Goodbye, Brian Sabean

I hardly know the Giants without you

It seemed like Brian Sabean would be around forever, didn’t it? In 2053, a mid-90s Sabes would be rattling his cane at whoever was running the Giants, telling them not to draft Albert Belle III because he doesn’t love the game like Royce Clayton’s grandson Broyce. He’d go scouting at minor league games, sending back reports on how the top prospects are still disappointing when they hit AAA. He’d get interviewed on KNBR, and his responses would seem somewhat curt. He’d be Brian Sabean, Giants executive, until the Sun swallowed the Earth.

That was never going to happen. At some point, he would have retired and stopped making appearances other than occasionally at reunions, and everyone would move on. But Sabean would still always be a Giant, right? He couldn’t just go to some other team, could he?

Well, yes. He could, and he did.

Brian Sabean has returned to his roots, going back to the Yankees as an executive advisor to Brian Cashman, and leaving the Giants Sabesless for the first time since 1993. From 1996 through 2014, he was the face of Giants management, the man responsible for putting the team together, the singular person on whom all of the front office’s sins and virtues were dumped.

Then he stepped back, handing the reins to Bobby Evans. And it turned out, said sins and virtues were very similar under Evans. The overall strategy was less effective, of course, but it wasn’t essentially different. It had just been superseded by new advances in general managing, such as Everything The Dodgers Were Doing. The Giants, then, went out and got someone who could do Everything The Dodgers Were Doing, except in San Francisco.

Whither Sabey Sabes? What would be his place in the new paradigm? It would be similar to his place in the old one: scouting, giving input on front office decisions, just generally adding his opinions to those of the group. But as the years went by, the appeal wore off, with Ken Rosenthal reporting that “he was no longer being utilized the way he expected to be.”

What that means is up for interpretation, but my best guess is that Sabean felt marginzalized by the new regime (Caveat: A mere two weeks ago, I was spectacularly wrong when guessing what was going on inside the Giants organization, so don’t think I have any inside information here). His input was, if not necessarily unwelcome, probably ignored. His philosophy on building a team, while Farhan and company may well have been interested to hear it, didn’t guide what they did. His scouting reports on prospects, while full of good information, may have paled in comparison with biomechanical analysis saying “Yeah, we can add a couple MPH on that fastball and tighten up the slider.”

The current Giants organization is a fundamentally different place than the one Brian Sabean ran for multiple decades. This is not to pass judgment on either iteration, but simply to note that he was a square peg and Farhan DFA’d the square hole to pick up a round hole, which he then DFA’d to pick up a crescent shape one, which immediately went on the 60-day IL, which allowed him to acquire an arch-shaped hole, which will make everyone very excited before the diamond hole becomes available in a week.

It was just probably an awkward fit, is the point. The game has changed, and after a very unsuccessful attempt to not change along with it (or not change more than necessary along with it, probably a more accurate characterization), the Giants very suddenly veered in another direction. Sabean didn’t want to head in that direction, and didn’t see a place for himself there anyway.

So he’s going back to New York. Sabean got his start with the Yankees as a scout, and rose to head their scouting department, eventually being a key player in the decisions to draft Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte, among others.

It is somewhat ironic that Sabean built his reputation on his excellent drafts in New York, while the Giants farm system has not been particularly successful over the last decade. Now Sabean expects to be a big part of drafting and scouting with the Yankees. It would be a natural fit, if not for recent and semi-recent history.

Still, we should all wish for the best for Brian Sabean. He gave 30 years of his life to making the Giants better. As someone who’s given almost 20 years of my life to complaining about the Giants online, I understand and respect this commitment. But as much as it seemed like he’d always be around, he wanted something more. He wanted more responsibility, or he wanted more resources, or he wanted a GM who’s listen to him.

Or maybe he just wanted a team that could actually sign a damn free agent.