watched the Giants on TV, in front of a computer or listening on the radio. I demanded that my Little League teams be the Giants. I guess I did what a lot of men do after their wild fantasy of being a major league ballplayer long passes…..we live vicariously with the team of our childhood.
But, you know what Mr. Neukum? I’m done.
The Giants and baseball have worn me out. I’ve lost my passion and loyalty. Maybe free agency started it. Maybe seeing ex-Dodgers play for the Giants and ex-Giants play for the Dodgers began a slow erosion of the kind of loyalty fans and kids had 40 years ago. But more than that, I’ve lost my passion because I’ve spent too many days of my life watching futility. Some fans count the years in New York when they compare us to other franchises. I don’t. I hate New York Mr. Neukom. I love San Francisco. And in the 51 years the Giants have been in San Francisco……all but 6 years of my 57 on earth…they haven’t won the ring. Not once. That is unacceptable for a franchise in one of the most beautiful areas in the world. Can you explain it Mr. Neukom? No, you can’t.
I am not the type of fan who is satisfied with a “playoff contender”. I wanted to see the Ring.
You sir are a part of an ownership group who accepts mediocracy and has no accountability in your soul. Fill the seats, get the revenue, “build the business”….that’s what counts. The fact that you would extend the contract of two incompetent men, Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy speaks volumes. I’ll let others fill in the specifics about Mr. Sabean’s record of failure. Yes, failure. As for Bruce Bochy, he’d manage to fail if you gave him the NL All Star team for his starting 9. A mediocre manager at best who was gladly let go from his prior job.
I’m sure this offseason you’ll authorize some trades and free agent signings. I’m sure the majority of the fan base will quickly forget the past and like the child of an alcoholic parent, they’ll once again hope that all is good and pure.
Not me. I’m done.
No, I’m not jumping ship to root for some other team. I’m not telling my son to not root for whatever team he wants. I’m simply worn out from watching year after year of mediocracy. I’ll just watch some Little League games now, spend more time outdoors rather than glued to the tube on a beautiful summer afternoon watching Andres Torres as our platooning lead off. The light went out Mr. Neukom…it was dimming but you pulled the plug.
So, that kid that is suddenly discovering what I did so many years ago may turn out to be a Giant fan. That first experience at a ball park will be forever etched into his memory. But we all grow up and grow old. We appreciate little things perhaps more than we ever did. I just wanted to see a team this year that didn’t have Edgar Renteria flaying around, Fred Lewis living up to his non-potential, Aaron Rowand playing despite his horrific performance after the break, a broken down Freddie Sanchez, a pathetic Ryan Garko, a complaining, whining Benjie Molina and certainly not wanting to see Bruce Bochy scratching his chin in bewilderment.
I could have lived with “the kids” developing. But when Buster Posey sat, Rowand started and the “kids” basically watched the last games of a season lost, I sat with them on that virtual bench. I was in complete awe of the fact that Bochy trotted out his same veteran based lineup for a totally meaningless game. For what? FOR WHAT?
I have nothing else to say Sir. I have nothing left.
Candlestickmike
wow…this letter got me, can we get a ring for candlestickmike? Come on front office, spring for one good hitter, even if our whole buget goes to shit, the minor leaguers we’d use to fill out the roster will be just as good as 9 million dollar 35 year olds.
I had a scary realization the other day, the 2002 game 6 was on classic sports, my father and I watched roughly 10 seconds of it before we realized we were torturing ourselves. I commented how terrible that day was. My fathers reply was shit, I thought that was finally it, I still haven’t seen them get a ring…My dad’s 50. This organization has been truly that inept that this much time has passed? We wasted the best player of our generations prime and are now wasting the best pitching staff in team history by giving them no offense. For god’s sake, how is it possible that we can only assemble half a team all the time? All signs out of SF early on point to no real changes to come either… Please, PLEASE Mr. Neukom, sell the Giants to Mark Cuban so this team can finally be run competently with a front office that’s as passionate as it’s great fan base.
The USS Caine Sails On
The Giants announced that Brian Saitano and Bruce Thunderdome have been given 2 year contracts with a club option for a third.
I am sure that John may or may not have something to write/say/opine. If he still has the energy/interest/heart to even give a shit anymore.
But as for the missing strawberries, I think its time to off these fuckers and get with a franchise that actually is concerned and dedicated to winning baseball, and not operating a fucking amusement park on the waterfront.
Hate to say I told you so. But did anybody realistically believe that Bill Goerring Gate’s mouthorgan who made millions fucking taxpayers and consumers alike, was interested in trying to compete against the Moreno’s, Henry’s, Steinbrenners, MacCourts, Loria’s of this world on an even playing field?
Shitbirds like that only compete when they have all the cards in their favor, and in MLB, like any competitive sport that douches like that have clue zero about, guys like the Yankees, Angels, Red Sox, Dodgers, et al are not going to let that happen. Fuckers can’t even compete with the Twins anymore.
when do ya think it the lansford termination will be announced?
Its a done deal. If I were he, I wouldn’t want to be around this collection of pampered suckbag freeagents and no-talent AAAAers ever again. He was pretty disgusted with the arrogance and ineptness of these assholes.
And except for Pablo Sandoval, one of the most irritating and annoying Giants teams in my memory.
Steaming pile of shit on the field, in the dugout, and in the front office.
Bobby Abreu sure isn’t worth crap! Glad we let him so easily go to the Angels.
Life is Like a Box of Ex Lax
Bochy has always reminded of Forrest Gump with his lumbering, drawling, repetitive and monotonous way. Whenever he is interviewed, you can almost see Tom Hanks in full-blown Forrest mode responding to an idiotic question from one of the Bay Area press like the senior stoogette from the green section of the local birdcage liner, Gwenn Knapp: at last Monday’s press conference.
“Bruce, were you surprised by your lack of offensive production this past season?”
Bochy: “Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.” or some other stupid brainless, thoughtless, meaningless, insipidly insulting remark.
“But what about bunting Bruce?”
“You only get 27 outs, and I hate giving up an out”
“But Bruce, you lost a lot of one run games”
“My message,” he said, “will be: ‘We’re all going to bunt. Let’s all be ready to bunt, throughout the order.’ ”
I guess we can all put the Giants down for 106 wins next year.
I got shot down for believing. I got shot down for trying to figure it all out.
We all want the Giants to win.
Well why the fuck do we even care.
Could it be because of our grandfathers being Giants fans? Mine sure were.
Is it possible that we, as fans, have over a hundred years of family history rooting for the Giants?
Yes we do. We really do.
Are we pissed off?
Yes we are.
Nobody ever paid a nickel to watch an owner or any other fruitcake from the front office. They’re like umpires, and offensive linemen. The only time you notice them or any other fucking sideshow, is when they fuck up. And the Giants have been a bunch of lying, selfish, band of fucking bureaucrats more concerned with polls and ratings than actually doing the things and hiring the people and players needed to win.
The current collection of bureacrats have about run this franchise into the ground. The 88 wins were and are a joke. When you play 56 games against the the Padres, A’s Dbacks, Pirates and Nationals, you’re not playing much. When you are one of the worst hitting teams in all of professional baseball for 5 years running, you’re not trying or you’re decision makers are fucking retarded.
This is the worst run the Giants have been since the transition years when Stoneham ran out of money in the 70s and Bob Lurie hit a stretch for 5 years in the 80s, for the same reason.
This collection of fat cats doesn’t have the money excuse. They’re just greedy slick fucks without any ambition or desire to compete against the big swinging johnsons in New York, Dallas, Los Angeles, Boston, St. Louis and Philadelphia.
They just don’t have the balls to compete. Its that simple. They’re gutless little country clubbers who are abusing what was once one the most successful and envied teams in Major League Baseball. They are like the sick puke fuck who used revenue he conned from gangbangers for shitty threads to buy Bonds homerun record baseball to deface it, before sending it to the HOF.
And guys like Nuekom and Magowan and Baer never said shit. Fucking puke monkey pussies without a single vertabrae amongst them.
Robert,
Amen. If I ever shot you down for believing…I apologize. I’m just sick that the fans are not holding mgmt and ownership accountable.
I am a Giants fan because my Granfather and Dad were(and still are) NY Giants fans.
john,
you are being a little unfair with towers
for most of his tenure, he was saddled with a below avg payroll
this past season, he was forced to cut payroll thanks to his owner’s messy divorce
he took the fall
but he does have some good baseball smarts, and unlike sabean, has never allowed the team to be saddled with contracts and players he could not get out of
And also in Towers favor, he made Bochy get rid of Vinny Castilla and his .579 OPS in August of 2006. Than after Bochy screwed the pooch in the playoffs as the coup de savvyitis, Towers knocked the Planet Skull out of orbit and into the gravitational pull of Sabean’s magnetic personality field, thus raising the baseball IQ of San Diego and lowering that of San Francisco by countless points.
This is my point why I don’t particularly care if we keep Bochy or let him go. He did a terrible job this year when it came to our offense. Just terrible. But I think he manages the pitching staff very well (other than riding Lincecum too hard just to win a Cy Young last year). If we just got rid of Sabean and brought a non-idiot GM in, I think he would force Bochy not to make the mistakes he does – playing shitty players and putting shitty hitters like Molina in the cleanup spot. A good GM stops that from happening, and if those decisions get prevented, I wouldn’t have any problems with Bochy.
while there are some gms that fiddle with the everyday lineup (beane for example) very few if any tell the manager what on field moves to make during a game
bochy sucks during the game…especially in late innings
as a result of his idiotic constant double switching, he runs out of bench players rather quickly (double switching is fine….just not 2 and 3 times a game)
he refuses to bunt in late innings, using dumbass stats that are quoted only by the idiots in san diego
i dont fucking care what the stat heads say, when you get one or two men on with no outs after the 7th, and unless you have a bonds coming up to bat….you fucking bunt…gettting men into scoring position puts more pressure on a pitcher and the defense
and its during the late innings when bochy goes to his fucking lefty-lefty, righty-righty bs…no matter what the batter or his replacement is batting against lefty or righty pitchers
unless sabean gets 2 power bats for next season, this team has to stress small ball…and bochy doesnt know how to do that
if he did, he wouldve had the team running situational and bunting drills all fucking st long
funny how in football there are on field coaches for the d and the o…but in baseball, there is only one skip
bochy is indeed ok with the pitchers (except he did overpitch both cain and timmy) but he pretty much sucks at everything else
maybe its time to hire a comanager
Well, you have to know if we know that Bochy is strictly without a clue and stuck with his outdated and proven wrong rituals, than his players have to know.
Players have to sell out to the managers way of doing things. Whether its Earl Weaver or Tony LaRussa or whomever, if the players don’t believe in what the manager’s doing, than that team will always be known as a team that squanders opportunities and/or be loaded with guys who have selfish hacking at bats… You know. Like the Giants for the last 6 years.
Sabean worked well with Baker. Sabean and Baker made joint decisions on players. And if Baker didn’t want a player, Sabean got rid of him, and if Baker wanted a Joe Carter, Eric Davis, Andres Gallaraga, Shawon Dunston, Ellis Burkes, or who-the-fuck-ever, Sabean went out and got them…
Sabean and Baker 1997 to 2002 6 Seasons. 5 Playoffs
Sabean and Idiots 2003 to 2009 7 seasons 1 Playoff
Bochy’s got to go to. The GM and Mgr have to be on the same page, and if the GM is an idiot, he cannot be overcome by anybody, and vice versa. They both have to be absolutely dead nuts right on.
Obviously, Sabean is lost without Baker.
Unc Joe,
Great post. Total agreement on this end. From the 5th inning on…Bochy is lost at sea.
See, most of these things don’t really bother me. For normal teams, sac bunting is almost always bad, Bochy actually has that right. The Giants do play in a low run environment and their offense is horrendous, so maybe at times it can be a good strategy for us, but in the grand scheme of things it really doesn’t make much difference in how many games we win. More than sac bunting we need our hitters to successfully not make outs.
As for lefty-lefty righty-righty stuff, well, I see this is in Bochy’s favor, too. From a relievers end, their splits in any given year will always be too small a sample (since they just don’t accrue enough innings) to make a conclusion from – unless their whole career shows the opposite splits of what Bochy’s playing, it’s a good move by him because he’ll be right more times than not. From a hitter’s end, looking at their career stats is the best way to see what kind of platoon split they have rather than the season stats, though hitters over the course of the season will get enough PA’s (assuming it’s a starter) to make a decent conclusion. I dunno, I’m sure sometimes Bochy is making a bad decision on this stuff but I think more times than not when he gets criticized about it, it really is a defensible decision. He’s also a huge step up from Alou in this regard…
I personally like the way Bochy uses the bullpen, I think he does a great job of not getting too caught up in the modern bullpen structure and instead gets his best pitchers in the game in the most leveraged situations. That’s exactly what we want, so overall I actually like most of his in game decisions (except the ones where he pinch hits a lesser player over a better player, but that’s really just a product of the kind of thinking that created the terrible lineups he made in the first place).
“Small ball”, generally, is a losing strategy, so I don’t much care for it. Not making outs is how you win games, and until we start doing that better, it doesn’t matter what different strategies we’re trying, we just aren’t going to be a good offense or get the runs we need to make the playoffs.
Would a comanager be like a bench coach…?
He made Bochy stop playing Castilla? How do you think Castilla got on the team? Just saying….
Castilla got sucked into the gravitational pull of Bochy’s skull, and Towers was powerless to overcome the suck of it?
Seriously, typical of the old foolers, although Vinnie the Elder, hadn’t been too bad in Atlanta, in 03 and back for one year with Colorado in 04 where he posted up a not too awful .867 OPS, the fact that Colorado chose not to resign him should have been the tip off. Bochy and Towers could not resist, even after a .150 point drop-off from the year before, where the fall-off had been about .150 points from the year before that as well. The fall-off was monumentally bad after that sinking to .722, (from his .867 with Colorado), with Washington who chose to say goodbye before the aforementioned .579 before going south of the border permanently from San Diego.
Besides, anytime Sabean says he respects somebody’s baseball acumen (and actually means it) run, do not walk, in the opposite direction.
Just sayin back
I suppose that their entire mindset can be summed up thusly:
Sabean: We were too aggressive at the plate.
Bochy: We needed to be more aggressive at the plate.
Molina: We were too aggressive at the post-game spread
Renteria, Sandoval: Si
My guess is Molina really thinks he wasn’t aggressive enough at the post-game spread (or at the plate, for that matter)…
My guess is that Bengie doesn’t think too much about anything…he just kind of reacts to things in the dirt and swings at it, including spillage from the post game spread, invoking the 3 second rule.
Monopoly Money
Just one more example of the lunacy of Sabean putting his mouth where other people’s money is.
2010 season obligations of the last 3 annual difference-making, next-level reaching, leadership-inspiring, gamer-making, savvy-teaching Free Agent acquistions:
2007 Featured F/A signing Barry Zito $18.5 Million
2008 Featured F/A signing Aaron Rowand $ 13.6 Million
2009 Featured F/A signing Edgar Renteria $10.0 Million
2010 Featured F/A signing Freddy Sanchez $??
That’s $31.1 Million folks. Thats more than the entire Pirate payroll (not including Tim Alderson of course) and almost as much as the Marlins 2009 payroll. Speaking of the two-time World Series Champs, Marlins, their payroll has never exceeded $60 Million and that was in 2005.
The Marlins have only $7 Million in commitments for 2010. And that would be for Hanley Ramirez. An actual star player and the only guy with a higher BA than Sandoval.
Insult to Injury Department
And as foolhardy as Sabean has been with Giants revenues, he was still outspent by the Commissioner’s office to the tune of of 235 employees and over $85 Million in payroll. And that was 3 seasons ago.
So the next time this fucker says anything about MLB needing a salary cap to stay in business, somebody needs to take a copy of this, shove it half-way up his ass after soaking it in gasoline, and than light it on fire.
Bud Selig Commissioner
3 years (2007-09)
3 years (2010-12)
* 3 years (2010-12)
o signed extension 1/17/08
* 3 years (2007-09)
o signed extension 8/04
o 2007 compensation: $17.5M
* 3 years (2004-06)
o signed extension 11/01
o 2006 compensation: $15.056M
+ $14,515,071 base salary
+ $ 400,900 in contributions to benefit plan
+ $ 140,603 in expenses, personal fees
o 2005 compensation: $14.5M
+ $6M base salary
+ $6M bonus
+ $2.5M expenses, personal fees
Thanks to Cots Contracts for the salary info. I would have gone deeper into this, but the thought of finding even more evidence of Sabean’s idiotness is a little more than I can handle for the moment.
By the way John, I was a little disappointed when I saw this post, I’m not gonna lie. I was planning on doing a FJM style rundown of that interview and just blasting apart every point Sabean made, but seems kinda pointless now…
No keep it goin. There’s no such thing as piling on when it comes to these nitwits
What kills me when I read this, specifically the part about signing Renteria over playing Burriss, is that Sabean was thinking partially along the right lines.
Going into the off-season last year it was clear that the Giants needed to sign/trade for a SS. In-house options were Burriss, Bocock, or some other piece of shit AAAA player. Sabean saw this and said to himself, ‘I have to sign a (VETERAN!) shortstop’:
“We made a management decision on all levels that we needed a VETERAN shortstop.”
If instead of being transfixed on getting a veteran, Sabean had looked around at what other teams were doing at SS, he would have realised that we needed an ‘excellent defensive’ not ‘veteran’ shortstop. Just look at what some other teams did last year, with regards to finding a new shortstop:
Rangers: Moved (undeserved) gold glove winning SS Michael Young to 3B in order to promote light-hitting defensive whiz Elvis Andrus to short. (Also sign Omar Vizquel to a cheap deal to effectively be a mentor/tutor to Andrus)
Tigers: Sign Adam Everett to a $1m plus incentives contract and move Brandon Inge back to 3B in order to improve defence. Tigers move from 29th in MLB in UZR/150 in 2008 (-6.5) to 4th in MLB (UZR/150 of 7.2 in 2009)
The basic principle here being that if you improve your defence dramatically at a key position such as SS then you will turn more batted balls into outs, meaning you should give up less runs, which in turn should improve your run differential and improve your overall record.
Sabean didn’t see this but instead signed a ‘veteran’ in Renteria because of what he can do ‘on and off the field’, such as taking ‘somebody like Pablo, who he took under his wing in Spring Training and carried that out through the season’.
Does this also explain why Renteria signed a long term deal but then played for 3 teams in 4 years, because every year a new team needed that veteran presence at short and were willing to trade for it? Or is it because he was overvalued by the Red Sox in 2005 (4 years $40m) and kept getting passed on to a new team hoping he just might provide value for money (especially since the Red Sox and Braves both chipped in $$$ when getting rid of him). The Tigers also decided he wasn’t worth the $11m club option for this year that they had (bet Sabean thought he was getting a bargain then at only $9m a year), but instead picked up Everett as mentioned above.
If this really was/is a team focusing on pitching and defence as Sabean kept/keeps saying then why didn’t he sign the best available defensive shortstop last winter (that probably being Adam Everett, who also happens to be an 8 year vet)? If you just said the words “because he’s a fucking idiot” either out loud or in your head then please feel free to pat yourself on the back.
If Sabean actually knew what the fuck he was looking at anymore, nevermind on how to evaluate what he was looking at or even come close to figuring out what exactly the Giants needed, all it would have taken was 5 minutes of reviewing Senor Fatasse’s stats, his birth certificate and his gelatinous body and simply said “Next!”
Instead he reached yet another milestone in his record-setting pace of “can you top this piece of shit contract?
But what the Giants got was what they always get with that nimrod. Useless piles of overage expired garbage, sewage and an outpouring of back patting from the paste eating sycophants like the troll above.
Geoffrey,
Great post. Why not just bring Omar back for two years. The deal breaker was we were only willing to offer one…and Omar wanted at least two. No better defense than O…and bring in Uribe as platoon option. Renteria was never needed.
The Brewers want to deal JJ Hardy…but, that will never happen with mgmt’s mindset…or lack of. Probably get him on the cheap…since he’s coming off a horrible year.
Unfortunately, this is a hapless situation…and for all of us who care…it’s capital punishment.
JJ Hardy and BJ Upton are looking real good as buy low candidates to me right now. Not that I expect Sabean would ever kick those tires. Why would we want a SS a year removed from being 25 and only putting up a .283 batting average? Sanchez could do that in his sleep! (His .343 OBP is obviously meaningless and selfish, too many walks, that’s why he only had 74 RBI’s that season. We need run producers like Bengie Molina) Upton, when he was 22, did put up a .300 BA with 24 home runs, so that’s nice and shiny, but again he only had 82 RBI’s so he wasn’t clutchiness enough. Why would we possibly care about a .386 OBP and .508 SLG? The better question is…does he “execute” well and move runners over? That’s what this offense needs. Based on his lack of hustle track record over there, the obvious answer is no.
Sadly, I fully believe that’s the thought process Brian Sabean will go through when thinking about those two players who are rumored to be available. Nevermind that we need offense and they both have had impressive seasons for such a young age at the MLB level before, while playing premium positions (that also happen to be our positions of biggest need)…
John,
Your have become so blinded by you biases that you just can’t see past them.
The correct translation of Sabean’s comments on “Bengie Molina” is that the Giants will not re-sign Bengie unless he is willing to come back on a one year deal.
The correct translation of Sabean’s comments on “free swingers” is that the Giants will seek to balance them off by adding more patient hitters but the Giants will not seek players that give up on defence as much as they add on offence like your “White Whale” Adam Dunn whose combined UZR rating at 1B and LF gave up the 35 runs his bat added.
http://www.fangraphs.com/winss.aspx?team=Nationals&pos=all&stats=bat&qual=0&type=6&season=2009&month=0
The correct translation of Bochy’s comments on “hitters counts” is that Bruce is right and this is when the Giants hitters should be aggressive as opposed to early in the count before they have worked such an advantage.
The correct translation of Sabean’s comments on “Freddy Sanchez” is that Brian is right and the Giants should and will negoiate a 2-3 year deal that pays Freddy $2-3M less per year then the $8.1M team option the Giants hold for 2010.
The correct translation of Sabean’s comments on “marginally better” is that Brian is right that the Giants hitters frequently tried too hard to be heros (hit the 3 run homer or bases loaded double) and did not execute moving runners over well enough. When you have above average team power you can afford to fail at moving runners over but when you have below average team power like the Giants do this is the one area you have to lead the league in.
The only translations you got right were both Sabean’s and Bochy’s comments on “Edgar Renteria”. We do indeed know that this was a bad signing and that many of the other middle infielders that signed later for less were wiser choices. However, even here your biases just won’t allow you to see that Edgar is indeed likely to be better in 2010 with his now healthy elbow.
You have to be the most annoying fuck on the internet. If you crave so much negative attention, just put your dress on and offer free blow jobs to anybody with a San Francisco Baseball Company business card.
You’ve pretty much established yourself as a pustular wart. Go ooze somewhere else and take your school paste with you.
Just proves you can’t argue the facts or even opinions rationally but can only insult. Why don’t you grow up!
You’re a fucking troglodyte. Just be grateful I acknowledged your pitiful existence. You poke your head out of your ass every three months, write something truly insane, boring and monotonous, and are too fucking stupid, lazy or illiterate to even use proper html to the fucktard links you spam us with.
You’ve been doing this for the better part of five years. What the fuck happened douche, did you lose your internet privileges at the fidget fucking farm? Or is it that you’ve just been banned by every fucking website in the world for your inane spewage.
Unfortunately for you, you’re on the same side of the “facts” as Brian Sabean. That’s not a side you want to be on. We need to “be more aggressive”? No. The Giants swung at more pitches than any other team in baseball. We were very clearly too aggressive. You don’t get more aggressive in hitters counts – you wait for your pitch and swing at it. If the Giants get “more aggressive”, that just means more swings at the kind of bullshit sliders a foot off the plate Rowand prefers. That prevents walk – a guaranteed on base opportunity. The Giants ranked dead last in MLB in OBP. That’s why their offense sucked. Being “more aggressive” in ANY situation hurts the team. Until you fall behind, you swing at pitches you like. That’s what good hitters do.
Second, regardless of how long we bring Bengie Molina back for, it’s a stupid move. Now that we’ve officially ended the season I have the official full season stats to quote, so here goes. Catcher is the worst hitting position in MLB. 24 catchers with 200+ PA’s were better hitters than Bengie last year. Next year he will be one year older and one year fatter. Bengie Molina is not the type of player smart teams pay actual money for. Bengie Molina is the type of player smart teams pick up off the scrap heap for the veterans minimum because somehow (probably bad planning) they ended up being one of the 6 teams in the league without a better catcher than Bengie Molina.
http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=c&stats=bat&lg=all&qual=200&type=1&season=2009&month=0
Third, let’s go to your Fangraphs link. Is Adam Dunn bad defensively? Absolutely, possibly even the worst defender in the league. First of all, defensive stats like UZR need to be regressed to the mean some since one season worth of data isn’t enough, especially a partial season at a single position. It’s very doubtful Dunn is really a -35 run defender to begin with. Second, we’d put him at 1B. 1B is the worst group of defensive players in MLB. Even if Dunn sucked there, so do many other players and compared to his peers he wouldn’t be too bad. Maybe he’s -20-25, which would still make him arguably the worst defensive player in baseball, but would still make him worth every penny he was paid this year (he’s a career -16 UZR/150 at 1B, by the way). That would make him worth more than the contract he got last season, and at 3 WAR, a well above average starter. Renteria? He was a fucking replacement level player this year. And nobody was surprised. You know why? Because he’s 34 fucking years old, and he sucked when he was 33. Generally 33 year olds who suck get even worse at 34. That’s a fact. Don’t let it stand in your way, though, just give us your best Sabean and tell us what a gamer he is. Supposed to be better next year? He’s going to be 35 fucking years old next year, after two shitty seasons, you really believe he’s going to contribute? Even given Dunn’s line this last year (which, as I pointed out, was very likely highly undervaluing him), he was worth almost a win more than Renteria.
Freddy Sanchez sucks, I don’t even need to go into that. We traded one of our top 3 pitching prospects for a 31 year old who wasn’t worth his contract to begin with, and is just going to get worse. Freddy Sanchez is exactly the type of marginal veteran Sabean loves paying way too much money to. Winning teams are not built on players like that, they might have one or two to fill positions, but not a team full of Rowands, Winns, Renterias, Sanchezs, Molinas…
Finally, the whole bullshit about “trying to be heros”. “Execution” is a load of crap. Find me one piece of evidence that players have some ability to hit a ball in such a way that at worst it’s a “productive out” that actually significantly improves the teams chances of winning a game. Seriously, a single link to a single study that has even a shred of evidence that this is a winning talent. Because I can give you plenty of links to support the fact that getting on base is incredibly, incredibly important to scoring runs. You know what the Giants don’t do? Get on base, because Sabean actively signs players who fail in that regard. And he’s allowed to continue doing this, ruining the franchise we root for, because hacks like you are ok with it. Sure, we may be biased against failure, but can you really blame us? Time and time again Sabean demonstrates the fact that he has no fucking idea how to build a decent offensive team. It’s unacceptable, and grounds for immediate termination. His quotes don’t even hide it, that’s the worst part. He talks about shit that doesn’t win baseball games, like moving runners over, while failing to address the single most important offensive category – not making an out. How do you defend that?
For the record, if you want a “fact” about this, here’s one I’ll let you explain to me. Randy Winn got 597 PA’s this year. 2nd most on the team. Fred Lewis received 5 starts after Aug 8. He received 336 total PA’s. You know what Fred Lewis does that Randy Winn doesn’t? He successfully doesn’t make outs. He has a career .355 OBP, and .343 wOBA. You know what Randy Winn did this year? Posted a .318 OBP and .302 wOBA. That’s horrendous.
Preach on Brotha’ B. We’re all out of patience. I hate being lied to.
Thats bad enough. But when people like the troll try to repeat and embellish and excuse the lies, thats when I just fucking lose it.
The sad part is, anybody that has been involved in this game on any sort of real level, even if it was only being a dad helping his kids little league teams intrinsically understands the value of not making outs.
It was this basic fact that was one of the underpinnings of Earl Weaver’s great Oriole teams. Walks, Homeruns, Shutdown pitching and Team at bats.
I just hate what the assholes in charge have done to this once proud franchise. Its merely a loss leader for their amusement park.
B,
Great Post. Well said…and well written.
A big Amen.
Rainman,
I am certain that there is not one aspect of analyzing defensive statistics that even comes close to matching the kind of predictive and analytical accuracy of offensive statistics, something even the most deeply involved defensive sabermeticians acknowledge. Your insistence that Dunn wouldn’t have made a difference for the worst offense in the league is patently absurd, and arguably insane. I’m not the least bit interested in an argument that a guy who hits 40 home runs and walks 130 times can’t find a place on the diamond because he isn’t the best defender, but I’ll state my case one last time:
IT IS UP TO THE TEAM TO UTILIZE THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE PLAYERS. IT IS UP TO THE TEAM TO FIND A WAY TO GET THE MOST OUT OF EACH PLAYER.
If the team needs home runs and walks, (not an old, expensive shortstop) and a guy is out there who can bring that to the table, it is a failure of the team’s managers to not figure out a way to get him in orange and black, and maximize what he brings to the table.
You sound like an idiot telling everyone over and over how bad Dunn is defensively. Beggars cannot be choosers, and the Giants were begging for home runs and walks all fucking year long.
This is my favorite part:
“We were waiting for guys to hit three-run homers. We were waiting for guys to hit a double with the bases loaded. The more we found out we couldn’t do that, later in the year, we decided that we were going to have to do some other things — bunting guys over or running a little bit more.”
Really? It took you until late in the year to figure out that this was a team that couldn’t wait around for the 3-run HR or the bases-loaded double? Are you kidding me?
The “We” being discussed here is the players not management. The point is that the players finally starting to accept that this is what they needed to do to late for them to make the necessary changes to get better at it. Bruce acknowledged that this was partially his fault and said he would address it with more emphysis (and likely a new hitting coach) in spring training next year.
You’re wrong John:
Of course Bochy and Sabean know what they’re talking about. They’re talking in code to the little guys in their tin-foil Panda hats. Its guys like us who are clueless about grit savvy tires diligent day’s end thereof and so forth.
Great post.
Too bad the Giants are run by fucking witnits, fucktwits, and zitpucks.