Idiots Write About Sports

If there’s a consensus in the picks for the NL West this year, it’s that there’s no consensus. Some people illogically reason that since the Giants won last year, and nobody else in the division has stepped up, the Giants are the team to beat. Which might have more merit if these Giants weren’t a pale shadow of last year’s team, let alone the 2002 squad.

Others say, hey, them Dodgers is interesting. Except they’re not interesting. The only think interesting about the Dodgers is that they might become interesting once Paul DePodesta is allowed to settle in and work his Sabermetric magic. For now, they’re a poor hitting team that may no longer be able to be saved by its Brown-less pitching staff.

The Diamondbacks have a refreshed Randy Johnson and an improved line-up, but they’re so very old. The Padres are up and coming and have a new ballpark — and never let anyone tell you that having a new park can’t be a huge boost to your confidence. And the Rockies, well, okay, they’re bad.

I can see a case for all but the Rockies to win the division. But despite my open mind, I have been driven into a fit of madness by the Giants preview at Baseball Primer.

Let’s set aside some of the article’s attempts at humor (a riff on the Brian Sabean “I am not an idiot” crack that’s either botched comedy or shows the writers to be ignorant asses… I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say it’s a botched comedy riff). Let’s set aside some of its very interesting points, too — namely that XYZ Park (my new name for Pac Bell, uh, SBC Park — I will also hereinafter refer to PNC Park as ABC Park) may actually be a worse hitter’s park than conventional metrics show, because Barry Bonds’ presence skews the results. I’m not sure if that’s true (you’d think that Park Factor would be built to adjust for error-causing agents like Barry), but it’s fascinating.

Anyway, let’s skip to the particular ax I want to grind: Ken Adams and Don Malcolm’s assumption that by failing to sufficiently stock the Giants roster in the offseason, Brian Sabean has blundered.

This is a frequent criticism of Sabean, and far be it from me to call the man who procured the Three Right Fielders Who Shall Not Be Named and the Two Infielders Who Shall Be Called XeiXi (let’s pronounce that shee-shee, shall we?) a frickin’ genius, but it’s one that misses the mark by a mile.

Say you’re the Giants’ GM. You’ve got one to three years of Barry left, hopefully at a continued superhuman level for as long as superhumanly possible. You know that he’s your whole team. If he does well, you will likely be in contention, at least through midseason. If he does badly or gets hurt, you’re dead in the water. So what do you do? Do you pre-emptively stock up on players in the offseason? That’s one way to go, but apparently the debt service on XYZ Park makes that problematic at best.

No, what you do is what Sabean did. Tread water a little, making good moves when you get the chance (Pierzynski) and filling in spots with hole-fillers elsewhere (Tomko, two of the TRF’s). And then you wait. You wait to see if Schmidt is healthy or not, if Nen is healthy or not, if any of your starters are better than expected or worse than expected. You let your hitters hit, to see if the Alfonzo we saw late last year and in the playoffs is the real guy, to see if Ray Durham can manage to walk through the clubhouse without breaking or straining something, to see if one of the TRF’s can step it up.

And you wait to see if Barry is Barry, if he’s no longer himself, or if he’s torn a ligament during an ill-advised turn around third on a game-winning hit in San Diego.

Yes, Sabean could have signed someone hot in the off-season. But with the Giants’ budget, he would have been prevented from making any big moves later in the year. And when you’ve got Barry, who is one bad dice throw away from retirement, as your entire team, isn’t it better to wait and see what happens? Not to mention that it’s always better to wait until you see what other cards are on the table before placing your bets. Nobody, not the prognosticators and not the GMs, knows what the NL West will bring. What if the Diamondbacks go on a tear and are 10 ahead at the break? What if all the other teams are godawful and the Giants are 10 ahead?

Then, come mid-season, Sabean will look at his team, gauge the status of his superstar, and make his move. He will either have money in reserve (saved from the $7.75 beers at XYZ Park, perhaps?) or he will be so tantalizingly close to forming a winner that he will sweet talk ownership into taking on salary to make one more Sisyphean run at the World Series. And he will trade for the piece he needs the most, mortgaging another young pitching prospect to make one more one-last-run-before-Barry-retires run.

Or Barry will be sitting at home with a big owie in his hamstring, at which point Sabean will sit on his hands, count the money he saved by not signing Greg Maddux, and begin to plan his next move. Which might be to find Barry’s replacement… or force the Giants to start looking for their next general manager.