Giants Draft Analysis: 2025 Update of the End of the Sabean Era Drafts (fourth in a series)

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.  

Your 2020 Giants: Revised Top Prospect Timetable Thoughts

Obviously, with the MLB season unlikely to begin until June or July, that throws all my prospect timetables out of whack, since they won't be playing, something I should have realized when I posted them (honestly, as you can tell by the length of each, I just wanted to get them out).  I probably should have thought about that before publishing, realizing that things have been moving so fast on Coronavirus Time.

So I thought I would take a stab at initial thoughts on how the top prospects might be affected, based on the current thinking that the MLB won't start until mid-year.  CDC guidelines is restricting meetings of 50+ for the next 8 weeks, which lasts to mid-May, but even if that works and people can somehow start to congregate again, the players will need spring training again, which pushes the start to, at best, early June; and some GM's are thinking July, because many players come into spring training having already gotten ready, but with this order, nobody is staying in shape.  Plus, some counties, like in the SF Bay Area, has a shelter order in effect, restricting people to stay at home for the three weeks, except for essential business (of which, entertainment is not).  Who knows how long that will take?  Still, thought I would tackle the scenario where the season starts up around June/July.

Giants Draft Analysis: The Sabean Era Drafts Overall (fourth and last in a series)

In this series, I broke up the Sabean era into three distinct periods - basically pre-Dynasty, Dynasty Building, and post-Dynasty - and analyzed each one based on the probabilities for finding Good and Great players, that I came up with in my recent study of the first 50 years of the draft.  It examined the odds of ending up with nothing in any particular draft and the cumulative probabilities of how many good and great players a baseball operations leader would have in a random draft (that is, if the leader has an average clue, as good as the average GM, as to which player is good, and thus is randomly choosing these prospects in the draft, based on this average expertise, randomly based on past history).

In this final blog post in this series, I look at the entirety of the Sabean era, see what the odds are of where the results are now, and where he could be if some of the current top prospects end up being good players.  As I've noted, it could take a decade or more for players to retire before we know the final results of any GM's draft results, if there are any players still playing and look like they could reach Good status.

And while this is the last of this series, I'm probably going to be updating this particular post after every season or two, see where he is, based on progress or decline of the remaining remnants of his drafts.  Obviously, there will be declines where we can say that a player won't be making it most probably, and there will be breakout seasons where he puts himself back into play.

The Difficulties Finding Good Players in the First Round of the Draft

I keep on seeing the comments about the Sabean era Giants being unable to evaluate talent.

So the below post is a comment I made and then added more.  I started it before Zaidi was hired, then just finished it up, since the point is moot now that Farhan and his new hires are in charge of the draft.

Your 2019 Giants: Thoughts On Giants GM Hunt

I've been wanting to post about the firing of Bobby Evans for a while now, but just been busy as heck at work and with life.   But I found a spot of time, and commented the below at a sports watering hole which was discussing the Giants open GM opportunity.  Plus grabbing some stuff I wrote in another post which I had started, part of which follows.  And still, a week or so later...

As you probably heard, Bobby Evans got fired from his Giants GM job, as part of the overhaul of the organization due to two (and a half insists many) years of losing.   The new GM, according to Baer, will continue to report to him, just like Evans did.  Sabean and Bochy have another year on their contract (so did Evans), and apparently will serve it out in 2019.  Evans will be re-assigned somewhere else in the organization; however, not as a special assistant, though, as Righetti was, for example.

In addition, there is going to still be a two-tier organization in the wake of Evans' termination.  As part of the changes, Sabean could be removed from his job as VP of Baseball Operations.  Thus the job search could involve both a new VP of Baseball Operations, as well as a new GM, both reporting in to  Larry Baer.  Sabean will be helping in deciding who will be the new "NextGen" GM, as Baer called the ideal candidate and apparently will stay in a yet to be determined role, should the new hire be the new VP, but appears to maybe keep the job, if the new hire is given the GM title, as I'll discuss in more details below.

Your 2018 Giants: Sabes Back! But Not Lincecum...

Got some news to discuss on the Giants front (though I first had to post on Watson siging).

First off, Sabean is, as the title of Baggarly's exclusive interview conveys so nicely "Giants ownership directs Brian Sabean to reassume day-to-day responsibilities (subscription required)".  And that's the main message I would take from the interview.

The other is that Big Time Jimmy Tim Lincecum had a showcase the other day at the facility he's been working out at to get back into the majors.  As NBC Sports Bay Area reported, Jon Heyman reported that he pitched for 25-30 scouts, roughly 15-20 teams, throwing 90-93 MPH.  He averaged only 88.4 MPH for the Angels in 9 starts a couple of seasons ago.

Giants and OF: It's a Work in Progress, as Haters Always Hate

I've seen many complaints about the Giants inability to develop outfielders in recent years.  This recent article in the Mercury brought it up again, noting "most of which went sour", and put some data into the conversation, which I've copied here:

Name, Yr. drafted              Draft Rd            SF Years      SF Games Played   OF Starts

Nate Schierholtz (2003)         2 (63)            2007-12                   503                  258

Fred Lewis  (2002)                2 (66)            2006-09                   326                  214

Todd Linden  (2001)             1-s (41)          2003-07                   270                    79

John Bowker  (2004)            3 (100)           2008-10                   183                    46

Dan Ortmeier  (2002)            3 (97)             2005-08                   124                    33

Jarrett Parker (2010)             2 (74)             2015-current              84                    39

Mac Williamson (2012)          3 (115)          2015-current              64                    35

Roger Kieschnick  (2008)       3 (82)            2013                           38                    21

Gary Brown  (2010)               1 (24)            2014                             7                      1

Wendell Fairley (2007)            1 (29)              —                              0                      0

Eddie Martinez-Esteve (2004)  2 (70)            —                              0                      0

Dylan Davis   (2014)               3 (87)           Still in system

Bryan Reynolds  (2016)           2 (59)          Still in system

Heath Quinn (2016)                 3 (95)           Still in system

Sabean Avoiding the Awful

There was an interesting article on Fangraphs recently about "avoiding the awful".  It was about teams (and their GM's) avoiding players with negative WAR (however, he didn't include pitcher's negative WAR would be fair).  The Giants were sixth, and with one random bad game, could have been fifth, as they were only 0.1 more negative than the Orioles.  This covered the 2014-2016 three year period.

This was a follow-up analysis of what the author had done two years ago.  That one covered 2012-2014.  The Giants were 10th in that one.

Unfortunately, he didn't do a table on 2012-2016, which would have combined the data between the two studies/articles.  Knowing that 2014 is double counted, the Giants were 4th when the stats from the two studies were added (I included all the teams in the top 10 in each study to get totals), so they were at worse probably no farther back than 5-6.

Also, he didn't follow up on his note in his first article about the Dodgers getting their new GM, and how they would improve because Friedman did so well in Tampa.  The Dodgers went from near last to near the top, even though it included one year with Colletti.  In spite of his ups and downs with Tampa, it appears that he has been good at avoiding the awful too.

Your 2015 Giants: Extensions and/or Promotions for Sabean, Bochy, Evans, and Shelley

As reported by various media sources (CNSBA, Extra Baggs, sfgiants.com, Chronicle), Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy, Bobby Evans, and Jeremy Shelley were either extended or promoted or both today.  I'll collate the info and add a few of my thoughts, below.

Thank You Brian Sabean!

I posted this on MCC, but wanted to share it here, just in case it got censored in some way.  I also realized that I had left in some grammar errors, so this fixes some of them

Your 2014 Giants: Say Beane And ...

The Trade deadline went and passed and the Giants chose to do no trade, though they did do a few moves:  after DFAing Colvin (original report was option; he must have asked for his release) and Uggla, the Giants brought up Matt Duffy (SS, but been playing some 2B and 3B, has hit at every level so far, got some speed too) and Jarrett Parker (OF, strikes out way too much;  but so did Goldschmidt when he was called up).

Meanwhile, Beane pulls off mega-deal, acquiring Lester and Gomes for Cespedes, then acquiring Fuld for Milone.

ogc thoughts

Many multitudes of Giants fans are angry at Sabean.  Good for them:  I would estimate that 95% of them were angry at Sabean for the past five or so seasons, and that everything bad that they are saying about him and the Giants are virtually the same they were saying during that time.  They have just never understood.

For those who are angry that Sabean didn't do anything, a little history that some fans seem to forget.  For a long, long time, Sabean didn't do anything with Cain, Lincecum, Sandoval, Bumgarner, Posey, Belt, he kept them.  That's because Sabean so far has been excellent at knowing what he has in hand and who to keep.  So if he didn't make a move, perhaps he's trying to keep the next young stud-to-be.

Out of all the prospects that Giants fans have cried over losing, none have ever broke out to be a star, at least so far.  Liriano has come the closest to being that, but injuries deadened the impact he has had on baseball, and if anything, he wasted too many of Mauer's and Morneau's prime years for the Twins than contributed.  There certainly have been good players traded or release, such as Foulke, Howry, Villanueva, Correia, and now Wheeler threatens to be the best one traded, but none I would call the All-Stars that teams want to build around as part of their core team.  That is exactly what you would like your GM to do:  identify the talent and then keep them.

When You Eat Too Much Beane, You Get A Lot of Hot Air

And despite the fawning that follows Beane after he makes a move, Sabean's record is light years better than what Beane has done.  Sure, Beane has been handicapped by his smaller budget.  But he has made a fair number of substantial mistakes that makes anything Sabean has done pale in comparison.

Let's start off with the first thing that any GM of limited means should follow:  Thou Shalt Not Trade Away Good Prospects.   And not only that, but make sure the trade makes sense in terms of net present value, where you get a lot in the present while deferring the future benefits, it's a balance.  Beane has failed in two significant instances:  Ethier and CarGon.

In Ethier's case, it was pretty egregious:  while the acquired player did do well for the A's (Milton Bradley), Ethier, in that exact same season that the A's acquired Bradley to help push to the playoffs, produced more WAR than Bradley did.  So it did not take years to determine how bad the deal was, it was pretty much evident that first season and it ended up with Ethier producing more, meaning that Beane would have been infinitely better off keeping Ethier, getting more production, having another 5 years of cost-efficient control of a young player, and a great trade asset at some point in that 5 years.

In CarGon's case, it was not as clear immediately, but it busted just as badly within one season:  while Bradley at least produced, Holliday was horrible for the A's, creating a trade chain that just spiraled in a death spiral before smashing into the ground and nothingness.  Meanwhile, CarGon had a breakout in the second half of the season and soon proved to be worthy of a giant extension, PLUS, the A's had also traded Street, who has continued to be a very reliable closer for years, as well as other players who provided some value.   Basically, in this trade, Beane threw out a good player, a good closer, and some other players with trade value, and got essentially nothing in return.

Or how about this:  signing the wrong player to a large long-term contract while getting draft picks for free agents.  Beane had the chance to sign or trade Chavez, Giambi, and Tejada at the end of his first reign of competitiveness.   It was Chavez who he signed to a long-term deal, and his injuries basically made that contract a huge long-term waste.

Meanwhile, he let Giambi and Tejada go for draft picks.  As my draft research showed, draft picks become good players at very low success rates for the types of picks awarded for players even as good as Giambi and Tejada.  In addition, such picks typically take years to develop and be useful.

Here, at least Beane learned his lesson, which is that if you are going to burn down the house at some point in the near future, trade away valuable assets beforehand in order to get top rated prospects in return.  They are more likely to become something good in the near-term than any draft pick, if you trade right.

And that is where Billy has been good at, trading for good players, though part of me wonders if that is a matter of if you make enough trades, and throw enough Jell-O on the wall, you will get something that sticks.  He succeeded with the Mulder trade, but got spanked by the Hudson trade, not one player of any substance from that trade.  But his recent success in rebuilding shows that he is a good GM:  just not as saintly as sabers seem to think he is.

Let's Say We Have GM A's and GM B....

Some have accused me of being a Sabean apologist because of my support over the years.  If that means appreciating his good points being ignored by the vast majority of Giants fans while understanding the difficulties of being a GM regarding his bad points, sure, that's me.  But it seems to me that the Saber blogosphere is a Beane apologist.

Look at all the fawning posts that have come out over the years regarding Beane's moves.  I've yet to read one negative post, no one dares to point out the Emperor's new clothes, ever.

Let's take a look at the recent moves for an example.  Writers were falling over each other to talk about how brilliant Beane was in trading first for the Shark (sorry, can't spell the guy's name even with a gun to my head) and Hammel.   Now they are doing likewise with Lester.  And even the trade for Fuld has its adherents, playing up how he now has a surplus of starters and trade from strength.

If Sabean had made those moves, here is what I think would have been written instead.

If he had traded our top prospect (and we are talking Posey, Bumgarner, and Belt level prospect, not Crick or Escobar) for an upcoming free agent who we may or may not be able to sign long-term and another pitcher who could be having a career year, but otherwise has been a journeyman pitcher, instead of being lauded for being proactive, as Beane was, in upgrading our rotation in light of the fact that some of the current starters might not be able to pitch effectively late in the season due to their lack of experience, Sabean would have been hung and burned in effigy for trading away our future, blamed for not accounting for these potential lack of performance late in the season, and excoriated for various bad past deeds, depending on the complainer.

Then, if he traded away our young star who is the face of the team (but not long for the team potentially because of pending free agency) for a great starter who has already said that he wants to return to his old team so it's OK to trade him and get something now, so the odds are low on an extension, and an OK replacement who is really a platoon player, Sabean would be pillored for selling off the one face that the fans recognize and have a major crush on, screwing up on the Hammel trade, which forced the team to strongly consider upgrading to Lester, and for not dealing with this in the off-season, when they clearly had a need to upgrade the rotation in this fashion, with all the injured starters and back rotation guys like Milone.

Or even trading for Fuld.  That was greeted with validating statements about trading from strength, because he now has so much pitching.  But Sabean would be challenged for waiting until now to fix a problem area, that he should have planned ahead in the off-season and taken care of it.  In addition, he would be questioned for overstocking on pitchers, and again, why didn't he take care of this during the off-season.

State of the Giants Nation

Some are upset about Sabean's statements, as well as inaction.  Well, it is what it is, as Sabean might say.

Do you want Sabean to sell off the future, accepting lesser present value to prop up this season, only to find that once Belt and Pagan returns, the Giants take no prisoners and sprints to the division title, making the trades moot and wasteful?  That is a very possible consequence of the action demanded by some fans, as Pagan's return last September showed.  And Belt has been a good hitter and any lineup is improved with him returning.  So you do what Sabean did, have substantial talks, and when the demands were too much, have the strength and courage to walk away from the table instead of taking a deal that you don't think is of good value to the team.  

Some have complained that the 2B situation should have been dealt with in the off-season, since Scutaro was looking so bad already.   As we saw in the first two plus months of the season, the team won pretty well even with spotty contributions from 2B.  Hicks did nicely the first month or so, but 2B has been a black hole offensively since then, except when Adrianza was healthy and playing in June and July, where he hit pretty nicely and Panik has hit well in spots, while keeping up peripherals that suggest that once he gets accustomed to MLB pitching, he'll be a nice hitter in the vein of Scutaro:  low K's, high BB/K, which usually leads to good BA and OBP.   They went 19-9 in May with Hicks hitting .549 OPS at 2B, so it wasn't 2B that was our problem over the last two months or so.

Plus, we know the Giants like to keep one spot quasi-open when prospects are nearing the big show.  They did it for Frandsen, Sandoval, Bumgarner, Bowker, Schierholtz, Niekro, among others, employing a journeyman vet to do the job instead of signing a significantly better player.   I view 2B as that open spot for 2014.   If Scutaro was healthy great, but if not, that gives Arias and Adrianza an opportunity to show off what they can do with regular starts, plus that would open up a spot to look at other prospects.  Hicks won the first tryout, Panik got the second, and now, with his surprise promotion, Matt Duffy is getting his tires kicked.  Plus Arias and Adrianza has gotten a number of chances, and if Adrianza didn't suffer his two hamstring pulls and get placed on the 15-day DL, he might have won the job, since June 1st, he has hit .327/.389/.408/.797, with 9 K's and 4 walks in 49 AB for a 82% contact rate (OK) and 0.44 BB/K ratio which is not bad either, and close to getting good (same for contact rate).

Sabean got the most pressing need, in my opinion, which was a replacement for Cain.  As Sabean noted, the Giants didn't know when they might be able to count on him for a while now.  Especially with his arm getting that shot and yet it has not improved since then.  Cain said that he's been battling the chips for ten years now, and he's been able to get through the pain until now.  This is perhaps the elbow soreness that kept him out of action in his first pro season.

Cain has gotten three opinions, including that of famous Dr. Andrews of Tommy John fame, and he said his ulnar is fine (which is probably the best news), but still all agreed that he should get an operation to remove the bone chips  They should be operating on his arm soon then he should be able to follow his normal off-season routine, according to reports, with a 3 month rehab.   Cain should be ready and healthy when spring training comes.

Meanwhile, Peavy has actually been pretty good the past few seasons, just a bit unlucky.  He had DOM% of 75% in 2012 and 74% in 2013, which were elite, only his results didn't show that.  He is down to 50% DOM this season, but has been incredibly unlucky with homers so far, so he should regress back towards the 70's pitching in AT&T.  I'm sad that Cain is out and all, but I'm really excited to get him in our rotation.  Assuming Cain's surgery and recovery goes well, and generally they do more times than not, and we sign up Peavy instead of Vogelsong, we could have a rotation of Bumgarner, Cain, Hudson, Peavy, Lincecum.   And I just finished a video of a Morse interview where he talked about Peavy's leadership and "mind-blowing" what he brings to the team in terms of positivity and character, and Bochy talked about how he's the pitching version of Pence, "Full Throttle" as a starting pitcher.

Deadline is not Deadline, It's Not Right Now-line

And there have been plenty of deals made in August by Sabean to pick up the necessary pieces.  Once we get deeper into mid-August, it should be pretty clear whether Pagan or Belt are returning to the team or not.  There will be players placed on the waiver wire and the Giants will undoubtedly pick them up (and the Dodgers can't block any right now).   

Whether it is now or later, as I noted, it really depends on when Pagan and Belt returns and if they can get back to their career norms.  If both are still on the DL, I don't think that there's anyone we could get who would help us overcome that, I didn't see that many good names out there for hitters, it was mostly pitchers.

In any case, I'm excited to see what Susac, Panik, Duffy, and Parker can do for the team.  I don't expect a lot out of them, but sometimes you do catch lightening in a bottle, like Herndon or Gladden long ago.   I like what I've seen of Susac and Panik so far, it gives me good feelings about their future in the majors, but we are a long way from that.  For now, let's enjoy them for what they are, young prospects trying to live the major league life for the first time, and hopefully somebody gets hot and give the team a jolt.

And at some time, they will have to go back into the box, and return to the minors.  Right now, Parker seems to be the guy gone once Belt returns, Susac once Sanchez returns, and either Panik or Duffy once Pagan returns.

And while the starting pitching has had a bad week, it has mostly been great for most of the season, and so I expect it to continue to do so for the rest of the season, especially with Peavy now the 5th starter and not Petit.  And the bullpen has been great again, after a few hiccups in June and July, they look pretty good.

Now it's time to make up 3.5 games, Go Giants!

Your 2013 Giants: Official Off-Season Press Conference

The Giants at the end of every season has an end of season press conference to go over.  Baggarly kindly provided a transcript of it, which I pasted below and added my comments.  I was finally able to spend concentrated time on it this weekend, as I took a mini-vacation break, as my daughter had a fall break.

Your 2013 Giants: Fanatics, Keep Your Dawber Up

After the nice run of wins, these two losses probably returns some to their prior glass is half empty mental state.  And I am starting to understand this phenomenon, why Giants fans get so down on the team even though the past four seasons have been the most successful period in San Francisco Giants franchise history, and among the best in Giants franchise history:  it is media driven.

It started long before it became a trend, with the bad road losses, when the Giants were 8-8 on the road previously and it was fully acknowledged that it was oddities to lose to Toronto and Colorado like that.  And it has spiraled downward, justifiably, ultimately, as the team succumbed to injuries that followed - which is the sole reason for the downturn, not that road trip.  Enough that one beat writer, who had not written for a long time on his blog, suddenly decided that the season was over, that it was time to give up.

And now, after a nice streak of wins, you get one loss to the D-backs, after a well-pitched game by Bumgarner, you get another beat writer talking about how the Giants don't have much of a chance of winning the division, because we would need to beat both the D-backs and D-gers to get the division title, and we are in even worse position to try to get either of the wild cards.

Another BP Hit Piece on Sabean

[NOTE:  wrote this back in November when the BP article came out, but never got back to finishing it until now, when looking at prior drafts that were unpublished]

It never ends with BP and their hit pieces on Sabean.  Here is their latest (hat tip to Shankbone).  I have not forgiven BP for their 2010 Annual chapter on the Giants advocating that Brian Sabean be fired as GM for the Giants.  I'm sure you will never see that emblazoned on the cover of their book, "We recommended that the GM who put together two World Championships in three years - the first NL team to do it since the Reds in the 70's and only the third NL team in the last 90 years - should have been fired."  I've looked at their 2011 and 2012 annuals to see if they apologized for that but so far no.  Maybe in 2013?  Finally?  Probably not, given this article.

This column is named "Punk Hits" and really, it is aptly named.  This is the perfect example of why I say that it is best to have analysts following one team writing articles because when you get a generalist in, or worse, someone who just don't care (see the column name), because they don't have the full story, and yet they will influence a wide swatch of also unknowing people, essentially, the blind leading the blind.  That's why I feel the burden to defend Sabean vociferously on the Internet, because people insists on writing on something that they either do not know or do not care about or both.  For this author, it seems to be both.

I'll start with "The Good".  How anyone can write anything that is meant to be taken seriously (and since it is BP, a lot of people take their word seriously) and not mention getting Jeff Kent, Robb Nen, and Jason Schmidt in trade for the good, is beyond me.  And then in discussing people who played huge roles in winning the 2012 World Series, he leaves out Ryan Vogelsong and Brandon Belt, as both were drafted/signed by the Giants too.

In "The Bad", he acknowledges that he don't know about Zito's situation, spending a whole big paragraph on it, when he don't even believe it is Sabean's fault.   That's where having an analyst who actually follows the team is invaluable, because Andy Baggarly broke the news a year or two ago that it was Magowan who was the one pushing to sign Zito to that contract, not Sabean.  End of story.  Would have saved half that paragraph, I think.

It would also help to know that every team has a lifecycle and that the lean year in the mid-2000's was due to the good years from 1997 to 2004, which made the mid-2000's a lean period.  It also didn't help that pitchers who looked like they would be good contributors in some way - Ainsworth, Williams, and Foppert - all failed to reach their potential.  Just like it helped that the ones who were rising in the late 2000's - Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Wilson, Romo - did reach their potential (though not all went well, Lowry and Alderson didn't).

And then he gets into "The Psychology", and so he gets that noted psychologist, Grant Brisbee, head cheese over at MCC.  Grant grants that "He's a good GM.  I wouldn't have said that four years ago, but either he's changed or his luck has."

Lucky They Are Still Ignorant

And there you have it, the "luck" term again.  Really?  Is BP really going to go with the "Luck" angle on the Giants championships?  Don't they realize what a slippery slope that is?  Because every championship team has some element of luck involved, and if you make a big deal about the Giants luck, then you need to do the same for each and every one of championships that has happened in the past.  And if each championship has "luck" as a key component, then why are we bothering with following a sport that is so depended on luck?  What meaning is there when a team wins?  "We're the lucky ones!"  I really do not understand why people don't realize this.

Sure, talk about luck from a sabermetric perspective.  Yes, the Giants were above their Pythagorean, so there was some luck there by current analytical tools, as they were 6 games above their Pythagorean.  However, I can explain that one easily, Bochy had the team out performing the saber rule that teams regress to a .500 mean in one-run games, they were 10 games over .500 in that, and if you turn half of them to losses, the Giants are now only 1 game above Pythagorean.  Looks like all the luck is in that one stat.

However, as I've shown in my analysis of one-run game record for managers, Bochy is that unique manager who is capable of finishing any particular season at least 8 games above .500 in one-run games.  He has over 40% of his managerial seasons among the leaders in the NL in games above .500 and most of them were 8 games or better.  He has averaged roughly 4+ wins above .500 in one-run games during his career, making average seasons good and good seasons great for the teams he has managed.  So there was no real luck involved with the Giants in terms of Pythagorean, it was all pure Bochy managerial skills.

And I've posted this many times in Fangraphs or THT, hoping to interest any of their writers to follow up on the bread crumb that I laid out there, and do the analysis, so that it's not just the crackpot joke who ogc's people saying this, so that they do their own analysis and show the genius that is Bochy to the general baseball world.  And it is genius when you can average over 4 games over .500 in one-run games during your career, and has been among the leaders in games over .500 in nearly half of your seasons as manager, when most managers struggle to stay above .500 in one-run games.   That makes him a 4 WAR manager.

More On Naysayers

The Sabean (and Bochy) Naysayers just don't get it and apparently don't care to get it, they rather stick their head in the sand.  And that is why I wash my hands on them now, and don't really bother engaging any of their ignorant and stupid headed comments regarding Sabean or Bochy. 

It is not like I'm not open to criticism of their decisions and actions.  I do question them when I think they did something wrong (like Zito and Rowand signings), and I've questioned some of their moves here at my blog.  But the way I see it, there have been so many people questioning their moves, especially at the major Giants watering holes, but very few who seem to support their moves, at least pre-2010, that I don't bother with many of the smaller things (like game decisions or bench positions) since I assume there are already people discussing that. 

Plus, I acknowledge that I don't necessarily know everything, so I try to see it from the Giants perspective.  For example, with Zito, his contract works if inflation stayed high in baseball and brought the average salary to the $18-20M range by the end of the contract.  But the Great Recession blew that out of the water and he's still way over paid.  Also, they expected him to pitch pretty well, below 4 ERA in his early portions of the contract, and that didn't happen either.  For Rowand, he had shown good OPS for good stretches of time prior to free agency, and basically the Giants bet that with good hitting and good fielding, he'll be OK as a contract.  They bet wrong, his hitting and fielding were never that good for them, and, for him, again, it was injuries that derailed him.  That and thinking that riding a mountain bike is good fitness for a professional baseball player.

I also don't really deal with the smaller things because I've been more worried about the big picture.  I didn't view discussions about the 25th man to be very productive towards winning a World Championship, which was the concern back then.  If a mistake with the 25th man results in the Giants not making the playoffs or World Series, then I don't think that we really belong there anyway and even had we had got in, probably would have lost.  The 25th man should not be a key success factor towards winning a World Championship.

And give me counter-data.  I laid out exactly why I thought about the Giants, but instead of addressing the issue at hand, and maybe pointing out studies that are the opposite of what I was referring to, they bring up the AJ trade, or Zito signing, or Rowand signing, or Ruben Riviera being our 25th guy.  Which is not much different from the Giants in recent years, giving Uribe, Torres, Stewart, Casilla, Blanco, Arias, Vogelsong a try, or the ones who didn't make it, Velez, Guzman, Downs, Wellemeyer, Keppinger, Hall, Theriot, Loux, Hacker, Kroon.  Some make it and some don't, but the Giants were trying to find that keeper and they cut their losses quickly, which is all you can ask for.  But the Naysayers just clung to the mistakes that they saw and had no latitude for change in direction or improved success, for in their minds, once a failure, always a failure.

So I get it now, the Naysayers are never going to change their minds.  If they are so blinded by their irrational hatred for Sabean/Bochy that they are going to attribute two World Series championships in three years - something that hasn't been done in the NL since the Big Red Machine did that in the 70's, nearly 40 years of teams trying and failing - to luck, and feel entitled to make sophomore jokes at Sabean's expense - calling him a moron, essentially - then I don't know what else I can say that will change their minds. 

I've tried for over 5 seasons now, and gotten nowhere, so I truly get it.  If they don't "get" two World Series Championships, and I hate to use names or labels in such a way, but I think it is finally clear to me who the morons are.  And it isn't Sabean or Bochy. 

Your 2013 Giants: Long Term Eextensions for Sabean, Bochy, and Posey

I'm not going to bother providing all the links, just want to get this out, just check the usual suspects via links to the right (Baggerly, Schulman, Pavlovic/Mercury, Haft/sfgiants.com). 

Sabean and Bochy are linked deals again, sounds like the Giants torn up the current contract covering 2013-14 and gave them a new contract covering the next four seasons.  Rumor has it that they are getting somewhere in the $4M range, like another top baseball exec.  Well deserved for a job well done (twice! at least...).

Posey got a 8-year contract extension tacked onto his current contract, which appears to have been torn up, for $167M (it is an odd contract like Cain which includes his current contract for 2013 plus the 8 years, so technically this is a 9 year contract).  Here is the link where I got my news on this, from Haft. 

It covers his remaining three arbitration years plus five years of free agency, plus full no-trade provision, so he's here to 2021.  There is also a club option for 2022.  Posey:  "I'm thrilled."  Because this year was included, it is considered the longest contract for a catcher ever, beating out Mauer's 8-year deal, but short of Mauer's $184M contract value.  But Mauer's did not include any arbitration years, Posey does. 
Here are the gory financial details:

Posey will receive a $7 million signing bonus, according to the source. Having previously settled for $8 million this year, Posey now will receive $3 million in 2013, $10.5 million in '14, $16.5 million in '15, $20 million in '16 and $21.4 million per year from 2017-21. The 2022 club option is worth $22 million, with a $3 million buyout. Posey also will contribute $50,000 per year to Giants charities.

The Giants' commitment to Posey is nothing short of historic. It's a record guarantee for a player with fewer than three years of service time. Colorado outfielder Carlos Gonzalez set the previous standard with his seven-year, $80 million contract. It's also the biggest financial obligation to a player with fewer than four years' service time, exceeding the $151.45 million Colorado committed to first baseman Todd Helton for 11 years.

Analyzing the three arbitration years, using the 40%/60%/80% of market value rule of thumb, that works out roughly to valuing Posey at $26.25M market rate.  But then we get his free agent years at a lower "market rate", so it appears that the Giants front-loaded the contract on a relative market rate basis.

Your 2012 Giants: The Melky Aftermath: Survalist Mode

Brian Sabean was interviewed today (transcript of highlights via Schulman).  First the news about roster moves.  Justin Christian was brought up to take Melky's roster spot as 4th OF and Eric Hacker to take Brad Penny's spot (I guess Otero is back down too) as long reliever.  Here is the interview parts with my comments, as I usually do it.

Thoughts and Research on Draft: First Round Picks Are Not Easy, Sabean Has Done Well in Picking

I wrote most of this (I almost always tweak my writing, plus I need to make it flow as a post, whereas in the comment, I had to flow from the comment) on DrB's great blog, in this post of his on one of the Giants games:  http://whenthegiantscometotown.blogspot.com/2012/05/game-wrap-5162012.html?showComment=1337290237617#c7333242136139406743

Someone complained about there being no impact players found by the Giants outside of the first round, where the commenter basically states that in the first round it is very easy to find good players, and therefore Sabean's hits there - Cain, Lincecum, Posey, Bumgarner - did not represent any skill on his part.  I did some research and wrote up text that I've been meaning to write up before the June Amateur draft for the past two seasons.  Better late than never, I guess.  :^)

Baseball Economics 101: Strategies When Resource Constrained

This post was inspired by my agitation with a caller into KNBR's SportsPhone 68 on Thursday night, May 3rd.  He complained that the Giants philosophy towards hitting must be greatly flawed because it has generated hitters who are greatly flawed - the old bugaboo, being aggressive and swinging at pitches outside the strike zone - and therefore Sabean and Bochy must be fired, either because they hew to such a strategy or that they are so flawed to always find such players.

I find the reasoning that Sabean Naysayers find  to try to justify firing Sabean laughable, mainly because they rarely see the whole and/or the big picture.  It is like the tale of the blind men holding the various parts of an elephant and trying to describe the elephant accurately.  They complain that the mighty elephant is a hoax because all they can feel is the tail, when, if they would bother to examine all the evidence that is currently available - which is easily findable via a more extended search of available evidence - they will find that the elephant is much stronger than the wimpy tail in their hands.  They leave a whole body of research and evidence that would show them the way, if they would only seek it instead of being bullied by the groupthink that pervades most Giants blogs and outposts.  This post is basically contained in my baseball team business plan (link on this page), but addressing specifically this question of why the Giants hitters are so flawed.

Sabean and Bochy get contracts extended thru 2013

As reported (Baggarly, Shea, Haft), the Giants extended Sabean's and Bochy's contracts in lock-step again.  Their contracts were due to expire in 2012, but got extended to 2013 plus there is a team option year for 2014, like there was for their prior contract, which was picked up for the 2012 season last year by Neukom.  Basically, the Giants upper management had to wait for Baer to be annointed "person of control" by the MLB, before he could finalize negotiations with Sabean and Bochy, else this deal might have been finished earlier.

In the press conference that announced the deal, they made a number of comments about the Giants future course (Baggarly, Shea, Haft):

• The plan is to earmark most of their money for their pitching staff, then use the remainder to improve the offense.  People rag on the offense, but as I'll show soon, a large part of that decline was the loss of Posey, but people conveniently forget about abnormal, unlikely to repeat events like that.  "There won't be any big splash.  Our pitching is our gold standard.  We have to make sure we take care of that commodity first," said Sabean.
• Evans noted in the meeting that he has just started talking with Lincecum's and Cain's agents, exchanging ideas and some numbers, mostly talking broadly, so they are not very far into the process yet (due to "so many other things").
• They also have a large number of arbitration-eligible players:  Ryan Vogelsong, Ramon Ramirez, Sergio Romo, Santiago Casilla, Nate Schierholtz, Pablo Sandoval.
• Once they take care of the pitching, then they will see how much money is left in the payroll and see which free agents will fit in that.  But they don't anticipate a household name, per se, no sticker shock type of play.
• The payroll has been bumped up to $130M (I believe it was around $125M last season, plus there is always the mythical rainy day fund).
• What they are looking for is better balance and flexibility.  Depth is important and thus flexibility with the roster is important.  (ogc note:  rumors are that the Giants are kicking the tires on Jerry Hairston, Jr., who can play MI as well as COF.  I view him as the successor to the role envisioned for Mark DeRosa, though I'm not sure how good he is defensively; DeRosa was great defensively and good offensively).
• Appears that re-signing Carlos Beltran is a longshot.  He was asked and agreed that an AL club (with the ability to DH regularly) could probably offer Beltran a longer-term contract than the Giants were comfortable with offering to a player with bad knees in his mid-30's.  Still, Sabean noted, "He is a consideration but term will be an issue with anybody we pursue, whether it's him or anybody else.  We have a game plan with what we consider a reasonable length."  (ogc note:  I would note here that they were comfortable with giving Franchez a 3-year contract, which, fortunately for us, he turned down for a two-year, and he's been even more injured prone than Beltran.  People need to remember that as business-people, you don't want to negotiate publicly nor give away your hand.  The Giants might be willing to give 3 years, but you don't give that away, particulalry in public, it is better if you play poor, act like it is possible that you will pass on signing, show some reticience in re-signing, as negotiations will always be one where each side has to give on something. You can't make a fair offer publicly and not have it bite you in the ass later in private negotiations).
• Baggarly:  "Sabean made it clear that the extensions will not be his focus when he arrives at the winter meetings in Dallas on Sunday. He is looking to improve the offense via trade or free agency, with the outfield being the area most in need."
• About SS, Sabean was impressed with the strides Brandon Crawford made in the AFL.  He could possibly be annointed the starter, though it was noted that they could carry his questionable bat if the offense improves elsewhere, and it was noted that he did what was asked to do in AFL, getting high marks regarding the strides he has made (ogc:  everyone has a questionable bat, that is why in the NL the 8th place hitter don't hit for much, so he has a low bar to make.  Plus the pitching makes the bar lower.  I think the offense is good enough as is to handle his bat, particularly because he was actually pretty good at avoiding strikeouts last season, so I think it is just a matter of adjustments and experience before he starts hitting.  May as well start in 2012 as the starter).
• About Belt, Sabean praised his work in the Dominican Winter League, noting Belt's adjustments and his willingness to go there, accept their challenge (he was not intending to go to Winter League, Giants asked him to, partly to make up for development he missed in 2011 because of injury and sitting on the bench).  Moises Alou (GM of the team Belt played on) gave positive reports on Belt.   They noted that he was playable in the OF, though they realize that 1B is his best position. 
• About Ross, he is still up in the air, Sabean noted, "not sure" when asked about him.  (ogc:  that is consistent with before, Sabean noted that Ross could come back to the team later, if available.)
• Sabean, according to  Baggarly, left the general impression that he might not make another move to help the offense.  Sabean:  “I think we have developed enough choices including our young players in the mix and our arbitration eligible players as far as the price point that’s suitable.  I think we’ve created enough food for thought and flexibility... Health is always an issue. We hope the guys who were banged up last year come back to form and do their part and pull their weight.”  (ogc:  I agree that another move is not necessary to help the offense, it should be good enough to win right now, but obviously any additional buffer to risk mitigate another hitter failing to perform would be great.)

And that is roughly it for the press conference, though there were a few other items that came up (read the accounts for that).  

Giants Thoughts

This is what I thought should happen, though I am sure that there are legions of Giants fans crying into their garlic fries right now.  I am very happy right now that Sabean and Bochy got extended another season plus a team option for another season. 

Sabean deserves to continue being the GM, both for putting together the team that we have today and for guiding the team well in the rebuilding phase during the losing.  Bochy, as I noted in prior research, is a unique manager, capable of bringing up his team by anywhere from 6 to 10 wins, every other season, that is a WAR of about 3-4 a season, which some sabers price at $4M (and higher) per win, or $12-l6M per season.  That's a bargain, as I assume Bochy probably don't make anywhere near that per season.

I was disappointed by Haft's dig at both Sabean and Bochy when he noted that others have done more than either over their tenure than they have.  First, sure, there are those who have done more, but that ignores the cycles that Baer talked about in the press conference when praising the two of them.  You have to accept that there will be times when a team is losing and rebuilding.  It also ignores that Bochy was handicapped by the Padres poor payroll problems that regularly rolled around and decimate the good team he had, then was hurt by the Giants rebuilding period at the tail end of the Barry Bonds era, where the teams weren't good enough to win yet.  Every team has a life-cycle of rebuild/compete/repeat that has to play out, nobody is going to be a winner all the time, that is rarely done in the majors, if ever.

Second, and more importantly, Sabean has the team set to win throughout the 2010's and be the team of the decade that I've been predicting for the past 3 years.  The pitching is all pretty set up, they only have to lock up Lincecum and Cain right now to set the team up nicely to do well over the next 4-5 years or so.  The middle of the lineup looks to be great with Sandoval, Posey, and Belt, and the top of the lineup will hopefully be great with Brown and Panik up top in a year or two. 

And with our great pitching and defense (just got the latest THT annual and it has the Giants team defensive runs saved figures there for the past few years and they have been one of the best defensive teams in the majors), what a lot of people don't realize is that it creates a low run environment in almost every game the Giants play in, thus making even a poor offense a good enough offense to win a lot of games with.  But people are stuck in the mindset that you can't win with a poor offense and thus think that Sabean is lame for not doing more.

He is doing what he should be doing, securing our future dominance by getting Lincecum and Cain signed longer term.  The whole team structure for winning falls apart without Lincecum and Cain up top (and with Bumgarner).  I have no doubt that we can get Cain signed to a 5 year contract that might even have a slight home discount.  I expect Lincecum to want fair value (i.e. no discount) but given the talk about liking shorter deals, I would be OK with a two year deal with an option year, then focus on getting him signed to a longer term deal next off-season.

There has been no mention about Bumgarner, but given the animosity that probably was engendered when the Giants summarily renewed his contract at their price for the 2011 season, I would hope the Giants look into making Bumgarner happy, it don't have to be a contract to buy out the rest of his pre-free agent years, though I would like something like that, but I think they should show him a little love in the contract negotiations this off-season.  And I've mentioned Posey and Sandoval getting signed up long-term as well.

All in all, a well deserved extension for both Sabean and Bochy.  Bochy in particular for bringing up the team and making it competitive for the playoffs, when by Pythagorean, by all rights they should have been scuffling around .500 during the 2011 season.  But Sabean too, deserves credit for trying to keep the team together in 2011 for another run, but when things got bad, made the big move to trade for Beltran, plus jettisoned both Tejada and Rowand, when they proved to be detrimental to winning.  Plus, by keeping the pitching staff together, that enabled the team to survive poor hitting and numerous injuries, and still be competitive enough for .500, by Pythagorean, when most teams losing a key player like Posey for the season would be sunk the moment he went down.

Sabean Cleared by Baggerly: He Was Not Responsible for Rowand and Zito's Contracts

Andy Baggerly in his article today clarified a question that has bothered me and many others for a while now:  how could Sabean sign Zito and Rowand?  It turns out that he didn't.  Andy wrote:

Club and league sources have confirmed that Sabean did not take the lead role when the club signed Rowand (2007) and Zito (2006); both contracts were panned at the time and have turned out perhaps even worse than critics predicted.

Of course, while most others thought literally "how could he?", I was more "It don't make sense" because Sabean throughout his career has shown that he knows how to recognize talent.  I think fans generally don't understand all the nuances involved with player acquisition.

Signing free agents have less to do with recognizing talent than your team's need for body to fill a position, so you are stuck with whatever is available when you need to get someone to fill a position.  Same with a lot of trades as well, when Sabean is unwilling to give up players that he thinks are keepers, you get so-so players, but sometimes you just have to roll the dice, particularly if he does not think that the player he is giving up will not make it as a good major league player.  Even the draft, while obviously requiring some ability to discern talent, is filled with a lot of unknowable factors that there is no team that can consistently find talent, it is mostly hit and miss with a lot more misses.

But in terms of trading prospects, Sabean has a great record, very few of his traded prospects have made the majors and few have been that good, except for Liriano (Nathan was not a prospect anymore at that point), but his injuries have made managing the Twins a nightmare not knowing if you have your ace that season or not.  Keith Foulke, Bob Howry, David Aardma, Carlos Villanueva, Clay Hensley are probably the most valuable of the bunch (with Foulke being the one true miss), then there is Jeremy Accardo, Boof Bonser, Jason Grilli, even Ryan Vogelsong, until this season.  Plus, there are the ones who the Giants let go and other teams picked up:  Brian Buscher, Pat Misch, Brian Burres, Freddy Lewis, etc.

But there was no overwhelming need for the Giants, baseball-wise, to sign either Rowand or Zito to huge contracts.  When Sabean signed other players, there was that need, in order to field a team to win.  By that time, the Giants were beyond just one player to win, neither Rowand nor Zito were players to get us over the hump.  Both clearly looked like overpays.  Both looked like they would never fulfill their contract to the amount paid, let alone exceed it.  This did not seem like a Sabean signing to me and others, mostly because it looked like the moves were more for marketing and PR purposes, not baseball purposes.  And now Andy Baggarly cleared that all up with his great reporting and investigative abilities.

This also supports the ease with which the Giants let go Rowand now, versus just playing out the string and keeping him around in September just in case.  It is much harder to let go of your own mistake, but when it is the mistake of someone else's that you have been living with, the release should be easier.

I know some will wonder why it didn't happen sooner and blame Sabean for that.  But these people don't understand that veteran players do come back from bad stretches of poor play.  They can also contribute, much like how Rowand, while not a key player in the playoffs, made some key plays and hits that helped the team reach the pinnacle of their profession.  Even better example:  Renteria during the playoffs.

But with the season spiraling away, Sabean needed to do something for shock value before meeting up with Arizona, whereas one would reasonably think the Giants should have been able to take on the Astros and Cubbies, but weren't.  Rowand by complaining internally didn't help, and Baggarly has been giving us a foreboding of that with his prior reportage.  His poor hitting has probably been a reflection of his unhappiness too, as well as a reflection of his diminishing skills.

Plus, Arizona has been on fire winning, but have been really being lucky in that regard because they have not been scoring that much more runs than allowed in August.  They ended August at 120-106, which has a Pythagorean of .553 or 16-13 record:  they ended up 19-10.  Take away those three games and the Giants are only 3 games behind right now.

It would be hard to predict both a Giants collapse against poor teams as well as a streak of winning by Arizona.  If neither happens, the Giants are still in the hunt, behind by 2-4 games, and not on the fringe like they are now, 6 games back.  And Sabean would not be second-guessed as much.

At this point, all the Giants can do is try to right their ship and not worry so much about Arizona except for the upcoming six games against them.  They need a hero and they need him to take charge now, and the team needs to win at least 4 out of 6 and ideally win 5 or 6 games (i.e. sweep).  Unlikely, but that is our state of the union right now, try to finish off with a nice record this season and hope that it is good enough.  But it will take a lot of opponents taking down the D-backs and D-backs regressing to the mean for the Giants to make the playoffs.

Not a pretty picture for Giants fans, but them's the facts.  Still, plenty of time to go before the season ends, plenty of time for a young team like the D-backs to fall on their faces.  Better teams have stumbled on their way to the finish line and screw up their playoff chances.  But right now, they got the look of a team that wants it, much like the Giants last season when Posey was leading them down the stretch, and they got a huge enough lead that they could coast if they wanted to.  I'll still be rooting for my team to win, hardcore, I haven't given up yet.

Buy "A Band of MiSFits"!

Thank you Andy for another big Giants scoop, clearing up that Sabean did not take the lead role in signing either Rowand or Zito. Now we need the Pierzynski trade to be clarified as well, and either take that off his record as well (as it has been implied before by Magowan's comment that he wouldn't have allowed the trade if he were appraised of it; one would think Sabean would know which trades to run by him or not) or mark it clearly his mistake.

These scoops are why I love reading Andy Baggerly's  book "A Band of MiSFits", there is a lot of inside  information about the Giants and their personnel in there, chockful that really improved my enjoyment of my favorite team, like how much money Neukom is really worth. I really recommend buying it (really inexpensive on Amazon and I believe it is on iBooks as well), as it was an enjoyable read and, like I said, it improved my enjoyment of last season's Giants dream run.

FYI, in case you are wondering, I make nothing off his sales, just want to share something really good with fellow Giants fans.