How Golden State constraints forced Giants GM Sabean to build his roster a ... - San Jose Mercury News (blog)
Major League Baseball has a payroll luxury tax and an international signing limit tax. The Giants have avoided getting dinged on either of those, moving as nimbly as a Ford F-350 with a Ron Paul bumper sticker. But until they find a way to uproot AT&T Park and haul it to Reno, the tax man will continue to make a major impact on how they build a roster. That was the most interesting part of the general discussion around Giants GM Brian Sabean’s podium as baseball managers and executives held a media availability session at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel on Monday. The conversation began with a question about Sabean’s team-building philosophy, and how he resists the compulsion to “win” the offseason or arrive at spring training with a finished roster. As we’ve seen in all three World Series-winning campaigns, the Giants had plenty of personnel churn along the way – Mark DeRosa, John Bowker, Bengie Molina and Aaron Rowand were in the opening-day lineup in 2010, for crying out loud – and the... But that’s not where Sabean has made his most important acquisitions while the Giants have won World Series titles in three of the last five seasons, and there’s a simple reason for that: for all the twinkle off those rings, the Giants aren’t an... “In some ways we’ve found … to entice a free agent to come to San Francisco, we’re almost in an overpay situation,” Sabean said. Source: blogs.mercurynews.com
