San Francisco Giants Top 20 Prospects for 2012

A MLB GM must have an insanely busy schedule.

or cutting him loose, and totally blew that decision.

Local scribe Andy Baggarly reported late last year that according to his sources, both internal to the Giants and in the league, neither signings were driven by Sabean. As many Giants fans suspected, it was most likely driven by former managing owner, Peter Magowan, and evidenced by the fact that Magowan was the one forced out and not Sabean. It was pretty clear to most of us that both signings were marketing driven.

I think it was pretty clear that the Blue Jays were the ones who started the Lincecum-Rios rumor, which, BTW, Sabean never confirmed, all he ever noted was that the Giants were not in a position to ignore any trade proposal, if it improved the team.

In fact, Sabean’s record in trades is pretty spotless, with only one really bad trade, the AJ trade. Still Baseball Prospectus liked that trade, so it was good in concept, not in the reality of dealing with a hot head athlete.

Sure, Sabean has made his mistakes in signings (which I also suspect was owner-driven, in a drive to try to win with Bonds). But I think the big picture shows that the Giants are positioned nicely for the future.

They have the rotation every team dreams about, and with extensions, would have that core with us for another 4-5 years. The bullpen has been retooled to a dominant group and given Bochy’s history of crafting great pens, most probably will continue to be dominant.

They have a core group of middle hitters in Posey and Sandoval, plus hopefully Belt. Brown and Panik look to fill out the top of the lineup in 2013-14. Crawford looks to be great defensively at SS and good enough offensively to not negate all that defense with his bat. That leave openings in the corner OF.

And with a great pitching staff and good fielding, they don’t need much offense to win 90+ games, around league average is all they need, and if that young core of hitters produce as expected, that should not be a problem.

Bochy even contributes by being one of the few managers capable of winning 1-run games consistently.

The Giants are in great shape for the future, which is all that should matter now, not past hurts over actual or perceived mistakes, over his non-cuddly persona, or any other prior issues. Sabean has put the Giants into a great position to be dominant the entire 2010 decade, the Decade of the Giants if the owners are smart enough to finance it.

1993 was the last race with the Braves. Then the strike. Then 2 4th place finishes. This part of Sabey Sabes gets conveniently forgotten as having Bonds is somehow the only reason for success, but coming into 1997 things weren’t all sparkly in Giantland. The interwebz was in it’s infancy, so there wasn’t a lot of debate, but I don’t remember Giants fans complaining much (after the initial “I am not an Idiot” dust up) from the moves put in place for 1997, and continuing down the line. We can talk until we’re blue in the face about Kent being a lucky throw-in, but the fact is he made the trade and Barry had a running partner for the next six years. He stole JT Snow. Rob Nen. Joe Carter. Ellis Burks. Livan. Big Cat. Jason Schmidt. 4 2nd place finishes, a wild card and 2 Western titles. And a massive bummer of a game 6. Then a reboot with some question marks, an absolute rampage of the NL West and another bummer of a game with Snow gunned at the plate to end it all.

The wheels came off, for sure. What was Sabean’s first bad trade? Most will say AJ/Nathan. I have a hard time with letting Kent go myself, but that was a multifaceted operation, involving not only Kent himself, Bonds, Sabean and PeteyM. Still from hindsight it was a mistake. The bigger mistake was not signing Vladdy.

But I have a problem with folks trying to take the Bonds years away from Sabean. He built those teams fair and square. 8 years of contention. Fans have a right to an exciting competitive ballclub. We don’t get the right to win everything all the time. That’s up to the Baseball Gods. They gave incredibly in 2010 and decided to take away big time in 2011. C’est la guerre.

At some point Giant fans are going to have to let go of the bunk ass Aaron Rowand signing, and batting practice Barry Zito. Those were bonehead moves, but they cost Sabean plenty, and he remembers them better and more painfully than any fans can. He’s found a new way to build a club, and he’s actually doubling down on it this offseason. We’re putting way more faith in the farm system than I thought possible. Its sort of scary actually, but it should be fun.

but prior to that, before the 2010 season, he said Posey wasn’t ready to catch 100 games (the team’s #1 prospect and messiah), then backtracked and said Posey was the starter..then re-signed Molina, a player much disliked by much of the Giants fanbase due to his age and lack of plate discipline. You might think that’s a great way for a GM to act, but many (maybe even most) fans don’t. He was criticized for his handling of that situation. So during that time, the fan base was definitely hungry for a younger team on offense. that’s not a controversial statement.

I posted up above to say I appreciate the core of players we have, on the Big Gigantes as well as the farm system, not to start a Sabean discussion, so I apologize for that. As Giants fans its easy to go down the rabbit hole of Sabey Sabes, he’s the longest tenured GM in Giants history and 15 years is a helluva lot of rope. I believe he is trying something different, as he has had successful results with the farm system now, and is no longer viewing it as a trading post.

I have a different view on the press conferences, which are the main avenue for his decisions to be questioned - I see them as high comedy and a treasure hunt for clues on the state of the franchise as he can’t help himself with his plainspokenness despite his secretive efforts. Is he short, rude and abrasive? Sure. Does he throw down classic quotes? Sure. I’m not an idiot. Lunatic Fringe. Kicking the Tires. If we don’t see him again. The Vladdy quote. All delivered with that clipped New England tough guy accent.

Nice guy in private: well, his whole crew of greybeards, led by Dick Tidrow, are all incredibly loyal to him and have been with the guy forever. If he’s such a jerk, how does he have the same guys with him for this long? They tend to be more scouting oriented than stats oriented, but there are some clues that isn’t necessarily set in stone. They seem to know pitching pretty well, and are incredibly old school in a new era of baseball knowledge and analysis. I would go further, I’d call them the Monks of MLB. They seem to be getting more secretive and close to the vest as they go on. Notice they are always the last team to announce non-tenders or other deadline moves?

I guess I view him as most the people I know in life, flawed. You take the good with the bad. I grew up on the late 70s early 80s Gints. I have enjoyed the Sabean years immensely. Do I have criticisms? Yes. Can I forgive some of the bonehead moves? Yes. Everybody is up in arms about the offseason, but he didn’t go out and sign Coco Crisp to a 3 year contract now did he?

I would rather have a Sabean, who has put out a winning team for us most years than not, plus who has gotten us to the playoffs many more times than the Giants had done in the roughly 25 years before he became GM, and more importantly, got us the Championship we have all desired, than a slick Beane, who talks a good game with the fans.

Ultimately, though, the reason he had to sell off his team this year is because he made stupid trades - imagine how good his team would have been if he still had Ethier and CarGon in the lineup in 2010 and 2011, or if he actually got any prospects worth anything from Atlanta for Hudson, same for Holliday and Swisher, or if he didn’t let both Tejada and Giambi go free agent for nothing but picks (horrible strategy due to the low odds of finding talent with them) - and has not been successful in the draft in a long time. Furthermore, his flawed strategy is what precipitated this sell-off, he was in the middle of rebuilding, then goes and spends $10M on Sheets (for nothing production) plus trades for Holliday. What exactly is his strategy, and why is it changing willy-nilly?

Sabean, meanwhile, has had a strategy of building up the pitching rotation since basically when Tidrow joined his staff. He had some good prospects early on in Ainsworth, Williams, and Foppert, but also bad luck, until Cain and Lowry, then hit big with Sanchez, Lincecum, and Bumgarner. I can remember interviews early in the 2000’s where he talked about building a team about pitching, fielding, and speed. And he did that in spite of having to deal with ownership’s desire to have a championship while Bonds was still playing.

People don’t appreciate how hard it is to actually build a team via the draft. The odds of finding a good starting player while winning is very low. It is still not that great when you are losing, but at least it is exponentially better than when you are winning (about 2-4 times more likely).

The Braves did it right: lose horribly for years, get great picks until you find the player you can build around (Chipper in their case) and go from there. Even then, they never had a team full of homegrown players, it was always a mix.

The Giants, if the owners OK the money, should have a team full of homegrown players: Lincecum, Cain, Bumgarner, Wilson, Romo, maybe Runzler or Hembree, Posey, Sandoval, Schierholtz, Crawford, and eventually, hopefully, Brown, Panik, Susac, Joseph, about half the team. That is pretty good for a four year period of losing, usually you have to lose for a much longer period to do that.

Cheers, I get that point for sure.

I was just interested as to what players he found promising. I looked over the rankings and read the captions for each player and the 1-2 sentences on the players which provided short blubs as to your information/feelings on each player. I was just looking for additional insight, which is why I will be purchasing your book again (for the 5th or 6th year in a row).

is that he has a knack for not doing enough or at least it appears that way…I think most rational people can agree that the Giants have about a 3 year window to be WS contenders while we have a staff of cain, lincecum, madbum. By actively not fixing the glaring offensive weakness and hoping for players to rebound it just feels like the window is closing and the miracle of 2010 is all that we will have to show for it…which isnt terrible im sure there are dozens of teams who wish they had a ring in the last 10 years, but it just doesnt feel like enough.

plus trading our best pitching prospect for a 2 month rental really really really sucks.