The point of sabots isnt that they are kinetic missiles, the point of sabots is that they largely ignore point defense. That's what they have to be designed around. If fired correctly (eg. from max range) sabots can only be shot down by pd ai tac lasers, lr pd lasers and guardians, or the rare case of adv. optics burst lasers on a capital or cruiser.
This, coupled with their incredible kill power in their previous iteration, is why they had to change so they cannot just mow down a ship on their own. Sabots now have the excellent role of opening a ship up to fighter or missile attacks since a lot of the ship's PD will be offline after tanking some sabots. Best of all, if you really loathe sabots you can invest in anti-EMP hullmods, armored weapon mounts and stuff like that.