Three Years of Sabes

by Jesse Thorn, EEEEEE! Staff Writer

We've established the Sabean era's been a mixed bag -- how do we judge Sabes now?

There seems to be a consensus in the Bay Area regarding Brian Sabean, the Giants' General Manager. He is, by all accounts, a man of vision. Depending on whom you ask, however, that vision is either sharp and sweeping or hazy and myopic. It has often been said in these parts that "Sabes" (to his supporters) or "BS" (to his detractors) should be given time for his plans to unfold before he is judged -- Sabean himself, in his famous "I am not an idiot" interview, begged the same. The ending of the 1999 baseball season marks three years on the job for Sabean, and it now seems reasonable to bring upon him at least a tentative verdict.

There is no denying that the Giants have been a successful club during Sabean's tenure. The club has won 265 games over the past three seasons, a total that trails only Atlanta, New York, and Houston in the National League. The Giants have been the only consistent winner over that time period in the NL's Western Division, finishing first or second in each of the three years. They've brought a division title home to San Francisco, and traveled to Chicago for a postseason (or extended season, for the rules-nics) playoff game. Sabes' supporters will tell you the proof is in the pudding. According to his official bio (which was published before the 1999 season), Sabean's "impeccable baseball pedigree and shrewd player acquisitions have transformed the Giants from cellar dweller to the Major League's fourth-winningest team over the past two seasons."

[While this is clearly true, it's also true that the Giants had only a two-year lean period. They'd had winning seasons from 1986 -- the beginning of the Rosen/Craig era -- through 1990, then finished off that era with two losing seasons. Then along came the Magowan group, and Barry Bonds, and suddenly the Giants improved on their win total by over 30 games. They might well have won the division, or maybe just the wild card, in 1994, were it not for the strike. Injuries and idiotic decisions by Bob Quinn (with -- who knows? -- Sabean's help, perhaps) hurt the team over the next two years. -- GP]

The success, however, certainly hasn't been unqualified. The Giants have suffered through horrendous post-All-Star swoons in each of the three seasons, which have led to two exceptionally close races ('97, '98), and one late season belly-flop ('99). Further, while the Giants did play beyond the regulation 162 in '97 and '98, they were laid waste in the extra nines.

The Western Division champion 1997 club was made to look foolish by the wild-card-winning Florida Marlins, and the 1998 team had its playoff hopes crushed by a geriatric (Gary Gaetti) and a guy who just threw like one (Rod Beck). Just as vibrant in the minds of Giants fans as the image of Brian Johnson's 1997 Dodger-beating, late-season, late-inning dinger is "Shooter" Beck mowing through the Giants' lineup, despite a fastball in the 70s and a gut in the next zip code. Sabean's detractors will point to questionable personnel decisions.

"So," you say, "we've established the Sabean era's been a mixed bag -- how do we judge Sabes now?" Well, Sabean's primary job is player personnel, so let's take a look at how his decisions have affected the club. We'll begin with what for Giants fans was, far more than October 17, 1989, the Big One.

Almost every conversation regarding Sabean seems to boil down to the same thing: The Matt Williams Trade. On November 13, 1996, the Giants dealt Williams and player-to-be-named-later Trenidad Hubbard to the Indians. In return, they received starter-reliever Julian Tavarez, shortstop Jose Vizcaino, and second baseman Jeff Kent, and a player to be named. Sabean suggested the PTBNL was to be an impact player -- it turned out to be sort-of-prospect starting pitcher Joe Roa.

A little context and background on the deal:

And the players involved:

At the time, the trade made Brian Sabean the laughingstock of the baseball world. San Francisco Chronicle sports columnist, Bruce Jenkins said Sabean "pulled off a deal that makes them [the Giants] infinitely worse." Fans derided the deal in letters to the editor -- "Has Brian Sabean posessed by the spirit of Spec Richardson?" asked one. A second stated, "Just when I became convinced that the Golden State Warriors had the dumbest front office in professional sports, Brian Sabean of the Giants proved me wrong.... Sabean has asked the fans to be patient because he is not finished wheeling and dealing, and sometimes trades that look bad on paper turn out great (see 'Boy Trades Father's Cow for Magic Beans' story, keeping in mind the beans had potential)." One put it simply -- "What's the deal? Is there some sort of mind-altering substance in the water lately?"

It would be easy to say that this reaction was simply engendered by the fans' love of Matty -- and that's true to a degree. Those same people will argue that the trade has worked out well for the Giants, which to a degree it has. Generally, the key to this argument is that Sabean saw something in Kent that suggested he could transform into Superman. Indeed, Kent has, given full-time status, performed very well. This shouldn't really be a surprise, as his offensive numbers are more or less in line with his career totals.

A power increase and an increase in plate patience came in around age 30, with a career year or two, but that's in line with a typical career. His defense didn't improve much, either. He's still only competent at second, generally considered to have glove skills more suited to third base, and he still consistently makes 15-20 errors per season. To suggest that Sabean saw something special in Kent that no one else could is a little questionable, as it was clear to anyone paying attention that Kent was a good ballplayer.

Then, you can throw in one good season from Julian Tavarez, and some passable ones, and a major league shortstop in Jose Vizcaino. So, it was a pretty good deal, right? Right?

Let's take a step back. There are two ways to look at a deal -- one is the after the fact, as Bill James has explored in his Baseball Abstracts. It's the obvious way, waiting till the chips have fallen, and counting up the benefits for each team. However, we must remember that no one can predict the future with certainty, and luck is obviously a huge factor in hope the trade eventually works out. There's two things we have to consider when evaluating trades. The first is this: Were I to bet my life savings (about $500) on the Royals for the Series next year, it's a bad bet -- if they won, it'd be a winning bad bet. We have to evaluate based on the information available at the time, because that's what the GMs are doing as they make the deal -- outside of some sort of super-special scouting technique, we've all got the same information. The second is we have to remember that in a trade, it's not value that matters, but perceived value. In any transaction of this sort -- right through to paper money -- it's the perception of value, as determined by the market, that counts.

If you approach this deal from that standpoint, it looks a lot less rosy.

The player with the greatest value to the Giants from this trade is obviously Kent, but he wasn't the player with the highest perceived value -- the highest trade value. That player was quite obviously Tavarez.

In the aftermath of the deal, Sabean couldn't stop talking about Tavarez -- he compared him to Mariano Rivera and mentioned that he could very well become a starting pitcher as well. Most importantly, Tavarez was, in Sabean's words, "one of the most sought after players this offseason." In other words, he was the player with the highest perceived value. Now, Tavarez did have one good half-season in the majors, but he had also had a full mediocre season, and scouts had stated his fastball was losing velocity and his pitch selection was unsatisfactory, as he threw only "hard" pitches. The scouts, and the history, were right -- Tavarez used his two hard pitches two have a succesful season as a middle reliever before the velocity loss caught up to him and he became a very mediocre pitcher.

And what about Vizcaino? He was making several million dollars a year, and posting an OBP of .310-.340 with no pop. His defense was deceptively poor -- his range was Dunston-esque, and his flashy dives frequently occurred on plays most shortstops would have handled easily. He was a "proven major leaguer" in the worst sense of the word.

So the problem with the deal was one of allocation of rescources. The Giants got a good second baseman and a solid (on balance) middle reliever. Did they have to trade one of the best players in the league to get those? Of course not. Picking up Kent was a good idea, but Kent's trade value was very low -- the Giants effectively killed a gnat with a bazooka. Supposedly evening the score was a tremendous misallocation -- Sabean got the trade value in the deal from a player who was wildly overvalued: a middle reliever. John Hart bamboozled Sabean further (more on this theme later) by dropping an overpriced, mediocre middle infielder, who guaranteed that the Giants saved no money on the deal -- and Sabean himself said at the time that wasn't a concern: "I have no budget."

The result of all this? The Giants did okay on real value, but did terrible in trade value. The key to a good deal is allocating your trade value in such a way as to get as much real value as possible, and Sabean turned a gold nugget into... very little. Had he turned around and traded Tavarez for a player with similar trade value but greater real value (of which there were many), he could have remedied the situation, but he did no such thing.

We've given short shrift to Vizcaino in this evaluation, but he exemplifies a certain Sabean tendency -- the "Proven Major Leaguer." In the same 1996 offseason Sabean traded for another well-paid mediocrity, Mark Lewis. The observer looks at these two pickups and wonders: with Bill Mueller and Rich Aurilia manning the left side, why did they need to have these overpaid redundancies? Simple -- the Giants need Proven Major Leaguers. Like most Sabean policies, this one (and it has occurred a number of times in the Sabean Era) has two sides. The good side is pretty clear -- young players can be eased into the lineup, the "hot hand" can be played, and there's injury insurance built into the roster. The strategy also has its dark side. The Giants are a club with limited rescources, and this insurance doesn't come cheap. As Gregg Pearlman, Baseball Prospectus website contributor and editor of EEEEEE!, is glad to tell you, three $2.5 million players make one $7.5 million player, maybe even the starting pitcher the Giants are always complaining about needing. We'll deal with these themes a little later on, but for now, let's stay in the offseason of 1996.

Besides the Williams and Lewis deals, the dawning of the Sabean Era had one more big bang. On November 27 the team traded left handed pitcher Allen Watson to the Angels for first baseman J.T. Snow. Snow was something of an enigma -- he had had an acceptable season for the Angels in 1995, hitting .289 with 24 home runs and playing very good (though perhaps not as good as advertised) defense. In 1996, while he kept up the glovework, he transformed into Mr. Hyde -- posting a .327 OBP with a .384 slugging percentage, not great for a shortstop, much less a first baseman in the swingin' nineties. He seems to have settled into a middle ground, as a below-average offensive player. Watson, though a former high draft pick, wasn't anything special, largely due to a dead straight fastball, but again we have the allocation of rescources problem. Snow was paid reasonably well (and is now paid quite well) to be a below-average first baseman. Below average first basemen grow on trees, and can be had practically for free. Roberto Petagine plays in Japan; John Jaha couldn't find a job this spring; Jeremy Giambi can't crack the majors. Again Sabean placed his limited financial and player resources in the wrong places.

The passion for redundancy also reared it's ugly head in the 1996-1997 offseason. The Giants signed outfielder Darryl Hamilton to a reasonably lucrative multiyear contract. "Hambone" was not exceptionally overpriced, but he was somewhat overrated, particularly in light of an extended errorless streak that wildly overstated his defensive prowess. Fans reacted much like the French Taunter in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "I don't think he'll be very keen... he's already got one, you see." Indeed, Hamilton was virtually the same player as Stan Javier, and seemed like (as it turned out, he was) another $3.5 million sunk into redundancy.

In his last year as GM, Bob Quinn made a very good pickup: Mark Gardner, a junkballing journeyman, was released by the Marlins, and the Giants quietly snagged him off the waiver wire just before the 1996 season began. No doubt Sabean had a hand in this.

While never particularly good, Gardner has been (until 1999) a solid and consistent performer for the team, and is universally liked. Was it luck? In a certain way, yes, but maybe Brian or his staff saw something in Gardy the other ten jillion teams that had released him missed. In any event, it worked out well, if unspectacularly.

Midway through 1997, the Giants were a surprise contender, but the bomb hadn't dropped. At the July deadline, Sabean dealt six minor leaguers to the White Sox for pitchers Wilson Alvarez, Roberto Hernandez, and Danny Darwin. The move was Sabean at his best. He recognized an opportunity (Reinsdorf's irrationality) a seized the day. The deal was no steal -- Mike Caruso, the top prospect included in the deal, was probably the Giants' best (and only) positional prospect, and the rest of the bunch were pretty solid on the whole. However, it was an old-fashioned need-for-need deal that worked out just as Sabean hoped, as the pitchers helped the Giants sagging staff fend off the advances of the hated Dodgers. An added bonus were the supplemental draft picks the club got when Hernandez and Alvarez departed as free agents. Sabean finished second in the executive of the year balloting, and was (nearly) universally hailed as a non-idiot.

Since that crowning achievement, Sabean's record has been spotty, but his detractors have been few. And it all started so well.

In the 1997-1998 offseason, Sabean bolstered the bullpen with two very good pickups, another pattern which has also been characteristic of his tenure. The first was sneaky -- the reacquisition of journeyman and career minor leaguer John Johnstone.

[Actually, Johnstone was reacquired during the '97 season. They'd tried, foolishly, to send him down -- foolish because he'd have to pass through waivers; the A's claimed him; he got hammered for them, so they tried to send him down, exposing him to the same waiver rulesÉ so the Giants reclaimed him. But Sabean deserves plenty of credit for having the vision, I guess you could say, not to let Johnstone get away for long. -- GP]

Johnstone's great location and solid pitches have combined to make him a very good major league relief pitcher for the Giants. The second was, in the analyst community, a sign Brian had had an epiphany. The Giants signed Steve Reed to a two-year contract. Reed, a former Giants farmhand selected by the Rockies in the expansion draft, had put up incredible numbers on Planet Coors, and incredibly incredible numbers on the road. His dominance of righthanded hitters had been, and continues to be, Eck-esque. One of Sabean's positive characteristics has to be his appreciation of the Johnstones, Reeds, Mark Deweys, and Rich DeLucias of the world -- righthanded relievers are a dime a dozen, but you have to know how to pick the ripe ones.

He then continued his hot streak, making a very solid deal with the Marlins, which again proved his right-place right-time can-do tactic succesful. He gave the Marlins very solid value for a new closer, Robb Nen, in pitching prospect Joe Fontenot. However, he knew from inside information (from pitching coach Ron Perranoski) that Nen's 1997 struggles had resulted from a relatively slight mechanical flaw, and he took the bold step of making a pre-emptive deal and letting the popular Rod Beck walk. The move is to be commended, as Beck's arm, as he has showed over the past two years, was slagged by Dusty Baker's enthusiastic relief pitcher usage, and Nen wildly outperformed Shooter in 1998 and 1999.

The Giants were looking good. Sabean was becoming, even to his biggest critics, more and more palatable. Then, with the Giants in a tight NL-West and wild card race, the team started to fade. Sabean looked in his bag for some of the magic dust that had produced the White Sox deal and the Reed signing, and he found none. But, as one late-July Chronicle headline blared: "Swap Meet Sirens Call Sabean". He had to do something, right? So he settled.

On July 24, Sabean made two separate trades -- one perplexing, one inexcusable. We'll start with the perplexing.

Sabean dealt former first-rounder Darin Blood to the Baltimore Orioles for aging slugger Joe Carter. The move wasn't as bad as some analysts would have you think. Yes, Carter hadn't been any good for years, yes, he was overpaid, and yes, he was overrated even when he was good. The Giants, however, needed some occasional pop from right field and it could be argued they needed a shake-up. The move cost a good chunk of change, but not a huge one. Blood, who wasn't far removed from top-prospect status, but he had shown in AAA struggles he wouldn't be much without at the least a change of scenery. The move was a little funny, and smelled of desperation, but it was hardly stupid.

The second deal of that fateful July day was stupid and more. The Gigantes traded newly acquired setup ace Steve Reed to the sharp John Hart and his Indians (back to the theme). They threw in Jacob Cruz, who despite failing to distinguish himself in earlier, brief auditions, was the Giants' top offensive prospect and was mowing through AAA pitchers, on his way to a call-up.

What did they get for this expenditure? Another postseason-experienced retread in the bulbous form of Jose Mesa, a very nice guy without too much baseball skill in Shawon Dunston, and a waste of space in Alvin Morman. Yes, the Giants traded a great reliever, signed for two years at a great salary, for a mediocre (but "proven") one. Then they threw in their best prospect to get... well, not much. Needless to say, John Hart liked the deal.

Now that the team had dealt away its right field pop, Sabean made a solid recovery. At the deadline, he sent Darryl Hamilton to the Rockies for Ellis Burks. It was a fair swap, and a gutsy one, considering Hambone's clubhouse popularity. However, it addressed a need with a reasonable solution. Not a fabulous solution, but a solid one.

What did all these perambulations get the Giants? The season ended in heartbreak, as they lost to the Cubs in a one-game playoff. It was hard not to think of what might have happened had Morman not dished up those home runs down the stretch, or had "Joe Table" not blown those leads, but it was without a doubt a great season for Giants fans.

Sabean seemed to like his group, for obvious reasons, and continued his pattern of only minor tinkering with the composition of the roster headed into this season. He signed Ellis Burks to a reasonable package, had Shawn Estes and Bill Mueller locked in long-term, and signed Mark Gardner to a modest deal, somewhat less than what he had been offered by the Red Sox among other teams. The Giants were poised for another season of good play. For the most part, the team stayed together, and performed as expected, though there were two moves during the 1999 season that merited discussion. We'll look at them now.

The first was a simple one. Having bought into the "J.T. Snow as worthwhile investment" theory two years previously, Sabean compounded his error, signing the good-looking first baseman to a big money contract extension. Ignoring, apparently, the attitude of other teams to similar players (Rico Brogna of the Phillies leaps to mind), he decided that a large-dollar, long-term contract was just the thing to give to an aging first-sacker. It's possible J.T. will earn his money next year, as he continues to hit lefthanded pitching, but in three years? Hardly likely.

The second was far stranger. As the deadline approached, Sabes again found little in his magic bag, so he went back to Dave Dombrowski of the Marlins. Dave was ready for him this time, with Livan Hernandez, another "proven" postseason pitcher. Livan had had a great half-season in 1997, and had been the MVP of the World Series. Then, as the Marlins were demolished and began to be rebuilt, Jim Leyland sacrificed him to the baseball gods. Completely rending the Cuban's (supposedly) young arm, Leyland let Livan pitch past the 130 pitch mark numerous times. Because of a combination of this abuse and weight problems, Livan had lost significant speed off his heater, and had been reduced to an adequate pitcher at best. Sabean traded two number-one draftees for what was left of this man.

It's been these sorts of contradictions that have confounded those who would try to analyze Sabean. How could the man behind the Robb Nen trade be the same man that feels Alex Diaz and Kim Batiste are major league players? How could the man who signed Steve Reed have traded him for Jose Mesa?

[I'm not sure to what extent Sabean should be blamed for Batiste, who played here in 1996, when Quinn -- in name, at least -- was still the GM. But Jesse is probably right: If Diaz, then probably Batiste. -- GP]

How does this all balance out?

Let's start with this: Sabean's not an idiot. Outside of the aforementioned Steve Reed trade, none of his moves has been terrible or crippling. He's done a good job, by all accounts, with the farm system, and the big league club has been succesful.

What's the problem then? The Giants have only so many years of Barry Bonds, the greatest left fielder of all time. Even Dusty Baker can't work magic forever. As the team's core ages, Sabean seems content to fritter away the time with 86-win seasons, relying on the magic of the approaching ballpark to hold our interest.

Well, the ballpark opens next year, and because of it's financing, it won't be any kind of financial windfall. What then? The Giants, as currently constructed, have no chance at all of ever winning in the postseason, and they've proved that consistently. Dusty's boys are a solid team, but outside of the overworked arms of Shawn Estes and Russ Ortiz, they aren't young, and they aren't going to get much better.

Few of Sabean's moves have been bad, but similarly few have been good. The team has spent three years building towards the opening of Pacific Bell Park, but have only the same team, three years older, to show for it.

Sabean didn't suffer from a lack of opportunity, but he has consistently pulled deals like the Williams one. There have been real benefits to his deals, but they've been more than outweighed by the opportunity cost of deals missed.

On the other hand, we can't have everything, can we? Maybe Sabean has, as he's sometimes indicated, had pressure from above to put a consistent winner on the field. Maybe Larry Baer and Peter Magowan have forced him to follow his course of short-term thought. Or maybe not.

What does it boil down to? Sabean's okay. I know it's not exciting, but it's the truth. He's not the sharpest mind in the business -- he doesn't have the vision of a Billy Beane, but at the same time, he hasn't made the mistakes of a Woody Woodward.

So, if you're a Giants fan, and old BS is driving you up a wall, do as I do, and repeat this six-word mantra:

"At least he's not Herk Robinson."

EEEEEE! debutante Jesse Thorn is an 18-year-old student at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Little things bring him pleasure, especially Wendell Kim (soon to be late of the Red Sox, so say the rumors). As you can see from the length of his article, he obviously has far too much free time. Should you be interested in him, or the real story of his meeting with the legendary Ben Stein, visit his website at http://www.sirius.com/~jjthorn/. If you'd just rather e-mail him, he can be reached at mrt@sirius.com
Copyright ©1999 by Jesse Thorn

Last updated 11/13/99
Gregg Pearlman, EEEEEEgp@EEEEEEgp.com

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