SD 5 SF 0
That's Bobby Evans, former minor league administrative assistant and now former General Manager. It was quite a ride and it came to an end after twenty-four years. This is the Giants which means they will keep him around--assuming he wants to stay--and find another job for him. But a new GM is on the agenda for Larry Baer and Brian Sabean. Sabes wants to stay upstairs, his late night poker games are a thing of the past. BobbyE was supposed to do that part of the job but it didn't work out. Brian's a family man, and made the mistake of hiring another like himself. The Giants probably need an outsider who will clash with senior management and ownership now and again just to keep the water in the hot tub fresh. We'll see if they can pull it off. I don't expect anything splashy, like luring Kim Ng away from the Commisioner's Office, but some new blood seems likely.
In the meantime the Giants got shut out by the Padres, at home no less. On the bright side that's only the eighth time they've failed to score at least a run this season. They drop to 4-17 for September, a brisk .190 clip.
Chris Stratton tomorrow night.
--M.C.
4 comments:
Kim Ng is precisely whom I had in mind. She has been in the running for a couple of GM posts before, since moving to the central MLB offices, so she may well be able to be lured, and especially to the great rivals of the Dodgers, who kept her as second fiddle for so many years. A side advantage may be that as an Asian woman she would have a popular ethnic and political appeal that might enthuse enough ticket buyers to keep the Giants’ stockholders from insisting that the team fill seats by doing something splashy and dumb, such as strewing bundles of dollars at the feet of Bryce Harper. But, leaving cynicism aside, I’d be excited were she to take over as GM.
Word is Boch stays and finishes his contract which is up after the 2019 season. That would be 25 years (12 in SD and 13 in SF). He has a shot at 2000 career wins (1925 so far). That would be quite a milestone and it would be nice to see it happen in orange-and-black. He'll be 64 in April. I figure a new GM will work with Boch and Sabes in a transition sort of scene and then bring in his/her own people for 2020 and beyond. Sabes will likely stay with the club but not oversee the GM--they would report to Baer and ownership. Sabes will emerge as some kind of emeritus VP and take on the minor league system or something.
It's tough to blame underperformance on the GM, but then, he's the guy (or, perhaps, it is his position) who signed underperformers. Such is life. There are a very few jobs where "getting fired" is not a black mark on your resume, but a GM is one of them.
Yeah, he's very employable. There aren't a lot of positions out there, but guys with 20+ years at the big-league level are valuable commodities. He can play any role in any organization--he's worn a lot of hats. The Giants are oddly incestuous, they keep everyone around and bring everyone back. They don't like to see their guys get poached. Ned Colletti is the last high-profile guy that went on to another club, at least he's the only one comes to mind. Perhaps one of our astute RMC readers can chime in here. I'm curious if Evans will go on to greener pastures. It would be hard to stick around a place, even a good place, if you sat in The Big Chair and then had to give it up.
I love Baer's we need a "new-gen" GM and then seemingly backtracking later. Well, he's the Mouthpiece and has to be political. The Giants try to keep everybody happy and sometimes all that does is piss everybody off. Clearly the Giants have to keep up with the Joneses. And just as clearly they have to emphasize pitching and defense because when they did that they built winning teams. No matter what else happens around the league, you still have to pitch and catch and throw, and being really good at that will still be the foundation of good teams. (I think they pitching will be very good in 2019.)
The hitting is so bad that they may have to get radical, and a new GM with some fresh jive could be just the thing to revitalize the offensive pipeline. Or maybe getting lucky and having everyone healthy at once!
I hope the Giants bring in a young talent (Evans is 50) from another club that's like an assistant GM or even better a hungry, ambitious assistant-to-the-assistant GM that will liven things up with some new ideas. Every outfit needs a re-boot now and then. I suspect Boch and Sabes, if 2019 is non-competitive, will not be re-signed.
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