And a long time gone….
…. San Francisco Giants (1954)
Years since last championship: 56Reason for gap: Though the Giants’ long drought is no secret, it’s still somehow shocking to see the team so far down this list given its status as one of the National League’a great franchises. This is a franchise that has 17 modern pennants and five championships, the team of John McGraw, Christy Mathewson, Carl Hubbell, and Willie Mays. And yet, since they relocated to the West Coast, they haven’t been able to raise another flag. This is especially odd because the Giants have often had the talent to compete, have often had the financial support necessary, and have had the opportunity to win. Some aspects of the long slump are just a matter of bad luck, of not being able to win a key game in a postseason series. As Charles Schulz’s outraged response, a slightly different swing by Willie McCovey and we might not even be talking about more than a half-century without a Giants championship.
Notwithstanding the post-Bonds years, when Brian Sabean’s efforts to rebuild the team have been hamstrung by what must be an organizational edict not to sign any bats….
I figured I’d stop it right there. This is a BP piece, talking about the franchises that have gone the longest without a title. The Giants have the third worst streak in all of baseball, behind only Cleveland (62 years) and the Cubs (102 years). That is simply awful.
It reminds me that this team has no excuse not to make a run at a title, or should I say, had no excuse this past off-season not to make a serious commitment to building the championship caliber offense needed to compliment their championship caliber pitching staff. Fifty-six years. Longer than my whole life.
UPDATE: Joe Posnanski knows one of the reasons the Giants have gone so long without a title:
…. Houston’s new third baseman Pedro Feliz. You know the Astros signed Feliz during the off-season for $4.5 million — he was the big offensive acquisition for a team that finished 14th in the league last year in runs scored. Now, I should start by saying the Feliz is not without value. He is an excellent defensive third baseman. He has never won a Gold Glove, but I think he should have won in 2007 for sure, and he had a strong case the previous two years. He does not seem quite as mobile now — he used to be the best in baseball at charging the bunt; now, not so much — but he’s still awfully good defensively. And he has a great arm. And, by all accounts, he seems a very good guy.
Also, every now and then, his bat will run into a fastball.
OK, those are the positives. Now, the downside: Feliz is a terrible hitter. No, really, dreadful … historically dreadful. The last five years, Feliz has not had an OPS+ of better than 85 in any season. The last four years, his combined OPS+ is 80. His batting Runs Above Replacement? Minus-70.9 for his career. He isn’t just worse offensively than a replacement level player, he’s A LOT worse. His .293 on-base percentage … worst in baseball for the decade (4,000 or more PAs).
Feliz isn’t a bad big league hitter … he’s an atrocious hitter.
Brian Sabean collects empty hitters, RBI men, and hitters like Feliz, like they are made of platinum.
Thanks for the link Unc! Fucking piss me off already why don’t you! More seepage from the SF fishwrap; this time about Posey:
This is more of the same shit that Sabean squeezes out of his ass every year. How can you even ask this question. You have Pablo Sandoval surrounded by 7 pieces of whale shit and they have a kid thats only a year younger than Cain and Lincecum hitting the shit out of the ball, just the way he was fucking projected and the stupid fuckers in the front office can’t make up their mind.
Last year with a week to go in Spring Training Sabean was hemming and hawing about whether to send Sandoval back down, yet he was dead sure as jesus in a fucking chicken basket that Travis Ishikawa was his main man at first base.
As for the assface castoff from those wonderful destination resort cities, Detroit, Baltimore, and Tampa?
Huff is done. He was done last year. Useless bastard opsed under .600 after Detroit, made a desperate rental of his worthless hide for their failed play-off run. Huff is Shea Hillenbrand with a worse attitude, and a worse disposition and not as good. He could hardly play 1b when he was actually in some kind of physical shape and before the night life ripped him a new asshole. The shine has worn off this tin plated turd and the only thing this hemorrhoid can catch is the flu. Which is what he conveniently caught after one spring training game or so.
From semi-pro on up Flu = Too fucking hungover to even make it to the yard and suit up.
Sabean is getting worse, not better. He is a bubonic plague on this organization and it will take his successor years to repair the damage he has done to this organization. He has managed to put this team on a par with Baltimore, Kansas City, Houston and Washington. He should be ashamed to match rosters against the Marlins. If Larry Beinfest had half the money that Sabean has squandered and was running the Giants, that 55 year drought would have ended several years ago.
Pathetic.
honestly, i would love to keep posey away from pumpkin head as long as possible
working with decker will be a good thing for him
Yeah, and winning the lottery would be a thing for us. The point is that Posey is not some kid just off a banana boat. He’s a couple of months younger than Sandoval and a couple of years younger than Cain and Lincecum. The point is he’s been playing at a high level for 3 years now.
I’d say if the Giants actually had a catcher that was not an automatic out like Molina and Whiteside, or wans’t 110 years old like Molina and Whiteside, and had Joe Mauer or Victor Martinez, then fine, send him to AAA for some more defensive tutoring.
If fat ass Molina wasn’t around, nobody would be discussing this shit to begin with. He’s green behind the plate, but what he lacks in “experience” over Molina, he more than makes up for in agility, arm strength, and footwork. I don’t give a shit about his lack of so-called “pitch calling” expertise. Yeah, its going to be rough to start..so the fuck what. This team’s only chance at the playoffs is to have Posey turn in a year like Sandoval did last year. They’re not going anywhere fast with Molina except to the post game spread.
And if the Giants were so fucking keen on defense like they bullshit about, what the fuck is Aubrey Huff, a washed up DH being penciled in at 1b as the cleanup hitter, and Edgar “Methuselah” Renteria, and Freddy”Sutures” Sanchez and Aaron Rowand being deployed as a “strong up the middle” defense. No really. How pathetic is that. That has the potential to be one of the worst defenses in recent Giants history. Along with not being able to hit.
And now that I did in fact mention it, what the fuck does it tell you about an organization that signs a guy that isn’t even good enough to dh in the AL being signed to man a corner infield spot and hit cleanup tell you?
I know what it tells me. It tells me that the Giants are planning to be just as pathetic at the plate this year as they were last year, the year before, and the 3 years before that.
Re-signing Molina to start at Catcher (complete with all of his incentive bonuses for playing time) is just one more in a sequence of never ending fuckheaded moves that Sabean and Bochy make on an ongoing basis, that condemn this team to be a shadow of its former self.
holy god, schulman wont shut about about his ignorance regarding the game
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/giants/detail?&entry_id=59331
I’ll be honest. For some reason I haven’t seen him play much, but I’ve seen enough to know that the backup first baseman is going to come in for defense awfully early if the Giants have a lead. Huff does not look comfortable or natural there. I will add this, though: O’s broadcaster Dave Johnson, who visited Giants camp earlier this spring, told my friend Andy Baggarly that Huff was not so bad when he played first base that you noticed him.
hey john, when is the chron gonna give you schulman’s gig
Remember how people would say the following about great players like Jerry Rice or Michael Jordan: “nothing [he] does surprises you anymore.” Well, you can actually say that about the front office. It makes no sense, NO sense, why these same people are still making the decisions. How fucking hard is it to add two decent bats with $25mm to spend?
hey john
take a gander at today’s splash
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/giants/detail?entry_id=59300&o=1&rv=1268815877614>a=commentslistpos#commentslistpos
The only mild surprise is Pill, because I was told he would get a long look this spring. But that was before 1B Aubrey Huff’s defensive deficiencies became so apparent, prompting the team to give Buster Posey and John Bowker some longer looks at first base. Pill needs to get his work in the minor-league camp.
you see, the insanity never ends, and is only aided and abetted by these hacks who dare to call themselves “reporters”
and now the team has to scramble to either force bowker or posey into the back up….errrrr….starting first base role
how much is sabean paying huff again?
uh,
is your point here that the houston gm is even more inept than sabean?
lol