As had I. One year, then FA. If proves he can still play (hit) , cool. If not, the Giants are not on the hook a la Zito.

Brewers have a nice farm system and could have some expensive talent at ML. Marlins are always looking at ways to cut salary. The new Padres management was talking about having a budget in the $40-45M range. The Blue Jays will be paying their players lots of money and the recession is also happening north of the border,

But not give them away. Besides, the highest paid players tend to be in the biggest markets already. No matter how badly the economy shakes out, I can’t see the Yankees or Angels turning into sudden sellers.

The two exceptions might be the Tigers and Cubs. Detroit is probably the hardest hit city in the country, and they had the second largest payroll in baseball last season. The Cubs just got sold, and who knows what the new owner is planning. In either case, I don’t see them just giving away their best hitters. Still, I’d expect the Tigers to bite the bullet and just wait for Ordonez and Sheffield’s contracts to expire long before they’d start shopping Miguel Cabrera for less than Lincecum. I was going to add the Mariners, but they don’t have any hitters signed long term that I’d have the slightest interest in.

Even more than that, though, the high paid players that the Giants would trade for would be signed to pre-downturn contracts. Why would you give up talent to get a guy with a $100M left on his deal when you might be able to get a 80% of the player for 30% of the price as a FA (either right now or next offseason). Even with the thin upcoming FA markets, I don’t see much opportunity for value here.

Also, Garland and his 4.90 ERA got 7.25M from the D-backs.

Every time I see a quote or read a report that the Giants are in contact with Scott Boras, I believe it. But I’m pretty sure they’re talking about Crede.

I read a story today in an LA paper which quoted Larry Baer as saying he’s been having ongoing discussions about Manny the last couple of days with Boras. It struck me as ridiculous that Sabean would then come out the same day and put Manny down publicly. As I mentioned, this is just stupid on his part. I agree with you that he probably won’t sign with the Giants, but even then Sabean’s comments become a motivating force for Manny when he plays against them. I think we all agree that we don’t want to see Manny extra motivated when the Giants come into town. As for Sabean’s comments about him being able to pick someone up at the deadline, I just want you to remember that he has made these comments repeatedly since Bonds left town and failed to do so. He continually seeks the players that he can’t get, which are players who he can control for multiple years, and then on the rare occasions when a player like this becomes available, he somehow expects the team to trade him without expecting a top level prospect. This is why he hasn’t made a trade worth talking about in years. As for Sabean’s firing being “imminent,” I didn’t mean he’ll get fired this week, I meant he’ll be fired after the season if they don’t make the playoffs, and I’ll stick to that prediction. And he WON’T make the playoffs, because once again he failed to pick up the big hitter that he needed.

Only if he would play first. I don’t really mind blocking Ishikawa if a player like Dunn is playing first. It’s not like he hasn’t played it during his career, out of the past 7 seasons (only discounting his first half year in the leage) he’s played almost a full season’s worth of games there.

but think of how much these comments at the Giants FanFest are going motivate Manny when he plays against the Giants next year! I’m pretty sure Manny was just going to mail it in for all 19 of those games, but now he is REALLY going to try!

the giants finish under .500
the giants finish last or near last in Runs Scored?

those are valid, additional ways that BS can be deemed to have had a lousy off-season.

to have not: he did not fix the “offense” = doubt

If I have this right, Bonds turned 39 in 2003. How Bonds played in 2003 and beyond belies his advanced age. Did you actually expect the production the Giants received from Bonds when he was 39+? I sure didn’t.

That said, it still doesn’t seem like his talent was wasted during most of his years here, especially during the Brian Sabean years. 2003, the first Alou year, the Giants went wire-to-wire in first place. That year, three starters OPS+’d below 100, and they were 90, 91, and 96. After that, the team’s been trying to climb out of the crapper. Mind you, Bonds’ last year as a Giant was 2007, and he was injured for the majority of 2005. So essentially, you’re saying that Sabean wasted Bond’s age 40 and over years by surrounding him with subpar talent in 2004, 2006, and 2007. These three years are up against playoff teams and playoff-contending teams of 1997-2003 (seven total years). So again I ask, how have Bonds’ talent really been wasted?

did you honestly try to insult me by suggesting i’m not trendy enough?

Did we not just sign Richie to another deal? Yes.

Maybe. We don’t know yet.

Is B-money still the cleanup hitter? Yes.

Maybe. I wouldn’t bat him there, but Bochy probably will. But this may change by mid-season when we see who is producing.

to all the dudes who are, like, "Sabean has had a good off-season":
what, do you people, like, hate offense, or what?

I’m just mystified by your arguments. I’d like, again, to go back to your original point above. Your basic premise is this offseason has been bad because Sabean didn’t get a bat. In other words, Sabean didn’t overpay for a bat, be it through trade or FA, so he failed this offseason. But you continue to hammer away at past offseasons to try to make your point that he did a bad job this offseason, which completely loses focus on what’s been done this offseason.

My personal take on Sabean is, he’s done a fine job not doing anything stupid this offseason. Why? Because he didn’t sign any Free Agents to too much money for too many years. Or at least, he hasn’t so far. This offseason doesn’t work in a vacuum, so within the context of what’s happened in previous offseasons, Sabean’s done a good job of preparing this team for the long term this year, instead of making short-sighted decisions that could handicap this team moving forward.

If you’d like to look at previous years, then yes I agree that Sabean’s done a pretty lousy job of building the team. Since the 2004 season, the team hasn’t been built for the long haul, but around bad contracts. I’m even one of the only remaining people who still believes that Zito was Sabean’s fault, because he’s the head of baseball operations, and the scouts report up the chain to him. If he and the baseball people truly felt that Zito was a bad signing, he should have been able to make a case for it.

So from 1997 through 2003, we’ve fielded a very competitive team. Good, Sabean! Then from 2004 to present, we’ve not had a competitive team. He didn’t make bold decisions or make particularly good signings. Bad, Sabean! But this offseason, decisions have been made that will not handicap this team moving forward. Good, Sabean!

So in the end, if Brian doesn’t return next year, I’m not going to be upset, unless it turns out the devil we don’t know is worse than the one we do. But if he DOES return, I might just be okay with that too.

But your arguments rambled and lost cohesiveness, and you started making a lot of points that aren’t true. So I argue the merits of your points.

Maybe you should evaluate the offseason by whether the team improved or not, not by a bunch of arbitrary crap. I guarantee you that Brian Sabean’s #1 objective was not to get a big bat. It was to improve the team, wherever it could be improved. Saying that the offseason is a failure because we didn’t add a bat is silly. We could have added Raul Ibanez. He wouldn’t have made this team any better, but by your definition we would be hanging up the “Mission Accomplished” banner afterwords.

As far as your point that Sabean hasn’t done a bang up job over the last few years, you won’t get any noise from me on that front. This is the first offseason in a while that I actually feel like we’re on the right track, and the biggest threat to that is a reversion to the old tunnel vision version of Brian Sabean.