No One Knows

Some assume that the reason Joe Crede is not today a Giant is that Brian Sabean didn’t match or try to match the Twins’ offer.  What they miss, though, is that Sabean could have done so, and Crede still might have chosen to sign elsewhere.  It’s not my job to defend Sabean, since much of what he’s done in recent years is pretty indefensible, but Sabean is not the only one making the decision about where Joe Crede plays baseball.

I know that in my own career, I’ve made decisions about what job to take or not take based on money, or on my marriage, or on medical benefits for my kids, or on long-term goals, or on my daily satisfaction with the work, or on the “culture” of the office.  The only person who might have grasped all these factors, or how they balanced, was my wife.

Now we hear and read a lot about similar decisions made by talented ballplayers.  We speculate that this guy followed the money, or the other guy went to a team in the region where he was raised.  We’ll assume that the agent actually makes the decision, or that the player picked the team because he hits well in their home park.

But at the end of the day, we have no idea what we’re talking about.  That’s because the decision about where to play, like our own decisions on where to work, is an intensely personal one that considers factors we cannot know.  Baseball players are like the rest of us.  They have wives and families, they like big cities or small towns, warm weather or cold, golfing or surfing.

For Crede, to take one example, this was the first time in his professional life he’d been able to negotiate anything other than his salary (and he hadn’t even had that opportunity much).  He was 18 when the White Sox selected him in the fifth round of the 1996 draft, and now, more than twelve years later, he’s been able to choose his employer, the city where he’ll work, and presumably, live and raise his family.  He’s never had that choice or one like it before, and as to his motives in selecting the Twins, let’s face it, we’re all just guessing.  Like a lot about baseball, and a lot about life, this is one where no one knows anything.

 

Catching Up On Transactions

High on the Giants’ list of off-season priorities is fixing the infield, and Brian Sabean appears to be trying to do that.  Pablo Sandoval will play more at catcher and probably some at the infield corners (giving the team a latter-day Brenly vibe); Travis Ishikawa will get his shot at first, with perhaps Josh Phelps platooning; Emmanuel Burriss and Kevin Frandsen will get their shots at second.  Barring trading Rowand, Molina, and/or Winn — options that Sabean should entertain, even if he really means it when he says he intends to contend in a weak NL West — the real problem area is the left side of the infield.

Bringing Edgar Renteria back to the National League — not cheaply, however — has its chances of working out reasonably well.  Adding a few points of OBP and SLG by moving to the weaker league, and adding Denver and Phoenix to his frequently-visited opponents’ parks, it isn’t hard to envision July headlines touting some sort of resurgence from a player whose skill set wouldn’t really change fundamentally.  Add in that he ought to be thoroughly adequate at the plate where the Giants got nothing of the sort last season, and I can see how this ends up being a slight improvement to the team.  (The Giants will give back some of their gains from Renteria’s offense due to his declining defense.)

This still leaves third base to stock somehow.  A full season of Sandoval at third would be a bit brutal defensively, so perhaps Sabean isn’t done.  Among the aforementioned veterans, dealing Winn remains the move I’d most like to see made, in part because I’d rather see the Giants add a rightfielder with some power, whether that’s taking another spin with strong-armed Nate Shierholtz or taking a low-end risk via free agency.  Counting on Sandoval, Ishikawa and Renteria, too, that adds up to an offense that might actually be average.

Putting the Big Unit in China Basin is yet another indication that the Giants take themselves seriously.  While one year ago I would have found that laughable, I’m just maybe starting to see things from Sabean’s point of view.  The Dodgers and D’backs haven’t made the sorts of moves that convincingly elevate them past 85 wins, and while so much of the Giants’ limited success last season depended on happy accidents in their record in one-run ballgames (going 31-21), there’s some reason to take them just abuot as seriously.  They’re not the team that fielded an almost entirely putrid lineup last April, they’re the one we saw in September, the one that had a few interesting prospects on the field.  The team needed help in the bullpen, and Sabean’s tried to scare some up.  The team needed a plausible regular at short, and whatever else you may say about him, Edgar Renteria is exactly that.  The team still needs some power in the lineup, which is why we keep hearing Manny Ramirez rumors, though the shame of that would be how it might suck playing time away from Fred Lewis, one of their better hitters, but if Lewis in turn reduces Randy Winn to a less-regular starter, even that could turn out well.  I admit, I’d be a little more enthusiastic if they came up with a power-hitting third baseman who lets them relegate Pablo Sandoval to sharing playing time at first with Travis Ishikawa and behind the plate with Benjie Moliina, but we’ll see if Joe Crede proves himself healthy enough to engender any interest in his coming workout.

So, put Randy Johnson onto that sort of team in this sort of division, and yeah, I like it well enough.  He’ll get his 300th win as a Giant.  (He’s just five away.)  He should be effective enough, he saves Team Sabean from having to count too heavily on Noah Lowry to round out the rotation, and I guess there’s something sort of amusing about having someone who reduces Barry Zito to not merely an expensive mistake, but the most expensive fifth starter ever in human history.

 

Is the Bell Tolling?

Brian Sabean is absolutely right about Armando Benitez’s share of the blame for the Giants poor play thus far this season. The Giants’ lineup, and their inability to hit, bears far more responsibility than any pitcher. He points out that in Benitez’s last game as a Giant on Tuesday, in which he blew the save, Durham and Klesko were not available. He notes that despite that, Barry Bonds took the night off.

Asked about a potential trade for a bat, an “agitated” Sabean said, “Ask the guys who can’t answer the bell every day. . . . We need guys on the field, and as usual, we’re not getting it.”

It is here that Sabean tries to have it both ways, here that the train of his logic runs off the tracks. Of course we need players who can play every day. But those aren’t the players Sabean chose to sign this past offseason. He knew as well as anyone that Ray Durham’s legs need constant attention from the trainer and periodic time off; he knew that one of Bonds’s knees has bone scraping against bone, so that he would need time off; he knew that Klesko’s bad back was one of the reasons the Braves unloaded him on the Padres several years ago; he knew the rap on Dave Roberts was that he couldn’t hold up long enough to be an everyday player. These injuries, and the rest our veteran lineup needs, is the predictable result of having the oldest lineup in the history of major league baseball.

One of the troubling aspects of team sports is the ethic that encourages players to play through pain. We see them do it all the time, often to their detriment. Pitcher Mark Prior of the Cubs endured criticism from writers and fans for complaining of pain and having to go on the DL several times over the past few years. When his shoulder was finally cut open a couple of months ago, doctors who saw the damage to his labrum and rotator cuff were amazed he could even lift his arm, much less throw a baseball. Teams, including the Giants, who under Sabean have always had a top-notch training staff, have realized that winning demands preventing and managing injury. Given that, and given the age of the Giants’ roster, doesn’t it make sense to occasionally rest the aged and infirm? Shouldn’t Dave Roberts, in whom the team has invested millions, be commended for telling his team he needs surgery to remove the bone chips in his elbow so that as much of their investment is preserved as is possible? Isn’t it wise to let Ray Durham and his hamstrings rest a couple of days rather than try to play through tightness but end up spending 15 days on the DL?

If Sabean wanted guys who play every day, he should have fielded a team with less gray in their beards. He didn’t. Maybe he’s the one who isn’t answering the bell.

 

A Silver Lining?

Having been swept by the Rockies, let’s suppose that the Giants are done — that they not only have nearly no chance of winning the National League West, but that the last two months of mediocre play and bad luck, and the fact that three teams in their own division probably have more talent than they do, will make it impossible for them to win the wild card as well. Even if one doesn’t grant this premise, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it’s so, and that the collapse has come. This leaves a simple question: Is it necessarily a bad thing?

The winter after the 2006 season should have been when the Giants made hard decisions, but they didn’t, instead persevering with their strategy of signing veteran “presence” to surround Barry Bonds. But this year and next year were also always going to be a time of transition for the Giants, even in the best of circumstances. After this season, Bonds, Omar Vizquel, Armando Benitez and Pedro Feliz are all free agents. Next year will be nearly as busy: After the 2008 campaign, the Giants will be done with their commitments to Ray Durham, Matt Morris and Rich Aurilia.

For the Giants, the complex of decisions and opportunities presented by the expiration of so many contracts is more important than the question of whether or not they make the playoffs this year. After all, they are a relatively rich team, and they have young pitching talent; falling short this season is not going to doom them to irrelevance. It would, though, allow them the chance not taken last year — to make decisions based on the long-term interests of the team. Even better, it would allow them to think about what those long-term interests are.

I’m beating a dead horse at this point by stating that much of the blame for this year’s poor showing rests on the fact that the team is just old. Neither Durham nor Aurilia are slugging .400. Leadoff “hitter” Dave Roberts, currently on the DL, has a .283 on-base-percentage. Pedro Feliz gets on base at a .292 clip, which more than negates his .438 slugging. There are a lot of benefits to having All-Star players in their 30s, but older players are vulnerable to injury and abrupt decline, and when you count on a lot of older players, you’re susceptible to this sort of thing.

The 2005-06 Giants paid the bill for a long run of winning with veteran talent that had to be signed to contracts that took them well past their primes. Brian Sabean’s mistake for 2007 was trying to milk a couple more years from the same strategy. That doesn’t mean they were wrong to do so — we all enjoyed the winning — just that there are consequences for bringing in a brigade of well-seasoned talent every year to prop up a run at a pennant. The Giants under Sabean have never written a season off to establish a young player at a position and thus avoid having to make questionable long-term commitments, and since they haven’t had the kind of farm system that the Braves had during their run of division championships, it was inevitable that their reliance on oldsters would eventually catch up with them.

Yet another season when they miss the playoffs, then, might not be such a bad thing if the team takes advantage of the opportunity it provides to really assess what they want to do and how they want to do it. Do they want continue to take on bad contracts and commit to playing expensive veterans at the end of their usefulness? They were pressed into that in the past by circumstance, but now is the time to master circumstance. As well as he fields, and as classy as he is, for instance, Omar Vizquel is a 40-year-old shortstop. Would signing him even for a year really be the best idea for the future, or would it be better to sign a stopgap while looking for (or developing) a long-term solution? Do the Giants really want to lock themselves into paying a 42-year-old Barry Bonds a salary of something over $15 million just to watch him get his three thousandth hit next season?

There is another way to build a perpetual winner, though, one that values flexibility, one that tolerates the risks associated with young players in the knowledge that those risks come with their own rewards, and one that exhibits an awareness that there are worse things than having a losing season while executing such a plan. If this year’s disappointment inspires the Giants to embrace such an approach, Giant fans in 2012 just might look back at this year with a special fondness. Losing is bad, after all, but not learning anything from losing is worse.

 

Blame Laid at Sabean’s Feet in Advance

Yes, the inevitable has happened. Peter Magowan has put Brian Sabean on notice: “We’ve had two disappointing years. We’re all accountable. I’m accountable. Everybody’s accountable for their performance. I think [Sabean] understands that.”

Well, we may all be accountable, but it is unlikely Magowan’s partners are going to kick him out of the corner office on King Street if (when?) the Giants don’t win the division in 2007. And, while Brian Sabean’s personnel decisions are not the one’s I like to think I’d make, there is no denying Sabean has done well while being saddled with Magowan’s own deal-with-the-devil. Sabean has followed an arguably smart short-term strategy every year since taking over the GM duties in 1997: he has relied on Bonds to carry a bunch of veterans, some of whom were actually exceptional players, into the playoffs. This has sometimes worked, and at any rate led to eight winning seasons in the past ten.

To make Sabean’s job security depend on the results of this season, however, does seem just a tad unfair. Magowan and his parnters are the ones who wanted Bonds back this season, and that decision took much of Sabean’s budget and many of his options from him before he had any time to actually improve the team. The results for 2007 are the same as in years past: Bonds surrounded by a crop of veterans. But Bonds is unlikely to perform as he did in 2001-03, and none of this season’s supporting cast is Jeff Kent.

That Magowan used the same method he used in putting Dusty Baker on the hot seat before the 2002 season (remember Peter’s “We should get to the World Series” speech?), is evidence that despite the fact “we’re all accountable,” the fans should direct their ire at Sabean. Sabean is not owed a contract extension, but he deserves better than this.