next season's greetings

It kind of is. Sabean/Bochy are one of the few tandems who continue to sign and play over-35 players at the expense of younger kids and show a tendency to see a good week by a vet as a sign they’re coming around and a bad week by a kid as a sign they’re no good. Cashman and Girardi have played young guys (Cano, Gardner, Chamberlain, Hughes) and shown they understand young players are valuable. It’s a little disingenuous to compare how the Yankees operate to how any other franchise operates; if Jeter were a lifelong Giant, he would be in the lineup at SS every day regardless of how well he was hitting, and the same can be said of Posada or A-Rod or Rivera and would be true for any franchise. The Yanks are somewhat unique in their ability to retain prominent players and the fact that Jeter/Posada play every day despite mediocre numbers is more a testament to their contributions to the franchise than Cashman/Girardi really believing they are important cogs of a productive offense IMO. It doesn’t hurt that Montero isn’t exactly tearing up AAA.

Really, the only franchise that seems to be doing the same thing as Sabean has for the last few years is the Cubs and Jim Hendry; that team is going nowhere this year, and instead of trading the few assets they had they’re sticking with vets for no reason. Of course, even they don’t see-saw top prospects like the Giants are doing with Belt, and they haven’t shown a tendency to overly favor veterans in the past.

The Giants are the oldest team in the major leagues by average age, which actually slightly underrates how old the team is considering the next oldest franchises have over-40 players (and in Boston’s case, Wakefield being 45) skewing the average age up; the Cubs (7th) are the next team whose oldest player is 38 and their average age is a year younger. And we have Bumgarner skewing the age lower, yet we still have the highest average age because so many players are in their mid-thirties.

What’s really contributed to this perception, though, is that the Giants continued to play vets even when we were sucking and losing games in 2005-2008. Looking at that list, the only team in the top 10 that isn’t contending are the aforementioned Cubs, and the next non-contender is No. 12 NYN. The bottom teams are the low-payroll ones and the rebuilding clubs. I seriously doubt the Giants were in the bottom half of average age in 2008, when they lost Bonds and a lot of games yet still played guys like Durham and Winn over Frandsen and Schierholtz. Rich Aurilia appeared in 140 games that year. It’s hard for me to fault the Yankees for playing a bunch of likely HoFers that have been part of that franchise for their entire careers, and it’s even harder when they’re jockeying for first place in the toughest division in baseball. No matter how badly Jeter and Posada hit, can you imagine the backlash if they were benched? Can you imagine what would happen if their replacements didn’t hit IMMEDIATELY? The Giants, OTOH, are not and have not been in that position, yet they regularly employ one of the oldest squads in baseball. Maybe other franchises don’t get enough flack for their flaws, but identifying Sabean and veteran-lovin’ isn’t really a big leap, nor an unfair one.