Your 2011 Giants: Punking Neukom

This has to be a Giant Punk, right?  Surprise, you've just been fired Neukom!

This is not a rumor, the Giants have acknowledged that this will be happening, officially as of the end of this year.  Mark Purdy broke the news for the Mercury - Huzzah! Mr. Purdy! - and Al Saracevic of the Chronicle also reports that the Giants acknowledgement after Purdy let their cat out of the bag.  Read both for a good overview of what is known right now.

Giants Thoughts

Change at the top is always unsettling.  The outward appearance is that this is all about Neukom spending money and the other owners not knowing about it until reading about it in the newspapers.  Communication.

Something like that normally is a hand-slap offense that you take care of with an owners meeting, heck, they were all owners, I am sure that Neukom was on their speed dial.  Just order him to communicate better.  Done.

Seems like there is more to this that we may never learn about.

It appears from the Chronicle's account that it is clear that Larry Baer is the new CEO and face of the Giants.  Not that he wasn't a face before, but now he's the guy making the decisions on everything.

I had speculated back when Neukom was first announced that he would be the transition between Magowan and Baer, running the Giants for a number of years (don't recall what I wrote back then, but I would guess 4-9 years) and then Larry would take over.  After all, Bow Tie was already 66 YO at that time, so that would put him around 70-75 for real retirement.  I assume the group decided that it was time to up the time table on that, for whatever the real reasons are.

I'm open to Baer as our new leader but I view him as part of the failed Magowan management team that resulted in Magowan's ouster.  I had been agitating for Magowan to be out since the whole "mediocrities are better than Vlad" debacle, so I was happy about the change.  Now, I'm not sure if there is any change.  I felt a lot better with Neukom, who has $600M net worth that he could inject into the team if he felt like it, in charge, than Larry Baer, whose main asset is probably his small slice of ownership of the Giants.  He will have to prove himself to me.

There could have been ego problems among the other owners, as Neukom is very much tied to the World Series Championship in the minds of many fans.  Maybe too many fans credit Neukom and the other owners are chafing about that.

I would agree that the average fan gives Neukom too much credit, judging by the sturm und drang on Twitter that I've seen about this move.  Lots of people complaining to the highest heaven about this move, like the Giants will suddenly become a pile of trash after this move.

I would disagree.  Sabean, Tidrow, and Barr have been the brains behind the Giants rebuilding efforts and thus the Giants overall success of the past three seasons, 2009-2011.  That solid core of players that the Giants control, or could control, for a long time, could keep the Giants competitive, barring another idiot taking out our star player for the season, for the rest of the decade.  The big picture still looks good.

Not that Neukom did not bring some good things to the table.   I liked his "The Giants Way" theme he gave the team.  I hope the Giants keep that and continue to develop that.  It was always unspoken traits that players passed to prospects, like what Jack Clark talked about, but now it can be captured in a book that can be passed on to future generations of Giants without having players be the ones passing on the torch.  That will help the next time we get into rebuilding and run into a dry spell like the 70's and 80's.

I also like that he was willing to at least entertain the thought of making the best baseball moves by having Sabean bring these decisions to him and allow him the opportunity to make the finances work to do the baseball decision, instead of having Sabean give up on it immediately.  Had he been in place back then, the Giants might have been able to sign Vlad as well as get most of those other players without upping the payroll much more.  I examined that possibility back then, it was doable.

I also liked his public face.  He was a Giants fan, an ordinary joe, from what I saw in interviews and meetings.  I never got that from Magowan or Baer.  That could also explain the general fan's endearment of Neukom so strongly.

Ultimately, all I really care about is the future of the Giants.  The Giants need to make sure that they sign Lincecum and Cain long-term, maybe also Sandoval and Posey too, soon, if we are to dominate the decade as I've been saying for a few years now.  It is not a fait accompli.  As long as Larry Baer takes care of that, starting with signing Lincecum and Cain to long-term big bucks contracts this off-season, I will be OK with the change over.

If not, then I'll be agitating for Larry Ellison or any other Silicon Valley billionaire to buy the whole team - like I did when I was complaining about Magowan - so that the Giants can sign all our good young players long-term and not see them leave the team as free agents with only draft picks as compensation: that is not a good option to me, if we cannot sign them, let Sabean know now so that he can start trading them to get very good prospects in return, and rebuilding quickly, like how the Marlins transitioned from 1998 to 2003.

Ideally, though, I want an owner like the Angels got, a billionaire who enables a lot of things because he has the money, not owners like we have now with the Giants complaining about hearing of the good uses of the Giants money in the press rather than personally from Neukom.  The Angel's owner isn't worried about saving for a rainy day fund due to the extra money the World Series has generated for the Giants.  He has been looking for ways to better the team and spending that money.  We don't need owners worried about rainy days, we need an owner who will keep our potential juggernaut of a team going for the next decade.

We have the players in place.  We only need owners who have the cajones to make that happen.  These owners are showing me that they don't have guts to do it by taking out Neukom over a disagreement over how windfall money usage was communicated to the rest of the owners.  That is a bullshit explanation that everybody sees through, the fans are not idiots.  I give them a vote of no-confidence right now, but am willing to see how Larry Baer does now that he is in charge.  I am giving him very little rope right now and this off-season will be interesting in how the Giants handle the payroll and signing players.