P A A P F L Y: Dear Mr. Neukom, SOS.

“We may not be perfect, but heaven knows we try
Let’s drop the big one and see what happens”

What we can clearly see from this is that the Giants still appear to lack the ability to get on base at a league average rate and are by far the worst in the division. Exasperating that problem is the fact that when they do manage to sneak their way on base, they are going to have to go station to station to score runs.  While my method for examining their relative speed and OBP for 2010 isn’t exactly bullet proof, it does provide some pretty significant evidence that the Giants won’t be terribly swift.  After all, Bill James’ ( a pretty smart guy) projections are based on past performance. The Dodgers have the second worst average speed factor in the division and still have greater than a 20% advantage in that category. The back breaker of course is the fact that the Giants also have a serious power outage since the departure of Barry Bonds. A team that can’t get on base, runs like a team full of catchers and can’t play for the three run dinger probably isn’t going to score many runs. So if the Giants pitching staff felt they were carrying the load last year, they will probably feel more of the same this year and the defense behind them projects to do them a lot less good, too.

Sabean is out of money for the upcoming season and he’s running out of time. He may have fooled the business man Neukom thus far, but it appears his days are numbered. Frankly, he was very lucky with the timing of Peter McGowan’s departure. Neukom probably didn’t want to make such a big splash, especially coming off of a very successful season with the huge turnaround from ’08 to ’09, but if Sabean’s rosters continue to be less than impressive despite the young infusion of talent provided to him by John Barr and Dick Tidrow, Neukom will show him the door and find a new CEO. If a man who once ran the very successful Microsoft can’t understand the benefit that is the wealth of statistical information currently available to evaluate players and which Sabean ignores, who can?