Dorks And Losers

(AP Photo/David Zalubbowski)

The final hours of Major League Baseball’s Win­ter Meet­ings gave me a shut­ter. I heard a rumor that Giants GM was think­ing about trad­ing a future No. 1 starter in Tim Lince­cum for Toronto Blue Jays future OF super­star Alex Rios.

There was out­cry.

Sure, the Giants need offen­sive help. But in the offi­cial first year of the post-Barry Bonds era, rebuild­ing takes courage, patience, and, most impor­tantly, PITCHING. No team can suc­ceed with­out pitch­ing, well not unless you have mega-hitting, and Rios can’t do it all him­self, espe­cially when he would be sur­rounded by the dou­ble play-duo of Omar Vizquel and Ray Durham. It should be noted that I have been say­ing for a cou­ple of years that Kevin Frand­sen should be allowed to prove him­self at 2B. And for the most part, he seems per­fectly capable.

Ask the New York Yan­kees what they needed most in the 2007 A.L. Divi­sional Series.

Ask the New York Mets what they needed most for prac­ti­cally the entire 2007 sea­son. That late sea­son col­lapse was wait­ing to hap­pen, and even if they did make the play­offs, they weren’t going to go far with Vic­tor Zam­brano on their rotation.

The team’s most attrac­tive trade bait, of course, is SP Matt Cain and Lince­cum. Who doesn’t like young pitch­ing? There might be some health con­cerns regard­ing Lincecum’s deliv­ery and body frame, but you don’t give up on pitch­ing. Sabean should have learned his les­son with the Fran­cisco Liri­ano deba­cle.

If you ever did trade young pitch­ing, you’d only do it the way the Detroit Tigers did in trad­ing Andrew Miller for megas­tud Miguel Cabr­era, and cer­tainly not so much for Rios. Trad­ing away (who some say could both be future aces) Cain and Lince­cum defeats the pur­pose of try­ing to rebuild. Young play­ers need time to develop, and Sabean is pay­ing for the mis­takes of rid­ing the Bonds train (as much as I did too) and not rid­ing it well enough.

It would be a whole dif­fer­ent story if the Giants got those final six outs in the 2002 World Series. But they didn’t, and now Sabean — if he wants to keep his job — needs to stop sign­ing aging play­ers and start devel­op­ing tal­ent. The farm sys­tem is in a sham­bles, and it’ll take at least — at the very least — three sea­sons of frus­trated fans and upper level man­age­ment before the team can again be suc­cess­ful in the long-term.

The sad part is that these efforts might be in vain con­sid­er­ing how strong the other N.L. West teams are. The Col­orado Rock­ies are next year’s divi­sion favorites. The Ari­zona Dia­mond­backs have loads of young tal­ent. The San Diego Padres aren’t too far behind. The Los Ange­les Dodgers could sur­prise every­one, now that they have Andruw Jones patrolling cen­ter field.

Sabean is def­i­nitely on the hot seat, and he’s just gonna have to gut it out until the team starts win­ning again or until he’s fired (whichever comes first). He just needs to pray that Cain and Lince­cum can be the aces that every­one thinks they will be a lot sooner rather than later. That would buy Sabean a lit­tle more time.
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Barry Bonds pleads not guilty. The next few weeks will be interesting…

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