I like that he’s been pretty open to young starting pitchers through thick and thin: Russ Ortiz, Jesse Foppert, Jerome Williams, Matt Cain, Joe Nathan, Noah Lowry, Shawn Estes, Tim Lincecum, etc.

Even when the Giants were contenders, they’ve had young guys in the rotation. The one person who was really screwed was Kurt Ainsworth, who spent 2002 in Triple-A behind Ryan Jensen. But, of course, Jensen was young himself.

PI!!!

If I had to do it all over, I would have made the approval for 2000 much higher. But I don’t, so I’m not.

I think the Y axis of your graph needs to be shifted down about 80 points.

Hey, a post without a poll attached!

I have a deep appreciation for his philosophies regarding work.

Other than that, I could take him or leave him.

The best part about Sabes is that he lets the media make up all kinds of reports, so make me laugh so hards sometimes I find difficult to stay in my chair.

I’ve always admired his ability to convey zero information in an interview. I’m also fond of his ability to barely tolerate Ralph Barbieri.

I like that Sabean trained his minion to be just as terrible as himself….if not terribler. Now, at least we are on even keel with the Dodgers.

I always like knowing that nobody, and I mean NOBODY, in baseball is kicking as many tires as Brian Sabean.

Also, I liked the Jose Cruz Jr., Ryan Klesko and Russ Ortiz moves. Two of them didn’t work out and one ended catastrophically (but was good until then) but they were good moves. I wish he’d have done more of these, though. I really wanted him to go after David Ortiz. I didn’t expect him to become what he did, but I was hoping Sabien would have done that at the time.

It had no chance with Ortiz’s defense, though.

…is that his last name is sounds similar to the name of a sex toy.

Wasn’t Puffer’s arrest for rape or sexual assault or something similar?

his patience is a virtue…
until his silence burns you.

i got nothing.

I like that Brian Sabean constructed teams that won the 2002 and 2004 World Series.

Son of a bitch!

Those AAA relievers and starters he takes a flier on are almost always a reasonable gamble. My favorite was Brandon Strongtown.

When he can resist the free agency crackpipe, Sabean’s an okay GM. Of course, that can also be said for many crackheads in condemned housing around the country.

I have never liked Sabean’s goatee / I have always liked Sabean’s goatee. It is just so terrible that I am incredibly conflicted.

Sabean’s goatee goes beyond the borders of normal goatee territory, and it’s sheer surface area MUST have something to do with how competent / incompetent he is. I wonder if there is a correlation, and how strong it is. Can we get a “Goatee Area” second data set against “Year” on Grant’s graph?

Some of Sabean’s moves have worked out brilliantly for the Giants; many have not. At least Sabean is active. Free agents, trades, promotions, demotions, DFA’s, waiver wire acquisitions, engaging in a war of words with Jeff Kent, you name it. Sabean is not a “stand pat” kind of G.M.

Sabean’s top five baseball player fetishes:

5. center fielders
4. left handed pitchers
3. claiming useless players off waivers, just cuz
2. tall/big pitchers (preferably left handed)
1. players who can field multiple positions

Final question: Why does Sabean davalue the first base position so much? Snow was okay, and since then, ack. Look away.

I think that -56 score was the day before the Ryan Rohlinger thread.

he drafts well, at least with top 10 picks.

fultz is now lefty depth for the reds. might actually show up in a few major league games this yr eventually, even if it’s a sept callup.

But I ended up grabbing some Bisquick, Totinos Pizza Rolls and a Snickers while I was here.

Toodles.

Most moves are not really worth the bother. Like, it always bothered me when people complain endlessly about signing someone who may or may not be the 25th guy on the roster. Big freaking deal, they are rarely critical to a team making the playoffs. And free agents, I understand hating the results, but he went out and signed the best available guy when the money was there, I can’t fault him on the process for that, though I do blame Magowan for that strategy and lack of money to do the optimal thing for the club.

For example, the Michael Tucker incident. Sabean needed a RF and got one, unless you thought Jeffrey Hammonds was going to do it for us, because we had nobody down below remotely ready to take that on. And as nicely as Dustan Mohr did for us that year, his lack of work after that showed that was mainly a fluke. For that he jettisoned a draft pick that 9 times out of 10 would have been a million dollar bust (and there are a lot of them in the 21-30 draft pick range; just surf through each year’s draft, you’ll see what I mean). Without Tucker, we probably would not have come within 2 games of winning the division, we would have been back with San Diego. Not because he was that good, but because whoever we would have played would have been THAT bad.

What matters most to me is that he has found a number of players who was able to lift the team up significantly when we needed it. Kent did it for us from 1997 to 2002, Schmidt from 2001 to 2006. And now he’s finding them via the draft, first Cain, then Lincecum, and hopefully others (which is a 5-10 year process for winning teams anyway, because of the 10% odds of finding someone good via the draft in the last third of the first round, plus 3-6 years time it takes to develop most draft prospects; most #10 picks are usually still in the minors, maybe AAA if we are lucky right now, not winning the Cy Young like Lincecum).

And as much as people like to rag on his drafting abilities (which I disagree with in any case) and focus on certain types of players, even if I were one of these still dissatisfied with his drafts, he did make what is obviously the right call, at the right time, when he selected Tim Lincecum, who did not fit the Adonis mold that most draft experts expected the Giants to select, they had us selecting Daniel Bard (still laboring in Red Sox farm system after TJS). The draft is like a lottery for the most part, luck plays a large part here, but if you are going to blame him for all the misses, you have to give him credit for hitting the grand slam with Lincecum, heck, that’s two grand slams. And you don’t need a lot of grand slams to put together a winning team.

I like quality over quantity. Lincecum looks to be a pitcher you can build around for the next 10-15 years; Cain too, and hopefully Bumgarner as well. And now that we are losing, er, transitioning, we got a great pick like Posey and should get another one next draft with our #6 pick. Villalona and Alderson are pretty good too (see BP’s latest Top 11) and maybe Rafael Rodriguez if he can get his 5-tools developed and working.

In addition, his focus has been on pitchers and defense for a long time, and recent research from THT and BP showed that it really is pitching and defense that helps teams in the playoffs; having the big boppers don’t hurt, but they are not essential to a successful team in the playoffs. In business terms, hitters are like hygiene (Geoffrey Moore used this term in past book), something you require to run your business, but not essential to its success, while pitchers (along with defense) should be a team’s core competency.

He has built a pretty good core with their pitching staff, now needs to figure out the right mix of offense and defense that can win with this pitching staff. I think this team can be competitive in 2009, barring any major injury to a major component (beyond Randy Johnson) and contending with a breakout performance or two (among Sandoval, Ishikawa, 2B, Rowand, Renteria, Sanchez, Zito).