My All-Name Team will always have a spot for Sr. Torrealba. I was broken-hearted when we traded him away. Now comes the news that we are interested in signing him. OK, news is a stretch. A tweet from Venezuela and something about an "industry insider" is a close as we get to news. Nonetheless, the Colorado Rockies' Mr. LDS (check out that 1.071 OPS) might be in orange and black again. I guess we aren't sure about Buster Posey. I mean, he may start. Or, he may not.
"At this time, we are prepared to go to Posey," Sabean said. "But we'll keep an open mind."
Yeesh. Let me tell you something--I'm not excited by Mark DeRosa. Really, I'm not. Or Aubrey Huff. Or Freddy Fecking Sanchez. I'm excited about Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, and Jonathan Sanchez. I'm excited about Pablo Sandoval. We've got a bucketful of exciting young relievers like Wilson and Romo and Runzler.
And we have the Golden Boy, Gerald "Buster" Demp Posey III. I'm pretty fookin' excited about Buster Posey. Don't get me wrong, I have all kinds of Yorvit love, but this team obsession with Veteran Savvy Clutchness is giving me chilblains. How many greybeards does it take to win a Division title? Yorvit, if you are coming our way to mentor our young phenom, I'm glad to have you back. But don't take it personally if I yell "play Buster" instead of "Yor-veeeeet" every time you come to bat. If you think about the entire Yorvit saga, you get a real picture of our hapless, inept front office. I mean, we had Yorvit. He was an adequate part-time catcher. He could put up a .700 OPS with the best of them. But noooooo, he wasn't good enough. We had to go out and get a FULL-TIME .700 OPS catcher. You know, that guy with too many consonants in his name. Typical Sabes--trade away the future for a marginal upgrade when a cheap, available solution was already on the roster. But that's all water under the Bay Bridge, eh?
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Let me remind everyone, again, about why you are not excited about DeRosa, Huff, or Freddie Sanchez. It is because we did well enough last year, when we were pegged for dead last in a weak division, to sniff the playoffs. That brought fans out when they were banking on a September crowd that looked like Candlestick Park on a cold night in 1987 and got a contract renewal for Mssrs. Sabean and Bochy. If you want to blame, blame Sandoval for being better than expected, Uribe for contributing, Molina for putting up career numbers, Lincecum for being the best pitcher in the NL again, and Matt Cain for looking even better for half the season. That, and the impending money we send Tim Lincecum's way, is why we are making incremental, savvy veteran adjustments, so as to edge our way into the playoffs assuming everything else stays the same. And, lack of excitement aside, we very well might.
Had we finished as expected, we would be rebuilding still instead of "on the verge." These are exactly the Sabeanesque moves to be just a little better that worked so well for him for so long (although not lately). Rebuilding teams use their Schierholz, Velez, Lewis and Frandsen even if they lose, and lay in the weeds for a big hitter. Teams "on the verge" don't need that wholesale kind of make-over.
2010 will prove an interesting experiment to ascertain the psychology of William Neukom. The Giants will either get to the playoffs (proving Sabean, Bochy right all along), just miss the playoffs (leading to more of the same types of moves next year) or bomb (leading to ????).
Merkin DFA'd to make room for Huff.
(The ONLY bad thing about making the playoffs will be Sabes & Boch's 5-year extension.)
Yeah, I get the whole "incrementalism" thing, it's just that it's based on "all things being exactly as they were last year." That's dangerous thinking. Not that we don't have some serious pitching talent--we do. But that doesn't mean all the chips will fall exactly as they did. The gods are cruel, and random variation is their plaything.
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