In July, when pressed to do so by beat writers, columnists, and talking heads alike, Mr. Neukom declined to confirm that Sabean and Bochy would be brought back after the 2009 season.  Refusing to take no for an answer, such sport literati as Ray Ratto, Bruce Jenkins and Scott Ostler have taken it upon themselves to use their privileged column space in San Francisco's only major newspaper to opine in favor of the dynamic duo.

In spite of such blatant lobbying, Mr. Neukom has stated repeatedly that he had committed to viewing the entire season, not just the first part before rendering a decision. And he has reiterated that position a number of times, as recently as a couple of weeks ago if I am not mistaken and he emphasized "entire."   And no amount of pressure was going to make him back off his commitment to that process.

And I suppose if one wants to look at the whole season, it is an improvement over the past couple in terms of won loss records and the surprise that is Pablo Sandoval is nice too. Even though as late as the end of March, Sabean was fairly listless in his appraisal of Oso Panda while at the same time gushing forth on Ishikawa and Burris.

There are two schools of thought on this team.  A team that exceeded expectations versus a team that squandered countless opportunities once it became clear in June they had a very good chance to get into the playoffs and that pre-season expectations were incorrect.  Well lets look at the season pre and post all-star break, since that is about the time bandwagon started taking on media riders and the public lobbying of Neukom commenced.

At the All Star Break the Giants were 49 and 39, 10 games over .500, and 2 games in front of the Rockies in the Wild Card.  At game 157 they were 5 games behind the Rockies, 2 games behind the Braves, a half game in front of the Marlins and 1 game in front of the Cubs.

The Giants decided they  were "...in this." ( including the Medical staff on Freddy Sanchez) and proceeded accordingly.  Sabean with the player transactions, Bochy with the pitching rotation, bullpen management and lineup construction

At the All Star Break, Tim Alderson and Scott Barnes were still in the farm system.  Freddy Sanchez was injured and not playing in Pittsburgh.  Ryan Garko was comfortably seated on a bench on the shores of Lake Erie wondering how a nice Stanford kid like him, ended up riding pine in the rust belt.

But by game 157 Ryan Garko has a really great seat  on the 3b side of  AT&T,  and Sabean's crack double play combo of Freddy Sanchez, and  Edgar Renteria is swapping jokes with Hawkeye and Klinger at the 4077 MASH.

Scott Barnes defeated Tim Alderson's old AA team by pitching the Indians affiliate to which he was traded to a league championship.  Alderson is somewhere else not named Giants land, his services owned by an organization whose recent successes are even more underwhelming than the Giants.  But presumably both Alderson and Barnes are still healthy and continue to show even more upside than either of the two folks for whom they were dealt.

The Giants, in spite of playing .500 ball in the second half of the year, are still going to finish third or worse for the 5th consecutive season.  For the 5 th consecutive year, they will finish near the bottom in nearly every significant offensive category, including Runs Scored, On Base Percentage, Slugging, OPS and with five games left , will finish up play  with the 6th, 7th, or 8th best record in the National League.

Now if one is to look at this team post all-star break, we get an even bleaker picture. And it was not just the lack of hitting.

Pre All Star the Giants Team ERA was ranked 1st.  Post All-Star Team ERA is ranked 6th

Pre All Star the Giants were ranked 1st in Runs Allowed.  Post All-Star they slipped to 5th

Pre All Star the Giants were scoring an average of 4.18 runs per game, 677 annualized.

Post All Star the Giants were scoring an average of 3.87 runs per game, 627annualized.

I'm not going to do a statistical analysis, because if you watch this team on a nightly basis as most here do, to continue in this vein would be redundant.  This is not a team that is getting better.  They are actually about the same as they have been the last 5 years in terms of where they finish in the standings and how many runs they can or cannot score.  And why is scoring so important? 

I came across this little nugget not long ago.  Starting with divisional play in 1996, (1995 was shortened by the prior year's players strike) and including this year, there will have been 8 teams x 14 seasons = 112 teams to make the playoffs.  Of those 112 teams, only 2 teams to score less than 700 runs have ever made the playoffs. Both in 2005. San Diego (under Bochy ironically) and Houston, and they finished with closer to 700 runs than 650.  Notably this was the first year of mandatory ped testing. For those of you without the official McCoven abacus or Xanthan Commodore 64, that is less than 2 percent of play-off teams and it was a one time fluke apparently.

And the Giants for the third year in a row, will again score less than 700 runs. Thats what you get when you sign guys like Alfonso, Roberts, Winn, Rowand, Renteria,  and now apparently Sanchez to long term deals.  Guys who may be "All Stars" which is nice when you have to sell commercials and ads in your paper, but who are not really the kinds of guys that are going to get you into the playoffs.

You can have 5 Lincecums and 5 Cains, but  you're still not going to the playoffs with the type of unbalanced, 80s college coach mentality that Sabean has brought to the Giants for the last several years. 

Sabean may like to remind folks  that "the Bonds era is over" as he did in his chalk talk as so diligentally noted by the esteemed BC alumnus JP and Mayor of 311, Esquire. But what Sabean neglected to mention was that it is this same Post Bonds era that has revealed his own dreadful shortcomings when it comes to team building. Bonds run production was Ruthian when Kent was here. Since both have been gone, so have the Giants run production capablity for the most part.  Both gone before they wanted to leave and both gone while they were still the best hitters on the Giants not coincidentally.

The Giants had a nice June, July and August.  That is one half of one season.  That represents ten percent of the last 5 seasons. And the trends since the All Star Break are simply in keeping with Mr. Sabean's "entire body of work " in the 2005, 06, 07, and 08 seasons.

A pitching staff and Pablo Sandoval does not a contender maker. The average Major League career is 5.6 years.  The Giants have not been to the playoffs in 6 years.  An entire generation of Major Leaguers have started and ended their careers in that time.  Baseball years are like dog years.  Time is more precious in baseball years than real life. 

For all the reasons cited above, but especially a 5th consecutive finish in the bottom of the NL West, things are not any better in the big picture of things. Clearly after 6 consecutive empty years, it is obvious that the goals and objectives of the Giants Championship dreams are beyond the grasp and capability of the current regime.