The 2010 Giants

I read an interview with Brian Sabean the other day and will probably have more to say about it - I can't get my head around the fact that this numbskull is the longest tenured GM in all of baseball. Here's one quote that should give one optimism, if only they didn't know it was Sabean talking:

“But it’s safe to say we need some more power, quite frankly. The team is going to have to take on a little different personality. As Boch pointed out to me at the end of the year, which makes sense, a lot of times when you have players like Pablo and Bengie who are free swingers, sometimes, especially with a younger team, or a team challenged to score a lot of runs, they’ll take on that personality. In a selfish way you’d like to find somebody who’s different from them who can calm things down or act in the middle of the order in a different way.

“We are going to be challenged in the market. I can’t mention names but you know the names (Matt Holliday, Jason Bay) that are going to be out there. There’s going to be huge action on them, including from their incumbent teams.

That's great, but it is the last paragraph that is heartbreaking, because even if I believed that Sabean was willing to spend money on a real bat, there's just no one there that the Giants will be able to afford. I'm not even sure I'd want to pay Bay, in particular, what it's going to take to sign him.

Here are the list of projected Type A free agents, per MLB Rumors:

Bobby Abreu
Jason Bay
Rafael Betancourt*
Orlando Cabrera
Johnny Damon
Mark DeRosa
Octavio Dotel
Jermaine Dye*
Brian Giles
Mike Gonzalez
John Grabow
Kevin Gregg
Vladimir Guerrero
LaTroy Hawkins
Matt Holliday
Orlando Hudson
John Lackey
Cliff Lee*
Victor Martinez*
Bengie Molina
Darren Oliver
Placido Polanco
Manny Ramirez*
Marco Scutaro
Rafael Soriano
Miguel Tejada
Jose Valverde
Billy Wagner*
Randy Wolf

The asterisks pretty much show who isn't actually going to stay a free agent, which means there's nobody there. So, even if we believe Sabean is willing to spend cash on an offensive player, he's likely to repeat the Freddy Sanchez, Edgar Renteria (who he still thinks was worth the signing) and Aaron Rowand type signings than anything else. Because those are the only guys left. (And despite rumors that the Nationals might trade Adam Dunn, you can bet a lot of money that Sabean will once again choose not to be involved.)

God help us all.