In early 2020, I was finishing up my series of draft analysis articles, using my updated draft odds results in analyzing Sabean's performance up to the 2019 season. Now that the 2025 Season is over, I thought I would review which players can be updated to be good or great players, or dropped off the possibility list.
You can read what I wrote in the link above, but the players I reviewed were:
- Joey Bart
- Heliot Ramos
- Tyler Beede
- Seth Corry
- Connor Menez
- Logan Webb
- Bryan Reynolds
- Zack Wheeler (he was mentioned in the second article)
As you can see, most have dropped off, but Ramos, Webb, Reynolds, and Wheeler have looked like good players who either reached or potentially should reach, if he continues to play as well.
ogc thoughts
Per my draft analysis, Sabean on average would have 5.79 good players (18.0+ bWAR), with 2.32 great players (36.0+ bWAR). At the end of the 2025 season, these are the draftees who are above 18.0 bWAR or look capable of passing that if they continue playing well:
- Matt Cain: 29.2 bWAR
- Tim Lincecum: 19.9 bWAR
- Madison Bumgarner: 32.4 bWAR
- Buster Posey: 45.0 bWAR
- Brandon Crawford: 29.5 bWAR
- Zack Wheeler: 39.5 bWAR
- Brandon Belt: 29.9 bWAR
- Logan Webb: 21.2 bWAR
- Bryan Reynolds: 21.1 bWAR
- Heliot Ramos: 2.7 bWAR
The Good
That's 9 Good players above 18.0 bWAR, with 2 Great players among them (above 36.0 bWAR). That's significantly above 5.79 good players on average, and just about the 2.32 great players on average.
So, time has shown that Sabean has been much above average (9 vs. 6 good players), and with potentially a 10th one if Ramos can continue playing as well as he has in 2024 and 2025.
The Great
Obviously, he can't have an 0.32 great player, so he's basically at average with two great players in Posey and Wheeler, but depending on what Webb does with the rest of his career, he could have a third.
But too soon to hope for Webb, Reynolds or Ramos, although Wheeler didn't look all that possible after 2019 either, but then he added 30.4 bWAR in his 30-35 YO seasons, average of 5.1 bWAR per season. So you never know.
It will be tough to add a third great player:
- Reynolds just reached 30 and had a huge decline to 1.4 bWAR, and at that seasonal production, would need to play another 11 seasons at that rate to reach 36 bWAR, so he looks good but not great. Even getting back to 2 bWAR, it would still be another 7 seasons or so.
- Ramos is too old and still developing: he will be 26 YO in the 2026 season and dropped from 2.3 to 1.2. Even if he continued at 2.3 per season, it would take 7 seasons to reach 18, 15 seasons to reach 36, so he's still possible but not looking as good as he did after 2024. He does not look like he will reach great status unless he breaks out big in the next season. Heck, being a good player isn’t a given either, lot of road ahead of him.
- Webb has the greatest possibility, but it’s not a slam dunk either. He will be 29 YO in the 2026 season, and averaged 3.7 bWAR the past two seasons, and if he can continue that, he can potentially reach in 4 seasons (which would be his 33 YO season), which looks doable. But Bumgarner also looked like a sure thing, reaching 32.8 at age 29 YO season, even better than Webb, but then fizzled in his early 30's. And Webb has already had TJS, so that specter still hangs in the background, given his high IP every season, and now his high strikeout rate. Plus he’s pitching in the WBC, which some believe stresses some players.
So it looks like Sabean will be simply good at drafting but not great. Some Giants fans like to point out Zaidi’s lack of draft success, but Sabean didn’t have his first above until Matt Cain, 5 seasons after he was hired as GM, and Cain didn’t look like a good player until 10 years after Sabean was named GM. Then Sabean had a succession of successes, Cain, Lincecum, Wilson, Romo, Posey, Bumgarner, Belt, Crawford, over a 5 year period. And Wheeler might end up being the one with the most WAR out of the bunch, but traded away before he could reach the majors with the Giants. Zaidi looks pretty good already with Bailey, Harrison, and likely Eldridge, and perhaps Davidson and Jordan, plus Josuar and Hernandez.
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