SAN FRANCISCO–For the first time in a decade, the San Francisco Giants finished in the National League West cellar.
After making the playoffs with an 87-75 record last season, the Giants stumbled out of the gates and never recovered, ultimately finishing off the year with a 64-98 record that represents the second-worst mark in franchise history.
At the franchise’s end-of-season press conference on Tuesday, former general manager and current VP of Baseball Operations Brian Sabean addressed the Giants’ last-place finish, and said he’s confident that the management in place will help put a better product on the field in the future.
“We had a last place season, that can happen in sports,” Sabean said. “Just like you have a washed year in life, but we’re not last place people and we’re not a last place organization. We’re the furthest thing from that.”
The Giants have a massive payroll and a roster loaded with veteran players, but Sabean said San Francisco is not in a position to blow up its roster. The Giants only have one free agent, backup catcher Nick Hundley, and they don’t have much room to add salaries. Sabean said the Giants have focused on understanding why things went south in 2017, and he said they’re prepared to begin a turnaround.
“This isn’t a blow it up,” Sabean said. “This isn’t a rebuild. We hope it’s a reset. What it’s going to take, and how that plays out, to go from what we finished to being competitive, to being a playoff team, that’s incumbent on all of us to figure out. That’s been going on for months. The autopsy has been going on for months. I don’t know how much more we can tolerate knowing that the patient got sick and why he got sick, but obviously he didn’t die.”
After Sabean’s comments, Giants’ CEO Larry Baer stepped in and pointed out that after frustrating seasons in 1996 and 2008, the team’s management was able to get the club back on the right track in 1997 and 2009. With senior personnel experienced in reversing fortunes, Baer said he believes the Giants have the right group in place to create change.
“Brian mentions the DNA and that’s important,” Baer said. “That is who we are. We are an organization that gets very focused. We’ve had the 25 years that the Giants have had this ownership group, these guys have been, Brian and Bobby have been here the whole time and Bochy has been here for almost half the time, we’ve had 90 loss seasons before. We had one in ’08, bounced back in ’09. Go back to ’96-’97, when Brian took over as a GM, there’s a lot of focus with the three of them and their staffs on the people that will reverse the turnaround.”