fling93 loves fishies

Not Renewing Giants Season Tix

Well, I was hoping to write this Friday or Saturday, but I play in a 9 Ball pool league in the APA, specifically the South Bay APA Leagues, and my team made it to the Tri Annual Tournament, which we played all day on Saturday — and won! Not much help from me, since I lost my match, but I at least closed the gap a little at the end, and those points did matter since our team ended up winning that round 51-49.

Also, my copy of iLife ‘04 came in on Friday, and I’ve been playing around with GarageBand. I actually have a bit of a musical background on several instruments, so I’ve been meaning to try my hand at songwriting for some time, but never got around to it. I’m sure I’ll eventually need to upgrade to something like Cubase, but for now I just needed a kick start. I’ll be sure to post some of my stuff here for your amusement.

But the real reason for this post is that individual tickets for the San Francisco Giants’ 2004 season go on sale today at 11 AM PST, which can be purchased from the Giants website here, at Tickets.com outlets, Giants Dugout Stores (except the one at Pac Bell… er… SBC Park), or at today’s KNBR/Giants Winter Fanfest, also at 11 AM at Pier 48 (in San Francisco, of course). I went to it last year, and it was pretty cool, but I think I’ll be too busy playing with GarageBand today. Besides, I already bought my tix for the 2004 season a couple of days ago because I’m an Xtreme Rewards member.

Of course, last year we were season ticket holders (up in View Reserved section 310, row 13 — still a great view, though), but we didn’t renew this year. Oh, I’m still a Giants fan (hey, I’m posting this, aren’t I?), and will still go to about ten games this year, but there were a couple of reasons we decided not to renew. And let me explain why…

Chance to Win it All

First of all, the main reason we bought them last year was because we thought that team had a good chance to win the World Series. Perhaps not as good as the year before, but still a decent shot. I was particularly excited by the acquisition of Edgardo Alfonzo, who was my favorite New York Met (and you can spot me at the games as probably the only guy in the stadium wearing a #13 Alfonzo home jersey). This year, we lost guys like Rich Aurilia and Tim Worrell, and didn’t really acquire anybody except A.J. Pierzynski. To me, it’s pretty clear that this is not a team built to contend for the title, but a team built to be just good enough to fill the seats.

Because, let’s face it, the way Sabean builds a team is to stock the minors with pitching, and then use those prospects to trade for more established players — and he’s used up all our prime prospects to go for it all in the past two years. And Magowan is in this to make money, so he’s not going to splurge to win it all unless he knows the team has a realistic chance of winning it all. It’s just not worth it to lose money on a team that doesn’t make the playoffs. This was the reason he mandated the salary cut last year resulting in the trade of Russ Ortiz. There were too many variables at the beginning of last year to know whether it would work, and only when it was obvious this team was a contender did he authorize Sabean to go after Sidney Ponson. In hindsight, it seems silly, but honestly, if it were your money, would you really have done any differently?

And I think Magowan knew that we were taking our best shots in the last two years and are now going to have to rebuild for a while. Of course, he can’t say that publicly, and neither can Sabean. And really, you never know. In this era of the luxury tax/salary cap, anything is possible. But looking at how much the Astros, Red Sox, and Phillies improved, it doesn’t look good.

Time and Money

The other main reason we’re not renewing is pretty obvious. Season tickets involve a huge investment time and money — most importantly time. Eighty-one home games is a lot to go to, especially when you live in the South Bay and take the CalTrain up. It was nice to experience that once, but I don’t think we could do that again, especially now that I’m blogging (and no, I don’t consider bringing the iBook to the game an option since I’d be too paranoid of somebody spilling beer on it). When we bought them last year, we figured we could sell all of our unused tix on the Giants Double Play Ticket Window, but we ended up selling only three or four games or so, which was pretty disappointing, and we ended up completely wasting tix to about five games or so. As for the money, we can still afford it, but I still have designs on retiring early in my forties or fifties, and the savings from all those tix will certainly go a long way towards that.

Rich Aurilia

And of course, we were both huge Rich Aurilia fans. He’s always been my second favorite (behind Jeff Kent, and now Alfonzo), and my wife’s favorite player. Worse, we both can’t stand Neifi Perez, who’s a hot-dogger who cares more about looking good than the team (thus his tendency to lollygag on routine plays so he can show off his arm). Yes, he was also the guy who scored on that botched infield fly against the Expos — but the only reason he did was because he must have forgotten the rule as well, or else he wouldn’t have been running towards home when they dropped it. He merely realized before the Expos that the umpire never made the out sign, which I admit was heads-up, but trying to play it off like he knew what he was doing the whole time is just bullshit.

Richie, by comparison, is the consummate team player and class act. Although Sabean’s hands were somewhat tied by the budget, it really is still his fault. The main reason we didn’t even make an attempt to re-sign him was because we were paying more than $2 million a year for Neifi to sit on the bench. Why? Because with last year’s scramble to replace Kent, Kenny Lofton, David Bell, and Reggie Sanders, Sabean panicked too early in a buyer’s market and overpaid for guys who could play multiple positions, like Perez and (yes, I have to admit it) Alfonzo (which actually came in handy last season when Ray Durham, J.T. Snow, and Aurilia were all out at the same time). Remember, before we got Jose Cruz, Jr., the original “plan” was to put Perez at second base and Durham in center field and Marquis Grissom in right — a plan that smacked of desperation.

And thus, we have a $2 million a year bench player, and letting Aurilia go was the easiest way to rectify that. I’m not saying that Sabean is a bad GM, but that he’s really overrated. He’s certainly above-average, but people forget that the Giants payroll is actually up in the top ten (actually #4 at the beginning of last year’s playoffs), so he’s clearly not in the same league as a Billy Beane, Omar Minaya, Terry Ryan, Allard Baird, Gerry Hunsicker, or of course, Larry Beinfest (A’s, Expos, Twins, Royals, Astros, and Marlins), who all operate with much tighter constraints. He’s certainly better than Steve Phillips (who burdened the Mets with all those awful salaries), but that isn’t saying much. Clearly, he’s no John Schuerholz, Brian Cashman, or even Theo Epstein (if you don’t know who those guys are, you aren’t paying attention).

Felipe Alou

I like Felipe, and he’s a good coach (as was Dusty Baker as well). But he needs to take more responsibility for what happened last season (my analysis of it is here) and learn from the experience. But he’s not taking any of it, and he’s already announced that he’s not going to change a thing, I guess proving the adage that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. So even if the Giants squeak by and win the weak NL West, I wouldn’t expect very much from them after that. You can’t manage your players like chess pieces instead of people and expect to win it all in this era. Joe Torre and Jack McKeon’s styles are the blueprint of success now (think, why did McKeon use — of all players — the struggling Brad Penny out of the bullpen in Game 7 — Game 7! — against the Cubs when he had better options available like Braden Looper and Chad Fox?).

So, anyway I’ll stay a fan. I’ll still read all the box scores and go to a few games. But no more season tickets for me. It’s probably going to be a long drought.