“The contracts of Winn, Morris, Molina, Benitez and I’m sure the next soon to be Giant, Jeff Suppan make as much sense as an 8 mpg hummer in a global economy screaming for oil and an environment yearning for relief…not to mix grievences.”

My Revision:

The contracts of Winn, Morris, Molina, Benitez, BOOGER BARY Z’s, Failure Feliz and Error on an easy play RAY RAY make as much sense as an 8 mpg hummer in a global economy screaming for oil and an environment yearning for relief…not to mix grievences.

HOWEVER,

I am very pleased with the signing of Aurilia and Roberts. At least the Giants signed some guys with hustle and heart.

Sabean has been thinking out of the box. Regarding the major league roster, he had been mineing what I suppose we can call “oldball”. The Hardball Times had an article about how there is a jump in production for the average player in their late 30’s, based on some research they did. They theorized that this jump is mainly because by then, the older, no longer useful players would not be given a chance to play anymore (think Edgardo Alfonzo) and said that Sabean had apparently been playing his version of Moneyball, which is not about doing it like the A’s but is about exploiting inefficiencies in the market place to get talent cheaper (think Marquis Grissom).

In addition, in his drafts, he has focused exclusively on pitching and improving there. The org is focused on pitching with Tidrow and (formerly) Dobson being the brain trust there. Look at how much mediocre talent is getting today, $10-11M per season. With this focus on pitching, we should be pushing out pitchers, both mediocre and good for many more years, not just the change of guards that we have had in our pitching staff the past two years. The spillover will fuel many trades because we will have young pitchers who can eat innings adequately and those pitchers now command $10-11M per season if they were free agents. That will get us the young position players that we need to go forward and compete.

When you have 11 positions open, you cannot just “go young” or whatever strategy you want to do, you have to take what the market will give you. Apparently they did try to go young but was spurned by the players (luckily, in my opinion). He has staggered the expiration of the contracts signed so that some go in 2007, 2008, and 2009, so it will not be as bad in the future in terms of finding new players and he can try to follow closely to a strategy.

Sabean has never said anything publicly without trying to follow up on it. He has always been reticient to say anything publicly so when he does, it has more impact because you know that that is what he intends. Sometimes it just don’t work out, but he publicly said it, I would have to believe that is the strategy he will hew to for the future.