Gary Peterson on the rehabilitation (if he needed it) of Brian Sabean:

Sabean, in case you haven't heard, has had a great season, leading National League GMs in FUIS.

What's that? You're not familiar with new-age baseball statistical analysis? Allow us -- FUIS stands for Facilitating Under Intense Scrutiny. All general managers in all sports attract a certain amount of scrutiny. Sabean seems to get more than his share locally.

--snip--

"I understand the criticism, and I understand why people say what they say," said Dodgers general manager Ned Colletti, who for nine seasons was Sabean's assistant GM with the Giants. "But you look at doing the job he has done for the amount of years he has done it, and transitioning from a team that was built around Barry (Bonds) to another team that is now built around a pitching staff, largely drafted and in-house, that's tough to do. Think about a franchise going to the World Series twice in nine years, that's pretty good."

More pretty good stuff: Under Sabean, the Giants have averaged 87 wins per season; only two National League teams have done better. The Giants have appeared in five postseasons; only three NL teams have been in more.

Essentially, these Giants have been successful because of five home-grown players: Buster Posey, and their four postseason starters.

Well, them plus Aubrey Huff and Andres Torres, two players in their 30s who were plucked by Sabean from the scrap heap.

Before these last two (good) seasons, the Giants finished well below .500 in four straight seasons. Before that, they had the most devastating baseball player on the planet.

Would the Giants have won without Barry Bonds? No. Not nearly as much. Does Sabean deserve credit for Barry Bonds? No. Not much. Bonds was already a Giant when Sabean got the job. He does deserve a great deal of credit for trading Matt Williams for Jeff Kent (as I wrote in this book). And the Giants did enjoy a couple of fine seasons after Kent left.

After Bonds stopped winning MVP Awards, though, the wins suddenly became pretty hard to come by. And signing Barry Zito for (gulp) $126 million didn't seem to help.

Where am I going with all of this? It's tempting to suggest that the key to the Giants' recent success is those starting pitchers ... But you know, with the exception of their No. 5 starter (during the regular season), the Giants' rotation this season was exactly the same as 2008, when the club went 72-90.

That team couldn't score, at all. The hitting improved just slightly last season, but the club won 88 games because most of the holdover pitchers improved. And they won 92 games this season because the pitchers held steady, and Aubrey Huff and Buster Posey arrived.

Fourteen years ago, Sabean traded Matt Williams and felt compelled to defend himself: "I didn't get to this point by being an idiot ... I'm sitting here telling you there is a plan."

For a long time, the plan seemed to be Barry Bonds. Then for a few years, there didn't seem to be any plan at all. It's not completely clear what the plan is now. But it seems to be working.