Keeping Sabean? Wha? Part I

Great post, Grant. That's exactly how I feel about the whole thing.

Unless every single bad move Sabean has made since 2003 was the fault of Peter Magowan's meddling, I don't see any reason not to try something new. Sabes' method worked for a long time, but it's clearly not working anymore and while he has done a nice job of building a pitching staff, we're never going to get anywhere with it if we can't develop a few potential impact bats from our own farm system (rather than having to pay out the nose for the dwindling number available on the free agent market).

Bring on someone new. If they keep Sabean around and it's the same old BS this offseason, I might have to defenestrate myself.

I cannot believe that Sabean actually typed out the following:

"If we had signed Guerrero or [Gary] Sheffield, we would have been without [Jim] Brower, [Scott] Eyre, [Matt] Herges, [Dustin] Hermanson, [Brett] Tomko, [A.J.] Pierzynski, Feliz, [J.T.] Snow, [Jeffrey] Hammonds, [Dustan] Mohr and Tucker -- obviously not being able to field a competitive team, especially from an experience standpoint, given our level of spending."

I don't have the numbers at hand, but I'm guessing every single one of those guys have a VORP of about, say, ZERO. I'm stunned -- nay, appalled! that  Sabean used those guys as a rationalization for not signing a big FA. He is clearly delusional.

I recant my previous views.  Off with his head!

I believe the Washington Generals of the National League are the Washington Nationals.

We're more like their cousin. Sure we suck just as bad, but we expect to be better.

I'm afraid this makes us a tad more pitiful.

Ned Colletti back.  The mustache has been a disaster.  vr, Xei

There are three things about Sabean I just don't get:

1.  The well-worn point about why he overspends the market on middle tier veterans
2.  How he suddenly went from good at recognizing talent (through 2002) to bad (ever since).  How do you lose something like that?
3.  Why he's never bothered to get a hard-hitting first baseman after Snow began to decline off his average numbers to begin with.  I mean, this should be the easiest position to fill by taking flyers on guys like Klesko, who we have to give Bochy some credit for.  Guys like Carlos Pena and Dmitri Young are always out there.  Minor league guys and players who could move to first lengthen the list.  

Jeez, Sabean just has the biggest mouth of any GM out there, doesn't he? He sticks his foot in his mouth more than my girlfriend's 6 month old niece.

For the record, I think that there are a few somewhat compelling reasons to be optimistic about the future of the ballclub under a continued Sabean regime...

But his yacker is finally starting to wear on my last nerves. "It's management's fault. It's money's fault. It's Barry's fault. It's Zito's fault. Etc.." For God sake, at least suck it up a little, even if by some freak scenario none of it actually is your fault. You can't just toss everybody around you (and above you) under the proverbial bus without shouldering anything yourself while insulting the fans and expect anybody (except, apparently, Magowan) to want to have you around.

So here we are. I've said a number of times that I'm happy giving Sabean another chance, but if he opens his mouth one more time to blame somebody else without acknowledging his own shortcomings even a little bit, I'm done with him.

That is, unless we're in the playoffs in '08 or look like we will be in '09 when ASB '08 rolls around.

These are my conditions

But I am about a half a step away from changing my usual tune and turning on the guy completely. At least try not to act like a complete moron...

I've been pretty conflicted about Sabean for a few years now.  I keep trying to give him credit for that magical run from 1997 to 2003. But I've slowly come around to the idea espoused by Grant and Evan. Sabean just hasn't shown any creativity in building a team. Recent free-agent signings include:

--Benitez
--Matheny
--Grissom
--Tucker
--Tomko
--Hermanson
--Feliz
--Aurilia

It's not an inspiring group. These aren't the players a smart organization counts on. Even successes like Morris and Vizquel haven't been outstanding.

2 words:

Paul Depodesta

Sabean tacitly blames ownership for forcing him to do all these things he apparently wouldn't have done if he were truly autonomous (re-sign Bonds, sign Zito). So apparently it's Magowan and Co's fear of a half-empty ballpark and paying their debt load that has driven the decision making.

If that's true, why on earth does Sabean want to stay?

Ok, Sabes made a few good trades at the beginning that helped build our 97-2002 run with Bonds as the obvious centerpiece of the team, which includes getting Kent, Livan, Nen, Burks, Schmidt plus other rent-a-players that contributed to playoff teams.

However, after 2002 when Kent left, it was clear that the team was going to need to prepare for the post-Bonds era. The #1 biggest opportunity to do that was getting Vlad (no, I won't ever let it go!) and he didn't even bother.

Besides the insults to the unloyal fans (apparently, loyal fans didn't want Vlad, so you do the math) what we got was an explanation of our strategy. Draft pitching, pitching and more pitching and then trade that for bats with a few free agent signings thrown in for good measure. Ok, but if you look at how that strategy has been implemented, it is fairly obvious that it either is a failing strategy and should be changed, or it hasn't been carried out competently. I'm more inclined to believe that incompetence is the main cause of the failure.

So, if incompetence is the main reason, then who's incompetence? Obviously, it's Sabean's, the guy in charge of carrying out the plan. One the one hand, if Sabean is just a guy who takes marching orders from Magowan ("go get Zito or you're fired!") then I suppose he's as good as any GM could be. Of course, anyone could do that job.

On the other hand, if he's the guy in charge of implementing a well-thought out and discussed and debated strategy of getting young pitching and trading it for hitters, then he has failed to carry that out.

In either case, he needs to go. If he's just a lackey, we can get anyone to do that (without the insults) and if he's the guy in charge, he's failed miserably in his tasks and he needs to pay the price.

Try not to believe everything the media tells you all.  I can't imagine Sabes is a lackey to Magowan or Baer.  Remember, this offseason large contracts were offered to Soriano and Carlos Lee, and both turned them down.  That being the case, the biggest impact bat on the market was absolutely Bonds.  Now anyone who thinks Bonds should have been in a different uniform after the only other major impact bats available signed elsewhere...  Well, you're basically crazy!  Plus throw in the fact that Bonds is still about to break that record, and that record belongs in San Francisco, and baby you've got yourself a case for BLB in SF.  Personally, I don't believe for a second that Magowan is even half the meddlesome owner the media is suddenly making him out to be.  Let's also remember that Magowan last season was the same guy saying that Bonds might not be back this year, and even sounded like he really didn't want Bonds back.

As for Sabean's strategy, I think it's a pretty sound strategy to sign some cagey veterans to fill out your roster.  That's really not a bad way to go.  Of course, it does work far better when you have maybe a couple three all stars and some young players, instead of a team full of cagey veterans...

I agree with the need to get rid of both Sabean and Magowan. Replacing a managing partner/owner is a lot harder than replacing a GM though, isn't it? Is the owner basically the owner until he (or she, don't think I forgot you, Marge Schott) sells his interest in the team?

I have to wonder how much of marquee free agents turning down the Giants has to do with Barry being on the team. Seems to me that the other players in the league love him, or at least respect him. Certainly he's not the only one who could be using PEDs, so I can understand at least the basic desire to not stand against Bonds. It could easily backfire and become "well, YOU are using too" and everyone's in a big mess.

How much of it is the ballpark, do you think? Guys aren't stupid. They know they can get more money, more free dinners, more attention, more tail, more everything the higher their offensive stats go. It's a challenge for LHH to hit for power here. We know it, we live it. I have to think that scares off more guys than anything else.

As for Carlos Lee's dumbass cop out, wtf was that? "I want to be near my ranch and my horses." Um hi Carlos, there's a crapton of land around the Bay Area where you can have your ranch and your horses. But again, the guy can hit a lot more homers in that bandbox they call Minute Maid Park, whereas he'd actually have to make an effort to be the same power hitter at AT&T. Even as a right-handed hitter. Cry me a G-D river.

Alfonso Soriano is a pill anyway and I didn't expect him to sign with the Giants. Joke's on him taking all that money and playing for perennial losers like the Cubs.

Let the babies have their bottles. And get rid of Sabean, please.

OK, I'll take the fire here.  I happen to agree with the Chronicle's conclusion; that's the way I've felt since about 2004.

The Giants since 2002 have been built around the assumption that Bonds could collapse in a heap any day, so they'd better try to win a World Series for him right freakin' now.  But they didn't have the money to sign five Vlad Guerreros; plus, given Bonds' dominance, they probably didn't see the need to.  Barry plus a few known quantities was deemed enough.

Now, they did pick the wrong free agents, and often overpaid, or went to the market after prices had risen too much.  And I can't explain the Zito signing.  I'm not saying Sabean is perfect, but I do believe his record was worsened by being saddled with Barry Bonds.

The lack of farm system -- can't that be partially due to the lack of high draft picks, which again goes back to the free agents and win-right-now strategy?   I think they had a lot riding on Lance Niekro, too, as pointed out... was that bad judgement or bad luck?   (I'm willing to believe either one there.)

In hindsight, the thing to do was cut Bonds loose after 2003: Trade him for a king's ransom, and start afresh.  The Giants didn't have the guts to do that -- and frankly, I wouldn't have either; even if it made baseball sense, it would have been an awful PR move.  

Spambot!

If he stays, I will not jump out of a window.

If he goes, I will not jump out of a window.

If he goes and is replaced by Cam Bonifay, not only will I jump out of a window, I'll take five kittens with me.

What bothers me most about Sabean (and maybe Magowan is partly responsible for it too) is that he found a solid formula for building a winning ballclub-- 2-3 really good hitters for the heart of the order (Bonds, Kent, Burks), solid vets around them, and a dependable rotation and bullpen, maybe no big time studs (other than Nen), but not many guys who really made you nervous or were being ridiculously overpaid.

Then, inexplicably, after winning the NL Pennant in 2002, the Giants have been slowly abandoning that blue print.  Instead of 2 or 3 deadly hitters, it's one guy and spread the rest of the money around.  And the pitching has been comprised more and more of rookies/cheap young talent, and a few big-name, splashy free agent types.  Now, obviously, some of those young pitchers have been good and well worth the time and effort (Cain, Lincecum, Noah) but others clearly haven't (Jerome Williams, Jesse Foppert), and the team's big name pitcher signings have been unmitigated disasters thus far (Benitez, Zito).  

I just don't get it.  When you find a way to win, and it's working for you, why change it?  A tweak here or there to keep things running smoothly I could see, but a complete overhaul doesn't make any sense.

When Bill Walsh was in charge of the 49ers he kinda had a theory that it's better to get rid of a guy a year too early than a year too late.

With letting Schmidt walk, it was probably "just right", but then we signed aging players like Aurilia, Roberts and Durham to be starters for contracts that extend beyond their usefulness. Even the Zito deal. I don't know if we'll ever be able to trade him, but for sure we're going to be paying him too much money far beyond the value he'll bring to the team and for many of the "too late" years.

I know the economics of football and baseball are different, with the non-guaranteed money and all, but there's no reason that the Giants should employ some of the same principals.

Look at the bright side from that chat...this quote should make you feel much better about a specific part of our team:

"Our rotation will be made up of Schmidt, Rueter, Tomko, Williams and possibly Hermanson as the fifth starter. Felipe and Dave Righetti will certainly decide the exact order by the end of Spring Training."

Okay...back to negativity ;)

First off, I agree that it is BS about not being able to sign Vlad.  I wrote on this long ago when I wrote for SFDugout - http://sfgiants.scout.com/2/238046.html - and noted that with the Maddux Money and a little more than a million more, the Giants could have signed everyone they did including Vlad, based on the contract he signed with Anaheim, er, LAA.  I think the players I dropped were Hammonds, Tucker, Hermanson, and JT Snow.  

I also made an impassioned plea for the Giants to get Vlad multiple times including - http://sfgiants.scout.com/2/117602.html and http://sfgiants.scout.com/2/225658.html for example - which drew this rebuttal column - http://sfgiants.scout.com/2/116802.html - about why we shouldn't get Vlad.  In fact, this guy thought that it was a better idea to pick up JT Snow's option at $6.5M rather than get Vlad - http://sfgiants.scout.com/2/174070.html.  Vlad forever!

At this point, I will note that there were potentially two huge reasons why the Giants didn't sign Vlad.  One was that reportedly the new Latino billionaire owner of the Angels wanted to make a big splash by signing Vlad and money was no object.  There was no way the Giants could compete with that.  Two, and this was noted on KNBR by Ted Robinson while guest-hosting with Ralph, he said that Vlad had a problem with Felipe.  That didn't make sense to me because Vlad made an eloquent quote regarding how great it was to see Felipe on the field again when Felipe hooked on with the Tigers and faced the Expos.  But Ted is a pretty reputable source, so I have to note it.

Also, while I'll be eternally thankful to Magowan and group for saving the Giants, I'm hoping a billionaire will buy the Giants and spend a little of his fortune on the Giants, much like the guy who bought the Angels.

That said, I am for keeping Sabean and hope the Giants can work it out.  I don't think he has earned a long term sweetheart deal like Billy Beane, but I think he has done enough - almost rebuilding the entire pitching staff internally and developing three good to great pitchers in Cain, Lincecum, and Lowry - to earn him another couple of years to see what else he can pull out of the hat.

I don't know if pitching first is his strategy but his actions thus far suggests that.  And I think it is a good strategy for the reasons I listed in a comment above.

Rebuilding is a hard task.  It is not a task done by jettisoning all your veterans and going with young players - that's what the Giants essentially did in the 70's and there was no one to teach the younger players or to pass down the Giants' mojo.  I remember Jack Clark talking about being a Giants while in the minors and lamenting the loss of that feeling.  We should hire him to fire up the guys in the minors and pass on that to future generations.

Like it or not, the team has been rebuilding the past couple of seasons and the pitching staff is nearly done, lacking a true closer.  Even the Tigers didn't go all young, while building up their young staff they signed a bunch of old and/or questionable vets to the team, some worked, some didn't (Jones, Perceival, Urbina - see the pattern there?).  People complain about the Giants lineup not having stars, well, the Tigers had two players with OPS+ over 120 in 2006:  Guillen and Thames.

And as much as people have been clamoring for a rebuild, rebuilds don't come cheap.  Teams usually suck - much like the last 3 Giants seasons - and sometimes stink - see Braves, Tigers, heck, most teams, before they got good.  And while some do it in 3 years, some are still doing it after a dozen years or more, see Royals, Pirates, Reds.

And a rebuild is even harder to do when you are winning.  Over a five year period (based on my research), a terrible team can expect to get 2 good and 1.5 useful players out of their first round pick, whereas a good team can expect to get half a good player, i.e. odds are you end up with nothing, and one useful player.  

That's a huge difference.   And a huge obstacle to rebuilding while you are winning (though signing international players would improve the odds greatly).

Yet, Sabean has found three good players in the first round in Cain, Lowry, and Lincecum, when the expected number is approximately 1, plus found Hennessey, who has been a useful player.

And that the problem I have had with those wanting Sabean's head.  Yes, many of the things you note as negatives are true.  I know it, you know it, and I once stood in your shoes.

But as with the draft picks, and seeing how difficult it is to pick good players when you pick later in the first round (not all first round picks are alike), many of the players he acquired has to be viewed from the context of when the decision was made.  Lots of time, if the mandate is to win and win now, you have to acquire sub-standard players because your alternative was even worse.

Let's start with Edgardo Alfonzo and Ray Durham.  At that point, we had pretty much lost Kent and David Bell.  In hindsight, perhaps we don't sign either.  However, many forget what the situation was.

At that point, we came off the World Series.  We had to reload to win.  Signing Ray Durham was a no-brainer.  Top hitting 2B with power and speed, leadoff hitter we've been lacking for years, never been on the DL, played over 150 games per year up to then.  He was a no-brainer.

So who to get for 3B?  The top guys that year was Alfonzo and Bell, from what I remember, and Alfonzo was clearly better, though potentially fragile.  Or we could go with Feliz, who looked terrible for years in the majors with no sign of any hope that he would ever be useful.  The best choice was Alfonzo, unfortunately.

And we could have traded, but then it would have costed us our top prospects, Ainsworth, Williams, Foppert.  In hindsight, again, that would have been the best thing to do.  Who knew that Ainsworth, Williams, and Foppert were that fragile?  There was no sign of that, well, perhaps Ainsworth but that probably meant he wasn't that valuable in trade anyway.  We had to keep them in hopes of rebuilding the pitching staff.

And Alfonzo, even when he was injured, wasn't that bad, coming off an .850 OPS year and was over .800 OPS most years, sometimes close to 900.  He only got bad once he joined us, much like Durham was an ironman until he joined us.

In Armando's case, again, context.  We needed a closer and badly and he was the best available on the free agent market.  That was not the way to go, but there would be no way to sell the team as competitive to win if we went into the season with no closer.  Ironically, we soon did.

When you are planning to win every year, that comes from above, and Sabean made the most of it that he could.  Perhaps he would have signed the same guys, but there's no way anyone can prove it either way though.  

Having one of the greatest players is no panacea.  Teams throughout history could not win with that one great player.  Walter "Big Train" Johnson won a lot of games, had a nice winning percentage, but, how did the saying go, "Washington:  First in war, first in peace, last in the American League."  Mays, Aaron, Robinson couldn't do it all themselves, neither could Schmidt or Brett.

Mays and the Giants in particular, all that great offensive talent and yet only one NL title while in SF.  Meanwhile the Dodgers were racking them up, first with Koufax and Drysdale, then later.

That plus my other sports interests then lined up.  In most sports, it is not the high offensive teams who win the title, it is the defensive ones with a good enough offense.  Air Coryell and Marino couldn't win it all, but the 49ers with their mix of great defense and great offense could.  Run TMC couldn't win much of anything, but the Warriors 75 with Clifford Ray and others creating a stifling defense could.

What's defense in baseball?  That's partly the fielders but largely the pitchers.  And over time, with a focus on pitching, our pitching staff overall will get better and better.  And the players we slough off, some will be average, but some will be good as well, and they will get us the position players we need.

But a strategy like that take time.  First you need to build to a critical mass.  I think we have reached that.  Then the cup starts overflowing and you start seeing the benefits.

That's why I want Sabean to have two years.  Often, when you switch GM's, they toss out all the old but we have some good stuff in Cain, Lincecum, and Lowry.  A new GM would not necessarily keep them.  They might go into a rebuild mode and get a package of prospects, and it'll be another 4-6 (or more) years before we are competitive again.

Sabean will continue his strategy and we get to see if he can improve the team incrementally, particularly once Bonds is off the payroll.

I don't believe the team's management do stupid moves normally.  They may appear stupid in hindsight, but in the context of the situation, I don't think there's enough to condemn them.  

However, the results of the current rebuild is very evident - the pitching staff has been totally revamped internally.  Morris and Zito are the cherries on the top, with the youngsters all learning together and from the vets.  That is the definition of a rebuild.

And maybe Sabean can't rebuild the position players.  Then that's only one or two year (he could always be fired mid-way through the contract) lost.  But given his successes with the Yankees, and his immediate successes with the Giants, and his long string of success with the Giants, I want to give him enough rope to see whether he can or can't.

I would be surprised if he can't but like some here say, perhaps he's lost it, perhaps today's baseball has passed him up.  Then only a year or two are lost, we should still have Cain, Lincecum, Lowry for another 3-4 years, and the next GM can try to rebuild around the three of them.

Today's fans lament how players today are not loyal to teams, but fans are likewise very unloyal in that many have the attitude of "what have you done for me lately".  That applies to players, that applies to GMs.

Sabean has been operating in an environment where it is extremely hard to rebuild while you are winning.  He was additionally hampered because the Giants would not (could not?) spend on international signings, another avenue of prospect talent.  He has nonetheless rebuilt the pitching staff and it is almost complete.  

Rebuilds do not happen overnight.  It could take 3 years, it could take 30 years.  It is not pristine rebirth from hatchling prospects, there are free agents galore, some trades, mixed with the prospects.  There are sometimes false starts (see Orioles after Tejada), there are sometimes long stretches of debilitating losses (see Braves with Cox as GM).  Sometimes you can win for the most part and still be mediocre (Dodgers from late 90's until recently; thanks Dreifort and Boras!)

And yet fans still call for his head.  I want to return to competitiveness as fast as possible.  The pitching is done, and if they perform as their prior performance suggests (and with Cain, Lincecum, Lowry being young, you can hope for improvement), we should have a .500 record even if we only score 4.0 runs per game.  

And a recent The Hardball Times article talked about how much more valuable towards winning reducing the runs given up by 1 run versus scoring 1 more run.  To have a .900 winning percentage, you need to give up 1.7 runs per game when you average 5 runs scored per game, but need to score 15 runs per game when you give up an average 5 runs per game.

For a more realistic example, I tried 4.5 RS and 4.0 RA (Giants scored 4.5 last season, giving up around 4.0 this year), that's a 90 win season.  To do the same with a 4.5 RA, you have to score 5.1 RS.  

As a goof, I entered in a 700 OPS for most lineup positions in Baseball Musing's Lineup Analyzer.  That's .300 OBP and .400 SLG, not much of anything.  For pitching, I entered .177 and .186; that's the average since 2000.  Then I entered in a Bonds/A-Rod type stat in the 4th position:  .400/.600/1.000 OPS.  That lineup works out to a 4.1 runs per game average.

Dropping the SLG to .350 for the 1st, 2nd, and 8th positions, the lineup generates basically 4.0 runs per game.  So the Giants could have a pretty bad lineup up and down the lineup except for one bopper in 4th and theoretically average about 4.0 runs per game.

Spreading the 3-4-5-6 to 350/450 (Durham), 350/500 (FA OF), 350/450 (Klesko), and 300/450 (Molina), with 300/350 at top (Roberts/Winn) and 8th, and 300/400 at 7th, the average runs scored is 4.2 runs.  That gets us to 85 wins with a 4.0 runs given up average.

So it does not take much to have an offense that can score enough to win with our pitching.  The key thing is obtaining probably two key hitters, one to replace Bonds, the other to upgrade 5th.  

Mainly, we need hitters who can hit LHP and RHP pretty equally and spread the offense.  A significant portion of the lineup (Roberts, Klesko) cannot really hit LHP.  And the rest don't always hit RHP that well either.

So why not give Sabean two years to figure out the final pieces?  We've already gone through 3 years of his rebuild, why kill it now and go through someone else's 3-6-9-12-15-18-21... year rebuild?  You don't like Cain, Lowry, Lincecum?  You need a team of super hitters or you won't be happy?  You want a real toy in your Cracker Jack box?  

FYI - If it hasn't been mentioned yet, Sabean talked at length about a lot of this stuff with Ralph and Tim Roye today on the BS* show. It might be up for download on KNBR.com.

* Yes, that has double meaning.