Brian Sabean Has No Clue

That Brian Sabean still has a job after allowing the Giants to crater the way they have over the past few years is fairly inexplicable. Sure, some of his defenders (there are a few, right?) may point to the fact that he had no choice but to delay rebuilding as long as Barry Bonds was on the roster, but that ignores the fact that, even with Bonds, the Giants couldn't break .500 between 2005 and 2007. Even setting aside the fact that the Home Run King was in disgrace, he was certainly in decline, and only the most delusional of general managers would have put off laying the groundwork for the next good Giants team beyond the 87-loss 2005 season during which the world got a pretty good glimpse of what the post-Bonds world would look like.

But Sabean did delay rebuilding, and instead took flyers on all manner of quasi-geriatric retreads such as Reggie Sanders, Marquis Grissom, Michael Tucker, Omar Vizquel, Moises Alou, Mike Matheny, Steve Finley, Randy Winn, J.T. Snow, Matt Morris, Armando Benitez, and Tim Worrell. Clearly that strategy didn't work. Clearly, after an all-too-long delay, Sabean would certainly begin to rebuild his team through the draft and the canny acquisition of young players still subject to team control, wouldn't he?

Nope. From today's San Francisco Chronicle:

General manager Brian Sabean has said he is willing to acquire major-league players, not merely sell those he has, if the deal makes sense for the present and future. But what exactly are the Giants building for? Next year? Or beyond?

Sabean said it could be 2009, so even if the Giants will not rent a player who is eligible for free agency this winter, they would consider a player who is signed for one more year.

The name Adrian Beltre is mentioned as a possibility. The same Adrian Beltre who will turn thirty next year and is now four years removed from what appears to be the one and only elite season he will ever produced. Tell me: when you think of Adrian Beltre, are you reminded of an up-and-coming young star around which the Giants can build, or are you reminded of the list of stiffs I rattled off a couple of paragraphs ago?

As was the case in 2005, 2006, and 2007, Brian Sabean in 2008 is either failing or refusing to understand where the Giants are on the success cycle. The Giants have precisely two players -- Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain -- who are (a) young; and (b) good. Two good players + Adrian Beltre will not allow this team to contend in 2008 or 2009. The Giants need more young and more good players to go with them lest Lincecum and Cain's primes be wasted toiling for a team who can't even stay within single digits of first place in what is shaping up to be the worst division in the history of baseball.

Given the absence of talent on the roster, the short term is a lost cause for San Francisco, and trading for players whose best years are behind them does nothing to help them contend in the long term either. If Brian Sabean doesn't know that, he has no business calling the shots for the Giants.