Haven’t written much. Busiest time of the year, for me, and with the sun finally arriving, lots of catching up to do.
Nonetheless, something’s wrong with Lincecum. It could be the way he’s being handled, it could be that he hasn’t seen his Dad in too long, he’s sick, he’s hiding an injury, whatever. He’s lost, going through a month and a half long stretch of full counts, not missing bats, and struggling to get deep into games. Somebody needs to do something.
As for the Giants, they’ve been a .500 baseball team since their 6-1 start, and watching them get smoked by Jon Lester yesterday, (well, not exactly watching, but seeing highlights), they look like it’s already August. Huff and Uribe have been carrying the offense with virtually no help, while Sandoval (.226/.298/.345 .643 OPS in June) looks like maybe the league is a step ahead of him right now.
All in all, the Giants look more like pretenders than contenders right now, and without Lincecum dominating, it would appear their chances of improving without help would be quite slim.
UPDATE: And now they’re in last place, after a lost week of bad baseball, in which they lost two of three to the hapless Astros, two of three to the surging Red Sox, and the first two against the hated Dodgers, scoring less than three runs per game.
UPDATE, Part II: Oops. Forgot about the awful D’backs. Still, swept by the Dodgers, and well on our way to another dismal offensive performance.
Faith In Sabean’s Evaluation Skills
From the LA Times on June 21, 2010:
Frandsen’s line with the Angels this year: OBP .390 SLG .443 OPS .834. In 105 PAs. Frandsen has walked 7 times and struck out 4 times.
From the San Francisco Examiner
The genius of a molecular biologist. The insight of a biblical prophet. The compassion of a Mother Teresa.
So Lewis was sent to Toronto in exchange for the equivalent of one season’s worth of meal money– $75,000. Lewis has an OPS+ of 110 batting lead-off for the Jays in the murderous AL East. Only if you are the only General Manager in MLB stranded on Gilligan’s Island would this be a surprise.
Here’s Lewis line since he first came up with the Giants in 2006, followed by Aaron Rowand, the guy whose salary made Lewis a “dead man walking”.
2006 OPS+ 156 Giants (only 11 PA)
2007 OPS+ 102 Giants
2008 OPS+ 105 Giants
2009 OPS+ 92 Giants
2010 OPS+ 110 Jays
So he is a career .775 OPS/OPS+ 102 outfielder with bullet speed and he earns the minimum wage.
Aaron Rowand of the 5 year $60 Million Contract on the other hand with no speed, nor ability to hit the ball anymore and due $34 Million guaranteed between now and the end of the 2012 season. This has made Nate Shierholtz expendable, and John Bowker a soon to be career minor leaguer.
2006 OPS+ 86 Phillies
2007 OPS+ 124 Phillies
2008 OPS+ 94 Giants
2009 OPS+ 90 Giants
2010 OPS+ 79 Giants
Career .782 OPS/ 102 OPS+ 101
…and in conclusion. (lack of a review function reveals moi’s lack of a review kind of mind it seems)
So the remainder of Rowand’s contract caused Sabean to kick Lewis out the door in the same way the remainder of Renteria’s $18 Million 2 year deal made Frandsen expendable.
Renteria, Uribe, Burrell, Huff, are free-agents at the end of the year. (A buyout of .5 million on Renteria’s contract notwithstanding). Torres and Jonathan Sanchez are eligible for arbitration next year. Making matters worse, the Giants are committed to $76 Million spread out amongst only 8 players; almost half of it to Zito and Rowand, with the rest to Lincecum, Cain, Wilson, DeRosa, Afeldt and Freddy Sanchez.
So of your starting position players, the half that is productive is eligible for free agency. The rest are under contract. And of the 7 guys on long term contracts Zito, Rowand, Cain, Wilson, DeRosa, Afeldt, Sanchez, about half of them you could replace with minimum wagers.
Even if they were committed to putting this exact same roster together next year, the Giants would be contracting over $100,000,000 for a cellar-seeking collection of expansion franchise wannabe’s.
The Giants are a joke and they’re joking around with a lot of money while they’re at it. If its one consolation, it is kind of amusing to watch the country clubbers who make up the ownership group get reamed by a guy who doesn’t even bother to return phone calls, values immeasurable intangibles disguised as platitudes developed during the 1980s over measurable performance metrics, and is one of the least respected GMs in Major League Baseball.
Only in the world of the privileged elitist fanboy front-office phonies in the owners section down by the Giants dugout on a nightly basis, does this kind of baseball malfeasance get twisted into a merchandising Slogan. “MAGIC INSIDE”
I guess its magic inside if the guy reaming you out doesn’t put ground glass in the ky jelly
My Hero; Captain Brian Queegean
Buster Olney at ESPN wrote this up and its not that its Olney, its that its the other GMs:
HINT!
Through 2012????
Like my old pappy used to say: “No Matter how stupid you think somebody is, there is always somebody stupider.” The SF Baseball Associates Stooges in Chief must bow towards Phoenix 3 times a day in grateful bliss that an organization exists within the confines of their very own division that is even more incompetent, arrogant and self-serving than themselves.
And Aaron Rowand was back in the lead off spot in another futile wasted pitching effort by a Giants starter, with Dodger cast-off Mota lighting the fires in the 8th inning.
Pathetique!
did you see sabean’s response?
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/extrabaggs/2010/07/01/giants-gm-brian-sabean-responds-to-criticism-that-he-doesnt-return-phone-calls
the man is full of shit
The fact that they dumped a dude they dicked around and low balled to begin with will only serve to reinforce the image of Sabean and company being unsavory. It’s not like they even have a plan, clue, anything like that.
Futility
A three game sweep by the Dodgers. At Home. Mediocre pitching and horrible offense. No Speed. No Power.
I think the Orioles (the last series they won) style of lethargic losing baseball must have contagious, as they haven’t won a series since then, dropping consecutive series to Toronto, Houston, Boston, and Los Angeles.
The fans are feeling lethargic too, as two of the Oriole games outdrew the Dodgers, with both series being played midweek. The Red Sox series sold out on two of the three dates. And if anyone hasn’t noticed, the noise from fans of visiting clubs is growing in proportion to the Giants fans. The idea of demand-pricing for premium games must be nice for the front-office assholes’ wallets, and the wussy SF wine and cheese season ticket holders who sell their own seats off to the tourists and the front-running phonies who follow the Red Sox and Dodgers.
But ask any player. There is little more discouraging to home teams, than their opponents getting more support from their fans than they get from their own. Which used to be the case back in the Lurie Days whenever the Dodgers came to town. Pretty much what it used to be like at the Murph in San Diego when the Giants came to down. Lest anyone forget, the Giants owned the Padres at the Murph. It was as if the Giants had home field advantage there many years
Not So Fast My Friend
The departure of Molina simply means more playing time for the useless Rowand as Huff moves back from the outfield to 1b and Shierholtz moves up a notch from no.5 to no. 4 on the outfield depth chart with Torres and Burrell bracketing Pizzaboy.
Pizzaboy vs Molina from above:
Deckchair Overboard!
Looks like Molina is going to Texas in exchange for something or someone, none of it out of the ordinary and a few of these chumps think they just won the lottery.
More playing time for Rowand. More playing time for Renteria. Bochy still in place. Sabean still in place. Same shit. Different Day. Just because Captain Queeg found a bowl of strawberries doesn’t mean he is all of a sudden competent to command.
The USS Caine and its officer corps of stooges sails on.
unless
the powers that be took a look at this past series and have had enough and ordered sabean to cut payroll
and that is what im hoping has happened
because if it is….rowand, rentawreck and sanchez are not long for this team
(my apologies to huff…looks like you will end up again on a losing squad)
because this was the quickest “leak to trade” in sabean’s tenure…even though it appears that the trade was in the works for at least a week
just curious what it was about the past 2 games that solidified the rangers want for the fat ass
there is a positive….posey is gonna play….bochy cant do anything about it
Well, if you’re a Giants fan I would think you would want no more transactions to be conducted by this crew. They have a seven year track record of failure on the field, since 2003.
I know this sounds counter-intuitive, but the reality of it is, that Sabean has not pulled off a trade favorable to the Giants since Matt Williams was sent to Cleveland for Julian Taveras, Jeff Kent and Jose Vizcaino in 1996.
Mid Season Trades by Sabean since Bochy showed up in 2007
May 31, 2007 — Traded Armando Benitez and cash to Florida Marlins in exchange for Randy Messenger.
July 31, 2007 — Traded Matt Morris to Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for Rajai Davis
August 9, 2007 — Traded Mark Sweeney to Los Angeles Dodgers in exchange for Travis Denker
July 20, 2008 — Traded Ray Durham to Milwaukee Brewers in exchange for Darren Ford and Steve Hammond.
March 27, 2009 — Traded Jack Taschner to Philadelphia Phillies in exchange for Ronny Paulino.
March 27, 2009 — Traded Ronny Paulino to Florida Marlins in exchange for Hector Correa.
July 27, 2009 — Traded Scott Barnes to Cleveland Indians in exchange for Ryan Garko.
July 29, 2009 — Traded Tim Alderson to Pittsburgh Pirates in exchange for Freddy Sanchez.
There is nothing here in the last 4 seasons or actually since Baker left in 2003, that warrants any faith or hope whatsoever that Sabean can execute a meaningful trade. He got 5 weeks of production from Randy Winn in 2005 when the Giants won 75 games and finished in 3rd place, and has nothing to show for anything since then.
If last year’s Garko and Sanchez trades are the true indicators of Bochy and Sabean’s trading skills, then to expect something positive is to believe in the tooth fairy.
im not looking for trades to get the team better…im looking for a fire sale to dump salary…and hopefully get some prospects in return
getting pretty thin in the pitching dept down on the farm
and i dont know if he would even think of coming to sf…but the giants need to make a play for fielder in the offseason
Chris Ray, rhp, 1 year. $0.975M. 2010; aged 28 years. College of William and Mary. Drafted in the third round of the amateur draft & signed by the Orioles in July of 2003.
He has appeared in 226 games as a reliever and has a career .414 ERA. 224.1 innings.
After four years with Baltimore he was traded to the Rangers for Kevin Millwood, cash, and a player named later (Ben Snyder – a 24 year old pitching prospect in the Texas league).
Plus a player to be named later.
Who knew Bengie Molina was worth so much?
Bochy says that Lincecum’s problem is that he needs conditioning and is out of shape? Could be, but how does he enforce more work outs when he lets Sandoval and Molina walk around 50 pounds overweight themselves? Maybe if he and the coaches had stuck to keeping Panda on a strict diet, his average would not have taken a nose dive, and the team wouldn’t be having so much trouble scoring runs. Maybe if Molina had lost some weight, he would have more speed so all those wild pitches and passed balls would not be getting behind him allowing opposing runners an extra ninety feet, not to mention how SLOW he is trying to run to first base.
The Age Old Question
The Giant’s Youth Movement was promised years ago and was reaffirmed by Bill Neukom when he took the helm in 2008:
“We want to be the sort of franchise that puts a contending major league team on the field game in and game out, and affords its community and fan base a contending team year in and year out. And how we’re going to do that is by emphasizing and investing even more in homegrown talent. We have to find the best baseball athletes we can find, through better scouting and better analysis of the amateur draft. We have to emphasize that part of our roster.” – Bill Neukom
Since he made that statement Mr. Neukom has extended the contracts of GM Brian Sabean and Manager Bruce Bochy. This was a puzzling decision as one of the most common criticisms of Brian Sabean is his disinclination, if not flat out inability, to develop young players. His hand picked side kick, Bruce Bochy, has also been characterized as favoring veterans going back to his days with the Padres, under then GM Kevin Towers.
“The most difficult thing to do in sports, which is doubly tough for a manager, is to try to win and develop at the same time. More and more, kids are getting to the big leagues earlier. More and more, kids aren’t prepared to play up here and deal with the failing.” -Brian Sabean
The first part of this statement, that more kids are getting to the big leagues earlier, is flat out wrong. The 1954 World Series Champion Giants were a younger team than today’s Giants. There were, if anything, more young players in the past. That is a fact.
“Triple-A baseball isn’t very good.” -Brian Sabean
The second part of Sabean’s statement, that kids aren’t prepared, suggests that the minor leagues are doing a poor job of preparing players. I am surprised that Director of Player Development, Fred Stanley, a man with real baseball credentials, hasn’t knocked Sabean’s teeth out of his head. The Fresno Grizzlies currently stand at the top of the Pacific Coast League with a record of 48-31.
Sabean is bad mouthing his own organization as an excuse for not fielding younger players. He is using this same excuse to deflect criticism of his signing high priced contracts with under performing veterans. And Bochy, Sabean’s hand picked side kick, keeps running out the veterans, even though younger, lower priced, better players, are already on the payroll and available.
If any of us, having been instructed by our employer to “get some young guys in here and get this job done,” instead hired a bunch of old, slow guys, at twenty times the cost, we would be fired. No questions, no excuses. Fired. I think the same should apply to Sabean and his little buddy Bruce. I am awaiting the day when Mr. Neukom drops the hammer. It cannot come too soon for me.
Stupid and Full of Shit
Sabean has no clue what he is talking about when it comes to guys coming into the bigs at an earlier age. He is flat out wrong. Not only is he wrong, he has it backwards.
From the NY Times, September 5, 2005: (Read the article here.)
Can the guy play? Obviously the Giants have wrong guys asking that question
Amazing
I don’t know how long the corpse of a career has to rot before the powers that be finally bury it.
PLAYER 1
May OBP .263 SLG .250 OPS .513
Jun OBP .274 SLG .317 OPS .591
PLAYER 2
May OBP .228 SLG .370 OPS .598
Jun OBP 275 SLG .387 OPS .662
The former. Giants starting catcher who gets a huge fucking incentive bonus for starting in 115 games. He is on pace to start 148.
The latter. Crashface Pizzaboy who has no speed, was sent in to run for the only legitimate power outfielder on the team, who did not tag on a short fly to right by Renteria when Ethiers offline throw was cut-off and made Sandoval an easy double-up. The throw was up the 1b line and a fast running outfielder like Shierholtz would have made it standing. The cut was made when the 1b saw that Rowand was not coming, leaving Sandoval a sitting duck. I have no idea what the fuck that idiot 1b coach Roberto Kelly was thinking, if anything other than what the post game spread was going to be.
Only a complete and utterly stubborn, stubborn old man takes his best power hitter out of the lineup in a tie game with 9 outs remaining and puts in an almost equally slow-footed runner with half the IQ and half the offense in his place. This would have been like pulling 2004 Bonds for Dusting Mohr if Mohr’s OPS had been about .300 points lower.
No matter. Molina than rolled over a pitch like washed up players with no bat speed always do and puttered a 22 hopper to Furcal for what would have been a double playball anyway.
Bochy’s utterly futile and defiant roster management is rife with mistakes. The kind of mistakes that a guy like a Joe Torre team always take advantage of .
And Bochy took the time out to blame Lincecum’s failures on being out of shape. Presumably while he and Molina and Sanoval were sharing a 45 meat/cheese extra-king size pizza and 6 family buckets of fried chicken tits.
Cue up the fucking Barnum and Bailey Circus Music. The only thing missing is the twin towers of tooldom, Baer and Neukom standing in front of the Willie Mays statue with a pair of organ grinders and rhesus monkeys.
+mia,
I like the way you put “Bochy” and “roster management” in the same sentence. I’ve been looking over his recent lineups and trying to figure out how he comes up with them. It isn’t by alphabetical order, but that would make about as much sense as some of the combinations he’s thrown out there. Is he using the I Ching? Ouija board? Hard to prove.
For a different team, under a different GM, Bochy would probably be a better manager. Kevin Towers was known as the “dumpster diver of GM’s” because of his tendency to find the lowest priced poorest players available. Sabean might be another such GM, only he pays top dollar for the league’s castoffs. I do get the feeling that Bochy is subject to Sabean’s instructions, and I have written about how I think Sabean, with no playing experience to justify it, has managed to put himself into the position of being a de facto big league manager. I imagine Sabean has wet dreams about putting on the uniform and standing in the dugout.
But Bochy is making some very odd on the field moves, and these cannot be attributed to Sabean. So maybe on another team Bochy would be just as erratic.
When the Giants let Will Clark go, I was sad, but I knew that there comes a time to make hard decisions about favorite players, even when they have some good years still left in them. That was a decision made by baseball people. It’s time for Neukom to step up and cut the dead meat in his organization, as costly as that may be, so that the team doesn’t die from gangrene. Molina, Rowand, Bochy, Sabean, are all long past their expiration date. Renteria and Burrell are getting mighty close. It’s time for the Youth Movement we’ve been promised for so long.
Robert and Everybody else:
The problem is not with Bochy. He is the sympton of the problem. Bochy is the open sore and festering pustules of infected tissue resulting from the unhygienic and poisonous management practices of Larry Baer, Bill Neukom and more specifically Brian Sabean. Kicking out Bochy now only buys Sabean more time and provides him with a scapecoat. Sabean has a lot of say so in who plays, Bochy just sets the batting order. I don’t even think his coaches are paying attention anymore if the baserunning is any indication.
“I was in full panic mode.”
–Aaron Rowand after striking out foolishly against Scott Atchison.
Pretty much describes Sabean’s roster building for the past several years after Baker and then Bonds left. People forget that Baker preceded Sabean and Baker had a lot of sway on who was on his roster, never mind the everyday lineup. When Baker left, his plaver evaluation expertise left too.
It was no mere coincidence that the slide from the post-season that began in 2003 has continued unabated for the most part
After his loss to the Red Sox Lincecum had this to say:
“I just felt like I was a robot out there, things weren’t moving smoothly or the way I wanted them to. I just kind of lost my stuff. I still feel strong, but I know the ball isn’t coming out the same every pitch. But that says to me it’s a mechanical thing or a timing thing. I always go back to the chalkboard between starts and try to figure it out.”
Taking Tim at his word, that it isn’t an injury, and he isn’t sick, I think it is time for him to spend some time with his dad, the man who invented his delivery motion. Dave Righetti hasn’t been able to correct the problem, and I wonder how much time Righetti has spent with Lincecum’s dad, if any.
There’s also the mental aspect, and as Tim’s paycheck and accomplishments have increased, so has the pressure to perform. Confidence is ephemeral. He is a young man and he plays on a team that doesn’t produce runs to support its pitching staff. I repeat: confidence is ephemeral. Dad may be able to help with that too.
Which leads me to Pablo Sandoval, who is in a very long slump, who leads the team in grounding into double plays with 17 so far this season. Opposing pitchers seem to have found the hole in Sandoval’s swing. Also, am I the only one who thinks he is actually getting fatter as the season goes on? What is that about? And are his weight increase and his batting slump related? Even if they are not, that kid needs to cut back on the nachos. If he can’t handle pitches high and tight because of his gut, that is inexcusable. I also don’t have any trouble believing he would be a better athlete if he wasn’t carrying an excess 50 pounds.
It is just my opinion, but I believe Bengie Molina may be a bad influence on the young Mr. Sandoval. Not the fat part, but the style of hitting. Swinging at pitches outside the strike zone, hacking away, not working the count. Who do you think has more influence on this kid, the near legendary eldest Molina brother, or Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens? Smart money is on Big Money. That’s what I think, anyway. My confidence in Bam Bam is low.
Look. The Giants aren’t a very good team with Molina and Rowand and Renteria on the bench. With Posey, Uribe, Shierholtz starting in their place, they are average. But the everyday lineup is a symptom of the overall problem. They’re simply not good enough to win this division; haven’t been good enough for 7 years, and never will be good enough, as long as the current regime is in place.
And following last nights embarrassment, they are comfortably in front of last place Arizona; and nobody else.
Again, this team is on pace to score fewer than 700 runs and the stupid fuckers in the media are interviewing Sabean about his trade deadline deals to “put the team over the top.”
Sabean claims he will not trade for anybody thats going to be a free agent next year and is only interested in guys he can control through the end of the 2011 season.
“Just like we did with Freddie Sanchez.”
Yeah, those 9 extra-base hits that Sancehz has blasted in the first half of the season has pretty much set the offense on fire. Fucking idiot gives this gimp a 2 year contract at 6million per and brags about it like it was stealing Ruth from the Red Sox.
You see what I mean when I say the Giants have no chance. They are right where they should be in the standings. Fourth Place with their pitching creating enough of an illusion of credibility when the reality is that they are a little above average pitching wise and a little below average hitting wise which means they are just not very good while being fucking boring and listless and stupid.