MLB 2010 Thread
- Thread starter shayd
- Start date
I'm being facetious. Sabean is notorious for bringing players in because they have, "veteran grit", which in his little pea brain actually amounts to something. Bringing Burrell up is a joke, but then again, I've been saying this entire off-season and into this season that the Giants outplayed their ability last year by huge margin, and it's starting to show prominently.
StanScratch
My Penis Is Dancing!
Reminds me of the Reds' mindset for several years. Pete Rose spoiled Reds fan, making them think for quite a while that all a player needed to become great was to hustle. Talent was not a prerequisite (only problem: Pete Rose actually had talent, too).
So, the club seemed to keep on focusing on collecting guys who played hard, but didn't have a whole lot of talent and many times were not that smart (Pete was no dummy either, at least on the ballfield). Chris Sabo was a poster child for this. Pretty good player, played hard...but dumber than a box of rocks. I hated seeing him get on base, especially with other players (I'm not sure how many times I watched him take an extra base, only to find himself sharing said base with a teammate).
In recent years, Ryan Freel was that guy. Played hard, but Freel really did not have a lot of talent. Yes, he made the highlight reels a lot, but he was also a man of many botched plays. Quite a few times, he would make a diving attempt at a ball, miss it completely, and a single would be played into a double or triple.
Chris Denorfia, Brandon Larson, Wily Tavares, Cory Patterson, Austin Kearns, Jeff Keppinger, Juan Castro, Norris Hopper - just a few 4 and 5 tool players the Reds saw as key components to their ball clubs, rather than fillers that most other teams use them for.
^^^ At least the Reds got some youngsters who look pretty good. Votto, Bruce, Stubbs, the Cuban fireballer. The Giants got Posey and maybe Bumgardner thats it for young talent. Sabean has been in love with the '97 All-Star team for a long time, too bad he signed those players 13 years too late. The Giants seem to be asking of their veteran players to give one more good year or are hoping the oldsters can play as they did in their prime. All these at-bats given to Rowand and Molina hoping they will break out of a career long slump is torture. Giants fans are still waiting for the proposed youth movement that was to happen when Bonds retired. Hoping for a split in Cincy, but the G-Men have sucked against the Reds for a couple of years now, and those boys can bash. Lets see if good pitching indeed trumps good hitting.
Both the Giants and the Reds have for years now been farms for AAAA players - too good for AAA but awful in the majors. Although in fairness, both Denorfia and Kearns had major injuries that derailed their careers. Both looked like above average major leaguers until their respective injuries.
It's funny, many people really do believe in hustle translating to better play, but, like most assumed knowledge in baseball, it's all hogwash.
Oddly enough, Sabean has done an even better job of stripping his team of talent, and instead signing people who he believes can "get the job done". Bengie Molina is the quintessential example. Bengie Molina will not walk to save starving children, and his OBP and wOBP (the most important aspects of an offensive player) are horrendous as a result. But Sabean is still holding out that he'll perform, along with at least 12 other AAAA in the past 4 years.
On a side note, I'm convinced that Sabean intentionally tried to sign people who weren't good, but were fan favorites to replace Bonds and the horrid image he gave the Giants.
My favorite fallacy like that is when teams get people that have good "clubhouse presence" because they think it will make the team win more.
As far as Sabean goes, people sure began thinking he was a lot less smart than he really was after he lost the ability to put Bonds, a bunch of flotsam, and the very occasional alright person that drifted into the system out there and still do good. Of course his abilities as a GM eroded long before Bonds left baseball.
I don't think that's necessarily a fallacy.
As a matter of fact I can think of a whole lot of instances where it's been true.
The first example I thought of was when the Dodgers traded Pedro Guerrero for John Tudor in August of 1988. Now granted Tudor wasn't what might ordinarily be considered a good clubhouse presence. His personality was actually very flinty. But like Kirk Gibson he was a hard-nosed, no-nonsense ballplayer, which is exactly what that clubhouse needed, being as it was the antithesis of Guerrero, who was a prima donna and a bit of a clown. Even though Tudor only pitched a few games down the stretch before being injured the chemistry in the Dodger clubhouse and the performance of the team took a tremendous turn for the better after that trade.
Wait a minute, Brian Sabean had abilities as a GM? :1orglaugh
But you're right.
There have been a number of studies into so called chemistry and it's effects, and in the end, it's a net zero gain. Anecdotally, there are enough examples to go for days, but statistically, those usually aren't backed up. For example, with the 1988 Dodgers, Guerrero added almost nothing to the big pictures, and the Dodgers pitching staff was second in the league in FIP and ERA+ at point, while the offense was next to last in OPS. The Dodgers were doing well simply because their pitching was good all season and their starting outfield had an average OPS+ of 115.
and Sabean looks bad when compared to Billy Beane who some how with much less money usually puts better teams on the field.
the Marlins are calling up Mike Stanton a very good power hitter so far in the minors. they have been comparing him to Miguel Caberra at the same age will be interesting to see how he performs.
red001
the Marlins are calling up Mike Stanton a very good power hitter so far in the minors. they have been comparing him to Miguel Caberra at the same age will be interesting to see how he performs.
red001
Oh there's no comparing the two, even with the chinks in the armor the last few years.
If it were up to me, Dan Uggla would be playing first, Cantu third, and mostly the same from there. While not great, Cantu has at least shown he isn't the black hole of suckiness that Uggla is defensively.
What I think is Billy Beane's biggest problem is that people have caught up to him. At one point you could argue that Beane was the greatest GM in any sport an maybe one of the greatest ever, maybe even the greatest ever in any sport. He had to be smarter than everybody else to compete with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. He probably won more with a bad hand than anybody else, and mostly didn't have to rely on luck to do it.
He was one of the first people that threw out old thinking about anecdotal evidence that didn't amount to much at an organizational level, he was one of the first people that valued the actual ability to play baseball and baseball skills over the traditional 5 "tools", he didn't feel the need to do things just because that's was the way they had always been done, and most importantly he was one of the first people that valued rational statistical information constructed in a way that showed what made actually people better and teams win more. I could also point out that for many years the Athletics had one of the best medical staffs in the league. He also drafted and developed people through the system well, especially pitchers (although getting as many good pitchers as he did might have had a lot of luck involved), and was phenomenal in trading. I remember him totally fleecing teams like the Kansas City among many others back in the day, often multiple times. He was usually good at locking up young players for cheap and letting go others when the time was right. He wasn't afraid to adjust strategy when things called for it and it fit the talent on his team the best. Like where he went from a potent offensive team to one that was defensive and relied heavily on pitching. If one way added up to more wins than the other statistically he wasn't afraid to do it. For a while he might have even been one of the best GMs in mid season adjustments and knowing who to go out and get for the right price.
The problem is that with a huge gap in resources that merely allowed him to put his team on close footing with all the big names with the money. Once others caught on it wasn't going to last like it had. Where before he had to be a lot smarter and savvy just to pull even with teams that had a lot more but weren't run by people at his level, when they started operating a bit smarter they had both that and the resources, and at that point there is only so much you can do to squeeze out all the wins you can.
I think that if MLB economically was run like the NFL with revenue sharing and a salary cap he would have built a long running dynasty, especially if others took longer to adopt sabermetrics, which he never really made a secret he used.
Oh you're absolutely right. Beane has done for the A's what no other GM has really been able to do with a small market team: go from cellar to competitive nearly every year. And don't get me wrong, Beane has made a living getting the better of trades, (Kenny Williams, and Josh Byrnes getting the worst of it) and I hope he does. However, there's no ignoring the absolute train wreck that was the Matt Holliday trade last year, and in the end, the A's didn't get much for Tim Hudson, granted that's hindsight speaking. I usually wait two full seasons before judging any of Beanes trades, but the Holliday trade was an absolutely awful trade for the A's.
In regard to the injuries, the A's at one time had one of the best medical staffs in baseball, however right around 2004 it all turned to dust. The rate of soft tissue injuries in the A's organization the past 6 years has been absolutely unacceptable. They've lost players for a total of 1,456 games in that span, nearly 500 more than the next closest team. Fast forward to now, and 5 of the A's top 15 prospects are injured and in the nebulous, "they've got pain" zone. Sean Doolittle, James Simmons, Andrew Carignan, have all been in this zone for an entire year now. Not to mention Dallas Braden having the nerves in his left foot completely severed while a team doctor tried to biopsy an infection in his foot. The severity and sheer number of injuries on this team has been dreadful for some time now.
That being said, I believe that Billy is getting back to the real money of his strategy, and that is through the draft. I know the A's are probably a full season at minimum from being "rebuilt" in Billys view, however this is the first time in the past decade that the A's have focused on in house development as opposed to trades, which looks very promising to me.
Bottom line, he's still the best at what he does, but money and injuries are starting to balance him out a bit.
All that is probably true. I haven't been able to keep with baseball in any ultra in depth way for 7 or 8 years now. Without a way to watch most of the games, or even a decent Internet connection, it's hard to do.
I do remember hearing about the As medical staff getting poached out about the time I started getting away from the game. I wonder how much that has to do with it. I'm sure finding good medical people is different than finding good players.
Mariners had a very cancerous clubhouse in 08', and it was Griffey who changed all that in 09'. Mariners had the biggest improvement in wins from the year before.
