"We're not ruling that out," Neukom said Tuesday, in his first public appearance since taking over for Peter Magowan last week. "But there are financial realities."
Neukom and Larry Baer, promoted to team president as part of the restructuring, have told general manager Brian Sabean and manager Bruce Bochy not to think in terms of a set payroll but rather to take an outside-the-box approach when it comes to organizing the roster. San Francisco had a payroll of about $80 million last season and Sabean expected something similar for 2009.
Sabean and Bochy have been asked to present a couple of different roster possibilities featuring varying talent levels -- not to mention a manual for players and others about how the organization will be run from top to bottom, down to how things will be handled in given situations, such as with two outs or with runners on base.
"The number is something of a placeholder at this point in our financial planning process. We said to Brian and to Bruce Bochy, 'Look, don't be constrained by a placeholder number for player payroll right now,'" Neukom said. "'Think of this in terms of how you're going to assemble a roster that's going to be competitive in '09 and come back to us. We may not be able to afford plan A, we may tell you that we're really at plan B or plan C.'
"We just think that's the way you run a talent business."
With the economic downturn and ticket sales already having dropped this past season, Baer doesn't envision any increases in ticket costs and perhaps even some drops. The club missed 3 million fans for the first time in the nine-year history of its waterfront ballpark.
It didn't help the Giants went 37-44 at home for their fourth straight losing campaign in their own park. San Francisco hasn't reached the playoffs since 2003, one year after getting within five outs of a World Series title against the wild-card Angels. Last year, the Giants had Barry Bonds chasing the home run record and the All-Star Game.
Neukom believes by rebuilding the franchise from the bottom of the farm system up and establishing a "Giant way" of doing things at all levels, the organization will be competitive come 2009 and then a contender again soon after.
"We intend to be competitive," he said. "And after we are competitive we intend to be contending. We want to be contending as soon as possible. We want to be the sort of franchise that puts a contending Major League Baseball team on the field game in and game out, and affords its community and fan base a contending team year in and year out. And how we're going to do that is by emphasizing and investing even more in homegrown talent."
Neukom hinted that he wouldn't address the futures of Bochy and Sabean any time soon. Both will be in the final years of their contracts.
"Brian and Bruce enthusiastically have endorsed the notion that we've got so much work to do, and it's good work, that we're not going to worry about what their status is with the Giants beyond the 2009 season now," Neukom said. "We're not going to be distracted by that. We're going to focus on making sure our trajectory toward competitiveness goes up from where it was in '08 so we can have a team we can all be proud of in '09 and beyond."
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