Are the Giants obliged to go for it?

David Pinto makes a controversial point about the Sanchez for Alderson trade on Baseball Musings, saying Giants fans who dislike the trade are wrong.

YOU HAVEN'T WON A CHAMPIONSHIP IN 55 YEARS!

There are a few franchises that haven't won in such a long time that they have an obligation to mortgage the future to win now when they are in contention. The Cubs, Indians, and Giants are the old school teams in this group, and the Rangers, Astros, Nationals and Padres fit into the new school group.

He notes that with Lincecum and Cain and extra days off, the team has a chance to win the World Series if it gets in the playoffs, and a trade that gets just one or two extra wins this year could do that.

Do you agree with him?

Posted By: The Sporting Green (Email) | July 30 2009 at 11:49 AM

Change at the top

Peter Magowan will step down at the end of this season and William Neukom will take over as managing general partner. What do you think about this change in leadership?

Posted By: The Sporting Green (Email) | May 16 2008 at 12:55 PM

Penalize the Giants?

Members of Congress are putting pressure on Bud Selig to penalize the Giants for allegedly ignoring evidence of steroid use. Is the team being unfairly singled out? Should Brian Sabean be suspended for failing to eject Greg Anderson from the clubhouse?

Posted By: The Sporting Green (Email) | January 16 2008 at 12:46 PM

Giants Are All Talk, No Action

By Betting Fool

Sporting Green Staff

So there goes Andruw Jones. To the Dodgers.

Miguel Cabrera? Gone?

Alex Rodriguez? Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!

The Giants need a bat, a big bat. But these linup-fixers are slowly, surely going to other bat racks.

Andruw Jones at $18 million a year? OK, maybe the Dodgers can have him.

But WHAT IN THE HECK are the Giants going to do? Anything?

So far. Omar is back! Super. Terrific. Maybe he'll be here for his 50th birthday.

More Dave Roberts! More Wynn! More Dorkmeier and Sheerhose! Free-Lew! Good God.

Toronto slugger Alex Rios could be headed our way. Perhaps for a young pitcher who could anchor a rotation for a decade.

Sounds shaky.

Miguel Tejada? Poisoned by Baltimore.

Scott Rolen? Way over the hill and so far into Tony La Russa's doghouse that Mr. ARF can't wait to ship Rolen anywhere, if the right deal is there.

La Russa's trash? No thanks.

Pitchers and catchers report in a few weeks, well, several weeks.

But the roster looks as bad as it did at the end of the miserable 2007 season. Maybe worse.

Without Bonds, the dugout may be free of some massive headaches but that offense isn't going to cause any headaches for opposing pitchers.

A few laughs, maybe.

Speaking of laughter, anyone else have the thought that somehow, maybe, in an awful nightmare but so real it scares the hell out of anyone who ever watched Ron Hunt get hit by a pitch -- that Barry will be back?

Have a nice day!

Posted By: The Sporting Green (Email) | December 05 2007 at 11:12 PM

Get in the A-Rod derby?

Bruce Jenkins lists the Giants as one of the candidates to get into the A-Rod sweepstakes. Would that be a good idea?

Posted By: The Sporting Green (Email) | October 31 2007 at 11:35 AM

An offer they can't refuse

OK, Giants fans, you can pretty much forget having bragging rights over those people in green and gold for a while. Now, just for the chat of it, it's time to play GM.

You've seen the A's - more than you'd care to at this point. If you were Giants GM Brian Sabean for a day, and you could trade any Giants position player or pitcher straight up for any Athletic who plays the same position - or has the same spot in the rotation - would you do it?

If so, which move would you make? Bonds for Buck? Vizquel for Crosby? Lou Seal for Thumper?

Come on, there must be somebody on the other side of the bay you secretly wish were in the orange-and-black ... isn't there?

Posted By: The Sporting Green (Email) | June 09 2007 at 10:23 PM

Playing through injury

When Brian Sabean rails on his team for "not staying healthy," does he have a point, or he is he just losing it? And what would he think if he were pulling the strings on the A's banged-up roster?

Posted By: The Sporting Green (Email) | June 03 2007 at 11:09 AM

The identity of the new "whipping boy"

By SFGate.com columnist Betting Fool

Like many Giants season ticket holders, I woke up this morning and started pinching myself all over. I had several welts before I realized the news was real: Armando Benitez was a Marlin.

Most important, his Giants locker had no more Armando and zero Benitez. His fishy smell is in Florida. Kinda perfect, all things considered.

The trade was for some dude named Messenger. Hell, they could have traded him for a Quicksilver Messenger Service cassette tape and I'd have been happy.

Then I read some of GM Brian Sabean's quotes in this morning's Chronicle and, by golly, I got irritated. Buzz? Killed!

In part, Sabes said: "I'll say one thing about Armando. He was strong enough to be a whipping boy. . . . apparently the fans, the press and some people in the clubhouse felt he needed to go. Now we're going to find out what they're made of. We'll see who's strong enough to be the whipping boy now."

Hang on, Mr. Never Done Anything Wrong.

You're the GM, Skipper. Why you listening to Gilligan? If you wanted to keep him, you could have kept him.

Swayed by the fans and the press? The other GMs in the "Been On The Job A Year Too Long Club" would cut off your Cabernet if that was true.

Sabean would never admit that the so-called Lunatic Fringe was right. He was deflecting attention away from the fact that he's put together a dull, old and bad roster this season.

Benitez had to go. Last year.

Sabes lamely deflected further blame from Armando by saying: "The first game here (in New York) we had three players who were not available. That was not Armando's fault."

The Twitch That Scored (his second balk) WAS totally his fault, as was the rocket off the bat of Carlos Delgado. Combined, it was embarrassing.

That loss, and dozens before and after it, can be traced directly to the front office because the three unavailable guys -- Dave Roberts, Ryan Klesko and Ray Durham -- are old.

Durham is coming off a great year, but started the year playing on borrowed time. Of course the Giants gave him almost $15 million for the next two seasons, of which at least 50 games will be lost to injury.

Roberts and Klesko? A waste of time, done and doner.

Much as I like to say "Riiicheeee!" real loud when no one is around, Aurilia is surely headed to the DL at some point, as is Bonds. As is one of the veteran pitchers (Morris or Kline). The team is old, across the board.

But at least they spent way way too much money on a 43-year-old outfielder and a very good, but not great, starter in Barry Zito.

Once again, the Giants plugged oles with broken-down free agents, hoping to ride the smothering red tide of the Bonds wave -- accented this year by the ludicrous and annoying All-Star Game hype -- to another year of superb ticket sales.

Wonderful. What about those 90 losses?

For all the money they spent on Bonds and Zito, the front office could have eaten the ludicrous parking fee of $100 for the All-Star Game week.

I'm sure the front office gerbils who lick Drugged Earwig's boots are in charge of All-Star gouging. So I'll give the Giants a break on that one.

But back in January, when they wanted my season ticket money, I felt gouged. The Giants asked for damn near $30 for each of my seats, nearly double their initial cost six seasons ago.

I have, essentially, bleacher seats in right center. But at least I get to stare at Dave Roberts' rear end, when he's healthy enough to play.

I ponied up, and now I feel like a horse's ass.

Not all the offseason additions were shaky. Bengie Molina is terrific. And since he's been here, Omar has been stellar. He is now, however, 40.

There was even a brief moment earlier this season when the oft-ridiculed farm system appeared productive. But Fred Lewis and Dan Dorkmeier and Todd Linden are all the same guy, quadruple-A players who aren't ready, and probably never will be ready, for "The Show." Lewis is regressing horribly as I type.

The problem, Sabes, is that most of the fans, the Fringe, the idiots who dared hope for Benitez to be shot out of a water cannon and well away from San Francisco, can see through the scheme. They know who to blame.

This is a bad roster, built by a GM who is -- all together now -- the new whipping boy.

Can he handle it?

The smart money, the Fool's money, the Fringe money, says no.

Posted By: SFGate Sports (Email) | June 01 2007 at 09:52 AM

Is this the end for Brian Sabean?

By Betting Fool of SFgate.com

I had a bad feeling going into this season. But it wasn't this bad.

It wasn't 70 wins bad, or Zito 7-12 bad, or Feliz hitting .220 bad. It wasn't another old-and-in-the-way outfield bad.

None of the above has happened yet, but I don't see this roster going anywhere if the Dodgers are indeed decent and the Diamondbacks stay sharp and the Padres and Rockies produce on some early promise they've shown.

It will be GM Brian Sabean's fault and he'll have to go.

No more Brian Sabean show on KNBR, punctuated by 100-word Ralph questions. No more 38-year-old outfielders (those are the young ones) and no more Bonds either. Sabean? Gone!

Good ol' Sabes can point to a seven-year stretch in which the Giants were pretty much in the pennant race every year. That earned the franchise liitle more than the scorn of a Rally Monkey.

He can also point to that horrid meaningless games stat the Giants trot out every time they're close to falling out of the pennant race. The last two seasons have been mostly all meaningless games, by any Candlestick fan's measure.

So while the Giants produce a "meanignless games" number around 20 or 25, fans know it's much closer to 340. This year could add many games to both lists.

I liked the Barry Zito signing. It seemed bold and badly needed. But he plays every fourth or fifth day and seems to pitch with all the fire of a rotting turnip. I know, he's zen, he's mellow. No time to panic, everything will work out. Or it won't. They overpaid for him, by a lot.

It doesn't appear that he'll get much run support, nor will Lowry or Cain or Morris, in the end.

Because the lineup is dotted with crusty veterans on the downslide (Winn, Roberts, Durham, Aurilia), teams won't have to pitch much to Bonds, should he hold up.

Even Omar Vizquel HAS to show sings of age soon and Pedro Feliz makes fans age with his poor batting habits.

So on offense, pop-wise we're left with a Barry and a Bengie (both dreadfully slow) and pray for Todd Linden to suddenly get it.

Anyway you look at it, the Giants have a crummy offense and the defense will likely end up less than stellar as the long season wears on the closing-in-on-40 set.

Could a trade change things? Not enough to save Sabean, who has put together a bad roster this season. The fans know it and the owners know it.

The owners will always owe Sabean for keeping butts in the seats the last few years. And he's brought the owners stacks of money, as they instructed, at the cost of big-name stars or even bidding for said stars.

But because of the impending 71-91 season, Sabean loses many hardcore fans this year and he will be shown the door.

Good thing the farm system is in good shape. Oh . . . wait. While the D-backs and Dodgers are 1-2 atop Baseball America's 2006 rankings of farm systems, the Giants sit at No. 18, below the Cubs, Rangers and Yankees.

Is there ONE hitting prospect out there?

No worries, some 60-year-old GM white guy retread will come in and say the right things and make his moves and then suddenly look around and ask himself: "What have I gotten into?"

Posted By: SFGate Sports (Email) | April 16 2007 at 12:28 PM

Fortifying a future

From Sporting Green columnist Gwen Knapp

At last, the Giants showed some guts -- and some brains directly attached to those newly fortified intestines.

It's not the $126 million for Barry Zito that makes such an impression. It's the seventh year on the contract.

No one else had the stomach for it. They bought the conventional wisdom that pitchers, no matter how young or durable, aren't worth that kind of risk. History said no, don't do it.

Mike Hampton looked every bit as durable as Zito, and at least as gifted, when the Rockies gave him an eight-year $121 million deal in 2001. He virtually vanished from the ranks of elite pitchers.

No one, of course, would dare compare the other $100 million deal for a pitcher. Kevin Brown's seven-year $105 million contract with the Dodgers was a farce because he was 34 in his first season with L.A.

Zito is 28, and Hampton was 29 when he became a Rockie.

More to the point, as the savvy fans relentlessly point out and conventional thinkers just as relentlessly dismiss, Zito has a fluid throwing motion that should keep him healthy for years. Barring a line-drive to his knee, or an injury on the basepaths as he moves to the National League, he should be absolutely fine. (Oh, wait, he has one hit in 29 interleague at-bats. No worries there.)

The biggest concerns about Zito are these:

1) He gives up more fly balls than grounders, and he will face lineups stacked with righthanded hitters, who are likely to pull the ball into left, where the other Barry's 42-year-old knees will be on duty.

2) He received minimal offensive support last year, but are these Giants likely to give him any more? And the defense absolutely won't come close to what the A's provided last year.

3) He matches Matt Morris and immediately has the worst year of his career.

A better bet: Zito gets better each year with the Giants and, along with Matt Cain, gives San Francisco one of the most formidable 1-2 pitching combinations in the game. (That's assuming that Cain stays healthy; he does not come with the Zito warranty.)

Naysayers say that Zito isn't the stone-wall ace that deserves the faith the Giants have placed in him, or the greenbacks they're putting in his bank account. But Billy Beane knows a few things about baseball, and he couldn't bring himself to part with Zito last season, even though he knew the A's would lose the lefty to free agency.

I'd like to see Zito become the kind of pitcher who creates a zone around the entire team, making the players around him raise their level of play. With the Giants, that could be pretty heavy lifting.

Bruce Bochy's job just got a bit easier, though, as he became more than Barry Bonds' usher into history. The Giants kept saying they tried to bring in expensive superstars to dispel the notion that Bonds would still be the centerpiece of the team, but the net effect -- until Thursday -- was a club in a holding pattern.

The Zito signing says that 2007 is the start of something for the team, not the protracted last chapter of Bonds'career. The $126 million was a statement to the fans as much as an investment in Zito, and it requires some quiet, nuanced follow-through. In short, the Giants need to upgrade their farm system. This doesn't take the guts of a seven-year contract to a pitcher. It's just common sense.

They paid a premium for a well-crafted A's product. Seven years from now, if the Giants haven't copied at least a piece of the Oakland manufacturing process, Zito's successes and failures will be almost irrelevant.

Posted By: The Sporting Green (Email) | December 28 2006 at 06:36 PM