I prefer EITHER Dan Evans of Paul DePodesta to Brian, and I would bet there are another half dozen or so people I would prefer if I knew all the candidates and their qualifications.

I hope to be wrong, but I am NOT happy with the re-signing of Brian Sabean.

The ironic thing is that Peter Magowan said he would review the Giants progress after the end of the season.  Just does how does being 11 games under .500 qualify as progress?

rebuilt the pitching staff??????

the man has drafted pitchers almost exclusively in the first round for 11 years....11 motherfucking years....if he didnt get at least some right, that would have been worse than pathetic

is sabean gonna get 11 years of 100 loss teams in order to rebuild his offense??

the man wasnt hamstrung when he made the awful aj trade, which has reprucussions into this season

and read his online chat again in regards to why he didnt pursue vlad.....because he wouldnt be able to sign players who now are no longer with the org, or are totally out of baseball

remember, we aint talking one bad season, we are talking about 3 in a row

when this team is in the cellar again next season....what will you say then??

I guess the likely answer is that the Giants upper management took enough personal responsibility for the Giants situation to rehire Brian, presumedly with his hands less tied.

So what do we know about Brian for sure?

It would seem he doesn't have his hands tied with regard to drafting, otherwise signing and then developing young players.  That hasn't been a total wipeout for the Giants during Brian's administration, but it hasn't been particularly good, either.

Peter Magowan pointed to all the pitchers (21) developed by the Giants that are in other organizations.  But he didn't mention two things:

First, as a group, those pitchers aren't all that good.

And second, the two best -- Joe Nathan and Francisco Liriano -- were traded by Brian for a player Brian then gave up with no compensation a year later.

One can make excuses for Brian.  But many of the excuses themselves (such as that he's been forced to go with older players) themselves demonstrate other problems (in this case, that the Giants have yet to sign and develop a good major league hitter under Brian's drafting -- in 11 years!).

And I really like the idea that Brian's overall body of work has been good, so why should we (the Giants) get rid of him just because he's in the midst of a four-and-a-half year slump with no end in sight?

Yes, one could argue that Brian has begun to do a better job with regard to young players.  But that itself raises the question of why it took him so long to adjust.

It appears to me that the signings of Tim Lincecum and Angel Villalona last summer and the hoped-for promising draft a month ago saved Brian's job.

And I have to give Brian credit for one thing.  He appears to be accepting responsibility for his mistakes.  I merely wish he didn't have so much responsibility to accept.  :)