The Ratto Sabean Collective

According to columnist Ray Ratto, Brian Sabean shouldn't be expected to have the Giants take a big step forward next year for the following reasons:

1) Teams rarely make two large leaps in consecutive years

2) They don't really have the budget (unless they raise payroll) to sign a really big bat. Math is math!

3) The budget isn't his problem, it's the ownership who sets payroll.

Allow me to compose myself while I digest the stupid.

If Sabean hadn't signed salary hogs like Barry Zito, Aaron Rowand and Edgar Renteria, they'd have more than enough money to go around.

If Sabean HAD signed someone like Adam Dunn for cheap ($10MM/year is his current salary), there wouldn't be as much a need for a big bat.

If Sabean hadn't hamstrung the Giants so badly in years past, their performance this year - which we should remember did not get them into the playoffs - wouldn't be such a huge leap to live up to.

Brian Sabean is a terrible, terrible general manager. He needs no apologists in the media or elsewhere. Throw this one back, Ratto.

Land Shark Stadium?

I heard the announcers refer to the Miami Dolphins stadium as "Land Shark Stadium" during Monday Night Football's game. It stunned me, and made me curious as to what was going on here. Obviously, it's not Joe Robbie Stadium anymore, but land shark?

The answer is actually pretty depressing:

The Miami Dolphins have a new naming rights deal with Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville and Anheuser-Busch InBev's joint brewing project, Land Shark Lager, which renamed the facility "Land Shark Stadium."[4] The sponsorship deal is reportedly for eight months and the name will revert to Dolphin Stadium in time for the Super Bowl XLIV and the 2010 Pro Bowl, possibly to be replaced by another sponsor name if a deal can be secured before that time.

Now, granted that's from Wikipedia and therefore isn't necessarily totally accurate. But I can't decide what depresses me more - the fact that the naming rights are after Jimmy Buffett's brewing project, or the fact that the Dolphins willfully renamed their stadium for what will amount to a single season.

Either way, folks, not cool. Not cool at all.

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.

On Duane Kuiper, Mean Joe Greene and The Power Of Heroes

I'm a big fan of Joe Posnanski (even if I find it hard to remember how to spell his name). His blog is updated regularly, a hard feat when you acknowledge he's not only a columnist for Sports Illustrated but has a book out (The Machine, available at Alibris!)

Today's article is about the Mean Joe Greene commercial, why it was successful, and it ends with a really nice suprise that reminds you that there are truly good guys in sport and why it's still fun to be a fan even after you "grow up."

And that’s why the Mean Joe Greene commercial — with all its obvious flaws — captures. You can sense (perhaps not through the performance but you can still sense) that this kid idolizes Mean Joe. And Mean Joe — heck, he was called MEAN JOE — doesn’t have any time for the kid. Mean Joe is in pain, and he’s feeling sorry for himself, and he really needs to get back to the locker room to get X-rays (and why are there no trainers around him anyway?). The kid gives him a Coca Cola, and suddenly it hits Mean Joe (through the power of carbonation) that this kid REALLY likes him, this kid looks up to him, this kid has his poster on the bedroom wall and pretends to be Joe Greene on the school playground and is willing to trade 20 Roger Staubach football cards to get one Mean Joe Greene.

And he tosses the jersey across the tunnel. Here you go, kid. This will mean as much to you as it does to me.

What does all this have to do with the greatest thing ever? Well, you knew I would make you work to get here. If you’ve read this site much you know who my all-time hero is — bigger even than Ozzie Newsome. When I was a kid, I only wanted to be like Duane Kuiper. I was a second baseman, like Duane Kuiper. I would dive for ground balls because Duane Kuiper did.

Oh, I'm not going to reveal the whole thing here, fool. Go read it yourself. And, way to go, Duane.

NFL Tidbits

A few thoughts from around the league after four weeks are in the books...

Checkmate?

...a league source tells us that the 49ers will indeed meet with Crabtree and Parker today.

But all signs point to Crabtree caving in.

...

In other words, the Niners will be holding firm. Though they possibly will try to find a way to help Parker save a little face, the damage is already done.

Parker and Crabtree have blinked.

This sounds about right to me. One of the few things that really bothered me about Crabtree's holdout - aside from the holdout itself which is moronic - was when Crabtree seemingly refused to TALK with the ownership. That's not a sign of strength, and I have to think that came from his agent who is looking quite bad here. The other thing that bothers me - and trust me, I'll get over it - is that it seems as if Crabtree and Parker were assuming, even counting on, the 49ers doing poorly without him. In effect, they were rooting for them to do poorly, for their own leverage. That's not ... cool.

If you need another reason to hate the Rams...:

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh says he is teaming up with St. Louis Blues owner Dave Checketts in a bid to buy the St. Louis Rams.

Limbaugh declined to discuss details Tuesday. He cited a confidentiality agreement with Goldman Sachs, the investment firm hired by the family of former Rams owner Georgia Frontiere to review assets of her estate.

Limbaugh also declined to discuss other partners that might be involved in the bid, but said he and Checketts would operate the team.

Forbes magazine has estimated the Rams franchise has a value of $929 million.

It's worth noting that I personally do NOT need another reason to hate the Rams OR Rush Limbaugh. I knew Limbaugh was an NFL fan - we can all remember his woefully inept turn on ESPN's NFL show when he said that Donovan McNabb was only still a starting QB because he was black. There's a big trainwreck ahead here folks; I'm worried only because I didn't think the Rams could get much worse. Still, I'd rather have less Rush in my life, so I'm against this one.

You win some, then you lose some more...

In the first three weeks of the season, I correctly picked 11/16, 13/16 and 13/16 games correctly. That's with the point spread, people - I point this out because it's never going to happen to me again. It's also worth pointing out that in week one, I lost to the commissioner's mother, who is in her sixties and doesn't know a lick about football - so I'm not professing a lot of knowledge here. I'm just saying, I need to document this somewhere because the fall has already happened. Last week, in fact, I got SIX right (out of the 14 games played due to bye weeks). That's sadly much more like it.

Ah, that's more like it.

The 35-0 thrashing of the aforementioned Rams by the 49ers this Sunday was a pretty satisfying win for a team that would be 4-0 right now were it not for the last minute heroics of Brett Favrego (yes, that's Favre plus Ego) in Minnesota. In particular, Patrick Willis played one of the most dominating games on defense by a 49er since, dare I say it, the days of Ronnie Lott. Sure, they played different positions but Willis and his teammates were EVERYWHERE, scoring three defensive touchdowns, sacking Kyle Boller five times and pitching a shutout.

Now, it's true that the Rams are particularly bad. Really, really bad. They've scored 24 points all season and Sunday was the second time they've been shutout. But the Packers gave up 17 points to them in Week 3, so it's not like they simply CANNOT score points. What's more, the 49ers aren't apparently that satisfied with the win, as convincing as it seems.

The 49ers recorded their first shutout since the final game of the 2001 season. But there was not the feeling that the team was fully content with the accomplishment, a 35-0 victory, over the winless Rams.

...

The offensive line was not pleased with their performance today against the Rams. Glen Coffee gained just 74 yards on 24 carries (3.1 average), and Hill was sacked four times.

"We're not excited just because we won," 49ers tackle Joe Staley said. "We know we have a lot of work to do."

Said Singletary, "When it's all said and done, our offensive line will be one of the best lines in the league. I think sometimes we just cheat ourselves out of what we can be. We just have to take it to the next level and I know they will."

I must say, after his initial antics after he got named the interim coach last year, I wasn't convinced Singletary was quite ready for this job. Suffice it to say ... I'm convinced.