The San Francisco Giants have found a winning formula under the leadership of manager Bruce Bochy and longtime general manager Brian Sabean. Together, baseball's power duo has helped guide San Francisco to World Series championships in 2010, 2012 and 2014. And though the odd years in between have been just that, odd, with San Francisco missing the postseason all together, the greater success and the overall structure of the franchise positioned the men in charge for much deserved rewards.
On Friday, those rewards came with the announcement that Bochy and Sabean have agreed to contract extensions that will keep them in San Francisco through the 2019 season.*For Sabean, the new contract includes a promotion, as he's also been elevated to executive vice president of baseball operations. His top assistant, Bobby Evans, has been promoted to general manager, while Jeremy Shelley has been named senior vice president and assistant GM.
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Obviously, these extensions represent a big statement from CEO Larry Baer, who remains committed to staying competitive in a difficult landscape with the free-spending Los Angeles Dodgers occupying the same division.
“Brian and Bruce form the foundation on which all three championship teams have been built. The strength and stability of Giants baseball is a direct reflection of the strength and stability of the partnership of these two men," Baer said in a statement. “My top priority this off season was to ensure that this partnership and our outstanding baseball organization remain intact for years to come.”
The key word is foundation. While superstars like Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner serve as the support beams that keep the Giants upright, Bochy and Sabean have been and will remain the foundation for which everything is built. They provide the stability in an often unstable business, and they provide a unified voice and vision in a sport often divided by ego and self-serving bias.
Until Friday, Sabean had been baseball’s longest tenured general manager. He was initially promoted to the position following the 1996 season and was an immediate success, overseeing a Giants team that compiled eight consecutive winning seasons and four postseason appearances. During that stretch, Sabean went from Dusty Baker to Felipe Alou as his dugout general, and when the tide finally turned against the Giants in 2006, he made the call to Bochy.
If not his best decision as general manager, it ranks close to the top. That was the moment the very important foundation of trust and patience were laid. Or as Sabean might put it, at that moment they became the first two links in a chain that secures San Francisco's success.
"We do as much work, if not more, on guys' background and how they fit into the clubhouse than all of the other analysis," Sabean was quoted as saying during the 2014 World Series. "We think it's very important from a professional standpoint, a coaching standpoint and a team standpoint.
"We don't have a star system here. Everybody has got to be a link in the chain. And they have to accept that responsibility and pull that weight every day."
It's with that philosophy that the Giants were able to overcome Matt Cain's season-ending elbow injury and the demotion of former ace Tim Lincecum to the bullpen last season. It's with that same philosophy the Giants hope to overcome the departure of Pablo Sandoval in free agency and the extended absence of Hunter Pence, who's due to miss several weeks with a broken forearm.
It's not an unbreakable structure, of course. No such thing exists in a sport that relentlessly tests you mentally and physically for six straight months, but it's a structure that proves difficult to crack once it survives the storm.

The Giants don't spend the most money. There's rarely buzz surrounding them when it's time to pick a World Series champion. But reminiscent of the NBA's San Antonio Spurs, another franchise with unmatched stability, they're the current measuring stick for success in MLB. With Bochy and Sabean remaining through the next five seasons, there's a better chance that won't change anytime soon.*
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @Townie813