Pheeeeewwwwww!
If you’ve never done it before, try this on games you can’t finish watching: wake up and just head straight for the blog, rewind the pages till about the time you checked out, and just read what happens through the words of you guys. The first thing that stuck out was the ‘418’ comments so I knew it wasn’t a simple ending. Anyway, while you don’t totally understand the details of what’s gone on you definitely figure out the outcome and feel a flavor of emotion that you aren’t going to get from Schulman or Baggs. Fun to do, I’ve done it several times…….
Have we finally reached a point where it makes logistical sense to go to a 6-man rotation through 3rd/SS/2nd/1st base? Renteria and Uribe are healthy, their version of it anyway, there’s no reason to play them every day. Sandoval and Franchez SUCK and there’s simply no time left to hope they play their way out of it day in and day out. Travis doesn’t and shouldn’t need to play every day. And now we’ve got Burriss, too. That’s a lot of flexibility……
I’m going to be on the road for the next week or so. I’ll keep new threads going and should see all the games but I won’t be around as frequently. I’m not going to be able to send out warning shots regarding blog etiquette, I’ll probably just quickly delete posts, or mini-threads, when it calls for it. Please just move on to a new topic if you start seeing posts or blocks of posts disappear…. 🙂
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Read Steward’s analysis of the game and have to agree that’s as bad as Panda has looked. He looks ill, frankly. Now he’ll go 4-4 and rake all of ’em. Seriously, wouldn’t be surprising to see he and Freddy both on the bench tonight. Edgar didn’t do much but he at least looks fit and “together”. And I think they can seriously look at Burriss to supplant Freddy altogether….
What GREAT shots of the play at the plate on Travis. As a few noted last night, just MLB from everyone. A momentary bobble prompting a sound gamble to send Travis, two perfect relays, a perfect block by Hill, and a terrific slide and effort to catch the back edge of the plate, T’s only shot… Arggggggghhhhhhh baseball but great baseball…
Then the best comment of the night, from Z:
“The ump should have called Ishi safe because Ishi made a decent effort to get to the plate.”
Big Flavor hits the road:
http://tinyurl.com/37avy6w
Dum da dee da
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Just want to second the POTG “coulda been the pen, too” sentiment. More like Pen Of The Game: 5 1/3 2H 8 K which included 1-2-3s from Mota and Romo in the 6th and 7th respectively. A strikeout the side jobber by B-Wheezy in the 9th. A scoreless inning form Ramirez. Another stellar performance from my and everyone’s new favorite LOOGY, Lopez. Then Ray sealed the deal by recording the final out to up his recored to 3-0 as a Giant. POTG indeed.
Hopefully their attention will be on these games and they can get the sweep.
I think the worst think about the Sanchez prediction was the timing. They needed to be focused on the lowly Cubs, not looking ahead to the Padres.
I wished I shared the feeling Burriss is the solution to the problem at 2nd. I think they will go Rent Uribe now with the others getting the occasional start or coming in for late D.
Going into the game i had the feeling that the Giants would win, but never that supreme confidence that it would be a piece of cake. Go back, back, back to that second game in Denver where the Giants were coming off a ten-run festival against Cook and company and then, that next day faced off against Ubaldo. He put the big chill on their hot bats. Then it was decent (and by Hudson–outstanding) pitching by the Braves in hot, hot, Hotlanta and it was like the Giants’ batters were swinging in snot. One might conclude that those five games discombobulated the Giants offense, sending it into a sliding, spiraling slipstream.
Baseball psychology is a funny thing. Confidence is the key. We saw it last night in that golden effort by the bullpen. What a show! Starting out, Bumgarner was okay, but caught some bad breaks on the part of his defense. But he toughed it out long enough for just that bit of offensive support to pull him out ~ along with that BP magic.
TF: Good points about Sandoval and Sanchez. At the least, the two of them should not be appearing on the same lineup unless there’s some turnaround.
My feeling is that the big turnaround last night was after Lady Luck and the Baseball Gods finally got their last laugh on the Giants with that bang-bang play at the plate in the 10th. The offering was accepted. The Bullpen bridged the top of the 11th. The unseen forces gave Renteria that Texas Leaguer. Then they pulled the veil from in front of Huff’s batting eye. With runners on first and third and nobody out, the Giants could not beat themselves, particularly with Posey and Burrell as the next two batters.
Unless the Baseball Gods and Lady Luck were just being one-off fickle, the key to a restored offense may have been that Texas leaguer which ended up being the winning run.
Hopefuly Huff is now past his Jekyll and Hyde , or rather Huff and Bowker, stage. They need that bat more than ever with Buster coming back to Earth and Panda just not looking ready to turn it around.
Hopefully
I’ve done what Flav did last night…Not know the outcome, and get it from the posts on the flap. Very revealing and fun to do, when you can’t watch or listen to the game.
Mike, as bad as Franchez is on “O”, Burriss is worse.
The type of game that winners win, especially at home. Portends well for the rest of the season to pull out games like this and the one in Atlanta to avoid what could have been a sweep.
Well I am off to the North Country (in car now as wife drives, my eyes are closed for my sanity) upstate New York in the Adirondacks as I type.
But no wireless coverage for the next week to keep up with you goofballs.
I will join JSanchez and predict we will be in first when I rejoin humanity on Monday. Thank god for XM radio and hoping I get a signal:)
Speaking of goofy . . . Peter, XM and Sirius send their signal via a satellite in the southern sky, so unless you are traveling via a gopher hole, I doubt if the signal will be affected. 🙂
That’s Mr. Goofball to you
I liked it when Jon asked Flem what his favorite Dead song was.His response,”Ummm…there are so many to choose from.”Jon asked if he followed the Dead on tour.Flem mentioned that he was unable to being only 7 at the time.I think he was guessing that the Dead were at the height of their popularity in the 1980’s.Baseball fandom is like Grateful Dead fandom in at least one way.You can go to a Giants game or Dead concert and say that you have been to one,however the experience changes significantly from game to game.show to show.
Anybody annoyed at the way comcast automatically turns the camera onto Huff in the dugout when Burrell does something good at the plate? I can dig the Brotherhood of Water Buffalo deal and I’ll bet that if Burrell is really as big an asshole as some people (Heyman most recently, right?) say, then his friendship with Huff is probably a real good thing for everyone else in the clubhouse. But spare me the PR about it. I would not like to see Water Buffalo hats show up on fans in the stands.
Anyway, nice to see the big guy stride up to plate with RISP last night, less than two out and simply drive the ball into deep CF for the win. Benji was pretty good at that SF job last season, Burrell may be even better. Hope so.
I think the Huff-Burrell thing stems from them playing together at U of Miami, but I agree, the excessive coverage is a little much.
It was definitely “torture” being at the yard last night (except for the kind aroma wafting through the air of course). As much as there were a few red flags, there were also a lot of positives in last night’s win. Burrell and the bullpen have already been mentioned, but Travis was also noteworthy. His D is almost always big and was again last night along with his O which has been missing as of late (except for his meaningless HR Sun). I was also very impressed with Bumgardner. That first inning was a grind. He should have had strike three to get out of the inning with zero runs and I must speculate that a lighter Pablo catches the liner over his head. Definitely some bad breaks, but he pitched out of it and through some tough situations in later innings. A nail-biter of a game no doubt, but all-in-all, a very nice win.
Beautiful win. Did Zits waive to Soriano on the crossing escalators?
I’m surprised by continued media jabber about Dirty’s guarantee. So many dolts barf out canned speeches about “play the game the way it should be,” “respect your opponent,” “let the scoreboard do your talking,” and “leave that to the clubhouse leaders” that they only leave Lou Gehrig robots. “Well, we’re sure gonna try hard and really hope for the best.”
Just another hurdle for MLB to overcome in its loss of fans. The steriod era and HRs inflated interest, but it really started with the strike and MLB realizing, “Duh, guess we need to make this fun again.” More I hear, more I’m supporting Dirty. “We’re better – I said it, print it.” Fuck ’em.
if Burrell is really as big an asshole as some people (Heyman most recently, right?)
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Doesn’t really matter but just for clarification, was Heyman talking about Burrell or Guillen? I thought he said Guillen was second only to Bradley in assholiness
He said Burrell was the worst he ever dealt with. I heard him say it on the radio.
Okay. Thanks
yeah, thanks
And you know what thanks.
http://tinyurl.com/2eqtv2z
It’s like the 4th Thursday in November around here
Jed, it’s Exhibit A on why athletes DO speak in cliches. Sanchez went a little outside of the box and the press just goes overboard with it, and tries to turn it into something big. It’s all a leftover syndrome from Namath “guaranteeing” a win in the Super Bowl. The press just wets itself when they manage to get a player to guarantee a win.
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Regarding Burrell, I don’t know anything about him, but he has Steve Garvey’s body language, for better or worse.
No doubt, Zum. Potential gaffes are valued over content … which reinforces why Bonds haters in the media are lame. Why is Lance Armstrong still teflon in the media? Rap sheets look similar.
Chili Davis had 2 great quotes:
“He ain’t God” (After the lowly Giants beat the invincible Dwight Gooden in 1985)
“St. Louis is a cow town” (During 1987 NLCS)
ROFL! Great quotes! I always did like Chili.
What bugsme about Sanchez’s comment is the reported, albeit not specified, reaction by some of his teamates that Schulman wrote about in the beat. “The teammates were said to be annoyed that Sanchez made his bold prediction after he lasted only four innings…” Sanchez is a guy with confidence issues. So many times it seems like he doesn’t trust his stuff, hence the walks. This is the first showing of real confidence I’ve ever seen in himself and his team. I really hope that Schulman was just blowing things out of proportion about how his statemnet was received in the clubhouse. Even if some of the guys didn’t agree with what he said, they have to show him they have his back and are behind him. No one wants to see Sanchez taking the mound Friday doubting himself or his team. How about the team leaders telling him, “You’re right. We’re going to stomp the friars this weekend. You pitch like you know you can, and we’ll take care of the rest.” At the very least give them a Lou Brown, “Nice quote. Don’t ever fucking do it again.”
“Mike, as bad as Franchez is on “O”, Burriss is worse.” Basing it on Fruckie’s numbers since the break, that is highly unllikely. But it behooves them to find out. As I’ve posted, a slow guy with zero pop is finished. Have to hope that’s not the case with FredFuck, but it’s a very real possibility.
sent down when healthy….0-26
I always thought it was Hacman who said St louie was a cow town.
It was Chili, Max.
I’m as certain as Popeye Doyle was about Frog One.
Leonard said about St. Louis “They didn’t show me nothing”
Ballplayers are babies, as evidenced by (among many other things), the kerfuffle a bat flip can cause. “He smirked at me weird-like” is a beaning offense… the beat writers get caught up in the nonsense because they’re with the children so much. So Friday night there will be some glaring and staring and just maybe a bat flip and then it will be all over. Either Dirty will have been taught a life lesson or he can stride from the mound with a 6 zip lead and a funny smirk…
Let’s just hope Dirty backs it up. If he can put together a performance like his no hitter against Dago last season, think about what that would do for his confidence down the stretch. If he gets shelled, I think it’s a safe bet he ends up in the pen in a 4-man playoff rotation.
Dirty to the pen? Four man rotation? Too early for that move.
In the playoffs.
Dirty & Panda for Hanley? Where do I sign?
If the Marlins did trade Hanley, they do not want MLB players. It would be something like Neal, Adrianza, Josepf, Wheeler, and maybe even more. Plus the Giants have zero intention of trading Sandoval.
Dirty will probably be in the pen for the postseason regardless. But not for the “bad” reason. It would be because he might be as good a LHer as there is in baseball to get one LHer out. And this start will hardly be the determining factor.
Agreed, though a tough call due to Dirty’s persistent BB habit.
True, but I agree with Twin on this one. If the playoffs started tomorrow, Sanchez has better bullpen stuff over Bum and Bum seems to be able to pitch through mistakes better than Sanchez.
Just about any really good “loogy” walks quite a few, they’re called in in the toughest spots: don’t give the guy anything good but don’t walk him. The huge advantage Dirty has there is his stuff against hitters who are in a high pressure situation and edgy about it.
It’s August 10, and you’re discussing the pros and cons of Dirty being put in the pen for the post-season. Hell, no need to play the remaining 49 games. Might as well start now.
Focus.
Dennis would rather freak about imaginary crises.
Didn’t Dirty guarantee the Giants would make the playoffs? C’mon Denis, have a little faith.
So now going into the playoffs, are the Giants going to carry 5 lefties in postseason BP? Lopez Runzler Affeldt Bumgarner and Sanchez. Something will have to shake out there.Plus Mota,Casilla,Ray,Ramriez,Romo and Wilson.Add of course Tim,Matt and Barry ,you have 14 pitchers.
Bochy likes lots of pitchers cause Cain and Bum can always pinch hit.
Well, Bumgarner was hitting .333 with one dinger in Fresno
I believe the Orioles used 3 starters and 1 reliever to sweep the ’66 WS.
When we make the playoffs and the time comes to decide how many pitchers to carry on the 25-man roster…
Don’t worry, I’ll shaddup. Just let the record show, I’m behind management 100%.
Right back at ’em.
Torres CF, Renteria SS, Huff RF, Posey C, Burrell LF, Sandoval 3B, Uribe 2B, Ishikawa 1B, Lincecum P.
Again Loo….You are solid! Yeah they only used Mo Drambowski out of the pen.With outstanding starts from Jim Palmer,Dave McNally and Wally Bunker.
I think Loo still might be waiting for a response to his “French Connection” reference.
Frog One? On the shuttle at Grand Central.
Since he blatantly mentioned Popeye Doyle, I thought he wasn’t expecting any response. But I could have been wrong. Well done
I was big baseball card studier, Kat. Like this one:
http://tinyurl.com/26f223s
Can you guess which Giants player has not had an error since 2003 and only has 2 errors in his entire career?
Gotta be a relief pitcher.
Renteria’s got the most. But, you know, he’s been around
Thats easy Dennis….Andres Torres!!!!!!!!
Is this counting major *and* minor league?
Not fair. I don’t have Torres’ baseball card.
Kat’s the big wiener, I mean winner. Torres hasn’t committed an error since ’03 when he was a Tiger.
Real donnybrook tonight in Cincy. Damn bastards on the MLBN won’t show the replay. I need me some violence.
Thanks Dennis..Yeah what is that this little spark plug can’t do.He’s a Gold Glove OF.He’s second among all leadoff hitters with a .372 OBP.He’s on a pace to break the Giants SF-era for doubles.He is probably going to win Comeback player of the year(although it could go to Huff as well). Steals bases.No he’s not the most interesting man in the world and he doesn’t drink Dos Equis.He’s Andres Torres who has captured the hearts and souls of Giant fans everywhere.
I thought he captured our hearts and minds…or was that shock and awe??? Hell, he’s done both.
Time to put a beating on Dempster. Off to the yard for Big Time Timmy Jim win night. Hasta manana.
The SS should always lead the team in errors, or the SS position anyway.
3B and SS both have 8 errors for the Giants, very low totals for either position. Lack of range on that side is an issue but they don’t make dumb plays. If you watched the game last night, Rent’s play in the top of the 11th on Nady’s grounder in the hole was a pewrfect example. He knew the runner, knew he had time, and didn’t rush the throw. Little thing. Saw Furball make catastrophic errors twice this year on the exact play.
I’m not criticizing Renteria. I know he’s been a gold glover. I’m just stating a stat. Dennis’ question made me curious so it led me to look it up. Through the 2009 season he had the most errors of all active major leaguers.
I didn’t say you were, Ted. It just brought up a point about defense.
Strasburg is out of ROY, Posey the clear front runner now.
Yeah theirs lack of range from the SS and 3B positions,but overall not much to complain about.The Giants .990 fielding pct is tied with Cincinnati and Minnesota for tops in the majors.At their current pace,the Giants will absolutely crush the 128 year record of .987 set in 2003.
Yeah it sure would be awesome for Posey to win ROY Twin.Sure is a stellar rookie class overall this year in the NL.Strasburg,Heyward, Posey,Venters,Stanton,Colvin,Davis,Garcia etc lot’s of great talent this year.
The great Omar used to average one error every 13 games (his number was 13, easy to remember). I think he has improved that average now that he’s not playing SS all the time and his range has (slightly) diminished. Funny thing, error total.
Wally Bunker? I’d never heard of him.
Omar’s knack for getting the runner by half a step was uncanny.
Of that list you have kat, it’s posey, easy. Stras got hit hard tonight and will be shut down in early sept….
Cubs are 190. wow, good thing I don’t ever bet against the giants
The manager of the Reds at the moment is….Chris Speier! Baker and LaRussa got thrown out of the game because of the brawl. As baseball brawls go, this was a pretty good one.
Zumie..Wally Bunker at 19 was a phenom coming up ROY in 1964 with the Orioles going 19-5.Shut out the Dodgers 1-0 in the World Series in 66,that right there makes him a legend in my mind.But he suffered arm problems after that and was never the same ending his career at the ripe old age of 26.
ROY odds:
Buster 4/5
Strasburg 2-1
J. Garcia 5/2
G. Sanchez, Ike Davis and Heyward all 5-1
I wouldn’t bet against Jesus. I’m in enough trouble with the Catholic Church as it is.
And here I thought it was the Beav’s brother. Cleaver, Bunker, same thing…
Bunker? Sounds like another dingbat or meathead if ya ask me.
Archie Bunker doing crossword puzzle, thinking aloud:
6 Across: Italian word for goodbye, 4 letters…………..B-A-N-G
Anybody else notice that Burrell wanted no part of the walk off celebration? He was pissed that the guys were whackin’ him.
Seems like Tim is always in trouble early lately…
I see he’s back into the shitty habit of not holding runners on worth a crap.
Can’t use the weather as a goddamn excuse this time Timmy.
Jesus. Fuku crushed that shit. Here it comes….Get a goddamn haircut!
WTFukudome is going on here?
Timmy should of pitched on Jerry Garcia night.
Well, now that you mention it, wonder what Tim was doing last night?
89 MPH fastball. And isn’t the ATT gun like 3 MPH fast? Tim’s a concern, but I actually have no doubt he’ll come through down the stretch and in the PS if they make it.
Is there an intelligent baseball explanation for all the DP’s?
RH hitters with zero to average speed.
Even Torres hit into a couple of ’em at Atlanta.
Huff seems to enjoy covering RF at home, especially on the tough plays. The guy’s hilarious.
You mention Posey for ROY. Huff and Torres should be considered for comeback player of the year as well.
like it…Ishi
I turn on the game late and its 4-2 in the bottom the 2nd? What the fuck is up with Lincecum.
Nice to see Ishikawa putting himself in the middle of it.