San Francisco Giants Have Perfect Recipe For Success With Brian Sabean, Bruce Bochy

By Bill Zimmerman on October 21, 2014

The San Francisco Giants are in their third World Series in five years — not the Los Angeles Dodgers, not the New York Yankees, the Giants.  How does a team that doesn’t necessarily have the biggest stars in the game consistently find themselves on the biggest stage? Quite simple, really. The Giants have a plan that they believe in, and they never stray from it.

General manager Brian Sabean isn’t really part of the GM fraternity. Sabean doesn’t subscribe to the Sabermetric Bible; he spends more time in his hotel room than he does at the hotel bar during the baseball winter meetings. He looks beyond the ballplayer before he signs a free agent.

The Giants look for grit, determination and try to breed a close-knit locker room of quality individuals with a single goal in mind: winning. It’s not that the Giants are devoid of stars. Some writers are anointing Buster Posey as the next Derek Jeter and Madison Bumgarner is rapidly climbing the ladder of the best pitchers in baseball. Those aren’t the players that impress if you look at the Giants. It’s the fact that Travis Ishikawa was nearly out of baseball and now is a key contributor to the team including hitting the walk-off Bobby Thomson “Giants win the Pennant” home run in Game 5 of the NLCS. It’s about Ryan Vogelsong, who was completely out of baseball since 2006 and playing overseas when the Giants brought him to the ball club in 2011, and he’s been a key pitcher on the team that won the 2012 World Series and is looking for another title.

Sabean never strays from his plan. Despite calls from fans and analysts that the Giants should go for a big free agent bat or break the bank for a particular available player, Sabean doesn’t break his mold. Sabean hasn’t made a big splash once in free agency since these World Series runs began. They committed money to their own players like Matt Cain and Tim Lincecum, neither of whom have even made a positive impact on this postseason run. That lack of production doesn’t affect the Giants like it would other teams because they spread the wealth around, finding as many contributors as possible, rather than going the top-heavy route like the Los Angeles Angels or Detroit Tigers.

Sabean knows the importance of pitching, specifically a strong bullpen. In every one of the Giants’ World Series runs, their bullpen has been stupendous. This year’s bullpen is led by Sergio Romo, Santiago Casilla, Javier Lopez and Jeremy Affeldt has been outstanding. They haven’t received the same fanfare of the Kansas City Royals‘ bullpen, but in many statistical categories, the Giants’ pen has been just as good.

The success of the Giants starts in the front office, but it continues in the dugout. Manager Bruce Bochy is a magician with this club. He knows exactly when to pull the strings on people, exactly where to insert players to put them in the best position to succeed and how to keep a team loose but focused.

In the era of sabermetrics where many GMs believe that players will perform regardless of the manager and go for younger, less experienced (cheaper) candidates, those managers frequently get exposed in the postseason.  Bochy picks October as his month to shine.

Game 5 of the NLCS was the perfect example, as the Giants trailed the St. Louis Cardinals 3-2. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Bumgarner was due to lead off for San Francisco. Traditional thinking says that the pinch hitter the manager calls on in that position should be a contact guy whose job is to get on first base to start a rally. Bochy called upon Michael Morse to pinch hit. Morse had only had three at-bats in the NLCS to that point, and Bochy put him in the game for one reason only — to tie the game with a home run in one swing. On the third pitch of the at-bat, Morse connected on Pat Neshek’s delivery and drove it into the San Francisco night, sailing over the left field wall.

The Giants enter tonight trying to become only the second National League team to win three World Series in a five-year stretch, and Sabean and Bochy have put the Giants in position to accomplish that feat.

Bill Zimmerman is covering the World Series for www.RantSports.Com. Follow him on Twitter, like him on Facebook, or add him to your network on Google.