Brian Sabean rejoins Yankees after 30 years with Giants - MLB

NEW YORK — Brian Sabean is returning to the Yankees, three decades after leaving for San Francisco and watching from afar as his former prospects led New York to four World Series titles in a five-year span.

“Somewhat of a strange twist of fate after 30 years to rejoin the organization that I started in,” Sabean said after the Yankees hired him as executive adviser to GM Brian Cashman.

Now 66, Sabean helped lead the Giants to World Series titles in 2010, `12 and ’14. He was San Francisco’s general manager from 1996 until 2014, then was promoted to executive vice president of baseball operations from 2015-18.

Shifted to an executive vice president role when Farhan Zaidi was hired as president of baseball operations after the 2018 season, Sabean worked under a contract that expired Oct. 31.

“I expected to do more or be more involved. And in some cases, it didn’t turn out that way,” Sabean said. “I still have a great passion for the game and I really have been exposed to almost everything in the game and almost run every department you can in an organization. So I think I needed to be in a place that I could give back, be a mentor, contribute at any level at any time and be an on-call doctor.”

Because of issues involving his extended family, a move to Florida was desirable. The Yankees’ spring training camp and player development complex are in Tampa.

Sabean will report to Cashman and joins former Chicago Cubs GM Jim Hendry in a front office that includes assistant general managers Jean Afterman and Mike Fishman, and vice presidents Damon Oppenheimer (domestic amateur scouting), Kevin Reese (player development) and Tim Naehring (baseball operations). Hendry moved to the Yankees before the 2012 season as a special assignment scout.

“I hope to be a utility tool and voice opinions when needed and work in areas that he may specifically want more thought or advice on,” Sabean said.

A graduate of Eckerd, Sabean was an assistant baseball coach at St. Leo in 1979 and at the University of Tampa from 1980-82, then was Tampa’s head coach in 1983 and ’84.

Sabean worked for the Yankees as a scout in 1985, then as director of scouting from 1986-90 and vice president of player development and scouting from 1990-92. He moved to the Giants in 1993 as assistant to the GM and vice president of scouting/player personnel in 1993 and was promoted to senior vice president of player personnel in 1995.

“I was a link in the chain,” Sabean said, referring to a group that included Gene Michael, George Bradley, Bill Livesey, Mark Newman and George Bradley. “The Tampa consortium, they would call it. It really was a think tank. I look back, we were probably best in class in scouting and player development. To part of that or to watch that grow and then when I left to go to the Giants, see it come to fruition, was extremely gratifying.”

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The first thing that Kansas City Royals owner John Sherman thinks about when he wakes up each morning is how the club, stuck in what seems like an interminable rebuild, will play on that particular day.

Not where they will play four or five years down the road.

Yet given the modest expectations for a team that lost nearly 100 games a year ago, it makes sense many Royals fans are just as interested – quite possibly more so – in the plans for a downtown ballpark than whether infielder Bobby Witt Jr. can double down on his brilliant rookie season or pitcher Brady Singer can truly become a staff ace.

That’s why Sherman’s second thought probably moves to the downtown ballpark, too.

“This is a huge decision, and I look at it as maybe the most important decision we’ll make as long as we have the privilege of stewarding this team,” Sherman said before the Royals held a final workout Wednesday ahead of opening day. “I’m probably as anxious as you to get moving on that, but it’s a complicated process.”

The Royals have called Kauffman Stadium home since the sister to Arrowhead Stadium, the home of the Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs, opened 50 years ago next month.

And while most stadiums are replaced because they have become outdated, the unique, space-aged look of Kauffman Stadium – built during an era in which teams trended toward impersonal, multisport concrete donuts for their homes – remains beloved by Royals fans and visitors alike.

The problem is that despite numerous renovations over the years, the very concrete holding the ballpark together has begun to crumble in places. The cost simply to repair and maintain the ballpark has become prohibitive.

So with the decision essentially made for them to build an entirely new stadium, the Royals revealed plans to build an entire development in the same mold of The Battery Atlanta, where the Braves built Truist Park, and the Ballpark Village in St. Louis, where the new Busch Stadium is merely the centerpiece of a whole entertainment district.

No site has been secured, but several of the most promising are in downtown Kansas City, where the Power & Light District along with T-Mobile Center have spearheaded a successful era of urban renewal.

Sherman has said that private funds would cover the majority of the stadium cost and the entire village, each carrying a price tag of about $1 billion.

But if any public funding will be used, as it was to build and maintain Kauffman Stadium, then it would need to be voted upon, and the earliest that it could show up on a ballot would be August.

“You look at Atlanta, they took some raw ground – they started with 85 acres – and that has been a complete home run,” said Sherman, who purchased the Royals in August 2019, shortly before the pandemic wreaked havoc on team finances.

“This is one of the reasons we want to do this: That’s helped the Braves become more competitive,” Sherman said of the vast potential for increased revenue for one of the smallest-market teams in baseball. “They have locked up and extended the core of their future, and the Braves are in a great position from a baseball standpoint.”

So perhaps the first two thoughts Sherman has each day – about performance and the future – are one and the same.

When it comes to the team itself, the Royals were largely quiet throughout the winter, though that was by design.

Rather than spending heavily on free agents that might help them win a few more games, they decided to stay the course with a promising young roster in the hopes that the development of those players would yield better results.

In fact, Sherman said, the club has been discussing extensions for some of the Royals’ foundational pieces – presumably Witt, who was fourth in voting for AL rookie of the year, and Singer, who was 10-5 with a 3.23 ERA last season.

“We’re having conversations about that as we speak,” Sherman said. “We have a number of young players that we’re trying to evaluate and we’re talking to their representatives about what might work.”

Just because the Royals’ roster largely looks the same, that doesn’t mean nothing has changed. The Royals fired longtime general manager Dayton Moore in September and moved J.J. Picollo to the role, then fired manager Mike Matheny in October and replaced him with longtime Indians and Rays coach Matt Quatraro.

Sherman said the new voices created a palpable energy in spring training that he hopes carries into the regular season.

“When we acquired the team, we had three primary objectives,” Sherman said. “One was to win more games; we’re working on that. The second was to secure the future; that’s what (the stadium) is. And the third was to do good in the community.

“But the first priority,” he said, “is really the on-field product. That’s what really lifts everything else up.”