At Giants Media Day someone asked Brian Sabean about defending the world’s championship. “To get in the playoffs,” he said, “that’s our goal. We’re not going to start this year — ‘we’re going to be the defending champions and repeat.’ Our goal is to get in the playoffs. We think if we do, we’ll be battle-tested enough to hopefully get through the first round.”
At Media Day, someone asked Brian Sabean if the National League is underrated. “I think so,” he said. “If you watch our games much like our series against Detroit, you have to play baseball in this league. There are a lot of close games. When you play a lot of one run and two run games, you have to do a lot of things fundamentally right to win them. We’re used to playing that kind of baseball. We don’t have… Read More »
I still get emails telling me what a mediocre general manager Brian Sabean is, how he’s made some bad signings and how he overpays for players and how he never got a power hitter for this year’s team and how he let Carlos Beltran get away. All I know is the Giants now are in the World Series for the third time in his tenure. How bad is that?
During a commercial on Comcast on Tuesday I talked to Brian Sabean about Dusty Baker’s health — an irregular heart beat and a mild stroke. Sabean told me he had phoned Dusty Monday night and they spoke a long time. Sabean said he feels confident Dusty will be OK. “He’s always looked after himself,” he said. “He eats well, exercises, is never overweight.” Sabean was smiling as he said all this. The whole time I was thinking this is the… Read More »
This Sabean topic sure has legs. I appreciate how passionate all of you are either pro or con on Sabean. Here’s a quiz. Rate these five GMs in order of best to worst and give a reason: Baalke, Sabean, Beane, Myers, McKenzie. I will stay out of the discussion. This topic belongs to you. And thanks for playing.
When I posted an item praising Brian Sabean yesterday, I knew I’d get some negative response. Fair enough. Some people even wrote that Billy Beane is a better GM and that the Giants winning the World Series under Sabean doesn’t mean all that much. Let’s be clear about this. Winning the World Series means everything. In baseball there is nothing more important. Beane has not won a World Series. That means he has not accomplished what Sabean has. There is… Read More »
Brian Sabean is a controversial sports figure around here. If I praise him, I get replies telling me I’m wrong and detailing some of his bad contacts — which have been very bad. Still, he’s had good contracts and he got the Giants in the Series twice and he won once and he’s mostly made the Giants a contender every year and he rebuilt them after the Bonds era and he created a fabulous pitching staff. So why all the… Read More »
Lots of comments this morning condemning Brian Sabean. Slow down, please. We are in what I call the culture of blame — I am part of that culture, but let’s step back from it for a moment. Do we blame Sabean and call him a flop as a GM? He won the world series. He got his team to the world series in 2002. He has the Giants playing meaningful games in Sept. His team was in first place a… Read More »
The Giants are an elite baseball franchise. When they have needs — and recently they had plenty — they go out and fill those needs. They represent and they strive to uphold a standard of excellence. I’m serious about this. I admire the player moves they recently made. Before Monday’s game against Arizona they made their latest two acquisitions available to the media — Carlos Beltran and Orlando Cabrera. I wrote my column about those two and about the Giants’… Read More »
I’m gonna make this fast because I think I may buy a new Prius tomorrow and I have homework to do. But all praise to Brian Sabean for landing Carlos Beltran. The Giants had lost Buster Posey and Freddy Sanchez and needed a big hitter to go along with all that excellent pitching. Sabean got the hitter. In years past, some fans have criticized Sabean for bad deals or for doing nothing — some of the criticisms were certainly justified.… Read More »
