I’d like to respond to the idea that I am saying that the Giants are wrong for not spending their money the way that I think they should. It’s not that I, (or E, for that matter) are pissed that they won’t spend their money the way we think they sho
uld. It’s that they do spend their money, they spend it in ways that are obviously and patently flawed from the start. They (Brian Sabean and company) go out and get mediocre players and pay them fortunes year after year. The Zito deal was an albatross the minute the ink was dry. The Rowand deal, the Dave Roberts contract, the Neifi Perez deal….
I have been saying for years now that Brian Sabean and whoever his team of analysts are, use statistically-based analysis that is rife with flaws. In fact, based on the players he goes out and gets, he has no statistically-based analysis at all. Sabean values major-league service time, which coincides with age and a lack of speed, defense and actual production. He ignores virtually all of the current statistical analysis tools, and for the most part, pays little attention to anything other than batting average. If a player has had the fortune to be on a championship team, regardless of contribution, Sabean will treat this player like a championship contributor, and by “treat him like a championship contributor,” I mean that he will pay him a lot more money than he is worth.
As for youth, if a player is young and unproven, Sabean will only play him regularly if forced to by injury. That is his strategy for handling young players in a nutshell.
The roster that the SF Giants have started the season with
each of the last ten seasons is described exactly by this analysis. Loaded with players past their prime (who are paid far more than their production warrants), seasons filled with disabled list management, and an appalling lack of offense and knowledge of how to generate it.
Every time I read an article about how we can’t afford to pay for a great player like Pujols, or Fielder, or Vladimir Guerrero, or Alex Rodriguez, great, championship-caliber players in their prime, I remember the vast amounts of money thrown away on players whose production was replaceable by major-league minimum dollars, and I am dismayed. Were it not for that mismanagement, the team could easily afford to pay for the one big bat they need to change everything. Now we are three seasons into having the fortune of championship-caliber pitching. We snuck into the playoffs in ’10, and won it all on the basis of that amazing pitching. Two seasons in a row thrown away with the worst offense in all of baseball, and we are looking at adding maybe 20 runs of offense with Melky Cabrera and Angel Pagan. This, while two of the greatest first basemen of all time were there for the taking. First base, by the way, being a position in which the Giants have fielded league-worst offensive production for more than 20 years running.
Instead, once again, some other team gets better, while I read articles about how Brandon Belt needs more minor league at-bats, or how Gary Brown needs his .350/.450/.500 numbers in the minors need to be produced again before he is ready to replace all the guys who made 400 outs for us last year, while earning $4 or $6 or $10 million dollars.
I’m not telling anyone how to spend their money. But when they spend it like fools, I’m gonna write about it.
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This blog is the shit. F*ck Sabean, go giants.
John — thanks for a fine post. This is a particularly penetrating bit of your analysis that explains why the Giants paid Aaron Rowand $60 million –
“If a player has had the fortune to be on a championship team, regardless of contribution, Sabean will treat this player like a championship contributor, and by “treat him like a championship contributor,” I mean that he will pay him a lot more money than he is worth.”
My point is being missed here. First off. “Owners” are supposed to be caretakers, entrusted with a national institution, except in a hyper-competitive setting. Their job is to oversee the finances of the baseball team, akin to a quasi-charitable endeavor, not completely unlike a major symphony orchestra (of which Mr. Charles Johnson is a Board Member), opera company, museum. A vehicle for the wealthy to give back to the community so to speak.
Unfortunately those ideals were swept away when Bud Selig connived his way into the commissioner’s job, and all pretenses of public good were dropped and he has cultivated ownership groups over the years like the McCourts, Lorias, Lerner, Sternberg, Wilpon, DeWitt, who treat the teams like private yachts and they are all members of the MLB Yacht Club; intent on financing their yachts with cable subscription fees from the general public, tax funds for collaterall improvements and favorable tax treatment and fan money.
Basically they want and do, run their yachts with your money, not their own. Whether they spend $90 million or $190 million is besides the point. When the jackasses THEY hire fuck things up royally like Sabean, over the last several years, and they’re not going to fire him and replace him with somebody who knows what century it is, then they need to spend their way out of shit-city like the Yankees and Red Sox and Angels and Phillies. SPEND YOUR WAY OUT OF THE SHITCAN if you are not smart enough to hire somebody who can build a team under the radar.
Look. The Giants paid Corvette and BMW prices for Zito and Rowand. What they got were fucking rusted out Ford Granadas and the monthly payments of a Maserati. So assholes that they are, they’re going to continue to drive those pile of shit Ford Granadas just because they have to make the monthly payments. The problem is they’re making those payments with your money, not their own. And the high performance Pujols, Fielders, Guerreros, Oswalts, Sabathias, and soon Matt Cain are going to be owned by one of their fellow yacht club members.
Its really that simple
My point is being missed here. First off. “Owners” are supposed to be caretakers, entrusted with a national institution, except in a hyper-competitive setting. Their job is to oversee the finances of the baseball team, akin to a quasi-charitable endeavor, not completely unlike a major symphony orchestra (of which Mr. Charles Johnson is a Board Member), opera company, museum. A vehicle for the wealthy to give back to the community so to speak.
E et al.:
Historically the “good steward” role of baseball club owners is a fabrication and a lie. I too shouted “Two four six eight who do we appreciate?!” as a child but I am now an angry old man who has very few illusions regarding baseball or anything else that sounds too good to be true for that matter.
You know as well as I do that prior to free agency the owners were raking in profits and using their anti-trust exemption to screw players and fans out of as much cash as they possibly could. Under the increasingly incredible ruse that Baseball is “America’s Pass Time” the owners continue to enjoy exemptions and privileges Scientologists have wet dreams about.
Even with free agency we see today some of the most egregious abuses in modern day business practices such as Selig’s moving the Brewers to the NL. I could go on and on about that, but will spare you.
Look at who the Giants have put in charge of their business and stare slack jawed in wonder. Larry Baer, “A fourth generation San Franciscan with impeccable credentials in the world of marketing, television, film and politics” that’s right, a total public relations hack. Perfectly suited to be a caretaker, entrusted with a national institution.
Then, if that is not enough, there is Brian Sabean and his little butt buddy Bruce Bochy. Brian Sabean, who has weaseled his way into being the de facto manager of a major league team with absolutely no playing time or experience of his own.
Holy crap, am I peaking too early? It’s only spring training and I’m in full rage.
Of course the stewardship is a sham. But its been worse under Selig to the point, nobody in media or with any swag even gives nodding acknowledgement to it and hasn’t since Bart Giammati dropped of a heart attack.
Bud Selig has incrementally removed fans and player from his constituency. Fans are pigeons, and players are contemptible peons.
Just because nobody talks about it anymore, doesn’t mean I or you or anybody else has to buy into the bullshit of meaningful All-star Games, Tie All Star Games, ad hominem movement of franchises from one league to another without regard to fans or players, but as a condition of tribute by the new ownership groups.
Selig is truly a pustule of infectious scum. What the fuck justification is there for him to pay himself $23 Million per year with a $500,000.00 annual expense account and manipulate a bronze statue of himself in front of a taxpayer-subsidized stadium. The stadium where in 1999 3 workers were killed because of dangerous working conditions of an overloaded crane in an effort to appease the owners of the stadium (Bud Selig) who were afraid they weren’t going to open in time.
Bet most folks have forgotten about that.
John, I couldn’t agree with you more, and I don’t differ with much of what E said either.
What I was responding to in E’s post is specifically the notion that the Giants ownership is miserly, and that somehow because Charles Johnson is worth $5 billion we can demand–by our rights as fans–that he spend more than he wishes on the Giants. I’m as big a socialist as you’ll find, but so long as we live in a system that allows people to accumulate that kind of wealth at the expense of others, regretfully they get to spend it, or not, as they please. And besides, if I could tell him how to spend his $5 billion, I sure as hell wouldn’t say he should spend it by spreading it around more within the top ~2% just so we could have a better baseball team to watch.
$130 million is a lot of money for a ML payroll right now. Last year, at $118 million, the Giants opened the season with the 8th highest payroll in the game. For this market, and with a mortgage no other team carries, that’s not that miserly. When opening day payrolls are settled for this year, I’ll bet the Giants end up moving up, potentially to 5th or 6th. In other words, only behind the Yankees, Phillies, Red Sox, Angels, and one or two other teams.
This is not a particularly miserly ownership group, and I’m sick of hearing that complaint precisely because it so misses the point–the Giants could be a lot better on the same payroll. This is a foolish ownership group, or at least a solid majority is. They’ve stuck with Sabean when they shouldn’t, they’ve hamstrung the team by not writing down bad debts taken on & gone bad years ago, and they apparently fail to recognize how rare and fleeting the collection of young talent they have right now is.
I do think they’re right to keep a rainy day fund though, because they are doing the best damned rain dances I’ve ever seen.
Saw the Giants are interested in trading one of their Mendoza second basemen. (Theiriot/Fontenot)
Should we expect a trade for Craig Counsell? He’s a perfect Sabean vet.