Archive for the 'Barry Bonds' Category
The NY Daily News’ Bill Madden is in the minority when it comes to common sense:
….the H
all of Fame’s Great Dilemma: It continues to bill itself as a museum, and the custodian of the game’s history, and records. But down the road, how does the Hall justify that if it excludes the holders of the most significant of those records?
…. with 15 MVP and Cy Young Awards between them, Clemens, ninth all-time in wins and third in strikeouts, and Bonds, the all-time home run leader, are the two most decorated players in the history of the Baseball Writers’ awards voting — and yet those same writers, many of whom are of the opinion they have an obligation to abide by the “integrity and sportsmanship” clause, feel compelled to say “No” when it comes to a plaque in Cooperstown.
…. “The problem you have now is that the Hall of Fame is supposed to tell the history of the game, good and bad,” said a baseball official, “and unfortunately there is this inconsistency between the records and the people elected to the Hall. If you’re going to keep out the suspected steroids players, don’t you then also have to put an asterisk or something on their records? You can’t have it both ways. Obviously, the commissioner has no intention of putting an asterisk on the records, and so, if they’re going to stand, Bonds and Clemens should be in the Hall of Fame. And, frankly, so, too, should Rose.”
Um, yeah. I’ve been saying that for going on a decade. Better late than never.
Meanwhile, Mike Lupica, (savior of children, baseball and integrity, though maybe not in that order) still wants us to know he’s got it right about Bonds and Clemens:
…. You break no laws, by the way, if you don’t care whether Clemens and Bonds and Sosa were shooting up in the dugout.
You don’t have to care.
But if you do, ask yourself a question:
Do you believe Clemens was clean over the second half of his career?
Once again, we see how it is with guys with a computer, a newspaper and am axe to grind. “Apologize.” Done. “Not enough.” “Gotcha, now go on trial.” Beat it. “Not enough.”
On and on. Just remember that Clemens was better than Lupica’s boyhood idols, Bonds was better than Lupica’s boyhood heroes, and that’s why he won’t let up. Guys like Palmeiro, guys like Ramirez, those guys he’s already forgotten about. Jason Grimsley? The only time Jason Grimsley will be in a Lupica article is if he shoots somebody. He didn’t beat an immortal.
UPDATE: In a related article written by Murray Chass, I came across this Buster Olney quote:
“The institution of baseball condoned the use of performance-enhancing drugs for almost two decades with inaction. To hold it against a handful of individuals now is, to me, retroactive morality.”
Again, not to belabor the point, but I have been saying that for going on a decade. At the risk of repeating myself, I’ll also mention that Pete Rose is in the same boat with these moving target assholes.. The sportswriters who now champion his permanent exclusion from baseball absolutely knew he was betting on sports for years; and at least a couple of them suspected he was betting on baseball. They said, wrote and did nothing, until it was politically expedient to act shocked and horrified.
On and on…. They demanded that Rose admit what he did, come clean, and apologize. The minute he did, they jumped down his throat insisting that he didn’t apologize the right way. Jason Giambi went through the exact same thing. So did A-Rod. Only Andy Pettitte appeared to handle his apology the right way. Of course, the writers already didn’t believe he was cheating anyway. He was an acknowledged “good guy,” which meant that he was a good interview for the sycophants.
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Posted in Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Cy Young, Hall of Fame, Most Valuable Player, Steroids & Baseball, The Commissioner |
23 Backtalkers »The Giants have made their decision:
The Giants this morning will announce a Division Series roster that does not include pitcher Barry Zito, the team’s highest-paid player, a source said Wednesday night, several hours after manager Bruce Bochy said either Madison Bumgarner or Tim Lincecum would start a potential Game 4 in Atlanta.
Zito’s exclusion is not surprising, given his performance in Saturday’s possible division-clinching game against San Diego at AT&T Park. In a broader sense, this is stunning for a player who was given $126 million over seven years not only to pitch the Giants into the postseason, but also to be a face of the franchise in the post-Barry Bonds era.
It’s only stunning in that it is an admission of failure by Brian Sabean and team ownership; something that we Giants fans are hardly accustomed to. The outrageous contract they gave to an already declining Barry Zito four years ago –a contract that was an albatross almost from the minute it was signed– represents the very worst trait of Brian Sabean; he over-values proven major league players. This issue is one of the biggest complaints you’ll hear at OBM, so, for him to admit failing is pretty surprising. He never admits failure.
Kudos to Sabean and the rest of the Giants braintrust for being willing to bite the bullet.
UPDATE: Speaking about the use of replay….
There is no doubt that an effective and timely use of replay is available. It is as easy as having an umpire in a booth watching a HD broadcast. One of two simple options are available under that scenario. Either the HD ump has the ability to notify the umpire crew chief of an obvious mistake, (such as Torres’ foul/triple), or each team is allowed two challenges per game. That’s it. You could limit the challenges or not, it doesn’t matter, because each team is only allowed TWO PER GAME.
{Of course, the NFL chooses to limit what is challengeable, which is not only absurd –as it serves no real point– but, in fact, acts to undermine the effectiveness of the challenge system. Any play could change a win to a loss, and a phantom holding call on an 80-yard touchdown run is just as damaging/rewarding as a missed catch or fumble.}
Don’t bother talking to me about the time of the games, or the integrity of the game, or the built in fallibility of the men in blue. All of these arguments are flat-out absurd. There would be no significant impact to the length of the games. We already have delays when the umps gather together to discuss their limited ability to recall what they may or may not have seen; and these delays are happening while Tim McCarver is on television showing us over and over that the call was obviously and completely wrong, and anyone can see that it was.
The integrity of the game is harmed by allowing mistakes by umpires to be treated as a part of the game. The reason umpires are part if the game at all, is because the players, acting in their own self-interest, cannot be trusted to always tell it like it is. The objective umpire is the arbiter of whether the man is safe or out, whether it was a ball or a strike. There is no value added by allowing an umpires mistakes (or God forbid, his bias) negatively impact a game.
It is stubborn, pig-headedness that is preventing MLB from resolving this glaring problem, and the game is suffering because of it.
UPDATE: Via Baseball Musings, there has been an effort to set up a meeting between MLB officials, umpires, and the players:
…. Umpires’ profiles have increased in the past year, largely due to a series of missed calls in last year’s playoff games. This season, umpire Jim Joyce’s call denied Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game only added to the focus and reignited a debate about expanding instant replay. Nearly a dozen players interviewed for this story told ESPN.com that relations between the two parties are deteriorating.
…. What the players would like to address, two player representatives said, is the growing concern among players about poor communication with umpires and what players see as a failure of accountability and transparency in the grading and evaluation of umpires.
…. (The Philadelphia Phillies’ Jimmy) Rollins said he’s noticed a change in the umpires’ patience this year. Often, he said, players aren’t allowed to question a call or get clarification about a rule because the umpire refuses to engage in conversation. Rollins also said that if players show too much emotion, like flipping a bat or shaking their head, they are much more apt to be thrown out of games than in past years. Other players echoed his thoughts.
“We’re supposed to yell at you, you know that?” Rollins said of the umps. “We’re trying to get every inch we can. You make the call, but you don’t have to keep looking back at me or antagonize and throw me out from the field while I’m in the dugout.
“It’s like umpires are taking it more personal these days. I don’t know what it was like back in the day, but looking at the footage, they’d get in these guys faces and ream them out. And umpires would stand there and when it was over they’d walk away. You’d really have to do something to get thrown out.”
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Barry Zito, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Cy Young, Matt Cain, NL West, San Francisco Giants, Tim Lincecum, Wild Card, World Series |
23 Backtalkers »Once again, the minute I start ripping a player, he starts ripping the cover off the ball. Huff looked gargantuan last night, that three-run blast was Bond-sian.
Sanchez was filthy, and the offense came back to life. Renteria(!?) gets four hits in the leadoff slot, including a beautiful drag bunt. Posey, who has to be considered the front runner for Rookie of the Year, another blast.
First place by a half game, with seventeen to go. Not too shabby.
UPDATE: Well, that was shabby. The Giants hitters made Randy Wolf look like Randy Johnson, and the Giants lose a game they needed. Ugly effort.
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Buster Posey, NL West, San Francisco Giants, Wild Card, World Series |
74 Backtalkers »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?
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Buster Posey, Free Agents, NL West, Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants, Wild Card, World Series |
6 Backtalkers »Zito had his worst game of the year, pretty much at the worst possible time, in a first-place showdown with the surprising San Diego’s. Struggling to find his rhythm the whole game, Zito was embarrassed by his buffoon of a manager, who tried to take him out during the fifth inning after he had gone to 2-0 on Oscar Salazar, with the first ball a wild pitch. Of course, Righetti had just visited the mound prior to the at-bat, so Zito had to finish the hitter. It was a pretty ridiculous sight, really. Out pops Bochy, practically running to the mound, only to be sent back to the dugout by the second base umpire.
Of course, the Chronicle manages to make Bochy’s gaffe seem like it was planned:
…. Zito said his “timing was off tonight. I didn’t have any command of anything.”
That was particularly evident during Oscar Salazar’s fifth-inning at-bat. Zito air-mailed his first pitch to the screen, allowing Yorvit Torrealba to waltz to second. The next pitch was extremely high and outside.
After that pitch, Bochy headed to the mound to check on Zito, but because pitching coach Dave Righetti had conferred with Zito just before Salazar came to the plate, Bochy could not speak with the left-hander. Bochy had to return to the dugout.
“When he threw those two pitches, I was concerned about him,” Bochy said.
Yeah, right. Everyone in the ballpark saw Bochy signal for a relief pitcher. Then again, why not lie to cover up your embarrassing mistake? The GM gets away with it constantly, and the local sports reporters only seem to insist on the truth when they’re harassing the greatest player in baseball history:
…. “The surgery I had was a failure.”
In October, DeRosa had an operation to repair a torn tendon sheath in his left wrist, an injury he sustained soon after joining St. Louis in a trade from Cleveland on July 1.
On Tuesday, DeRosa was examined by Giants doctor Gordon Brody and had an MRI exam. The diagnosis, according to DeRosa: “It’s completely ruptured again.”
The article goes on to mention that the Giants are, laughably, hoping that rest will make it all better. Of course, nowhere in the piece is any mention of the criminally bad contract that Sabean so generously gave to the known to be injured DeRosa. Now the team has two $12 million dollar players who cannot play, and a GM who simply does not know what he’s doing:
…. Hot-hitting prospect Buster Posey remains at Triple-A Fresno because Giants officials are not convinced he is ready to catch in the major leagues yet, GM Brian Sabean said.
The longtime GM also stressed that the decision to promote Posey has nothing to do with service-time concerns, nor will it.“Let me dispel all that, all right?” Sabean said. “When we think Posey’s ready, just like when we thought (Tim) Lincecum was ready, and this starts from ownership, he’ll be in the big leagues. I’ll speak to the Lincecum thing. If we don’t bring up Lincecum, how do you know he’s on his way to winning the two Cy Youngs or more so helping us win 88 games last year? Now, in other places where you don’t have a deeper or more consistent budget, I can buy the strict clock. But we can’t be on a strict clock. Shoot, we’re trying to get back to winning ways and get to the playoffs, and everybody understands it.”
…. Sabean said the 23-year-old is “still learning how to catch. Some of that is game calling. Some of that is the consistency that he’ll need as, we hope, an offensive catcher.”
Besides, Sabean said he doesn’t put much stock into Triple-A statistics.
“Triple-A baseball isn’t very good,” Sabean said. “I’m going to tell you that right now. Especially from a pitching standpoint. Anybody who can pitch is in the big leagues.”
How many ways is this man ridiculous? Posey needs to be more consistent as a hitter? This, from a man who re-signed a catcher who made 450 outs last year. No pitching in Triple-A? Triple-A stats aren’t worth much? Lincecum won two Cy Young Awards because Sabean waited as long as he did to bring him up?
Whatever. Once again, we have a bottom feeder offense, 142 runs scored, and only the dismal performance of the two worst teams in baseball –the barely better than Triple-A Astros and Pirates– keep the Giants from having the worst offense in the game once again.
So, when you hear Sabean talking about anything at all, remember that it’s all bullshit. He’s got one of the wort hitters in all of baseball at just about every position on the diamond, and we’re supposed to listen to him tell us that a guy throwing up a .343/.436/.525 line isn’t hitting enough. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t have the slightest idea how to evaluate hitters. He has been selling Giants fans the same bullshit bill of goods for going on fifteen year now. I wrote this eight years ago:
…. Over the last 30 days the Giants offense is DEAD LAST in the National League, meaning it is dead last in all of baseball. This, while Barry Bonds is posting a .565 obp and a .900 slg. Do you have any idea what that means? That means the Giants are even worse than their stats.
I heard the Brian Sabean show yesterday, and he said that he intends to show patience and trust that his hitters are going to start hitting. You know what Ray, that’s the single stupidest thing I have ever heard Brian say. You’ve got Marvin Benard taking swings in the last of the 8th in a one run game, and you’re telling me that I am supposed to trust that he’s gonna come around? Shawon Dunston has a spot on our bench? Damon Minor? Reggie Sanders? Sanders’ lifetime BA is .263, last year he was about 30% more productive than in ANY YEAR OF HIS LIFE.
…. which is more than you could say about JT Snow. There is nothing masking the fact that he is one of the most unproductive major leaguers drawing a salary. He is an out-maker, simple as that, and he gives nothing back for all of the outs he eats. Don’t talk to me about how many games he saves with his glove, that’s pure hyperbole. Bill James and a whole slew of baseball analysts have done reams of research into run prevention, and JT’s defense is worth maybe five runs a year, let alone five wins.
Eight years later, and the Giants are still comprised of one good hitter and bunch of out-makers. They’re still old. They are still slow. They are still injury-prone. The GM has signed more ancient mariners to more bad contracts, and the team is still just as boring and still barely competitive.
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Barry Zito, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Cy Young, Free Agents, NL West, Pablo Sandoval, Rumor Mill, San Francisco Giants, Talking Heads, Tim Lincecum |
14 Backtalkers »It isn’t bad enough that the Giants organization is run by people who still think it’s 1940. But when I read this kind of horseshit, I can’t help but think that Schulman is essentially parroting the company line in an effort to maintain access to the team. In other words, he’s being blackmailed. Because, if he’s not being blackmailed, he’s not competent to cover this team, or any team for that matter.
…. This is going to be an anti-Sabermetrics screed, specifically the notion that Lewis needs to be the Giants’ everyday left fielder because his .348 on-base percentage last year was 90 points higher than his .258 batting average. In other words, Lewis can take a walk.
I get e-mails like this all the time. I see this sort of comment on Internet boards. I’ve ignored them, hoping they will go away.
Um, we’re not going away, Henry. In fact, it’s people who think like you do who are going away. Sabermetrics are currently sweeping through baseball, basketball, and, in fact all sports. Thoughtful analysis, incisive research, and careful consideration of the many so-called “truisms” that lazy sportswriters, baseball men, and old-timers –like you and Brian Sabean– spout like veritable pearls of wisdom, are being systematically torn apart by men who sit around and analyze thousands upon thousands of fact-based results to discover whether, in fact, for instance, a strikeout is any worse or any better than any other kind of out.
It is sabermetrics and the men who use sabermetric principles to advance their understanding of this great game of baseball that are the foundation of baseball analysis for most, if not all of the top organizations in the game, and it is teams like the Giants, mired in the past, who are the bottom dwellers that these top organizations feast upon. Quite frankly, your comments are laughable.
Just last season, for example, the list of the top scoring teams and the list of the top teams in getting on base were mirrored each other remarkably well. In the AL, the top four in both categories were the Red Sox, Yankees, Twins and Angels. I guess it was just a coincidence that these were the four playoff teams. In the NL, only two of the playoff teams made the top four in both lists, but the other two playoff teams just missed in OBP (.334 and .332, with .340 being the fourth best total in the league), while three of the top four runs scoring teams made the playoffs. Go back through the years, and you will see a very strong correlation between OBP and scoring runs, and, incidentally, making it to the post-season.
And to think, for fifteen years, the Giants watched the greatest player of all time, the player most perfectly representative of the very best possible application of every single axiom that sabermetricians have discovered these last several decades, and after watching Bonds; these men still think the way they do. Words fail me in an effort to capture this absurdity on paper.
But, anyway, Henry, keep up the good work.
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Hall of Fame, San Francisco Giants, Talking Heads |
18 Backtalkers »In his post about Jeff Francouer, David Pinto does an outstanding job explaining what a batter’s value really boils down to:
…. Outs are the currency of baseball. Players who can buy more runs per out, or conversely, spend fewer outs per run, are richer hitters. An easy way to look at this, something you can do off any stat sheet or the back of a baseball card, is to use batting outs per run…
…. Since 2005, Francoeur’s first season, 163 players accumulated at least 2000 plate appearances. Among those, Albert Pujols spends the fewest outs per run, 3.14. Jason Kendall spends the most, 7.34. J.D. Drew ranks 26th, a run costing him 4.12 outs. Francoeur ranks 107th, a run costing him 5.33 outs. In other words, it costs Francoeur 121 more outs than Drew to produce 100 runs. That’s four and a half games of outs.
I’d say the majority of Giants hitter during that time land closer to Francouer than they do to Pujols. 
I’d also like to see where Bonds ended up during his historic 2000-2004 run.
I’ll send him an email and ask him where the Giants hitters rank in his analysis.
UPDATE: David sent me the info. As I suspected, several Giants (and ex-Giants) rank among the very worst everyday players using David’s runs per outs standard.
Randy Winn ranks 145th (6.04 outs/run) out of the 164 players in the study (good luck, Yankee fans), just ahead of Double Play AJ (6.13). Juan Uribe ranks 139th (5.84), just behind our old friend Pedro Feliz (5.83). Freddie Sanchez ranks 136th (5.80), Bengie Molina 121st (5.57). Aaron Rowand 116th (5.48), and Edgar Renteria ranks 112th (5.42).
Interestingly enough, Aubrey Huff sits in 88th place (5.11), just 4 places behind new Yankee Curtis Granderson (5.08), while Mark DeRosa has the best ranking of any Giants player listed, 55th best (4.64), so maybe, just maybe, DeRosa and Huff will improve the offense as much as some people seem to think they will.
I will highlight, of course, that my personal pet peeve player, the one proverbial “One that got away” Adam Dunn, ranks 29th, using just 4.15 outs for every run he produces.
Using David’s spread sheet and formula, (yes, my friends, I, too, am not an idiot), I calculate that Pablo Sandoval uses 4.40 outs/run produced, which would rank him 40th on this list. Travis Ishikawa and Fred Lewis both come out poorly using this method, at 5.45 and 5.38 outs/run, respectively.
The overall list shows a fairly constant correlation between OBP and outs/runs produced, not exact, but close.
However, as much as it pains me to admit it, I may be wrong about the two newest guys, or at least I’ll say that I hope I’m wrong. Notwithstanding their potential declines and injury issues, over the last several years, Huff and DeRosa have managed to be modestly efficient offensive players. Freddie Sanchez has not. Pinto’s study demonstrates with brutal clarity exactly what we’ve been saying here all along, he is an empty batting average, and certainly not worth the money and prospects the Giants gave up to get him.
As I wrote at the time of the trade, he’s essentially the same as Juan Uribe:
Sanchez, 31 years old, is a career .300 hitter, but he’s never walked more than 32 times in a season, his career high in home runs is 11, and his career OBP is just .336. He’s ranked fifth among NL second basemen in just about every category, which is to say, we traded our top draft pick from 2007 for a league average second baseman. For an easy comparison, let’s look at Juan Uribe.
J. Uribe 72 G 222 AB 17 2B 4 HR 21 RBI 10 BB 47 SO .284/.313/.432 .745 OPS
Sanchez 86 G 355 AB 28 2B 6 HR 34 RBI 20 BB 60 SO .296/.334/.442 .776 OPSI can’t for the life of me imagine how that kind of minimal upgrade would be worth one of the top forty prospects in all of baseball. Trading Alderson is fine, but WE NEEDED HOME RUNS AND WALKS!!!! Instead, we get two more 30-year old guys who are league average hitters. Can you see? This is systemic, because Brain Sabean does not know how to evaluate hitters, player value, or how to build a team.
Now we can add outs/runs produced:
J. Uribe 5.85 outs/runs produced
Sanchez 5.80 outs/runs produced
Yeah, that looks pretty good.
I also ran Bonds’ historic 2000-2004 run using David’s formula (outs per run is (AB-hits)/((Runs Scored + RBI)/2)). During that period of time, 5 years, Bonds had 2122 at bats, and, well, let’s just side by side him with Pujols:
Barry 2122 AB 1402 outs 1142 runs produced 2.24 outs/runs produced
Albert 3354 AB 1853 outs 1179 runs produced 3.14 outs/runs produced
Wow! Bonds, at his peak, was 70% more efficient than the best player alive today.
Hat tip, and then some, to my good friend, David Pinto.
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, Free Agents, NL West, Pablo Sandoval, San Francisco Giants |
22 Backtalkers »Courtesy of a Baseball Musings link to link, you can see that the bullshit stream generated by Giants –and propagated by the hacks that cover the team– never stops:
…. We all know that Magowan’s replacement, Bill Neukom, has positioned himself for a major battle over preventing MLB from overturning the Giants’ claim to the South Bay. Last year, the Giants even bought a portion of the Single-A club in town. (And have you noticed the San Jose Giants are even switching uniforms to look more like the parent club next season?) The Giants have been murkily tied to efforts from the San Francisco City Attorney’s office and a local coalition in San Jose to prevent the A’s from relocating, too.
The reasons for the bunker mentality are well known. The Giants attract a significant percentage of their corporate sponsorships, season-ticket and suite sales, ballpark advertising revenue, etc., from companies in Silicon Valley. Their ownership group is a who’s’ who of the tech sector. It’s part of their identity as well as their bottom line. They simply cannot afford to let the A’s cut into their interests in Santa Clara County.
And what’s the only way their territorial rights can be overturned? A three-quarters vote of the 30 major league owners, who’ll basically do whatever Commissioner Bud Selig tells them to do.
How does Lincecum and his arbitration status enter the equation? It’s simple. The No.1 way to tick off baseball’s owners is to establish a new salary threshhold. And Lincecum has a very good chance to clear Ryan Howard’s $10 million bar for a first-year arbitration player.
Yeah, right.
What a crock. We’re supposed to believe that the reason the Giants are jerking Lincecum around is so the other owners won’t vote to end the Giants territorial rights? Andrew Baggardly should be ashamed of himself for swallowing such a complete line of bullshit, and then regurgitating it all over his fucking computer.
It would be embarrassing if it weren’t so predictable, so completely in line with the standard operating practices demonstrated by this team for the last seven years. If I were Lincecum, I wouldn’t sign a long-term deal with this team under any circumstances. Lies and media manipulation are the foundation operating systems of an ownership and management group that lives in a world a fear and scarcity, a world of false promises and laughable “plans,” a world of failure masquerading as progress; a world where accountability is a catch-phrase.
Your San Francisco Giants.
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Barry Zito, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, NL West, Rumor Mill, San Francisco Giants, Talking Heads, Tim Lincecum |
10 Backtalkers »I know I tend to lean towards the negative. Sorry. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of what I read about the Giants is positive, and for a team that has had it’s share of worst in baseball players, contracts, offenses, and acts, that is simply Polly-Anna. The Giants are not one of the better run organizations in baseball, as suggested by this BP article:
…. the best-run teams of the decade:
1. Oakland Athletics Billy Beane (2000-09)
2. St. Louis Cardinals Walt Jocketty (2000-07), John Mozeliak (2008-09)
3. Cleveland Indians John Hart (2000-01), Mark Shapiro (2002-09)
4. San Francisco Giants Brian Sabean (2000-09)
Whatever. I don’t care how you measure it. The idea that any of the team’s success in the “aughts” was due to anyone but Bonds is provably false. They’re not one of the best-run teams, they are one of the worst. They are one of the worst.
I wrote several years ago that I thought Brian Sabean was riding on the coattails of the best offensive player of all-time, and that the minute Bonds was gone we’d all see just how bad Sabean was at building an offense. Well, we sure see now. The Giants have been one of the worst offenses in baseball from the instant Bonds left the team, and Sabean shows no signs at all of being able to turn things around. That he was rewarded with a contract extension after years of failing is astounding. That he is still around to throw money away, to trade away important and valuable prospects for more old, declining, injured and injury-prone mediocrities is frankly unbelievable. Sabean lives in a world where players are frozen in time, where the best thing a player gas ever done is what the player will do now, regardless of how long ago it was, or how fluky it was, or whether the player has undergone major surgery, or whether the player is injured.
…. Giants GM Brian Sabean was already pleased with his winter after re-signing second baseman Freddy Sanchez before he could reach the free-agent market, then signing free agents Aubrey Huff and Mark DeRosa to play first base and left field. However, Sabean is even happier after catcher Bengie Molina decided Friday to return to the Giants as a free agent on a one-year, $4.5 million contract on Friday following protracted negotiations with the Mets that did not produce the two-year deal he was seeking. The Giants did not want to commit to Molina beyond 2010 because of the presence of top catching prospect Buster Posey in their system.
…. Sabean thinks the Giants will contend after finishing 88-74 last year to end a streak of four consecutive losing seasons. Molina believes the Giants can do better than contend, commenting “I think we can get to the playoffs and win it all. This team is that good. The pieces are all here. We’ve just got to go out and do it.”
First off, the worry that someone would sign the broken-down, shadow of a former batting champion out from under the Giants is laughable. LAUGHABLE. Not only was Sanchez under contract for 2010, but there wasn’t a GM in the game who though as highly of him as Sabean did. Not one. There was absolutely no chance whatsoever that Sanchez was gonna play anywhere but major league baseball’s version of the Seniors Tour, San Francisco.
And as for this quote: “I think we can get to the playoffs and win it all” all I can say is, Huh?
That’s not optimism. That’s not even wishful thinking. That is blindness. The kind of blindness that cripples a team, the kind of blindness that allows one to trade away two of the team’s top four pitching prospects away at the deadline to acquire razor-thin, marginal talent upgrades. It is the kind of blindness that allows someone to sign one percent better players than the ones you have for another $4 or $6 million dollars; so that at the end of the day, they very amount of money needed to land a top free-agent has been wasted on five players who are not more than ten percent better than the five players you already had.
…. First Base: Aubrey Huff (.248 EqA, -1.0 WARP)
Given what we know about the defensive spectrum and the distribution of talent in baseball, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a player who can hit at a league-average clip and play first base in a manner that doesn’t suggest a future nomination for the Darwin Awards. Yet here we are. Huff had shaken off three years of mediocrity to enjoy something of a career year in 2008 (32 homers, .306 EqA), in part because he didn’t see all that much time in the field. With the departure of the undead Kevin Millar, the Orioles told Huff to reacquaint himself with the leather. Huff wasn’t egregiously awful afield (-2 FRAA), but his bat went limp (.253/.321/.405) before dying a miserable death upon being traded to Detroit, where he applied the coup de gràce to the Tigers’ season as a Replacement-Level Killer DH (.189/.265/.302).
That’s Aubrey Huff, our new first baseman. One of the worst hitters in baseball at his position, a player no better than either of the two first basemen we ended 2009 with, Travis Ishikawa or Ryan Garko –and arguably, worse– but as always, a player who is absolutely, positively, older. Once again, I cannot begin to understand how Sabean can fail –for virtually his entire career, now– to acquire a guy who can stand at first base, catch a throw from the shortstop, and hit a couple of home runs. In just the last two seasons, now, Sabean has spent $14 million dollars and traded one of our top young pitching prospects in his efforts to fill the easiest position to fill on the diamond. Who wants to bet Ishikawa is out there by the end of May? If he is, then you can know that the money and the prospect was wasted, COMPLETELY WASTED; because Brian Sabean cannot do his job.
And that’s just first base. I could go on and on. Shortstop? Please. Too easy. How about second base? Right now, the odds are just as good that Sanchez’s career is over as they are that he’ll be a key offensive contributor:
…. Sanchez has been hurting since the Giants obtained him from Pittsburgh in late July. He had said the Giants knew before the trade he’d need knee surgery to repair a torn meniscus (it was performed Sept. 30), and he went on the disabled list Aug. 25 with a strained shoulder, the same shoulder that was surgically fixed last month.
The surgery repaired a torn labrum and cleaned up an arthritic AC joint, said Groeschner, who added that recovery could take 12 to 15 weeks.
Asked why the shoulder damage was not detected in the physical and MRI exam before the contract was consummated, Groeschner said, “Sports medicine is not black and white all the time. It’s not just reading an MRI. A lot of interpretation goes into it.”
Asked if he would have done anything differently with the contract in retrospect, general manager Brian Sabean said, “Not at all. Due diligence was done on the medical side. This is something we couldn’t pinpoint. It shows the medical profession isn’t perfect. … There’s nothing more we could have done. We checked out every medical question.”
That is disingenous at best. Everyone knew Sanchez was injured. Everyone. For Sabean to sit here and say they did due diligence is, at best, an admission of failure. At worst, it is a bold-faced lie. This is the exact same thing that happened when Sabean went out and signed Edgardo Alfonzo. The. Exact. Same. Thing:
…. (December 16, 2003)
Manager Felipe Alou said Alfonzo, 29, could hit third or fifth. While he batted .308 for the Mets last season, 10th in the National League, Alfonzo had 16 home runs and 56 RBIs, his second straight subpar season on the power front.
In 1999 and 2000, he averaged 26 homers and 101 RBIs. A back injury hurt his numbers in 2001 (.243, 17 homers, 49 RBIs), and it was speculated in New York that he also suffered the consequences in 2002 even though he was considered healthy.
The Giants were so confident that Alfonzo has recovered that they didn’t require him to take a physical.
“It feels pretty good. I’m fine,” Alfonzo said. “Last year, I dedicated the offseason to working out and getting in great condition.
The Giants were so confident that Alfonzo has recovered that they didn’t require him to take a physical.
That was six-plus years ago. What’s changed? Only the cast of nobodies Sabean goes out and wastes money on. They’re still old, injured, and declining. The team still says it cannot afford top-flight hitters. Still says nobody wants to come here (except, of course, the really old guys who see the Giants as the Seniors Tour of baseball).
So, sorry, I cannot focus on the positive. Sure, our pitching is tremendous. I love seeing Lincecum dominate. I am ecstatic about how good and young our core of arms are.
But the way Brian Sabean treats this essentially unprecedented bounty is unforgivable. And this team will tease us, because the pitching will be so dominant at times. And then Brian Sabean will trade away some more good, young pitching to acquire some old, broken down baseball player who is five percent better than the old, broken down player we are already paying, and our future will continue to recede into the dark.
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Posted in Barry Bonds, Baseball Prospectus, Bill Neukom, Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Free Agents, Matt Cain, NL West, San Francisco Giants, Talking Heads, Tim Lincecum |
27 Backtalkers »Grant over at McCovey Chronicles wrote a simply outstanding article about the McGwire situation, and the whole steroids and baseball issue, and comes away with a doozy of a piece:
…. This isn’t to imply that it was just fine that a large percentage of the players were using. It’s not something that’s inconsequential, and it isn’t something that can be laughed off because a lot of players were using. But, good gravy, please stop the good vs. evil, hobbits vs. orcs, black and white discussion. Stop the false dichotomy of players from THE STEROID ERA vs. the OLD-TIMERS who did things the right way and who, if offered a way to extend their careers and improve their numbers with some chemicals, would have said “No way! I’m an old-timer who does things the right way!” I’m not sure if Rod Carew, Robin Yount, or Paul Molitor would have used steroids if they played in an era saturated in chemical enhancements, but the odds are that one of them would have. I say we kick them all out using the “Fallibility of Man” clause, just to be sure.
So when I hear or read that McGwire shouldn’t get in the Hall of Fame because he didn’t apologize the right way, it makes me stabby. Apologize to whom? To me? I had an idea he was using at the time, and I didn’t really care.
Makes me stabby? Nice. Very nice.
Go over there, and read the whole thing.
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Posted in Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Hall of Fame, Most Valuable Player, NL West, NY Yankees, Rumor Mill, San Francisco Giants, Steroids & Baseball, Talking Heads |
49 Backtalkers »
