A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

I'm not really interested in discussing the details of last night's game. We sucked. Again...
Did any of you catch Greg Papa on the pre-game show on Comcast? According to those of you who saw it, Papa led into an interview with Panda who was explaining his base running blunder from the night before by CHUCKLING ABOUT NEEDING A TRANSLATOR. Fuck Greg Papa. How DARE he disrespect Pablo Sandoval with a dumb comment like that. Panda is a 23 year old kid who is actively working on learning a second language so that he can, among other things, communicate directly with his fans. To make fun of his grasp of his second language is reprehensible. There are lots of athletes who never bother to learn the language and that's fine, that's their choice. But to openly mock a young player who is trying to learn and practice a difficult language is something that Papa needs to be held accountable for. A suspension without pay should be where Comcast starts. And Papa should publicly apologize for his stupid, racist comment though you know he won't. From now on when I hear Greg Papa's voice I'll only be thinking of Larry Krueger.....
If you want to send the operations team an email about any of this you can contact them here:

http://www.csnbayarea.com/pages/contact_broadcast


Finally, regarding the July Contest, we are still actively looking for participants. The Contest: pick the Giants all stars (or all star) EXACTLY (for instance, if you pick Lincecum and Wilson it has to be just those two guys, you lose if Molina makes it too :) ). First tie breaker will be who wins the all star game. Second tie breaker will be total runs scored in the game. We are closing the contest July 1st at Noon so get me your picks ASAP. Email me at bigflavor77@gmail.com

Just a demoralizing loss, there’s no other way to describe it. When you consider that we all love baseball, ultimately, for *enjoyment* it makes you wonder how we could watch last night’s game in its entirety….
And Torre almost was conceding the game with that starting line up. Sitting Kemp, Loney AND Martin? Jesus.
Maybe the baseball Gods just hate Barry Zito. When we get games like last night it always *seems* like he’s pitching. Struggling to score runs, bonehead plays, 8th inning implosions…”Zito Games” have it all. It’s too bad, he pitched very well. Again.
Loved the “Hate the Blake” posts on the last thread. Nice Seinfeld reference…..

We’re in sort of a dangerous part of the season right now, all teams go through it. We don’t have anyone hot right now, no one is carrying the team. At different times during the season it’s been Uribe, Torres, Huff, Franchez….hell, even Rowand. But right now it’s a bunch of guys looking around at each other waiting for something to happen. Finally we’re seeing the Dodgers pitching staff do what I thought they would do last year: suck. In our yard against this staff we *should* get our bats going again. I want to see lots of doubles and walks. We’ve no power and no speed, I’d like to see us at least be able to hit more doubles than we’ve been getting lately. We aren’t going to beat this team with a few singles sprinkled over 9 innings……

Yesterday’s game just didn’t match up to the intensity of Friday night. Zumie did a nice job of re-capping the game. I’d also add that I really enjoyed the Irvin Ceremony. For a 91 yr old man who’s not a regular public speaker I thought he did an OUTSTANDING job during his few minutes at the podium–very engaging guy.
You guys had a better view of the Bumgarner game than I did. I just had too much going on with slide/cable car/food/beers/etc to gt a good idea of how he was pitching. I tracked his fastball in the second inning and he seemed to throw almost every FB at 90 mph according to the stadium gun. he’s going to have to vary that if he wants to maintain success at this level. I was struck with how big he’s gotten. Last year he was a super skinny kid but he’s really filled out nicely. Walking around the other players, he fits right in physically–his shoulders, as I said last year, are wide and he’s definitely growing into that frame.
I agree with Zumie, the “Franchez lead off double inning” was a total drag. We can’t even get him to third base with no one out? Awful….
All in all, I thought it was a great debut for Bum. I wouldn’t say he had “electric” stuff but he recovered nicely from that second inning. He wasn’t facing the ’27 Yankees’. Hell, he wasn’t even facing the ’10 Red Sox’– but he was composed and professional. I like him.

I would have made Santiago Casilla the POTG but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That inning was just too horrific. But what an AMAZING performance he gave last night. He had NO IDEA where the ball was going early on in that inning. How Bochy decided to stay with him vs V-Mart still remains an unknown to me. The only thing I can think of is that Mota wasn’t ready yet and he didn’t want to feed Runzler to him since he devours lefties. Somehow, someway, Casilla got out of that inning….
Wilson had a pretty run of the mill 9th, didn’t he? Did you catch the moment when Franchez approached him before he faced McDonald? He was giving him some kind of very direct encouragement, it almost looked like he was yelling at him. Then, when the game was over, the camera was panning underneath a walking Wilson in the line of high-fives and all of a sudden Wilson screams out “FUUUCCCKKKK!!!!!” right as Franchez approached him to high five him. Franchez froze for a second and then high fived him. Not sure if he screamed that out at that moment on purpose or if that was just a primal, random release of frustration. Go back and watch it if you have it DVR’d…..
I can’t wait for the game today. World Cup at a friend’s house and then we hit the game. No clue whatsoever on how Bumgarner is going to do today. Pedroia has got to be hobbled from that foul ball last night, he’ll either be out of the line up or worthless. In fact, s a team, Boston is dealing with a lot of injuries. The only guys Bum really has to worry about are V-Mart and Youk. If he can somehow avoid giving up bombs to those guys he might have a chance today. Either way, today is going to be E-F-U-C-K-I-N-G-L-E-C-T-R-I-C. Can’t wait…..

Michael has once again generously offered up a very cool prize for this contest. E mail me at bigflavor77@gmail.com if you want to enter. You don’t have to be a regular to enter but we reserve the right to exclude you from the contest if we have no idea who you are.

twinfan said, on June 24, 2010 at 6:29 pm (Edit)
OK-here’s the All-Atar contest pending Flavor’s approval and minumum 25 entrants:
Simple: pick our All-Stars. It has to be exact. In other words, if you pick Tim and Wilson, it has to be JUST them. If it’s those two plus Uribe, you lose. First tie breaker: the winner of the AS Game. Second tie breaker: total runs scored in the game.
The prize is a deluxe Quad Core PC, brand new. Built by Mikey…
EMail your picks to Flavor. Deadline July 1 Noon.

AMD Athlon Quad Core 3.0 GHZ per core CPU
Asus M4A77TD Motherboard
4 GB DDR3 Memory
Two 40GB Solid State Hard Drives, RAID 0 ( for O/S and apps)
One 1 Terabyte Hitachi Hard Drive
Blu-Ray Drive ( also burns DVDs and CDS)
1 GB nVidia Ge Force GT220 Graphics Card
Thermaltake MidTower with 500 Watt Antec PSU

http://tinyurl.com/2bthbt9

Baggs posted some horrific Molina stats in his “post game notes” blog last night: he’s scored 1 run since May 16th (26 starts). That’s astounding…..
I also wanted to highlight a blog thread I put up last May 27th at the old blog:
http://oneflapdown77.blogspot.com/2010/05/roy-oswalt.html
It seems that close to a month later Baggs saw fit to post nearly the exact same thing with Bochy agreeing with me. Not sure what to make of that. I know, I know, I’m NEVER allowed to agree with Bochy although in this case he’s agreeing with me. The horror! Of course, here at The Flap, we’re always AT LEAST 3 weeks ahead of everyone else when it comes to kicking around a good baseball topic 🙂
This is really a huge game today. And I am worried that our guys might be looking past it with the big “Boston/Dodgers” home stand coming up. We HAVE to take 2 of 3 from these guys. It’s not life or death or *must win*, but this is a big game today….
by the way, I’m sure most of you recognize the POTG picture. Here’s that chick’s blog entry about that moment It’s long, but a cute story and nice insight into what a cool ass dude Torres is:
http://sfgiantsgirl.mlblogs.com/archives/2009/10/

How many come back wins do we have this year? 14? 15? It’s something crazy like that. “Crazy” when you compare it to the no-hope line ups from the last couple of years……
Buster sat and that’s fine with me. He’s not hitting anything hard, lots of ground balls—I doubt the brass would send him back down, he’s shown too much to go that route. Hey, he could have just needed an off day….
Pat the Bat *is* the bat we’ve all been wanting. His career has been sprinkled with long hitting droughts and I know Boch is NOT the manager to deal with that since his style is to let a hitter hit themselves out of a slump if it takes all year! Wait ’em out through THE NEXT year if he has too! Let’s just enjoy The Bat for what he is and what he’s doing. And again, the fact that Tampa Bay is picking up the tab for all this production is just awesome……

The only thing that keeps us from winning at least 2 of 3 from Houston will be if the team looks ahead to the next home stand. Boston for three, then the Dodgers for three. The AssFroes should be a good tune up for those electric home series. I’m going to the Sat Boston game and might hit the Wed Dodger game….
The end of the last thread was a turn for the blog this year, at least for me. I was really blown away when I looked at what Torres, Franchez, Uribe and Huff have done this year. I’d throw The Bat in there too he just hasn’t brought it all year like the other guys (I know, it’s a stretch to say “all year” with Franchez but he’s hit .333 over 111 at bats, that’s enough for me to put him him in that group of 4).
The fact is, NO GM anywhere in baseball found 5 bargain basement guys last Winter who are putting up this kind of production. It’s funny, guys like Renteria/Rowand/Molina/DeRosa contribute very, very little at a healthy clip of 31.5 million this year. You look at them and go “Classic Sabean”. But then you look at those other 5 guys and go “Wow, I DID NOT see that coming”. I don’t think it’s a stretch at all to throw Sabean in “Exec of the Year” discussion though it’s obviously pre-mature to have that talk now. But if they keep winning, if they win the division, it’s totally possible. I want to see that happen just to watch the bloggers detonate themselves simultaneously on threads throughout the internet world…..

Without quoting him exactly, he basically said “We’re evaluating everything, we aren’t trading any of our blue chips (see: Bumgarner) and we’ve got the talent to win with who we have”….Same stuff we always here from him.
I agree with him on one thing there: The arms we have in the BP are better than the “Walker/Trashner” days. I just don’t think we can afford to lose games finding out who the most passable set up guy is going to be. It’s quite possible that NONE of them, at this point in their careers, are ready for the job and Bochy is just going to have to go by *feel* for who he sends out to do the 8th inning job. Of course, Bochy is loath to that type of approach. Somebody mentioned “Thornton”, that’s not a bad choice. JJ Putz seems to have put his steroid and injury problems behind him. He could work. Whatever, the 8th inning guy is who we go get first and foremost. If I’m Sabean I stop worrying about a middle of the order bat. He’s already found that in Pat Burrell.

Let’s just assume there’s nothing in the minors that will be of immediate help. And I think we’ve all had our fill of the guys currently rounding out the bullpen. I do still have hopes that Affeldt will get it together. I think he’s been struggling with the hammy all season and it’s clearly got him out of sorts, mechanically. But at some point before the trade deadline Sabes is going to have to go after some BP help. We should all be fearful of who he might secure via trade since he’s so horrible at trading. But at least we are talking about pitching, something he knows a lot about….

Sabes is probably going to go after a *holds* guy— someone like Scott Downs or Jason Frasor (and yes, I used Toronto purposely as the example since we know that’s a phone number Sabean has access to). But if it were me, I’d go a different route. I’d go after a currently closer and make him my 8th inning guy. A guy like Matt Capps would cost a lot but what kind of a stud 1-2 punch would that be in the 8th/9th? If you don’t want to pay up for Capps then go after a closer who’s not doing his job right now. I will always maintain that closing is one of the hardest jobs in all of sports. Not everyone has the make up for it. There are guys out there right now who are failing as closers and, because they are failing, won’t cost much at all. And frankly, I think these three guys are much more suited for setting up a closer than being one: 1) Octavio Dotel. Here’s a guy who’s having a rough time of it in Pittsburgh but he’s put together a career of being a very solid set up guy and he DOES still have wicked stuff. He’d be cheap and Pitt is ready to deal (also a team Sabes talks too). 2) David Aardsma. Look, last year was fluky, everyone thought so. And he’s blowing saves now as many sabermetric fans thought he would. I think he’d be better off as a set up guy. Seattle will deal him soon enough. 3) Chad Qualls. THis guy is NOT a closer and he’s totally f-ed in the head right now. BUt go back and look at his recent career numbers, he’s a control pitcher (wouldn’t it be nice to see one of our set up guys come in and NOT walk the hitter) and he literally could be a scrap heap pick up from the WW in a matter of days….

Again, you can’t look at what these guys are doing NOW or you’d never want them. But if you believe they are miscast in their current roles AND you believe a change of scenery would do them good, then it’s a great move for Sabean to make. It would be bold, it would nail down the last 2+ innings of our BP. And I want to say Sabean has a history of doing this: In the big 1997 trade for ALvarez/Darwin/Hernandez I BELIEVE Hernandez had been closing for the White Sox but he was used as the 8th inning guy when we got him. THAT is the type of move Sabean should make to fix the bullpen. We can argue about who it should be, maybe the 3 guys I listed aren’t *the guys* to go after. But if it were me I’d do something bold like go after a closer instead of a *holds* guy……
And if all this doesn’t tickle your fancy we could always pick up the newly designated for assignment (which he refused and is now a FA) *Jack Trashner*! as bullpen savior. 🙂

As I said last night, I didn’t see much of the game. I feel bad for Zito, from what I’ve read he pitched much better than his line. Still can’t get over Flannery sending Huff with no outs. You CANNOT send a guy in that situation when the runner has almost no chance to score. “Shut Down Matt” goes today……

It’s actually quite simple, just keep the ball in the yard. These guys are free swinging, HR happy monsters. If they don’t hit a bomb? No big deal, head back to the dugout with their .241 average and wait for another chance. It’s safe to say there isn’t much chocking up on the bat or two-strike approach in Toronto. We have smart pitchers, I think our guys will keep them off balance enough to play them tough this weekend (no prediction)….

First game is going to be fun to watch. I’ve followed Brandon Morrow’s career since he was at Cal. Dude has wicked stuff but has arm slot problems. He can be no hitting you for 5 innings and then boom walk the bases loaded. And Zito’s fly ball tendencies probably won’t be tailor made for this park 🙂

Plus we get to see Freddy again. Right now he’s sitting awake in bed wondering if it’s possible to hit a 16 run home run……

I liked Huff’s quote in the paper today:

“At this time of year, I’m used to being 20 games out,” Huff said. “I’ve never been a part of something like this.

“It’s an amazing experience. I used to be counting the days until vacation by now.”

I’m guessing Franchez is having a similar ride….

Huff’s re-birth has been one of the great sidebars of this season. He’s been like a left handed Ellis Burks lately. You know, when Barry, Kent, Alou, JT etc were on the team it was great because we were winning and who doesn’t like that? But it was never easy to like most of the players on those great teams just as *people*, you know?

This team is different. It’s EASY to like what we know about the fellas on this team. You can root for these players as “people”, not just players who play on your favorite team….

I’ll remember that when we go on a 6 game losing streak– it’ll make it a little easier to tolerate. 🙂

Everyone saw the same thing last night, we hit bullets at people, they hit balls in between or by our guys. That’s baseball, we are on the other end of games like that all the time.

For the people freaking out about Lasorda sitting next to Neukom:  He’s there as a representative of Milken’s group that raises a TON of $$$ for prostate cancer research. They go around all Summer from stadium to stadium doing the same thing: Milken gets his half inning in the booth, Lasorda hangs out in the owners box. I swear to God, who could possibly be AGAINST raising money for cancer research? If you’re going to spaz out about Lasorda could you get equally burned up about Milken being invited into the booth for a half inning? Or do you support a guy who was convicted of racketeering and fraud? These two guys are spending their personal time raising billions of dollars for cancer research, Lasorda can come back and coach the goddamn team if the money they raise helps us find a cure for cancer. Jesus…..

Torres CF
Sanchez 2B
Huff RF
Uribe SS
Burrell LF
Posey 1B
Sandoval 3B
Molina C
Martinez SP

Compare it to a line up in the first weeks of the season and look at the changes:

1) Torres in at leadoff/Rowand out (literally, he seems bolted to the bench now, I like it)

2) Franchez hitting 2nd

3) Burrell playing and hitting well

4) Posey playing and doing his thing

5) Molina down to the 8 spot

If you just take the first 4 changes and realize that 50% of our line up has turned over, for the better, since the beginning of the season it’s obvious why we’re hitting so much better……

Take a look at the standings, the LARGEST lead anyone has is 2.5 games (Twins > Detroit).  You can see a dogfight in every division all Summer long with the NL West, potentially, being a 4 team fight to the death. I doubt that will happen though, once all the division games kick back up again…..

Forget trying to explain the Andres Torres Revelation. I’d like to put it out to you guys: Can you name another player who did nothing until he was 31 and then had 2 successive seasons with an OPS average almost touching .900? Torres isn’t quite there yet, he’s got to do it all year, but over the course of last yr and this yr he’s got 334 at bats with an OPS of .876 and .896, respectively. You could play him every day simply for his defense but what he’s doing at the top of the line up is astounding. And if we’re going to go with burrell and Huff in LF and RF (and why wouldn’t we) then Torres is MANDATORY in CF to keep our OF defense honest……

CF Torres
2B F Sanchez
RF Huff
SS Uribe
LF Burrell
1B Posey
3B Sandoval
C Whiteside
P J Sanchez

Surprised we don’t see Rowand tonight…….

I’m busy with a bunch of stuff tonight but if anyone mentions “Renteria” in this thread you are getting the comment deleted. I’m done with this. And I’m done with the paranoia about “who is posting as who”. Talk about the game and the team or you’re all free to post at the Splash. If you mush use language, head back over to the dead-blog and post till the cows come home. I really don’t give a shit……

I understood why the Giants didn’t start Bumgarner in Cincinnati. It was on the road in a notorious hitters park. I get it. But I am not understanding why he’s not starting against the punchless Orioles at home tomorrow. Iron Head Joe instead? He’ll probably do fine. But this would seem to me to be the perfect opportunity to usher in MadBum to the 5 spot, a spot he could lock down for the rest of the season. I guess my question is, if not Tuesday against the worst team in baseball at home….then….when?

I understood why the Giants didn’t start Bumgarner in Cincinnati. It was on the road in a notorious hitters park. I get it. But I am not understanding why he’s not starting against the punchless Orioles at home tomorrow. Iron Head Joe instead? He’ll probably do fine. But this would seem to me to be the perfect opportunity to usher in MadBum to the 5 spot, a spot he could lock down for the rest of the season. I guess my question is, if not Tuesday against the worst team in baseball at home….then….when?

Renteria should be back Wednesday.  Assuming Uribe isn’t going anywhere in the line up every day, how might Renteria see the field. If you want to rest Uribe one day a week (Rent plays short), play Panda at first one day a week (Buster rests one day, Rent plays short) and play Uribe at 2nd one day a week (Franchez rests and Rent plays short) that’s the only way I see Renteria hitting the field—so that’s 3 starts a week and I don’t even like that since it’s got Uribe bouncing all over the infield throughout the week.  The other option is that Renteria returns as a bench guy but that’s a bad role for him since he only plays one position. I don’t know, none of this looks very appealing. I know one thing: Juan Uribe is our starting clean up hitter most of the week…….

I really don’t *hate* the A’s or anything. But I REALLY want to see a sweep today. More so than if it was any other team. we’re in a prime spot to get this done. How many dominant starts in a row does Cain have in him? We’ll find out today……

Very nice overall game, we showed power (2 bombs), patience (5 walks) and it should have been more than 6-2 (that bases loaded nobody out fiasco was infuriating)…..

This is a good team for Zito to pitch against today. He has been painfully below average for the last month. He’s never beaten Oaktown. A stud performance against them would get him re-started, I think…..

Anyone got a problem with Pat the Bat playing every day?

Torres RF
Sanchez 2B
Posey 1B
Uribe SS
Burrell LF
Molina C
Sandoval 3B
Rowand CF
Lincecum SP

Things I like: Switching Posey and Sandoval, Burrell instead of Huff (he’s right handed plus he’s one of the best we have at taking walks)

We get Gio Gonzalez again. Last time BamBam sent the hitters out there with the advice of “swing early” and it was a failure as I could have told him. You beat Gio by letting him walk you. I think in all of his wins except one he walked 2 or less. In his losses/non decisions he walked more than 2. Besides putting base runners on it rattles him, you can see it in his body language on the mound–he’s like a “pre no hitter” Dirrrrty in that regard. Anyway, I hope our hitters take a different approach this time……

Having said all that, I think we take 2 of 3 from them, maybe a sweep. Their best hitter (Suzuki) is gone all weekend at his grand father’s funeral.  The A’s are going to have MASSIVE problems scoring runs this weekend…..

I juts checked, it’s definitely rising this morning; despite the fact that The Todd is going to be taking the mound in a couple of hours for a road start–the horror! When we get back to ATT I think it’s time to switch Posey and Pablo in the line up–we’ve waited long enough for Pablo to break out of this, all he’s doing now is hurting the team. Maybe 2 weeks in AAA to straighten his swing out? Would that be the worst thing in the world? I know, it’ll never happen. But this has gone on to long, something has to be done and sending him out in the 3 hole every game for 4 at bats isn’t working for him. He’s totally clueless at the plate right now…….

my post from a couple of days ago…..

bigflavor said, on June 7, 2010 at 1:47 pm (Edit)

My gut is they go with Welly one more time. Martinez is the back up plan if they feel like they just can’t tolerate another shit outing from The Todd. I will be shocked if Bum is even on the board in terms of what they might do……

No Benjie or Rowand tonight. Sure seems like Bochy has turned a corner on those guys. Kruk said something interesting on his show this morning. “This team is starting to develop a swagger. You don’t ever develop a swagger until you start hitting. Pitching is great but it’s hitting that gives a team a swagger. I’m finally seeing that in this team, something I haven’t seen since Bonds was around”

I guess Bochy is seeing it too……

A tale of two pitchers:

Pitcher A has given up 2 ER’s in his last 31 innings/4 starts. He has 26 strikeouts against 8 walks. He’s given up 17 hits. He is 4-0 over those 4 starts…..

Player B has given up 1ER in his last 34 innings/4 starts. He has 23 strikeouts against 5 walks.  He’s given up 17 hits and is 3-1 over those 4 starts……

Player A is on the cover of every baseball magazine that doesn’t have Strasburg or Clown-Face all over it. His name is, of course, Mr Pitcher of the Month “Ubaldo Jimenez”…..

Player B is our Matt Cain. Not bad…..

Next up, “Sam Lecure”. I do not fear this Sam Lecure. He’s part “Eric Hacker” with a little “Kevin Pucetas” thrown in for taste. Cain deserves a few of these games. After we feast on this fool we face off Judgement Day and find out who are starter will be Wednesday. We know it won’t be Bumgarner who started last night. Does Welly get thrown to the wolves again? Might Iron Head Joe get the call?

Gary Brown, Cal St Fullerton CF.  — hitting .438 this year, OBP under .500–that’s hard to do.  Of course, another guy who doesn’t walk, only 9 all year. He’s a speedster, stole 23/25 in 08/09 and has 31 stolen this year. Brett Butler type who is said to be developing power. We’ll see, welcome aboard, Brown!

I still can’t get over that trip through Pittsburgh. I’m still going with Franchez hitting that grand slam on Sat night and it was a clean sweep to me. The come backs were nice but the 2 things that shocked me were 1) who was contributing and 2) how Bochy managed all 3 games. I’m glad I got on the Torres Bus, however sheepishly, a month ago. This guy is proving to be one of the rarest major league players around: a guy who doesn’t blossom until his early thirties. Just pray his legs hold together and we have got our leadoff hitter for the rest of the year…….

Bochy showed no fear of ruffling any vet-feathers. Molina and Rowand aren’t going to have all Summer to stumble their ways out of their slumps. I don’t think pulling Wilson was a message to him, I think he’d thrown 35 pitches and Bochy just thought it was time. Wilson is our closer through 2012. He might get a break if he’s really awful but he’s our guy. The ship sails or sinks with him at the helm……

Quick Bryce Harper thought: lose the eye black, chump. Until he ditches that ridiculous look he’s nothing more than a circus freak…..

Thoughts on the draft today? It’s tough to get too jazzed about pick 24. I’ve said this before: Sabean’s total focus on the draft for the rest of his time here in SF should be on drafting HITTERS. He can’t get the FA’s to come to SF but if he drafts them they HAVE to play for us. We’ve got pitchers to burn and when we run out of those it’ll be a hell of a lot easier to get a FA pitcher to come to SF than a FA hitter……

ROOM B explanation: that’s Michael’s baby. He’s got free rein of the room whether he chooses to re-post on of your posts there or put you on a list there.  try and have fun with it everyone, that’s what it’s *supposed* to be….

This was just an unreal road trip: took 2 of 3, in my mind it was a sweep with the Franchez grand slam I’m still seeing in my mind’s eye. “Resiliency” was the word of the weekend. This is how you become a good team. It’s not about winning with *only* pitching or *only* hitting. It’s about a balance and you have to toss in some chicken scratch with a lil’ tabasco sauce in their eyes just for good measure. We are coming together as a team and Bochy is slowly nodding his head to the progress. He did things as a manager this weekend that I’ve NEVER seen him do. Bravo, to him and the team. Shoulda swept ’em……..

I’ve gotten in multiple arguments with certain people over the last 24 hours regarding this question. I’m certain one of you will know the answer or be able to find it in a rule book:

There’s no outs and a runner on third base. The batter hits a line drive to 2nd base which he catches. the base runner on third, instead of freezing, takes a few steps towards home plate. Seeing this, the 2nd baseman hurriedly throws the ball to third to try to double him up. But his throw is wild and goes half way up the line foul. The runner decides to try to score. Question: does he have to tag up first or can he just scamper home?

I won’t color the answers with my take on this. I talked to a buddy who played college ball and he wasn’t certain of the answer but he had an opinion. In fact, NO ONE I’ve talked to can say for certain what the runner on third has to do in this situation. Thoughts?

I woke up this morning feeling like we won that game last night. I doubt the 9th inning happens last night if the Friday night comeback didn’t happen. You could *feel* it happening and I don’t mind saying that I was certain Freddy Sanchez was going to hit a grand slam when he came up in the 9th. When the ball left his bat I didn’t even flinch, I KNEW it was gone. And then…

And I liked the way Bochy MANAGED the game yesterday. Batting Pablo 8th? Good move, Pablo has sucked all year. Batting 3rd isn’t a right, you earn it. Sitting Rowand? Always deserving of a prop from me. Pinch hitting for Molina in the 6th in an easy RBI spot? I know he said he’s saving him to catch today but that doesn’t wash with me. When you are the #4 hitter and Matt Downs pinch hits for you and you are replaced by Eli Whiteside–I don’t care what the circumstances are, the message to you should be clear: start playing better or you’re gone……

I could be wrong about this, but by my count that was our 13th comeback win of the year. And when you come back from 4 down on the road that’s not worth one win that’s worth like 5 or 6. When you PROVE to your collective self that you can do something it’s likely that you will end up doing it again. Last year, d0wn 4 was a death sentence. Now? Hey, from here on out if if they get 4 down they’ll just strap those gloves on a little tighter and go to work……

And to think, the Giants pulled off this win without one of Krukow’s keys to the game coming to fruition: “Stay HOT Rowand”–baha, that *key* had me chuckling all night…….

Finally, we see a lefty. How many righties have we seen in the last 2 weeks? It seems like all of them. I’ve been looking forward to seeing what Torres would do against lefties with regular playing time against them…..Bagggs says “weather permitting”. Anyone got a weather report? How bad is it?

RF Torres
2B F Sanchez
3B Sandoval
SS Uribe
LF Huff
1B Posey
CF Rowand
C Whiteside
P J Sanchez

I’m not even going to trip on Cinny yet, that series is not going to be a good match up for us. First up is Pittsburgh where we need to take at least 2 or 3. I’m giving us tonight’s game and then giving them the “Welly” game since it’s a road game and he loses his mind on the road—-And the Giants would NEVER throw Bum out there for his first start of the year, they’d run him out at ATT–I actually agree with that philosophy. It still has me doing a slow burn that we are giving a road game away in Pittsburgh. Anyway, then Timmy takes Game 3 just because he’s Tim Freaking Lincecum and he beats the Pirates with up to 5 blisters on his pitching hand…….

Keep McCutchen off the base paths and hope that Garrett Jones strikes out a lot. Their pitching sucks. I’d also like to see Franchez hit about .600 in this series and Pat the Bat come up to club a big bomb or two for us just to remind everyone on the team that it’s ok to lose them over the fence now and again….

I agree with Pawlie on the last thread, their ballpark is amazing. I wish I could take a trip there some day…..

After listening to the long interview he gave about the blown call I have a greater appreciation for what happened and just letting this go. No one feels worse than Joyce. He obviously loves this game and takes pride in being a major league ump. He knows what this will forever do to his legacy in the game. Selig isn’t changing it, it’s just time to move on from all this. In fact, Joyce is taking WAY too much shit for what he did. He blew a call, he didn’t kill anyone or anything. he had tears in his eyes when Galarraga turned in the line up card today. For me, all this ended when that happened. Galarraga ended it by going out to home plate and showing Joyce there are no hard feelings. If he’s going to forgive the guy everyone should. He’s a human being, who hasn’t made worse mistakes than what Joyce did yesterday?

PS–the comments are now restricted to 50 a page to keep the stutter up thing from happening….

Had we gone 0 and 3 I was going to delete the blog and start over. Awesome job by Cain to grind out last night’s win. Benjie and Rowand were skillfully and deftly placed in the line up. 🙂

We are facing another critical section of the schedule. We NEVER play the Pirates well and the idea of trying to bop toe to toe with Cinn in their joke yard isn’t appealing to me in the slightest….

You have spoken and I have listened. Bye Bye TU/TD…

He squared that ball up didn’t he? And that slide from Posey way Pro-Fess-Ion_al!

we could be as bad as the d-backs and the Dodgers are right now. Yesterday they go scoreless thru 9 innings with Kemp hitting a walk off in the 10th. Today, they are scoreless through 13! Christ, if that happened to the Giants the entire blog would be swimming with the fishes off the GG Bridge…..

I’ll post something later about it. I just wanted to get a new post up. We are obviously finding some glitches in the new blog, especially the “upward stutter” thing (it’s actually a lot like “inward singing” –Tenacious D reference, probably nobody got it)….I think the stutter is due to the theme and the number of posts, the tech guys think it will sort itself out. Until I figure it out I’ll throw a few posts up there a day, it seemed to get much worse once we got a lot of post going……..

Also, there are at least 2 of you who I missed on adding into the contest— will update later today.

Ubaldo Jimenez, Jesus Christ. This dude has 10 wins already and what’s he got, 5 or 6 more starts before the all star game? Utterly dominated us, as he has done all season against everyone else. We didn’t learn anything from this game except there’s a clear front runner for the NL Cy Young Award. Timmy has a fun little streak of 5 walks a game, 4 games running. When the fans are saying “at least we can count on winning the Wellemeyer starts” you know we’ve got problems. It’s not an overstatement to say that if Lincecum doesn’t right himself our season is doomed….

Congratuations to DPaintings! He won the mini-contest. MrBillBill took 2nd place. You guys, send me your address and I will get you the mini-Timmy bobblehead (d-paintings) and the mini-black baseball bat (BillBill) out ASAP….

At some point later this morning I’ll add up all the June Contest players and create a page on the right hand side of the blog for them….