I think Brian Sabean is a bad GM. Let’s get that out of the way right there. I’m not going to bother proving it, because you probably don’t have five years to read the endless list of idiotic moves, occasionally punctuated by a favorable outcome as a result of pure dumb luck.

But I want to know: at what point does the groupthink prove itself to be more competent than Sabean? I’m sure many, if not most, of you think that you’d do better than Sabean as GM (I know I do), and some of you are probably right, even if most of you are wrong (I probably am). Sabean’s the longest-tenured GM in baseball; that has to mean something. There must be something he’s doing that makes him good at what he does, doesn’t there? Or is it possible that the ownership knows nothing about what makes a good GM, and simply continue to employ Sabean because he’s been doing this awhile, and not on the strength of his individual accomplishments? Part of me thinks that anyone with the money to buy a baseball team is probably pretty good with business and personnel decisions; you don’t get a few billion dollars by being an idiot, and so there must be something that we’re not seeing which makes Sabean a good GM. The other part of me thinks that Neukom has no idea what’s going on, and he retained Sabean because he didn’t know who else to hire, and more importantly, didn’t know how to go about finding someone else to hire.

I digress. The point here is that as a community, most of us are fairly good at evaluating players with statistics (the inability to see a player in person does somewhat mitigate our collective opinion, but then statistics are good predictors of future performance when analyzed correctly), and most of us generally agree on which players should be retained, which players should be cut, which players should be pursued, and which players aren’t worth major league minimum. Nick Johnson is the most prominent example right now; he’s oft-injured, but his high OBP and position for a team with OBP problems and an open first base make him a good match. In fact, the injuries drive down his price, and we may not have much money after Lincecum goes through arbitration, so that may work out in our favor. And most people here think Nick Johnson would be a good acquisition (so would Dan Uggla, depending on the prospect cost, and some prefer Uggla over Johnson, but I believe few here think Johnson is a bad acquisition for us).

Brian Sabean is pursuing Johnson and Uggla. He is also pursuing Adam LaRoche, who would cost quite a bit more than Ryan Garko for the same production. Given he recently non-tendered Garko, his motivation in pursuing the same player for more money is mysterious. Mark DeRosa, a 35 year old infielder, admittedly with considerable position versatility, is also on the radar. DeRosa had a career year with the bat in 2008, but hasn’t been particularly impressive offensively excepting that year, and has declining defense, likely related to his age (his best defensive year was in 2006, primarily as an outfielder and a third baseman, two positions we have pretty well filled). I question why LaRoche, a player who is typically no better than one Sabean just non-tendered, and DeRosa, an older player with declining skills who would devalue our best offensive player by pushing him to first base, are considered valuable acquisitions, especially when they are seeking multiyear deals at anywhere between $7M and $10M per year (maybe he likes players with two capital letters in their last names?). I think most people here share my concerns, and likely for the same or similar reasons.

Mike Cameron is the other position player I like, for his strong centerfield defense and consistent hitting, despite his age. Anything longer than a two year deal is unwise for him, but a one-year pact at a reasonable rate makes him a good target. Again, this is a feeling shared by many here. Sabean has responded by showing interest in Scott Podsednik, who had a career year in 2009 thanks to an inflated BABIP of .342 (career .321) which pushed his average and OBP to .304 and .353 respectively. Given that Sabean hasn’t had a lot of luck signing players coming off career years to expensive contracts (see: Aaron Rowand), one would think Podsednik’s numbers, inconsistent with his career performance (he had his best year since 2003, and his first in positive WAR territory since 2005), would serve as a warning sign, as would his typically bad defense. Many people here already know this, have pointed it out, and have rightly concluded that Podsednik is a bad acquisition, especially when a player like Cameron, who has produced consistently, is on the market.

In the case of Sabean vs. the Groupthink, it seems far too easy to go with the groupthink, whose positions are clear and based on statistical evidence, when Sabean seems to have little reasoning other than "AH LIKEZ DIS GUY HE GUD!" Reasoning like that results in the signing of an interesting guy you met at the bar to be the starting left fielder. Is it possible that Sabean is truly stupid enough to think that Podsednik, DeRosa, and LaRoche are good acquisitions? Or is Sabean’s interest not genuine, intended to drive the price up and draw attention away from his real targets: Johnson/Uggla and Cameron? The fact that he’s got offers on the table to three different infielders (Johnson, DeRosa, and LaRoche are three different infielders…) would seem to point to the former. Yet it still remains difficult to believe that Neukom and the rest of the managing partners are dumb enough to stick by Sabean while he butchers the team, especially when they are obviously generally successful and intelligent people.

I’d seriously like to know what you think: is Sabean just as stupid as he seems to be, and the collective opinion of some of the more hardcore fans, substituted for Sabean’s, would result in a better team, or are there unknown factors that we, not being major league general managers, and having no real experience building major league baseball teams, which create the illusion of idiocy without the actual content? Is it possible that Neukom & Co. are incompetent when it comes to finding and acquiring talented management, or do they merely combine inexperience with exposure to information we are not privy to?

So there’s pretty much a universal feeling of anger and frustration and sadness here regarding Sabean’s retention, mostly deserved. The man did engineer quite a few winning teams and pulled off several good trades, but the former were mostly the result of having one of the game’s all-time best players and the latter were overshadowed by the myriad of awful trades and free agent signings that marred the team and pushed it into several years of suck. Most of the blame for this period falls on Sabean (with a little distributed between various managers and owners), and again, there’s good reason for that: he’s the GM, probably the most powerful voice when it comes to who to sign and who to trade for and who to hold on to. This got me thinking: why are we entrusting this one man with the future of the team?

I’d like to suggest a fairly radical idea: replace the solitary GM with three co-GMs, a triumvirate whose decisions as a body will require the assent of at least two members (it has to be three if not one; two GMs would result in frequent and unproductive dissent). With one general manager, too much of the team’s direction is placed in one man’s hands; sure, he has plenty of scouts, assistants, and the manager giving him advice and altering his direction, as well as an owner who overrules him, but ultimately I feel the single GM has too much control; to say he holds the team’s future in his hands is a pretty accurate assessment. You don’t have to go far to find idiot GMs on failing teams (Dayton Moore, JP Riccardi until a month ago, Walt Jocketty, etc) or great GMs building contenders (Theo Epstein, Andrew Friedman, etc).

So here’s what you do: you replace the GM with the GMs, three equal individuals, each from a different perspective. One sabremetrician, one experienced scout, and one “baseball executive” (I’ll define that more later). This will balance theoretical and experiential knowledge to best judge which players are worth it and which players are not.

The sabremetrician is a pretty obvious role: one guy who knows what all those obscure, yet highly important, stats mean, how to calculate them, and how to apply them. This is the guy that reminds you not to sign Player X despite his coming off a career year, because his HR/FB rate is inflated and his BABIP is 50 points above his career average. It’s the guy that explains Matt Cain was a good pitcher last year, but he wasn’t 2.89 ERA good, he just had a crazy LOB% and generally got lucky. This helps guard against the eyeball signings and using irrelevant stats to evaluate players.

The scout is the guy who spent twenty years in the minor league system and can tell you the entire roster of every affiliate and what flavor ice cream they like most. He can tell you if a guy is going to go the Mark Prior route or the Tim Lincecum route (hopefully). The sabremetrician can tell you that Prospect X looks great because he posted a .250 ISO and a .400 wOBA in college, but the scout can point out that his swing has got holes in it, he can’t hit a curveball (ok, so the sabremetrician could figure that out too) and whether he’s a guy you can fix or a lost cause. This is an important role mostly for the draft and minor league system, but also for knowing which young guys you want and which ones you don’t (for trades/non-tendering), and which guys are ready for the big club and which ones need more seasoning. He’s the guy that will tell you Tim Alderson looked good, but he was generally overvalued and therefore expendable (but he still should’ve fetched more than just Freddy Sanchez).

The “baseball executive” is the negotiator, veteran player expert, and the guy who knows how to work the system. The scout and the sabremetrician aren’t going to be very useful when it comes to determining market value and swapping players; you need a guy who knows a bit about the farm system, and a bit about the stats, and a lot about what makes a player want to come to a certain team. He’s also going to be the authority on free agents, ideally in-between the sabremetrician and the scout. The sabremetrician would say to Lincecum, “We’re prepared to offer you $20 million a year because Fangraphs values your performance at $35 million and your FIP was this and your BB% was this and…”. The scout would say to Lincecum, “We’re going to offer your $2 million because that’s a big raise off you’re $400,000 salary and we’ve got these great prospects coming up and they’re going to be cheap and amazing and you’re replaceable” (Ok, so they wouldn’t be that extreme, but you get the drift; the scout, being focused on the farm system, would undervalue an established major league producer and overvalue the prospects). The “baseball executive” would say to Lincecum, “Look, we know you like San Francisco, and we would love for you to stay here. We also know that you’re really the first guy to put up numbers like this in his first year, but you have to know that we’re weighed down by the Zito and Rowand contracts, and we don’t have that much payroll space. We also have to be careful with pitchers, because they tend to be more unpredictable than other players. But you’re still going to get a great deal, because we realize how special a player you are we’d really like to lock you up long term. We can offer you Contract X based on what Cole Hamels and Zack Greinke got and where we feel we are as a team and where we think we’ll be in a few years.” He’s going to go the middle route between scout and sabremetrician, ideally be a guy who’s worked in baseball operations for a while and knows the business and knows the agents and knows the other executives, like Brian Sabean without the stupid. The “baseball executive” is a bit more difficult to define, but it’s certainly an important role.

I know the scout and the sabremetrician already exist within the system, and I know the “baseball executive” is essentially the current GM (he’s supposed to be), but this would put all three on an equal playing field, and force them to listen to each other and find reasons for their decisions. They’d have to justify themselves not to a possibly ignorant owner, or underlings who can be pushed aside, but to two equals who have the power to overrule them if they’re not providing a good enough argument. Yes, this system could end up being problematic (especially if personal issues arise), but I think it’d be a lot fairer and produce better results than what we’ve got now. The three perspectives need to be equal, because their importance is equal; Sabean’s “baseball executive” doesn’t do any better than Billy Beane’s “sabremetrician” because there is no balance in their roles within the Giants or A’s organizations.

Thoughts?

The Dodgers' fantastic lineup and decent staff are starting to get very expensive.

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Johan Santana of the New York Mets has been fined after throwing at both Pablo Sandoval and Bengie Molina three innings after David Wright was hit in the head with a pitch by Matt Cain on August 15th. As Giants fans, we have to ask: where does this leave us?

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It's radical.

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I just wanted to know if ANYONE has EVER seen an ump reverse a call on ANY play (not involving instant replay). I've never seen it, and I've never seen any ump look like they might consider it. When the players/manager come out to argue, they usually end up yelling while the ump looks bored and annoyed.

My problem with it is that it NEVER seems to help, and if you get tossed for arguing, then you're hurting the team. I'm not saying some close calls don't deserve a good "Dude, seriously" but the in-your-face insanity that some players/managers seem to get into is just stupid. The ump isn't going to reverse the call, and then you're going to get tossed, which is less important for managers because a) they're pretty much a vestigial organ anyway and b) most of them sit in the clubhouse and send orders up, so tossing them doesn't do too much.

Does anyone think Carlos Zambrano's temper tantrum was actually going to make the ump go "Yeah, you're right, he was out, and I'm sorry"? Because I've watched a lot of baseball, and I've never seen a reversed call except on instant replay.

So I'd offer this piece of advice to all those players and managers out there: If you feel the call went the wrong way, politely, quickly, and quietly make your position known, don't repeat yourself for more than a minute, and don't expect to get your way, because if you get tossed the team is what gets hurt the most. I know tempers can flare, but goddamn it we're paying you millions of dollars to play this game.