Zaidi followed much of it, but did not have enough successes to get to finish his contract, which had another year to go. My kinder side wonders if the Giants replaced him because he was hospitalized, twice, near the end of the 2024 season. But unforced errors like the furor in hiring Kapler and the waiver wire musical chairs, ate away at public and internal support, and he got replaced by Buster Posey, who installed Zack Minasian as his GM and right hand operational man, who has had GM level experience when he was with Milwaukee.
[Note: I've re-written the original starting post to be addressed to Buster Posey, new President of Baseball Operations of the San Francisco Giants, but the original series of links were to Bill Neukom, soon after he was hired, with additional ones after Zaidi was hired.]
Buster, congrats on your promotion! I'm sure every Giants fan is excited to see what you will do with the Giants in the next three years and hopefully beyond. I thought you would be interested in my Giants business plan, to have an idea of what one fan (since 1971) has seen and analyzed over the past 20 years or so.
Mission Statement
Lead the San Francisco Giants to become the Team of the 2020's decade, much like the Giants became the Team of the 2010's, winning 3 championships in the decade, which no team has beat, not even the Dodgers, who has thoroughly dominated the later parts of the 2010's, only to fall short (they didn't follow this plan, with their strategy for starting pitching) repeatedly in the playoffs.
Executive Summary
To win the World Series again, the Giants need to maximize their chances by filling their rotation with top of the rotation type of starters, have a great closer, field a strong overall defensive team, particularly up the middle, and have a good enough offense that is running oriented. This is the plan that Sabean and gang has executed on in his tenure here as the leader of baseball operations. And, Buster, I know you agree particularly with this, as you noted in an interview that you want quality elite defense - pitching and fielding - as that is the key to winning low scoring games.
Zaidi's Front Office, while struggling with bad luck in 2024, has stocked the pitching staff with a nice mix of mostly young, which should only get better in the coming years. Good timing on taking his job now, as the fruits of his drafts should be maturing in the coming years.
I'm happy with the ascension of Buster Posey to be the President of Baseball Operations because the strategy and tactics he talked about in his interviews so far is exactly what I think the team needs to be competitive in the playoffs: elite pitching and defense, which leans into the park that they have. He will also emphasize intangibles like character and make up.
[Note: I've re-written the original starting post to be addressed to Buster Posey, new President of Baseball Operations of the San Francisco Giants, but the original series of links were to Bill Neukom, soon after he was hired, with additional ones after Zaidi was hired.]
Buster, congrats on your promotion! I'm sure every Giants fan is excited to see what you will do with the Giants in the next three years and hopefully beyond. I thought you would be interested in my Giants business plan, to have an idea of what one fan (since 1971) has seen and analyzed over the past 20 years or so.
Mission Statement
Lead the San Francisco Giants to become the Team of the 2020's decade, much like the Giants became the Team of the 2010's, winning 3 championships in the decade, which no team has beat, not even the Dodgers, who has thoroughly dominated the later parts of the 2010's, only to fall short (they didn't follow this plan, with their strategy for starting pitching) repeatedly in the playoffs.
Executive Summary
To win the World Series again, the Giants need to maximize their chances by filling their rotation with top of the rotation type of starters, have a great closer, field a strong overall defensive team, particularly up the middle, and have a good enough offense that is running oriented. This is the plan that Sabean and gang has executed on in his tenure here as the leader of baseball operations. And, Buster, I know you agree particularly with this, as you noted in an interview that you want quality elite defense - pitching and fielding - as that is the key to winning low scoring games.
Zaidi's Front Office, while struggling with bad luck in 2024, has stocked the pitching staff with a nice mix of mostly young, which should only get better in the coming years. Good timing on taking his job now, as the fruits of his drafts should be maturing in the coming years.
Thus, we should stay the course, Buster, and based on what you have said in interviews so far, you clearly agree.
The Strategic Business Plan
In baseball history, there are certain strategies towards building the team that wins in the playoffs that appear to stand the test of time, and the following are key competitive advantages every team serious about winning it all needs:
Another chapter that should be added and inserted above (as the new #14, pushing down the others) is regarding positional flexibility. Zaidi called it selfless players in his introductory press conference, about how they need to move beyond the focus on individual stats and be willing to do the little things teams need to do to win, from taking pitches to moving runners up, and so forth. And this is a particularly necessary ingredient of any 25-man roster, any player development really, for success as a baseball team today. And it aligns with what Buster Posey says that he is looking for in players, their makeup.
With today's expanded bullpen expanding to 50% of the 26-man roster, to 13 pitchers (5 starters, 1 long reliever, 7 relievers), the bench at those moments is squeezed to only 4 players, with one reserved for backup catcher, one reserved for backup SS, and one reserved for backup CF. With the likelihood of replacement level players when any starting position player is injured and/or ineffective (offensively or defensively), and the likelihood at any moment of time that your team does not have a young prospect waiting in the minors who is ready to start at the position of need, teams need to focus today on developing positional flexibility in the minors, and use that flexibility at the major league level, to rest starting players more and as needed. They need what Gregor Blanco delivered to us for many seasons: multi-positional good defense, plus good enough hitting.
Some argue that teams should develop these players themselves and have them waiting in the minors. That's an impossibility because of the low success rate of finding good players in the draft and IFA, which many deny or don't understand, but as my draft study showed, the success rate is too low, particularly when your team is not among the worse in baseball. It is an impossibility because a team can only keep a player in the minors for 3 seasons through options before needing to expose them via Rule 5 draft or trading them away. That requires developing 8 prospects ready to start every 3 seasons (replacement rate) when teams are lucky to develop just a single player every few seasons.
All anyone needs to do to see this is look at the success rate for any team (other than, perhaps Cardinals, but even they have a problem finding one per draft, and you need 3 to match the replacement rate) who have been winning, or at least, not a worse in the majors, in finding a good player in the draft, to see how difficult it is to find a good player via the draft. One must supplement via trades and MLB free agent signings, as well as finding change in the cushions by picking up players others have given up on.
Positional flexibility provides the depth to survive the loss of a player's production (whether by injury or ineffectiveness). Sabean and gang had been moving in this direction for a number of years now, drafting a lot of up the middle types, where SS can play anywhere in the infield, where C can play 1B and/or 3B, and where CF can play any OF position. He also signed players that fit that mode, like DeRosa and Blanco. But he never reached the Dodgers level of flexibility, like they derived from Taylor, who was a middle infielder when they traded for him, got his chance to start playing CF, then took over for Seager at SS the following season.
This would result in a bench of 4 players that could have 2-3 of them covering for most of the positions on the field, and the need for less than a handful of developing prospects in the minors to help provide the necessary depth to survive a bad season. Perhaps Sabol would have filled this role had he been better as a catcher.
This type of flexibility is also necessary in the pitching staff as well, but more from the state of mind, than in usage, as flexibility has been there as long as there have been relievers (as I noted in the chapter about the Draft, and how pitching provides options). Derek Holland was a good example of that last season, with him switching from starting to long relief, to relief, back to starting. Andrew Miller showed this flexibility as well, eschewing the traditional closer role in favor of being used when his team most needed him, which has been the saber mantra for a while, of not saving your best reliever for closing, when the leverage situation is not that high, generally. Bochy has long espoused this mentality of being the closer for whatever inning you happen to be pitching in.
The word has been that pitchers are most happy when they know their role and when they will be used, so that they can mentally prepare, but teams need pitchers who can be flexible with their usage, who answers the call when the manager and the team needs him. Especially in this era of openers. Zaidi said that he will be prioritizing this for the Giants, going forward, and so pitchers have been preparing themselves to be versatile and ready when called upon. We will see if this continues in the Posey era.
Post Script
Part of the impetus for this post is that I realized that anybody coming in new to my blog won't know about this business plan or to search for it. It is critical to understanding my commentary on this blog to know what my vision for a great baseball team is. Plus, this emphasizes what I've been advocating: take the big picture view, don't let any setbacks color your view of the big picture.
Another impetus is that there are commentators out there acting like they know how to run a baseball team, particularly with their comments about Sabean, but really, it is all hot air unless you have a plan and a vision for how a team should be built. And the plan and visions should be more than just "get the best lineup and pitching staff in the majors" because that is not realistic, even the Yankees haven't been able to buy the best lineup and pitching staff in the majors (though they sometimes come close to it; but they've only won a championship once in the past 24 seasons, so they clearly don't know because that's their objective every season). The vast majority have no process, no methodology, no analytical evidence of how to win games, other than their "expert" advice as armchair GM's.
This will be a living document, as I will be updating the chapters to change the focus to addressing Posey, based on what he has stated in press conferences so far, and then eventually, once all updated, probably post again to this series when the muse (and insight) hits me, I will probably just post an update in real time but add a link to the updated post. [I'll probably move the Flexibility section into the links at some point in my update process].
The Strategic Business Plan
In baseball history, there are certain strategies towards building the team that wins in the playoffs that appear to stand the test of time, and the following are key competitive advantages every team serious about winning it all needs:
- Mission Statement, Executive Summary, and Strategy Outline (old one, replaced by this post)
- Great Team Defense
- Great Defense Up the Middle
- Great Starting Rotation
- At Least 2 Aces, If Not More
- Core Rotation
- Good Bullpen
- Great Closer
- High K/9 Pitching Staff
- Good Enough Offense
- Good Enough Offense Example
- Team Built With Speed
- Great Team Overall Defense for Playoff Success
- Positional Flexibility (see below)
- Pitchers Produce more WAR than Position Players
- Draft Philosophy and Strategy
- The Phoenix Strategy of Rebuilding (tm)
Another chapter that should be added and inserted above (as the new #14, pushing down the others) is regarding positional flexibility. Zaidi called it selfless players in his introductory press conference, about how they need to move beyond the focus on individual stats and be willing to do the little things teams need to do to win, from taking pitches to moving runners up, and so forth. And this is a particularly necessary ingredient of any 25-man roster, any player development really, for success as a baseball team today. And it aligns with what Buster Posey says that he is looking for in players, their makeup.
With today's expanded bullpen expanding to 50% of the 26-man roster, to 13 pitchers (5 starters, 1 long reliever, 7 relievers), the bench at those moments is squeezed to only 4 players, with one reserved for backup catcher, one reserved for backup SS, and one reserved for backup CF. With the likelihood of replacement level players when any starting position player is injured and/or ineffective (offensively or defensively), and the likelihood at any moment of time that your team does not have a young prospect waiting in the minors who is ready to start at the position of need, teams need to focus today on developing positional flexibility in the minors, and use that flexibility at the major league level, to rest starting players more and as needed. They need what Gregor Blanco delivered to us for many seasons: multi-positional good defense, plus good enough hitting.
Some argue that teams should develop these players themselves and have them waiting in the minors. That's an impossibility because of the low success rate of finding good players in the draft and IFA, which many deny or don't understand, but as my draft study showed, the success rate is too low, particularly when your team is not among the worse in baseball. It is an impossibility because a team can only keep a player in the minors for 3 seasons through options before needing to expose them via Rule 5 draft or trading them away. That requires developing 8 prospects ready to start every 3 seasons (replacement rate) when teams are lucky to develop just a single player every few seasons.
All anyone needs to do to see this is look at the success rate for any team (other than, perhaps Cardinals, but even they have a problem finding one per draft, and you need 3 to match the replacement rate) who have been winning, or at least, not a worse in the majors, in finding a good player in the draft, to see how difficult it is to find a good player via the draft. One must supplement via trades and MLB free agent signings, as well as finding change in the cushions by picking up players others have given up on.
Positional flexibility provides the depth to survive the loss of a player's production (whether by injury or ineffectiveness). Sabean and gang had been moving in this direction for a number of years now, drafting a lot of up the middle types, where SS can play anywhere in the infield, where C can play 1B and/or 3B, and where CF can play any OF position. He also signed players that fit that mode, like DeRosa and Blanco. But he never reached the Dodgers level of flexibility, like they derived from Taylor, who was a middle infielder when they traded for him, got his chance to start playing CF, then took over for Seager at SS the following season.
This would result in a bench of 4 players that could have 2-3 of them covering for most of the positions on the field, and the need for less than a handful of developing prospects in the minors to help provide the necessary depth to survive a bad season. Perhaps Sabol would have filled this role had he been better as a catcher.
This type of flexibility is also necessary in the pitching staff as well, but more from the state of mind, than in usage, as flexibility has been there as long as there have been relievers (as I noted in the chapter about the Draft, and how pitching provides options). Derek Holland was a good example of that last season, with him switching from starting to long relief, to relief, back to starting. Andrew Miller showed this flexibility as well, eschewing the traditional closer role in favor of being used when his team most needed him, which has been the saber mantra for a while, of not saving your best reliever for closing, when the leverage situation is not that high, generally. Bochy has long espoused this mentality of being the closer for whatever inning you happen to be pitching in.
The word has been that pitchers are most happy when they know their role and when they will be used, so that they can mentally prepare, but teams need pitchers who can be flexible with their usage, who answers the call when the manager and the team needs him. Especially in this era of openers. Zaidi said that he will be prioritizing this for the Giants, going forward, and so pitchers have been preparing themselves to be versatile and ready when called upon. We will see if this continues in the Posey era.
Post Script
Part of the impetus for this post is that I realized that anybody coming in new to my blog won't know about this business plan or to search for it. It is critical to understanding my commentary on this blog to know what my vision for a great baseball team is. Plus, this emphasizes what I've been advocating: take the big picture view, don't let any setbacks color your view of the big picture.
Another impetus is that there are commentators out there acting like they know how to run a baseball team, particularly with their comments about Sabean, but really, it is all hot air unless you have a plan and a vision for how a team should be built. And the plan and visions should be more than just "get the best lineup and pitching staff in the majors" because that is not realistic, even the Yankees haven't been able to buy the best lineup and pitching staff in the majors (though they sometimes come close to it; but they've only won a championship once in the past 24 seasons, so they clearly don't know because that's their objective every season). The vast majority have no process, no methodology, no analytical evidence of how to win games, other than their "expert" advice as armchair GM's.
This will be a living document, as I will be updating the chapters to change the focus to addressing Posey, based on what he has stated in press conferences so far, and then eventually, once all updated, probably post again to this series when the muse (and insight) hits me, I will probably just post an update in real time but add a link to the updated post. [I'll probably move the Flexibility section into the links at some point in my update process].
No comments:
Post a Comment