They are not leprechauns, unicorns or the Easter Bunny. They really do exist, and their names are Jeremy Shelley and Yeshayah Goldfarb.
They are the quantitative analysts in the Giants front office, which if you believe the prevailing opinion among baseball’s Internet Illuminati, still gathers most of its information from gut feel and tobacco-spattered scouting reports.
The Giants, and Brian Sabean, the longest-tenured general manager in the game, have long been an easy mark for what acronym-inclined bloggers perceived as old-school methods. Now that the Giants are checking to see if their ring sizes have changed in 24 months, analysts, both recreational and professional, are trying to figure out how the heck the franchise they love to lampoon has pulled off the nearest thing to a dynasty by a National League club since the Big Red Machine.
There’s the pitching, of course. There’s a dash of serendipity. And a whole lot of Buster Posey doesn’t hurt, either.
But if the Giants’ World Series title in 2010 was a happy accident of sorts, won by a waiver-wire band of misfits, their second championship in three seasons had less ad-lib and more script. Those six elimination games against the Reds and Cardinals notwithstanding, this was by design.
Danny
Posted: December 05, 2012 at 03:15 PM |
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1. Ted Williams Carlos Williams Posted: December 05, 2012 at 05:12 PM (#4318062)A nice way to sweep under the mat the facts that belie your entire argument.
Wow. Never would've guessed that.
Nor does having a $130M payroll.
So we've got four GMs who were hired in the 90's: Sabean, Billy Beane, Brian Cashman, and ... Dan O'Dowd?
Now wait a second. It was the old school journalists writing all those "the Giants did it the old fashioned way, not the Moneyball way" articles and it was the Internet Illuminati who were pointing out the existence of Goldfarb.
Now I still make plenty of fun of Sabean but I'm a member of the Internet Stonecutters' Lodge not an Illuminati.
Of course I'd also say the 21st C Cards have a better claim to "first NL dynasty since the Reds". Also the 08-09 Phils with back-to-back pennants and 1 WS.
Not to mention a certain Braves team and their 37 straight division titles.
Anyway, no problem with Sabean as NL exec of the year although Jocketty and Rizzo deserve strong consideration.
It's not like "Saber guys" are immune from the bad fa signing. If you're going to sign free agents consistently, you are going to get burned occasionally. It's the nature of the game.
They farm most of their MLB writing out to local MLB beat writers, like Andrew Baggerly, who wrote this piece, so you see a lot of pieces that looks like the stuff your local beat writer would spit out... because your local beat writer did, in fact, spit it out.
Their college and minor league stuff is handled in-house and, like you said, is pretty damn good.
Harry Caray would be proud!!!
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