When It’s Time For a Change

More and more the general manager is becoming the new star of major league baseball.

Over its history men such as Branch Rickey have rose to fame (or infamy) for trades and more recently free agent signings, but the players and manager were the face of an organization. They were the ones on the field for 162-plus games, always available to the lens of a waiting photographer or television camera.

But GMs such as Billy Beane, Theo Epstein and others have taken more public roles and more blame and reward for the state of the franchise.

Brian Sabean has been the general manager of the Giants since Sept. 30, 1996. In that time the team has come one win from a World Series and finished with a winning record in all but three seasons.

The problem is that those three seasons have all come consecutively with a fourth most likely on the way. The criticisms have been well documented; over reliance on veterans, wasting of draft picks and more recently poor trades.

This is the start of what I hope will be an in-depth look at nearly every transaction Sabean has made with the Giants, including trades, free agent signings and the amateur draft.

Like how every win and loss cannot be attributed to the manager, not every transaction is 100 percent the decision of a general manager. But what I hope to find are general trends about the way players are selected in the Sabean regime and the success of those moves.

Let’s start with trades, shall we? Using the Lahman database, Retrosheet transaction database and Dave Studeman’s Win Shares database (and borrowing heavily from his work here) I tallied up the Win Shares doled out in Giants trades over Sabean’s term. I used only shares credited to the dealing team (so the Giants aren’t hurt by Keith Foulke’s years with Boston or helped by Jeff Kent’s years in Houston and L.A.). I think this helps measure what each team got out of the deal and not just the talent sent around.

Sabean’s biggest success and failure have arguably been in his dealings with other teams. Today I’m going to start with his top-5 trades. Eventually I’ll hit his top-5 duds and then finish up with a look at how his success has changed over his tenure with the team.

1. Nov. 13, 1996: Matt Williams and Trenidad Hubbard to the Cleveland Indians for Jeff Kent, Jose Vizciano, Julian Tavarez and Joe Roa.

Here’s how the immortal Bruce Jenkins summed up what has turned out to be one of Sabean’s best moves as general manager:

The Giants claim they have a master plan for the offseason, and here’s how they kicked it off yesterday: They pulled off a trade that makes them infinitely worse.

The day the trade was announced I remember my dad reading the paper and declaring he was no longer a Giants fan. He wasn’t the only one, by far. Williams was that important to the makeup of the team, at least in the mind of many Giants fans.

But Sabean escaped with his first major victory. It’s amazing to look back and see how little was thought of Kent. Basically he was a decent-hitting middle infielder who happened to be a jerk. Of course he turned out to be a power-hitting middle infielder who happened to be a jerk.

In the Chronicle’s write up of the trade the lede mentions that Matt Williams was traded for three players but does not mention any of them by name. And when they are named, Tavarez gets first billing.

Before the trade Kent’s best OPS+ was 11 in 107 games for the 1994 Mets. He had lower than 120 once in his time with the Giants, winning the 2000 MVP award.

Overall the trade netted the Giants 176 Win Shares over the players’ careers, gaining 194 while giving up only 18 (Williams left Cleveland after one year). While Kent gained the majority of that, even Vizcaiano (17) and Tavarez (12) added double-digit value.

Sabean had one other trade that netted more than 100 Win Shares, and it occurred less than two weeks later.

2. Nov. 26, 1996: Allen Watson and Fausto Macey to the Angels for J.T. Snow.

From a Chronicle piece dated Nov. 14, 1996:

Sabean conceded the Williams trade by itself “wouldn’t bode well on how we plan to set up our offense,” and said he’s talking to four teams about a first baseman who finally can fill Will Clark’s shoes and protect Bonds in the lineup, which had been Williams‘ job.

Snow, already the owner of two Gold Gloves, was coming off a year in which he hit just .257/.327/.384, good for an 81 OPS+. Not exactly a protector of Bonds. Little did everyone know Sabean had already picked that piece up.

In his first year as a Giants Snow hit 28 home runs and 104 RBI. It would be his best offensive season. Still, Snow added defensive stability in the infield and around league average offense at the plate for eight seasons.

Watson would go 18-19 in two years with the Angels. The trade would net the Giants 125 win shares, 136 for Snow and losing 11 for Watson.

3. July 30, 2001: Armando Rios and Ryan Vogelsong to the Pirates for Jason Schmidt and John VanderWal.

To believe this was made to counter the Dodgers getting James Baldwin. Here’s what the New York Times had on Armando Rios the day after the the trade:

In the deal, the Pirates got outfielder Armando Rios. Rios has produced decent power numbers — 14 homers, 49 runs batted in — in his second full season in the big leagues, but his poor play at Pac Bell Park — .218, three home runs — kept him in an occasional platoon with the 39-year-old Eric Davis, even though Davis is hitting .204.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement. In his two seasons with the Pirates Rios would earn 2 win shares. Schmidt on the other hand would win the 2003 Cy Young Award (Something that will get you thrown out of Borders: Crossing out Eric Gagne’s name in all the baseball encyclopedias) and earn 80 win shares.

Fianlly tally: 79 net win shares.

4. Nov. 18, 1997: Joe Fontenot, Mike Pageler and Mike Villano to the Marlins for Robb Nen.

Your classic prospects for experience, except for the fact the team trading experience had just won the World Series weeks before.

Nen was part of the Great Florida Fire Sale of 1997 and luckily landed with the Giants to replace the departing Rod Beck and Roberto Hernandez, picked up at the trade deadline that year in a deal we’ll get to later. At the time the trio of prospects was thought to be a decent haul:

To get Nen, who had 35 saves for the world champion Marlins, the Giants gave up three pretty good pitching prospects, Mike Villano, Joe Fontenot and Mick Pageler. … Fontenot, 20, was the Giants’ first pick in the June 1995 draft. This season, he was 10-11 with a 5.53 ERA at Double-A Shreveport. Other clubs had inquired about him before, but he was untouchable until last night.

Nen of course would never pitch after 2002, playing through injury to get the team to the World Series. his five years would still be good enough to earn 71 win shares. The trio would pick up zero for the Marlins.

5. July 31, 1998: Jason Brester, Jim Stoops and Darryl Hamilton to the Rockies for Ellis Burks.

This would be Sabean’s second consecutive big deadline-deal after picking up Hernandez, Wilson Alvarez and Danny Darwin from the Chicago Whitesox the previous July. It was also technically the second the year as well, since the Giants had earlier picked up Joe Carter. And as we saw with Schmidt it wasn’t his last deadline deal.

Sabean felt the team was getting too many people on base and not driving them in, so he traded his leadoff hitter for a power guy.

Burks played well down the stretch and then had two great years in the Giants outfield. Hamilton played 142 games for the Rockies before being traded at the deadline again the next season, this time to the Mets.

You’ll notice that four of the five happened between 1996 and 1998. This way of measuring trades will naturally favor older transactions as it allows for more build up of value. I plan on addressing that as I wrap up the trade part of the series.