I got an email this afternoon from Bleacher report regarding if Brian Sabean is a good General Manager or not. The inspiration for this writer was the Fred Lewis trade. I have allready given my opinioin that I do not believe that the trade was in the best interest of the Giants, I believe and stand by that assertion still.
The author was attempting to make the point that Fred Lewis was not a good player with the Giants and that he has done well witht the Blue Jays is irrelevant. I couldn't disagree more. It is one of the largest failings of this front office is utter disregard for looking at the empirical performance of young players when making judgements about them.
Somehow that has seemed to work for the pitching staff. Maybe the scouting types and the numbers types like the same kinds of things in pitchers you getting guys out and getting a good number of guys to strike out. However when it comes to evaluating hitters the front office seems to rely on gut instincts and how players perform in small samples weighs heavily in their minds.
This makes me think of the Eugenio Velez situation. Fred Lewis and Eugion Velez are not all that different kinds of players. I have made the argument that Fred Lewis is a better player but they share some of the same faults (mental lapses on defense, poor baserunning ability for their speed).
The Giants however had the impression that Eugenio was the more valuable player, I am not sure how they came to the decision but I can only assume it is because 1. When he came up in 2009 he had a hot start which in the think skulls of the Giants front brass ment that he learnt something new or finaly figured it out. This can and does happen but what happened next was that he regressed back to his old self as he got more and more opportunities. 2. They think that he is more versital because he can play multiple positions on the feild, he plays them all rather poorly with left field being the least poor but that doens't matter because well he has gloves for multiple positions and that means he is valuable.
This to me is just plain silly, any person who has spent any time looking at the statiscs of the two players with the names marked out would think that Fred Lewis is the better player, excpet for the Giants.
Another straw man that the author tries to erect is that because Brian Sabean is the longest tenured GM would just defer to his expertise and give him the benifit of the doubt. To a certain extent he does deserve some defference but over the years he shown that he is not good at building a major league offense. He had the greatest hitter of the generation to cover up his errors for the longest time but as soon as Barry Bonds was gone the offense sunk to the bottom of the league in hitting. Over his tenure we have failed to develop any offensive all stars, think about that: For fifteen years Brian Sabean has lead this team without drafting and developing a position player good enough to make an all star team. Heck we have only had a handfull that were actually league average players which would be all that this team needs right now.
I see this as a failure that is on him. Yes he has been in charge while the pitching staff was assembeled but that seems to be what he is best at and that maybe we need to get him some help with offensive development.
So to go after the writers statement that it doesn't matter if San Francisco is enjoying a good season or exceeding expectations, that isn't good enough. We expect more than medicority, we expect more than just having a good season or doing better then expected and I am sure that Brian Sabean and every fan would agree with that.
I will conclude by saying that Brain Sabean has done a good job, he has built a good team that can win 80-85 games, but maybe it will take someone else to get us over the hump and to the promise land. If it does happen I will tip my cap to him and write that if the team wins a championship to send him a ring but maybe the time has come to move in a different direction.
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