AT&T plays a HUGE role in the team's lack of offense. Last year's team was 9th in the league in runs scored and 6th in HR's but tied for 5th in the league in runs scored ON THE ROAD AND 1ST IN HR'S! It's hard to judge a team's offense without a level playing field. This year's team lost 2 of it's best offensive players in Posey and Sanchez, and pretty good offensive performers in Schierholtz and Burrell due to injuries. Which great free agent hitter did you want him to sign: Jason Bay (who the Mets would love to dump), Matt Holliday ( a good hitter, who's not worth what he's getting paid without Pujols in front of him and Berkman behind him). Maybe Jason Werth and his Zito-like contract. Or, how about Mark teixeira, a .250 hitter in a ballpark made for lefties surrounded by great hitters? Do you really think he'd put up those power numbers at AT&T? He's still owed $135 million over the next years. Which one of our starters Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, would you NOT want to be able to sign because Sabean gave bloated contracts to overrated hitters?

I have to think the Giants could sign a back of the rotation veteran pitcher with this park just about any year. I wonder what Sanchez and Wheeler + could have netted in the off season in terms of a decent team controlled player?

We're kind of on the same page, but my conclusions are a little different. I just took the total runs scored rankings. The runs allowed ranking. The numbers of wins and where they finished in the standings. Those are bottom line numbers, not a stat analysis. But if you look at the acquisitions (not including Bonds) during the first 5 years and compare them with those afterward, you will see quite a distinction in the quality and quanity of players Sabean brought in. Last year was indeed a fluke. A well-deserved one of course. And one that I will literally carry with me until the day I drop dead. I enjoy your work Chris. http://wherehaveyougonejoe.com/public_html/articl...

Evaluating free-agent players outside the organization and signing them has never been Sabean's strong suit. He's done better with acquisitions via trade. While those players haven't always been superstars like Kent and Schmidt, he has managed to almost entirely avoid trading away actual future Major League talent in exchange for those mediocre to good players (the Liriano and Nathan trade being the sole exception). In addition to free-agent acquisitions not exactly being the GM's strong suit, the Giants also face the challenge of having to convince good hitters to sign here. Players that are actually good enough to consistently put up 4-5+ WAR seasons are by definition going to be good enough to have other teams with more hitter friendly ballparks to choose to sign with instead, like Matt Holliday or Carlos Beltran when they were FAs last. Ultimately, the best way to build long term success is going to be through internal development of position players. Given the park, we *should* be able to attract quality free-agent pitching. Sabean simply needs to be wise about who he pursues (which again, he's not good at). In terms of young position players, he's gotten Pablo Sandoval and Buster Posey as successes, but that's really it in 14 years. Belt looks good, but it would be nice if they actually played him. It's difficult to say of the current crop of young position players is something Sabean has learned to do, or if this is an aberration.

I think the real problem is Sabean takes all the wrong chances. He signs Aaron Rowand to a 5 year, $60 million contract. Rowand, as a hitter, wasn't worth that contract. Granted, I don't think anyone saw that he would be worthless, but it turned out that way. The same is true for the Zito contract (which, I guess, he gets less credit for). Sabean had an opportunity this offseason to make a big improvement at SS by acquiring J.J. Hardy. I mean, the O's didn't give up anything special for the guy. Sabean could have taken a chance there, and he could have benefited. Sabean also trades away potential chips for the wrong players. Maybe he could have kept Scott Barnes (who was traded to Cleveland), and combined him with several other decent prospects for a good player at a position of need. To be honest, the Giants' offensive problems all can be summed up in a single point: Brian Sabean doesn't know how to evaluate hitters. Period.

I have some worries about the "rebuilding process" - while they may cross, the cost of the pitching staff is ahead of the upcoming hitters. Lincecum (IMHO) will not be worth the money he can get as a free agent, so as much as the fans might want it, I don't think he'll stay. Despite the public perception, I think Sabean has done a good job of avoiding huge free agent contracts. As posted above - Manny? Werth? But then again, Occam's Razor, Huff at the end of his contract will have performed about as one might have guessed, so will Ross. They're both above-average players. But outside of Panda and Posey (jury may still be out on Belt) everybody seems like complimentary pieces. Saeban rolls the dice a lot, and while I do believe he's good at it, even getting the upside is limited. I can see avoiding the madness of signing an A++ free agent for 8 years, those all seem like bad deals, but when your most luminous acquisition is Freddy Sanchez (not counting a rental) I'm not sure you're really trying.

And, you know, avoiding injuries and medical maladies to your key hitters (Posey, Sanchez, Burrell, Torres) and players who did not perform well (Huff and Tejada). Hard to get your offense even average when your cleanup hitter is taking out by a scrub and you weren't the top offense in the first place. The problem is that you can't build both offense and defense at the same time, so he focused on pitching first, then once that was pretty done, he then focused on offense. Our farm system looks pretty good for offense for the future and our middle of lineup of Sandoval, Posey, Belt looks to be very good as well, though obviously not Bonds-Kent-Burks good. But that should be good enough to win with our pitching. It just takes patience with the re-building process and an understanding of how hard it is to procure offense via the draft when you are focused on pitching, thus leaving you at the mercy of the free agent grab-bag, where there apparently is a surprise in every bag.

It would be interesting to remember who the main available offensive free agents were the last few years. Jason Werth? Manny Ramirez? As I recall not much value was to be had let alone a sure fire stud. The only option presented in the last few years has been to break up their rotation and trade a pitcher. Obviously that couldn't have been Zito; Sanchez everyone knows can't throw consistently; and that leaves Cain, Lincecum or Bumgartner. This coming off season will be an interesting one where there will be at least a few potential studs out there, lets see if some fish can be brought in.

If you draw a line on your chart when the Giants started playing in AT&T park (Pac Bell at the time) it seems to be a lagging indicator of a change in focus, a focus on pitching. I'm not saying that the corresponding decline in offense justifies the level of pitching we've seen lately, but this observation might provide a little more perspective.

why hope Brian Sabean is going to make any major changes given that he will utilize what the Giants' farm system has to offer as well as cheap veterans or inexpensive mediocre ballplayers who don't cost much. The last time the Giants reallt put out was for Barry Zito. won't happen again! No more putting out funds for longterm contracts. Sabean will continue to muddle through while the fans keep supporting the team and a night out at the ballpark. And we, the real fans, become all the more depressed knowing that it could have been better.

don't forget, the panda was injured for 6 weeks. If you're going to mention Wright, you should mention the Panda too And please don't call Keppinger, Sanchez's near twin. Keppinger is less than a shadow of the player sanchez is. I don't have delusions about Sanchez being amazing, but Keppinger is a bench player on a good team. He's not half the fielder sanchez is and hardly 3/4 the hitter

You have to give credit to Sabean for rolling the dice last year and having it work out, but any realist knew that it was highly unlikely this offense could be the same as last year. We assumed Huff would be decent, Torres would come back to earth, Ross is nothing special, and Rowand would suck. It look everything going right last year, including staying healthy, to put a league average offense out there. Sabean was clearly banking on it happening again, and it didn't work out. There's no way around the compound of injuries this team has gone through. I'm not sure what exactly the options were this off-season, but as you said, Sabean hasn't proven he knows how to put together an offense in the last 6 years. Sanchez was replaced by his near-twin in Keppinger, so that leaves the key injury down to Posey. The reality is that even with Posey, and being as healthy as last season, this offense would probably be around a 85 wRC+ at best, below league average. It might of been enough if this division played out like we expected, but the reality is that the D'Backs are on pace to win 94 games. We figured the competition would be the Rockies, at maybe around 85-87 wins. Look at the Mets, Phillies, and Braves all for example-- all around league average offense. Mets lost Ike Davis for almost the entire season, David Wright for nearly 8 weeks. Phillies didn't have Utley for 2 months, and others at times. Braves had Uggla doing nothing for half the season, Heyward still not producing like last season. All 3 still around league average. Once again, this offense is still probably 12th in the NL at best with Posey/Sanchez healthy, and minimal injuries all around.

There are two things that may be contributing factors to the poor offense, one of them Sabean. I have to wonder how much playing in AT&T is off-putting to guys who have big numbers as hitters. Its common knowledge that the Giants play in a pitcher friendly park and I think that could discourage some from playing there. For the Giants, it makes sense to have pitching be the first priority given that the park is generally cavernous. Given that the Giants weren't very successful in the years after Bonds left, this probably made AT&T even less appealing. Mediocre team in a pitchers park. The problem with Sabean is he doesn't seem willing to spend the big bucks on a prime free agent hitter. Instead, it looks like his strategy is to patch together decent, cheaper hitters to field a strong pitching average hitting team (like last year). Even so, his "big" additions during the stretch run were Cody Ross (which payed off) and Jose Guillen (which didn't). The pitching has its leaders with Timmy and Cain. This season it seemed like Posey could be a similar nucleus for the offense. With no defined leader for the offense (i.e. Huff & Posey of 2010), Sabean needs to find or make invincible an offensive leader.