Qualities Sabean is Looking For in Long-Term Relationship
There were a number of qualities Sabean is looking for (plus other notes):
- Sabean will be open-minded but minimums include either minor league management experience or extensive major league coaching background.
- However, according to KNBR interview, Dusty Baker, he diplomatically acknowledged after Barbieri asked him directly, twice, that he "wouldn't think so." So Dusty is definitely not coming back.
- Willing to commit for four years or longer.
- Magowan will sit in on interviews but it will be Sabean's choice (though obviously Magowan will have some significant input, I would assume).
- Sabean has already spoken with Wotus, who I consider to be the odds on favorite, but not any of the media channels nor Giants gathering websites. He had a very successful run as AAA manager, then has been Felipe's bench coach, which I consider to be a a co-manager type of position, plus Sabean made the point of saying that Wotus was the 2nd choice of Depodesta before he chose Little to manage the D-gers. He has been groomed to be manager of the Giants, I think all the show of process is like in football, where the team has already made the decision, but they have to make a big show of interviewing minority candidates and others to at least show that they went through the motions of interviewing before chosing who they wanted to chose.
- According to the article, they have spoken with Righetti, but not about the position, but according to interview with Sabean yesterday afternoon, Sabean said that he had not spoken yet with Righetti, and that he will have to make contact to find out what he is thinking.
- Apparently Bud Black and Art Howe are interested. Stan Javier was mentioned by the Merc in another article. Bob Brenly, Lou Piniella, and Jim Fregosi were also mentioned.
- According to KNBR interview, Sabean sees the process taking up to a month, based on the need to wait for teams of potential interviewees to leave the playoffs so that they can interview the coaches. But there is not much hurry because they want him in place before signing free agents and players cannot declare until one day after World Series is over, and must wait 15 days before negotiation can start.
- Having former ties to the Giants is a bonus but not a high priority.
Can we coax Depo out of his LA life? I'd take him.
ReplyDeleteKent
Maybe, but I heard that he doesn't range well to his right and he can't take a walk if his life depended upon it, ironic, eh? ;^)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, I guess this is where we disagree, I'm still for Sabean leading us out of this era, I'm excited about our prospects, I'm excited about our pitching staff, but I'm only giving him maybe two years, 2007-2008 to figure out how to get competitive with the mix of youngsters and spending all of that budget.
I'm with you, Martin, in that I want Sabean to rebuild this team. The one thing I disagree with is giving him "maybe two years" to rebuild the team.
ReplyDeleteI disagree because if this team is to be rebuilt properly, talent will have to be developed mostly from within. Being that most of the position players we have to be excited about play A-ball, this could take a little longer than two years.
I think Magowan still wants to field a winning team while building the propects, so Sabean won't be able to go the route of the Florida Marlins, or worse, the Kansas City Royals (thank goodness). He will have to spend on "stop-gap" veterans now, carefully choosing who he wants to spend large chunks of the payroll on.
I think Magowan will probably give Sabean a four year maximum to show that this team can be good with home-grown talent. However, this "trust" will come with one big clause: you have to continue contending between now and then.
Sabean really has his work cut out for himself this offseason, and I'm really anxious to see how it will play out. Go Giants!
Looking forward to your first extensive report on free agents available or free agents the Giants could sign, Martin. Keep up the good work.
Thanks for your kind words, sfgfan!
ReplyDeleteI agree that you normally need more time to have your talent develop and all that, and a minimum of 4-6 years to show how good you were in drafting, but Sabean has had nearly 10 years now of drafting, and the results need to come pouring in now.
And as I've noted many times (obsessively so :^), Sabean's been turning over the roster with many young players, obviously mostly pitchers, where now nearly half the roster are young, home-grown players.
But I agree with you that four years is the max. What I see is that ideally he would earn the four years but that there is an interim two year milestone where we assess how he did in rebuilding the team with all that payroll budget available.
This two year period is critical. He cannot just blow all his dough on free agents, he needs to spend some long term and some short term, and keep the team competitive. Obviously the competition in the NL West is not that steep still, so that makes the job easier, but that is partly why I'm giving him 2 years.
He has not been very good in his free agent acquisitions in years past. Vizquel is notable for his exceptionally good payoff, many of his acquisitions have not panned out as expected, though I won't hold Durham against him, nobody could have seen that coming.
Benitez, however, I didn't know his knees have been bad so long, since 1999, he should have been passed on and instead we should have gotten someone via a trade or something. Or even resign Hermanson as backup until you could trade for a better closer.
And Edgardo Alfonzo, there were warning signs that was not heeded. And I will admit that I was for the acquisition at the time and it could be argued that between Alfonzo and Bell, Alfonzo was the better bet. But if he could trade for a Bell-type the year before, one would think he could find another one instead of going 4 years for Alfonzo, I didn't know about his bad back or the rumor that he was older than his stated age when I "voted" for this acquisition.
And Moises Alou has been a bust as well, mainly because between him and Bonds being injured, plus the rest both needed even when healthy, there were many more games these two years where either Alou and/or Bonds were out of the lineup than there were lineups with the both of them in it.
So I feel that we should give him two years, to transition out of the Bonds era, and to see how he is managing the payroll. I expect him to pass and get the full four years but I think he shouldn't just get a pass either, if the UnBonds era starts out with a fizzle instead of a nice Pop, he should feel the heat.
I agree with most everything, Martin, except the Moises assessment. Actually, I would like to see both Moises and Bonds baCK, with Linden taking the Finley role and AUDITIONING for a full time role, by getting 400+ ABs.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't mind having Moises Alou back too, but it is basically like all the other free agents, at the right price.
ReplyDeleteBut I do not see how the acquisition cannot be considered a bust when he only got into 98 games this season. That resulted in 65 games where they both had at least 2 PA (proxy for games where they started so I can use Excel instead of visually counting each game). That means that even this year, there were 97 games that one or the other did not start the game, because of injury, rest, or whatever the reason.
I don't see how Moises can return knowing his Dad was canned, no matter how nicely the announcement was made. Plus he has got to know that he needs to be the DH somewhere and he would be great doing that because there's fielding involved to mess him up physically, like it did this year to ruin his good start. Had that not happened, who know what would have happened. He was totally hot in April, then was lost all those games, then took basically three months to get back into hitting shape and getting healthy, before being hot again in September. Had we had him for even 30 more games where he was hitting like he was hitting, we might be in the playoffs right now, instead of licking our wounds.
I took a further look at his 2005 stats and when he's healthy, you can count on him to hit 900+ OPS, but when he's struggling with his health, you're lucky to get 8-something. If we had a 900+ Alou in May, June, July, and August, the positive is then we don't have a 600-something Winn or Finley playing. Or even if we got the 122 game Alou of 2005.
ReplyDeleteThat to me is a bust.
As I mentioned in a comment on MCC: besides his DL time, there were at least 20 games this season where Moises was on the roster but couldn't play, due to one injury or another. That's 20 games the Giants had to play with a short bench. And considering they carried 12 pitchers all year, a short bench means three guys not counting the backup catcher. That's a serious problem.
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