Published August 23, 2011 on CSNBayArea.com

It’s been almost a month since Giants GM Brian Sabean started making changes to the roster, and the results, obviously, have been disappointing. The Giants, who won series after series over the first four months of the season, have won exactly one in the past four weeks.

It’s tempting to pin all of this misery on the incredible sequence of bad luck the team has run into lately, but I think that’s letting Sabean off the hook. He took a team that had only one thing going for it, and in shaking up his lineup, he destroyed that one thing: faith.

Faith was the team’s ace in the hole. It was winning games simply on the belief that it would; that someone would step up and get the two-out hit they needed to break a tie in the late innings. It wasn’t always a hit, either. Can you think of another team that won games on a pop fly lost in the sun and a bases-loaded balk in the same month? It was crazy!
It’s easy to understand Sabean’s desire to make changes. This team was, on paper, one of the worst offensive (most offensive?) teams in the major leagues. In fact, had the games been played on paper, you could be assured that the Giants would have been well below .500 at the end of July. Since the games are played on grass, not paper, and by human beings, not statistics, faith was a factor, and it carried the Giants to a four-game lead in the NL West.

That’s when Sabean started to talk about his desire to get some better sticks, and most of the baseball “experts” agreed that he had to. Here’s the problem, though. This isn’t Strat-o-Matic. You can’t just drop a new guy into the lineup of a Major League team and have him perform exactly the same way he would have with his previous team. And what about his new teammates? Starters become bench players, bench players get sent to the minors, and the team’s whole dynamic changes.

You may offer up Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn as examples of just the opposite; players who were acquired by their new teams at the same time the Giants picked up Carlos Beltran, and they clicked immediately and started making contributions. I would counter that argument by pointing out that the Phillies and Braves were teams which were offensively competent without those new players, and the pressure on them wasn’t nearly as great as it was (and remains) on Beltran. If you’re a team that is more reliant on talent than chemistry, you can add and subtract players without derailing your mojo. When you’re the Giants, mojo is not to be tampered with.

When Sabean went shopping, it was a reality sandwich for the whole team. It was like Wile E. Coyote suddenly looked down and realized that he had run off the cliff. Yes, Sabean got his man, but it seems like everyone else on the team (except Pablo Sandoval) has taken a step backward since Beltran showed up.

The interesting thing is that it’s not just the hitters who have been affected by this new, uncool vibe. Doubt has crept into the pitchers, too, who have had collectively their worst month of the season. Even manager Bruce Bochy, the man who has pushed all the right buttons since Aug. 1 of last year, doesn’t seem to have the same magic touch. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with him giving his No. 15 to Beltran, but why would a manager who won the World Series last year and sits in first place with two months to go tempt fate by changing his number?

So what’s my point? Good question. I suppose I just wanted to get on the record what a special experience it was watching the Giants play the first four months of this season. The past four weeks have been excruciating, but it doesn’t erase the memories of Crawford’s grand slam, Nate Schierholtz’s catch in L.A., Chris Stewart dropping a squeeze bunt in the top of the 11th and starting a 2-5-4 DP in the bottom to save the day. I mean, really? Chris Stewart?

Vogey making the All-Star team, countless innings of scoreless long relief, and Brian Wilson shutting door after door all made the Giants must-see TV. I understand why Sabean didn’t feel like he could leave that team alone and still have a chance to compete in October, but I wish he had.

I guess fans need to have a little faith.