Moving Ahead with Familiar Guys at the Helm
The fact that Sabean and Bochy got extended isn’t a surprise or even newsworthy. Everyone knew this would happen. What is a little surprising is the widespread vitriol you can find on the internet about Sabean. Of course, I knew he had his detractors– for several years I was one of them. And it was justified for a long time– he was at least 3-4 years too late in responding to how to build a team once The Bonds Era started to fail. But he adapted, made some changes in his approach to building a team and, along with some luck, ended up bringing a World Series to San Francisco. Boom. End of criticism………
Except it wasn’t the end of the criticism. I’m not going to inadvertently advertise the websites that call for Sabean to be fired– yes, THE WEBSITES. There are guys out there with so little to do with their time that they make “Fire Sabean” part of their daily lives. And that’s really unbelievable. I’ve continued to criticize Sabean when it’s been appropriate. No one is perfect and he made several mistakes last year (not finding an adequate back up catcher, Tejada signing, O-Cab signing, etc…). Part of the gig of being a major league GM is exposing yourself to criticism from the fan base on the mistakes you make. But to spend part of your life managing a website that calls for the firing of a man who brought you a World Series championship—wow, you either have too much time on your hands or you’re just ignorant.
It’s the same mentality that the “Alex Smith Haters” take. They’re too stupid or too stubborn to celebrate in the joy that Smith is helping bring them. They’d rather keep on hating him because *hate* is something they’re good at….
We’re really just talking about fringe lunatics here. The Sabean haters, the Smith haters— it’s the minority. But they’re loud. And if there’s one thing they are good at, and it really is probably just this single thing they are good at, it’s staying committed to an opinion or a cause, however misguided or ignorant it might be. If only they could channel that focus into something productive. But that isn’t ever going to happen. ….
You can spot normal people when it comes to debates about guys like Sabean and Smith. They usually say things like “Wow, I didn’t think he had that in him.” Or, “Oh, he’s doing something I didn’t think he could do.” “Hmmmm, turns out I was wrong about him.”
Stuff like that.
The haters? They stick to obsessively building their websites of doom and gloom. They post their hate speech and their death threats from the dark corner of their empty apartment. They don’t have much but they’ve got a laptop and that allows them to spew their idiocy into society, a place they otherwise have very little interaction with.
Anyway, I am fine with the extensions for Sabean and Bochy. I’m hoping the Niners offer Alex Smith one this off season, too. A 3 year deal sounds about right. But who knows, another team might come along and offer him more. The Niners will be fine, Harbaugh will whip up another masterpiece and we’ll be full steam ahead in 2012.
As I got older in life, I realized that hating people and things didn’t do anything other than boomer rang back to me and make my life miserable. Your attitude is the single most important thing you can control in your life. Something you CAN’T control? Other people. This is an important concept to *get* if you want to be involved in the blog world……..
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Yeah, lot of doomers out there on this one, mostly anti Sabes. I checked out the first part of the thread on MLBTR, and there are Giants fans ragging on Sabes for Rent, Huff contract of 2011, rowand, etc. One guy brings up the fact that without rent we don’t win the WS, and immediately there’s a comment about the Sabean apologist camp arising. I remember the FSN guy we had here who said he was lucky to draft Lincecum.
Like every GM that ever was and certainly that exist now in some much bigger markets, he makes mistakes. But he really did build the team that won 2010, and some pretty important parts were guys he picked up that were available to anyone—Burrell, lopez, ramirez, ross, uribe, torres and huff to name a few. A lot of bloggers were on him hard for trading a promising young P for an unhealthy Freddy Sanchez too.
I don’t think you can fault him for making a couple of aggressive moves to pick up Keppinger and Beltran last year either. These are both guys I’d love to have back. Coaching staff that includes bochy and rags is top notch, and being able to spot young P talent and have it progress through the system all the way to the top is no small accomplishment. SF staff is the envy of every team in mlb.
I’ll note there there was no criticism of the Tejada signing here when it went down, except that a lot of people wanted Uribe instead. There’s a diffference between an acquisition not working out and not working out because the GM should have known better. Huff ? He was considered an absolute must signing before last last year and even more so because the Dodgers were after him him, too. In fact there was no flak over any the signings for 2011, just the usual that he didn’t do more. There was some justifiable bitching about Whitey remaining the backup catcher, I had said he never should have been on the team in the first place.
Let’s also remember that the number one ongoing critisicm of Sabean had been for his penchant for drafting pitchers over position players. Homegrown pitchers Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Bumgarner, and Wilson should have put that criticism to rest in the 2010 postseason..
Anyway, of course any knowledgeable fan should be fine with the extensions, there is no other reasonable positon. Total no brainer.
Since Craig mentioned him, I’ll follow up on Alex Smith. There has already been a lot of talk about a new contract, and from what I read, it’s Smith who proposed that the talk wait until after the season. Sounds like a pretty confident guy to me..
Everybody seems to be downplaying the Rams and we should certainly handle them, but with the chance to clinch against them, this becomes the biggest game in years- we want them coming out like it’s against the Pack for the NFC championship…I’m sure that’s Harbaugh’s thinking…
As for doom…….where’s Dennis? In a stupor somewhere?
He doesn’t seem to post much except game day on Chuck’s blog.
Tim Dierkes on MLBTR has it that the Giants are shopping either Ramon Ramirez or Jeremy Affeldt in the Winter Meetings. Comments are all over the map. Mostly from fans of other teams. Some called it a salary dump. Not likely as Affeldt and Lopez were recently given hefty contracts. In the case of Jeremy, it could indicate the team has some confidence in Runzler as their second lefty. Could be simply a testing of the waters to see if there is a backup catcher or SS jumping out in favor of solid bullpen help. I would expect decent value if either is traded, particularly Affeldt as quality lefty relievers are a scarce commodity. He might be worth an ML ready outfield prospect from a team which is already well set in their OF.
A trade was the first thing I thought of when they signed both Javier Lopez and Jeremy Affeldt. One of them would be bait. Looks like it’s Affeldt . . .
Before I take Nap #1, I think i’ve checked this before, but I believe that there are “Fire ___” sites for every GM and manager in the game. I’m certain that Sabean has more than his share but had there been an internet, I’m sure there would have been a “Fire Ed Barrow ” site in 1927…
Chron reporting that ex Oakland Raider and current Stanford assistant coach Chester McGlockton just passed away age 42
Unfortunately, with all the great stuff the WWW does provide, such as this venue, it also provides cover for cowards. Yeah, as you say, their vacant minds lurk in a dark corner of an empty apartment of an empty life going nowhere after not having been anywhere or anyone or anything. I say they are cowards because most such folks would not spew their vitriol if, say, they used their real name with, for example, phone number and zip code. Of course not. It’s so bad that I can’t even read the comments on local news sites. Dreadful nonsense. As for Sabean and Bochy, I’m in their corner. They are imperfect human beings who obviously WANT to succeed. What? They want to fail? What next, questions about their birth certificates? (True, Bochy was born in France.) Besides, whom do the detractors suggest as alternatives? Themselves? Puhleez.
Pawlie– when I first started blogging back in 2007 I used to get bent by a post or a poster. Now I just shake my head and LQTM.
Very sad news about The Big Man. he was one of the few Raiders from the 90’s who I actually liked…..
Santiago is OFF THE BOARD after re-signing with the Tigers. Shit, 2yrs/4 mil vs Barnes getting 2 yrs/10 mill?????
They’re basically the same guy, I would have jumped on Santiago for only 4 mil.
I also just read where David Dejesus is off the board too . . . signed with the Cubs (2 years/9.5 million with an option year for 6.5 million).
You guys in the know please tell me that it is only a RUMOR that the G-Men want to sign Jerry Hairston Jr. Notwithstanding him meeting the Sabean prerequisite of being over 35 years of age, what the fuck rover is he interested in this never has been for? By the by, Twin I know you have an eidetic memory, but I NEVER supported Tejada coming here. Just saying . . .
Didn’t say you supported it, but didn’t see anywhere where you or anybody but Denny was against it. I looked back at the comments when he signed.
Fair enough . . . I may not have commented on it, but Tejada is definitely not one of my favorite players for a lot of reasons, some of which have to do with his character.
I was cool with Tejada’s signing, and said so, only because it was one year.
I figured “how bad could he be and/or get”?.
The answer was really bad. I gave Sabes too much credit, and figured wrong…
That’s precisely how I felt. Sort of a “Why not? No big commitment” attitude. Zoinks!
Almost forgot – Just like New Yorkers “LUV NY,” I “LUV SABES.”
Albeit, not in the biblical sense.
Zito engaged.
I’m sure there’s plenty of joke material here, but I’m not in the mood…
http://blog.sfgate.com/matierandross/2011/11/30/barry-zito-getting-hitched/
“Engaged” to do better and commit himself to being a better player? Wow! All for that!
Isn’t that cute? I guess when yer rich, you can get yourself a pet polar bear . . .
I’ll rep her on the pre-nup negotiation.
Looks like I’ll have no problem putting together that 70 page binder — 69 pages of lingerie shots…
Looks like we got A-Gon in our future . . .
SSes are dropping like flyballs . . .
Here’s more pics of the ‘lucky’ girl . . .
http://hmmla.com/models/women/284/no/no/Amber-Seyer.html#1
Damn, she sure has big feet . . . Ahem, but I digress.
Tejada 2010 .269 BA .312 OPB .692 OPS 15 HR 71 RBI
A-Gony 2011 .241 BA .270 OBP .642 OPS 15 HR 56 RRBI
So Chuck, you’re saying he’s going to sign Tejada AGAIN ? Most of us hope he learned.
I’m not saiyng I want it to happen, just that it looks like it’s working out that way.
Actually, you did recommend him, but no big deal. As I said, let’s just hope Sabean wouldn’t do it.
I did, didn’t I? Oh well . . .
Ok, Nap 2. Any ideas on tonight’s game from *2010* ?
How about September 16, 2010? My younger daughter was at this game. Drrrty went 7 for the win vs the Dogs. Posey, Huff, and Guillen went deep in the 10-2 win.
Retro ’70s, or obviously the favorite, retro ’10, fun stuff… but now and then, I’m still thinking about this past season, especially the 5-week period between the end of July and very early September. Of course most explanations focus on the “anemic offense”, we all know that. But it’s still just weird to me how precipitous the team’s fall from grace was. Not looking any of this up, relying on memory, it is still a puzzle to me “what happened” during that time, after beating Philly 2 of 3 in Philly and I think splitting 4 games at Wrigley, climbing to a 4-game lead in the West, a lead I thought sure at that time was only to grow… only to lose about 13 games in the standings to AZ over the next handful of weeks. Not an epic collapse like Boston and Atlanta suffered to miss the post-season, but just… puzzling. Like someone flicked a switch and it all went downhill. Oddly coinciding exactly with Beltran’s arrival, which instead of bolstering the offense, saw the whole O shut down. I don’t know. August has been a very cruel month for the G’s the past couple of seasons. In 2010, obviously they recovered, but couldn’t do it this past season. If I’m Sabes, I’m looking to pick up some new players who historically have had good Augusts… 🙂
I remember going to a sports bar to watch one of those Phillies games and thinking after the win, gee, this is going to be easy; we might win the division by 10 games. It’ll almost be boring. We looked great in that series. Still baffles me what happened after that.
To me it looked like everyone else expected Beltran to pick up the heavy lifting and start jacking the all all over the place. When it didn’t happen, the team stopped scoring. Whether Beltran was hurt or not (that did happen later) all the other guys seemed to sag once Beltran got here.
I don’t know. I recall everyone pointing out Beltran *couldn’t* go yard at ATT
I had noted that he never had gone deep here..
But Pablo did his share and they weren’t pitching around Beltran, he sucked then got hurt. Beltran was brought here to hit- it’s not on other players that he didn’t until it was too late. Before his injury, he did nothing, if he had been the 3 to Pablo’s 4 that they expected, it would have a huge difference.
Twin, our guy Ramon Santiago re-upped w/ the Tigers, 2 yrs.
Noted by the flavster @ 2:04pm
skype me, mile high boy
Ianetta traded to Angels.
. . . They get Tyler Chatwood, SP. Also, close to signing Ramon Hernandez.
I’m going to try your game, Chuck. So I can keep my eye peeled, in what inning do you run onto the field?
I said my daughter went, not me . . . she’s at SF State.
It was one of Guillen’s 2 good games with the G’s.
Not smart enough for Bryn Mawr?
Yeah, her 200 year old mother didn’t recommend it.
Sorry, what inning did *she* run onto the field..;-)
It’s still 1-1, looking forward to the explosion. might wake me up.
The Angels scored with Iannetta. They gave up an average pitcher for a catcher who could easily hit 2o+ bombs next year…
“skype me mile high boy” are 5 words that probably belong on the gay giants blog, should there be one out there. 🙂 kidding! Mall tits!!!!!
Yes, indeed. He (Pawlie) was summarily admonished for his indiscretion.