At the way I love baseball all the time….
Seriously, our friend Ernie thinks I’m drinking the Kool-Aid. Maybe I am:
…. Aubrey Huff was cut loose by Detroit (his 7th team in 9 years) after posting a 43 OPS+. To say his mind wasn’t in the game at the time is an understatement. Andres Torres had been released/free-agented 6 times in his 6 year career before being picked up for the league minimum by the Giants before the 2009 season. He spent most of it enjoying bus rides and economy class flights across the country touring the Pacific Coast League. Pat Burrell and his $9 Million were sent packing unconditionally by Tampa just 7 weeks into the 2010 season. He and his paycheck bopped out an embarrassing .629 / 69 OPS+ during that time, so Tampa decided it had seen enough.
So desperate were the Giants that all three were picked up for nothing, and all three had moved right into starting positions by this June. The heart of the batting order. So much for “Central Planning”. Huff replaced the injured DeRosa. Burrell has replaced the departed 28 year old career minor leaguer John Bowker and Posey has replaced Molina in the lineup but they are still not enough to offset the continuing presence of Aaron Rowand, Freddy Sanchez, and Edgar Renteria. Sandoval is under-performing about as well as Uribe is over-performing and each is still more valuable than the trio of Travis Ishikawa, Eli Whitesides, and Nate Scheirholtz who play merry-go-round in and out of the the line-up. There is just not a lot to work with.
…. Good teams cut their losses. I don’t eat 5 month old room temperature fillet mignon, just because it was $11.99 a pound. If I want fine dining, I’m going to throw out the mold-infested mess, break out the bank, go back to the meat market, and chalk it up as a cost of eating well. The problem with the Giants over the last few seasons is that they have not been replacing the old spoiled food with quality choice product. They merely add garnishment with players like Ryan Klesko, Mark Sweeney, Todd Greene, Steve Finley, Omar Vizquel, Randy Winn, and lots of other older guys.
This time, they got lucky with Huff, Burrell and Torres, who except for Torres, are eligible for free-agency after this season. There is no long-term solution in play. Posey is the first position player to come out of the system with a bang since Matt Williams. That was over twenty seasons ago, and if there were anything in the system that was even marginally better than some of the fellas on the Giants roster now, they would have already have been here.
So, OK, the Giants are less than established. They are less than solid. They are, in fact, a bunch of re-treads, has-beens and never-was’s. That’s true. But I still want to see them win. And therein lies the rub.
If they were to win, even one playoff series, Sabean would be here for another five years. If they make the playoffs, he’s gonna get another two years at least. If they contend right to the wire, he’ll get a chance to try again next season. And, Ernie’s right. Sabean caught lightning in a bottle, not once, or even twice, but three times. The players the Giants are paying top dollar for are either on the bench, or should be. Renteria, Sanchez, Rowand, DeRosa. That’s like $36 million dollars right there. $36 million dollars!
Where would this team be without Huff, Torres and Burrell right now? Ten games back? Fifteen?
There is nothing in the system. No more hitters, no more position players. No young, fast, healthy players. There is no plan to go out and get young, fast, healthy players. We never go after premiere free agents. We hear bullshit stories about how they don’t want to come here, but that all a lie. Sabean doesn’t want them. He’d rather pay $18 million dollars for a 36-year old centerfielder who made one single play in his entire career.
The reason the team has been wasting money on old, expensive players for the last decade had nothing to do with surrounding Bonds with talent, or keeping him happy. It has absolutely nothing to do with maintaining the team’s chances to make the postseason. It never did. The team has wasted millions upon millions of dollars the last ten seasons on old, constantly injured, replacement level production because of Sabean. He signed these players to these contracts because he thinks it is the right thing to do. He believes in this approach. This is his strategy.
So, baseball fans, San Francisco Giants fans; we are stuck. If we win, this inept front office will be rewarded with new contract extensions, and we will almost certainly see more of the same. We’ll see Sabean give soon to be 34-years old Pat Burrell a four-year, $25 million dollar contract for three months of hot baseball. Career journeyman Andres Torres will celebrate his 33rd birthday with a three year deal worth something like $15 million. And Aubrey Huff will get a Christmas/34th birthday combo deal of something like 4 years, $30 million.
Jose Guillen might hit ten home runs before the season ends. If he does, you can bet the Giants will sign him to a deal that makes the $55 million wasted on Aaron Rowand look like chicken feed.
Of course, the team could collapse. They could go on a ten game losing streak at any time. Burrell could pull a hamstring. He is, you know, old. So is pretty much every player on the field, save Posey and Sandoval.
Which would you rather see? Giants winning, and staying with Sabean for another three or four years? Or the kind of total collapse that gets heads rolling?
How does anybody take a team that has acquired three former dhs over the age of 30 to play left-field, right-field and first base seriously? And not only play those positions, but to be the heart of the offense along with a rookie catcher called up at midseason?
Really. Thats what a $100 million payroll in the hands of Brian Sabean and Larry Baer and Bruce Bochy will do for you.
And fuck the Tim Lincecum is having an off-year excuse. Cole Hamels, Phillies ace, went from a 3.08era/142 ERA+ in 2008 to a 4.32/98 in 2009. The Phillies won their division, the LDS and the NLCS anyway. Why? Because the Phillies front office is smarter than the Giants front office. They went out and got a Cliff Lee, let Brett Myers go as a Type A free agent after the 2009 season, and picked up a great draft choice from Houston as a result.
Its no accident folks that the Giants keep coming up short.
Trade Sandoval and Lincecum for some serious fast and talented prospects like Posey.
I don’t think Sandoval will win with the Giants, as he is a fat fuck who keeps getting fatter, and I don’t like Lincecum because he is a tiny fuck who defies all historical expectations. They are both huge values now and I would toss them out there for a bunch of solid prospects – if I wasn’t the most hated GM in the major leagues. Where is the youth movement?
Send Lincecum away. Send Sandoval away. With the right GM and the right manager, you could set your team up for a decade of success. People will hate you if you fuck up, but people already hate the Giants front office. A small fire in the marketing office would work wonders.
This is a very slow bunch of baseball players. Trading Molina away to Texas raised the overall speed of the team, but they are still very slow.
AT&T Park is a below average hitter’s park. The Giant’s pitching is good enough, but they don’t have great hitting, and *pretty good* won’t get it done in that yard.
AT&T calls for speed. Erratic pitching, erratic hitting, you have to expect some of that with any team. Speed does not slump.
AT&T calls for two center fielders, one in center, naturally, and one in right, with a cannon for an arm. Nate seemed right. I still think he is right.
With Torres the lone exception, these slow pokes are not destined for greatness. Not in that yard. The Giants need a manager with the mind set of a Ty Cobb (I can imagine +mia groaning as I type these words but hear me out).
AT&T calls for speed. For station to station baseball. Sacrifice bunts, the suicide squeeze, sacrifice fly balls, double steals, base knocks. And running. Fast, savvy base running. (Hire Ricky Henderson as a running coach. Do it today.)
When the Padres built their huge new stadium with its enormous field they dumped Bochey like a hot potato. They realized he didn’t have the right mind set. (How did they reach that conclusion? They’d watched his entire career, that’s how. I pray Sabean chokes on his next bite.) Even with twice the payroll Bochey cannot do what the Padres are doing. He doesn’t know how, and he doesn’t want to learn.
The battery is good enough. It is more than good enough. But these old, slow men, they are not going to work out.
Ty Cobb! LOL I’ll agree only when Sandoval starts filing down his spikes.
I’m not a big speed, run, guy. I’m an Earl Weaver guy. A walk, a single a bomb. Instant 3 runs. You can overcome mistakes with power. One swing gets you in the game if you can get guys on base. Playing speed ball with singles hitters who walk very little who are slow is not only boring, it is a recipe for (drum roll) your San Franicisco Giants for the last 7 years.
After reading John’s post, and witnessing the last 3 games and losing to a sorry ass bunch of sad sacks like the Padres, the win loss may show on track for a 90 win season, but that is some sorry-ass pathetic team out there, and you have to change the guys running things.
Sabean caught lightning in a bottle with Huff, Burrell, Torres. Does anybody seriously doubt John’s scenario of big ass contracts for old slow players like he alludes to if Sabean is still around and the Giants stay “in this thing.”?
It kills me that Posey is such a great kid, a great player, a great story, and he got shit on before they even broke camp this spring, and now he’s supposed to spend the first few years of his career carrying a bunch of old, slow slow slow as you say, goats around on his back and we’re supposed to say:
“MAGIC INSIDE”? The only fucking magic inside is the gunsmoke and horseshit show Baer and Co. are pulling with fans wallets down at 24 Real Estate Mogul Plaza. Enough of this shit. Get these fuckers out of Tombstone and bring in a new fucking sheriff. The place is beginning to smell like shit.
Fuck second place. Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler finished in second place.
See Giants 1960s style if you like second place.
I think the difference between old school, station-to-station baseball and the crap that the Giants trot out is that ‘old school’ had players that actually could do it.
Whether the team is built for contact, speed, and fielding or singles, walks, and homers, you still have to commit to that strategy. All the way. Old and Slow isn’t going to cut it.
we all know that sabean cannot judge real talent…end of story
getting lucky at dumpster diving does not a good gm make
btw, either timmy still hasnt spoken to his pops, or there really is something seriously wrong with him
no way this team makes the post without a solid freak….and even if they do, its one and out