and don’t even mention Cain and Lincecum, you might be a worse columnist than Sabean is a GM.

...

Well, probably not.

that FJM article his hilarious

and it turned out really badly. His trade of Freddy Garcia for Miguel Olivo, Jeremy Reed, and Mike Morse was a tramendous deal. Of course, Olivo played his worst baseball ever in Seattle, Reed’s power never arrived, and Morse have been caught using steroids three times, but at the time it was a good deal.

Aside from that, Bavasi’s trades are appalling.

That’s how I feel. But, I can’t ignore reality—no one defends Sabean, his reputation is in the dumper. It’s in the dumper even though he was under orders from up above, I believe, to patch together a team around the grumpy power-hitting left fielder because while the grumpy power-hitting left fielder was here, fans would not accept young players and rebuilding.

For the past 3 to 4 years, Giants fans have been calling for rebuilding…. It has been the the qoute following the “FIRE SABEAN” chant they have all come to know and love. The writer of the article has to be either of two men, Sabean himself or a Dodger writer/fan/GM.

To be fair, there’s also Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. But yeah, the guy’s got a point. When’s the last time Sabean drafted and developed a good hitter?
-Charlie

As for claiming that Cain and Lincecum were developed in the Giants system, nope. Both of them barely spent any time in the minors to even truly develop.
Bill Mueller was the last developed hitter. But the last “good hitter” was Matt Williams

For the record, I voted for Sabean. The man seemingly goes out of his way to create teams where most players are a decade past their peak! He then hires Felipe Alou to manage these creations!

I’m guessing the only reason he still has a job is because most of the really stupid ideas, like the Zito contract, are ownerships ideas. You can’t really fire a guy when, what he told you was a terrible idea turns out to be a terrible idea.

In the end though, the Giants were strong contenders for seven years. And if the GM is to be blamed for everything bad, no matter how unforseen, that happens on his watch then he must also be lauded for everything that happens on his watch whether or not he is responsible.

For that reason, despite all the f*()ups, I’ll have to vote for Bavasi—his team has yet to make the playoffs despite a ton of cash.

Sabean didn’t sign Bonds. Bonds signed with SF prior to the 1993 season, when the Magowan group bought the Giants from Bob Lurie, “saving” the team for the city because Lurie had threatened to sell to Tampa Bay interests. Bob Quinn was the GM at the time. Remember, they played at Candlestick Park, and Lurie had tried several times to get a new park built somewhere, was always shot down, and got huffy. The new owners signed Bonds - and Dusty Baker as manager - and immediately commenced compaigning for a new park. The team won 103 games on the back of Bonds’ career year (.336/.458/.677). The team also had Matt Williams and Will Clark. Ultimately, of course, the owners got their little jewel—you have to know SF politics to understand what a miracle that was, and while plenty of arm twisting and bundles of money moved around, Bonds was what put it over. But 1994 was the strike year, and the next two years were miserable too, with only Bonds and Williams producing. So Quinn was fired and Sabean came in. He traded Williams, essentially, for Jeff Kent and cash to pick up JT Snow, a good glove sabermetric horror of a 1B. The Giants won the division, tied for the wild card, then shut down Candlestick at second in the division. The Giants made playoffs in 2000, Bonds hit 73 HRs in 2001, they went to the Series in 2002 and won 100 in 2003. Why? To oversimplify, effective bats around Bonds (among them Kent, Burks, Aurilia, Santiago, Galarraga, Grissom, Cruz), OK pitching, and a closer (Nen 2000-2002, Worrel 2003). Then Sabean’s luck on veteran supporting cast and closers ran out, Bonds was hobbled in multiple ways, and all the chickens of his ridiculous surrounding moves came home to roost. Wordy post, I know. Short version: Sabean inherited the best baseball player of the era in Bonds, gambled yearly to stack up veteran bats around him, has lost those gambles since 2003, has lost every bullpen gamble since then too, and his farm system stands naked from neglect giving him nowhere to go. And then he signs Zito. Sabean was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and now he is a deadbeat dad and bum.

Vlad is not wrong about Sabean’s utterly random judgment, but he is wrong about Sabean being able to “sign anybody” because “the juice” made whoever he signed good. There’s no evidence that any form of any juice has ever made any marginal ball player into a good ball player. And there’s no reason to think Sabean’s reputation as GM benefited more from “the juice” than any other GM’s did. Beane. Cashman. John Hart and Jon Daniels. Bavasi. Hendry. And so on. Come on. Although this does remind me that Sabean signed and kept on the 25 man roster Marvin Benard, an amazingly lousy steroid using player whose career was kept alive not by “the juice” but by Sabean’s decisions.

vlad’s usually spot-on but i also thought that was a dubious statement. i don’t want to start a steroid argument in this thread, but if steroids without talent made you good at baseball jay gibbons would win the mvp.

would like to thank Brian Sabean for taking Bruce Bochy off of the Padres’ hands.

Not that Bud Black is any better, but still…I can’t believe Brian Sabean wanted Bruce Bochy.