I love reminiscing, don’t you? And in wake of the Giants’ renewing the contracts of Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy, let’s reminisce over our 2009 Giants season, shall we?
Here are some statistics for this season’s San Francisco Giants offense, courtesy of baseball-reference.com:
HR: 122 (rank: 29th)
BB: 392 (rank: 30th)
OBP: .309 (rank: 30th)
SLG: .389 (rank: 28th)
OPS: .689 (rank: 30th)
ISO: .132 (rank: 29th)
Those numbers don’t look too good, huh? Amazingly, they are an improvement over the numbers from the past two years. Still, they are a good indicator that as a team, the Giants could not and cannot get on base or hit for power. Period. That is kind of a problem when you’re trying to score runs, I think. Just like having a sucky offense is kind of a problem when a team is trying to win the World Series. Yet we have no need to fear, since our intrepid General Manager, the highly esteemed and revered Brian Sabean just signed a two-year extension with the promise to improve this pitiful offense.
Right?
No?!
According to Sabean, apparently our offense did just fine last year.
From Mister Sabean himself:
“Indeed, when asked about the need for hitters with better on-base percentages, Sabean said almost dismissively, ‘I think we learned this year, as attested by winning 88 games, the most important thing is the final score, winning the game.’”
…By golly, he’s right.
After all, the Giants did win 88 games behind their outstanding pitching and solid defense, despite Sabean failing choosing not to scrap together even some modicum resembling a major-league offense for the team, and despite having really only one (Panda-shaped) above-average position player consistently in their lineup. With grit, determination, hustle, and most importantly (according to Sabean) winning they managed to sneak into the playo-
Oh.
Oh, wait.
…What?
We… we didn’t… make the playoffs? We didn’t make the playoffs with the worst offense in the major leagues? We didn’t make the playoffs after trading two of our top five pitching prospects for a nobody and a gimp who ended up producing nada? With Aaron Rowand, Edgar Renteria, and Randy Winn getting paid $10 million each to stink it up every day? With our players being mismanaged night in and night out by Bruce Bochy? With our multitudes and multitudes of gamers and our winning?!
And we still re-sign Sabean?
Go figure.
It’s not like we haven’t had this discussion before. When was the last time the Giants made the playoffs? 2003? From there, year after year, seasons have gone down in flames. If any other professional in the world had the quality of job performance Sabean has had over the past six years, he would have been fired. Fired fired fired.
But no, Sabean doesn’t need to change a thing! He’s obviously got it figured out:
“The longer I do this the smarter I get,” Sabean said. “And this team, especially with Bruce’s guidance, is probably one of my best experiences as a GM, to learn more about people in baseball. We’re at a good place and time to use this season as a springboard and I’m very honored I can continue in my capacity.”
Ladies and gentlemen, the General Manager of your San Francisco Giants. For the next. Two. Years.
…Meanwhile, the Dodgers laugh.
Posted by bmwong 
