Idiot

Sabean specifically brought up the Winn trade on KNBR.
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MS <none.RemoveThis@attbi.com> wrote in news:2008073120522316807-none@attbicom:

> Other teams just wanted to unload poor prospects - I'm glad that
> Sabean didn't take the bait. Since nobody will give the Giants anybody
> of value, Sabean will have to rely on free agents.

That's nonsense. We don't know what was available. Obviously, no one
is going to give up a great-looking prospect for Winn or, even worse,
Aurilia, but that's no excuse for doing nothing at all. Plenty of legit
major leaguers were once 2nd tier prospects. The Giants need talent,
and Sabean missed a chance to add some.

(And it's practically impossible to build a team using just free agents.
More to the point, it's practically impossible to build a team if you
tightly restrict yourself to proven major leaguers. It just gives too
much of an edge to the teams using all the other sources of talent).

JHB
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Jonathan Bernstein wrote:

>
> Now, granted, it's mlb.com beat writer Chris Haft talking in that first
> paragraph, but it sure sounds like he's just paraphrasing Sabean. Where
> to begin? First, Winn of course wasn't young in 2005; that was his 31
> year old season.

Ahhh... Sabean's preference for PMLV, yet again. Plus his definition of
"young" (implied, lots of upside) as anybody under the age of 30.

> And, second, Winn has been a total disaster for the
> Giants after his flash in the pan in 2005. He was terrible in 2006,
> maybe a bit over league average in 2007, and he's been bad again in
> 2008.

Yeah, but Sabean's standard excuse for predictable age-related declines
is "He's just in a slump. Give him time, he'll come around".


>
> (Checking...Henry Schulman has pretty much the same story -- it's pretty
> clear that Winn is Sabean's idea of a great pick-up. Unreal.).
>
> Winn is a major leaguer, but he's not what you want "ideally"; he's what
> a contending team with a big whole might want to get by at a position.
> What you want, ideally, is a Bagwell, or a Smoltz -- or a Hanley Ramirez
> or Jason Bay. Sure, there are guys who get traded who fit that ideal;
> Adrian Gonzalez fits, as did Dan Haren (with the A's). But to pick that
> as your ideal...well, if you only want proven major leaguers in
> rebuilding trades, you're going to get stuck with an empty bag every
> time. Which, of course, is what happened to the Giants today.

I don't think Sabean thinks he's rebuilding. I think he thinks he's
trying to make this year's team incrementally better, the same way he
did several years ago when the Giants were contenders.


Smith.
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trout <nothanks DeleteThis @nothing.org> wrote in
news:4MCdnSGmkYVgVg_VnZ2dnUVZ_gGdnZ2d@giganews.com:

> Sabean specifically brought up the Winn trade on KNBR.

As a good thing?

Granted, Yorvit isn't anything more than a backup catcher and Foppert
fizzled, so it's not like the Giants lost anything, but....

JHB
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DLew022.DeleteThis@gmail.com wrote:

>
> I still think they'll move Winn in a waiver deal but this whole thing
> just speaks to Sabeans ineptitude. As much as I think Damon Bruce
> blows, he was right last night (or the night before) when he said
> Sabean screwed the team and himself by signing Aurillia/Winn/Durham to
> such disproportionate contracts....in terms of money paid for degree
> of talent.

The thing that Sabean seems to miss is that once players reach 30 (give
or take year or two), players will start to decline, and once that
starts happening, with each season, a player will generally be less
productive than he was the year before. This varies widely -- some
players start their decline earlier than others, some players decline
faster than others. Some can slow the decline some by improved fitness,
experience/wisdom, etc., for others it's accelerated (injuries).

Somehow, Sabean seems to think that he can beat the odds, but I don't
know why. Perhaps it's that he becomes enamored with players when they
are at their primes and turning a blind eye to the predictable decline.
Some of it seems to be excessive optimism that they can produce at
previous levels. Even though Sabian's dislike of statistical analysis
is notorious, it doesn't take an in-depth sabermetric analysis to know
that a player is probably going to be less productive at age 34 than he
was at 31, and that there are very few players still playing at age 36
or older.

In some organizations such a perspective might be based on a hope that
they can get name players cheaper, but that certainly doesn't fit
Sabean, giving out big-money contracts (which might have been
appropriate, if the players had been around 5 years earlier) to guys
that are clearly not going to produce at those kind of levels. Plus the
insanity of back-loaded multi-year deals (where the biggest money is at
the end, when the player has declined the most).

As for Randy Winn, it looks like Sabean sees only what he got the first
year here, and seems to be beyond rationalism in his hope/expectation
that Winn can continue to produce at that level, and that Winn is an
everyday player that the Giants can be building on, despite there being
no good reason for that expectation.

Thus, we keep getting the situation of players like Winn, Aurelia,
Vizquel, Durham, Marquis Grissom, Michael Tucker, etc. -- payers whose
only upside is in whatever ability they have to slow the degradation of
performance from the aging process, that have big contracts, and whose
value to other teams is, at best, a minimum-salary veteran that can be
added to the roster of a contending team for the remainder of the season.

If I'm another GM, the only way I'm interested in any of those guys is
if the Giants eat all their salary above the minimum, and the only thing
I'm willing to give back is a prospect from Low-A that's whose chances
of getting past AAA is pretty doubtful.

Smith
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NFN Smith wrote:

> Somehow, Sabean seems to think that he can beat the odds, but I don't
> know why.

Well, he did a reasonable job of beating the odds up until 2002'ish. But either
that was a random fluke or he has totally lost whatever he might have had back than.
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Jamal Bernhard wrote:
> NFN Smith wrote:
>
>> Somehow, Sabean seems to think that he can beat the odds, but I don't
>> know why.
>
> Well, he did a reasonable job of beating the odds up until 2002'ish. But either
> that was a random fluke or he has totally lost whatever he might have had back than.


I've noted before that I think he got lucky often enough early that he's
convinced himself that he's a lot better than he really is.

Plus, it's one thing making trades to tweak the edges of a team that can
win 95 games (and had Barry Bonds), it's something else to tweak the
edges of a team that's not going to win much more than 70 games.

The latter is not much different than the proverbial "rearranging the
deck chairs on the Titanic".

I suppose that it's not a lot different than a novice who goes into a
casino and wins a lot at a blackjack table in the first couple of hours,
and then keeps playing, thinking that he can sustain winning. When the
inevitable happens, and his stack of chips starts getting smaller,
instead of cashing in and walking away, he keeps playing, thinking he
can recoup his losses. Far too often, when he leaves, it's empty
handed, and the casino has all his money -- both his original money and
everything he won.

Smith
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NFN Smith wrote:

> I've noted before that I think he got lucky often enough early that he's
> convinced himself that he's a lot better than he really is.
>
> Plus, it's one thing making trades to tweak the edges of a team that can
> win 95 games (and had Barry Bonds), it's something else to tweak the
> edges of a team that's not going to win much more than 70 games.

Yep, when you have a guy on your team that makes other players better, it makes
the GM look better too.

> I suppose that it's not a lot different than a novice who goes into a
> casino and wins a lot at a blackjack table in the first couple of hours,
> and then keeps playing, thinking that he can sustain winning. When the
> inevitable happens, and his stack of chips starts getting smaller,
> instead of cashing in and walking away, he keeps playing, thinking he
> can recoup his losses. Far too often, when he leaves, it's empty
> handed, and the casino has all his money -- both his original money and
> everything he won.

Yeah, except that Sabean gets his money no matter how poorly he does.
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On Jul 31, 8:44 pm, Jonathan Bernstein <j... DeleteThis @socrates.berkeley.edu>
wrote:

> Sabean says he was surprised that there was no interest in Aurilia.

He lies. ESPN reported the Twins were offering Boof Bonser for
Aurilia.
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Jamal Bernhard <noone.DeleteThis@nowhere.net> wrote in
news:nHIkk.34504$ZE5.8147@nlpi061.nbdc.sbc.com:

> NFN Smith wrote:
>
>> Somehow, Sabean seems to think that he can beat the odds, but I don't
>> know why.
>
> Well, he did a reasonable job of beating the odds up until 2002'ish.
> But either that was a random fluke or he has totally lost whatever he
> might have had back than.

He didn't, really, outside of Bonds. Yes, Kent was a big plus...but
Vizcaino, Hamilton, Hill...those guys mostly didn't beat the odds.
Burks, yes; ROOS!, no.

My guess is that the typical situation was Durham over the last two
years, or Charlie Hayes 1998-1999 -- Hayes did well by his standards in
1998, but tanked totally in 1999. Durham did fine this year, but not
last. I agree with the previous poster that Sabean probably remembers
the good and discounts the bad.

JHB
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Jonathan Bernstein wrote:
> I agree with the previous poster that Sabean probably remembers
> the good and discounts the bad.

Right. In his eyes, the anomalies are the failures, not the successes.

However, we're now to the point where there's sufficient accumulation of
failures, and few enough successes (especially recently) that it's
getting really hard to brush off the failures as anomalies. He really
hasn't shown that he's capable of repeating his successes.

Sabean's alchemy work is producing a rather impressive collection of
iron pyrite.

Smith
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Jonathan Bernstein wrote:

>> Well, he did a reasonable job of beating the odds up until 2002'ish.
>> But either that was a random fluke or he has totally lost whatever he
>> might have had back than.
>
> He didn't, really, outside of Bonds. Yes, Kent was a big plus...but
> Vizcaino, Hamilton, Hill...those guys mostly didn't beat the odds.
> Burks, yes; ROOS!, no.

Nen, yes; Schmidt, yes; Benito, yes; JT, yes (though others will disagree)

Vizcaino, Hill, etc. did not beat the odds, but they were not total flops either
-- many of those guys did about what we expected. His track record was far from
perfect, but he had more solid hits than he did total flops back then, and IMO
was getting more out of his veteran free-agent signings than other GMs around
the league. Of course, as was pointed out, Bonds had something to do with that too.
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On 2008-08-01 12:51:54 -0700, NFN Smith <worldoff9908.TakeThisOut@sacbeemail.com> said:

> Jonathan Bernstein wrote:
>> I agree with the previous poster that Sabean probably remembers the
>> good and discounts the bad.
>
> Right. In his eyes, the anomalies are the failures, not the successes.
>
> However, we're now to the point where there's sufficient accumulation
> of failures, and few enough successes (especially recently) that it's
> getting really hard to brush off the failures as anomalies. He really
> hasn't shown that he's capable of repeating his successes.
>
> Sabean's alchemy work is producing a rather impressive collection of
> iron pyrite.
>
> Smith

and everyone in this newsgroup remembers the bad and discounts the
good. We did have a long stretch of winning teams starting when PacBell
Park opened.
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