Dyer: These San Francisco Giants Employees Must Go

Pruritusani “Muscles” Keger…at the garlic fries stand has got to go!

1. Manager Bruce Bochy

The contracts for both Giants General Manager Brian Sabean and Field Manager Bruce Bochy are up, and retaining or removing Sabean/Bochy looms as the biggest decisions team owner Bill Neukom will make at the start of his ownership era. Here’s the deal: Neukom has a rare opportunity to make a clear, decisive stroke and take real ownership of the franchise in his name. Beyond the merits or weaknesses of Brian Sabean or Bruce Bochy, Neukom should relish the chance to make a clean cut with the past; even the recent, slightly more positive past.

Bochy is a steady, reliable caretaker who won’t screw things up day-to-day. But he is not the guy who will lead a dynamic young team to a World Series victory. Like Dusty Baker, Bochy cannot let go of his crack-like addiction to giving endless at-bats to steady, reliable mediocre veterans who also won’t screw things up but bring little else to the fight.

For much of the 2009 season, the Giants batting line-up consisted four #6 batters (Randy Winn, Aaron Rowand, Edgar Renteria, and Fred Lewis), one triple A batter (Travis Ishikawa), one clean-up hitter who should be batting no higher than 5th (Bengie Molina), and the potent Pablo Sandoval, a actual, honest-to-gosh #3 hitter. And while Bochy can only play the hand dealt to him, and the team is not likely to sit $9 or $10 million-dollar-a-year players on the bench, the hundreds of wasted at-bats given to Winn, Rowand, Ishikawa, Lewis, Rich Aurilia, and Renteria doomed this team to a third place finish.

Add to that Bochy’s utter inability to get Giant batters to play classic small-ball (to bunt, to move runners, to take walks, and to be aggressive on the bases), and you have a manager who abandoned the team’s only legitimate offensive strategy.