Two sides

After a week at the lake where yours truly finally, finally got up on a wakeboard, I am ready to post again for your reading pleasure. Apologies for the delay, life's real busy lately. Things should calm down after August.

This whole Sabean extension has Giants fans splitting to two sides, most of whom are standing in the "This is the last thing the Giants organization should have done" side. My gut reaction was to jump over with them, but after reading many, many opinions on the matter, my mind was changed a bit.

John over at OBM (which is probably the best-written Giants blog I've seen) presents a valid case for the crowd calling for Sabean's head. On the other hand, Martin at Obsessive Giants Compulsive (another well-thought out Giants blog) presents a case in defense of Sabean, which as controversial as it may be, has some very good points that swayed my opinion a bit.

After hearing both sides of the argument, I have to say I lie somewhere in the middle. I agree that Sabean has not made any impacting trades that turned out to be positive since the Schmidt trade. He has done a poor job of developing the minor league system, and has signed mediocre after mediocre player, giving them huge contracts.

On the other hand, if (and that's a big "if") McGowan played puppeteer to Sabean's Pinnochio all these years since Sabean turned the team around with the Matt Williams trade, then I can see the case for giving Sabean a year or two to see what he can do on his own will. My deepest feelings tell me that Sabean had just as much to do with the current state of the Giants' organization as McGowan, but because of the job he's done with the pitching staff, and the recent off-shore signings he's made in the past year, I don't think it's a horrible thing to give Sabean a chance. Plus, I do think that if we had brought in a new GM, there is no guarentee that he would be any better than Sabean, and we also may have to suffer even longer for him to get used to and get to know the players in the Giants organization.

My official stance, then, is that I give Sabean one trading deadline (which is rapidly approaching), and one offseason to show us that he can still work some magic and make some steps in a positive direction. We don't need to be a winning ballclub next year, but at least show us that you are able to manage this team in a manner that leads towards the future (ie. get rid of old guys, get new young hitters). And for goodness sake, hire some scouts and coaches that can find and develop young hitters! The lack of these organizational leaders could be the Giants' biggest problem!