Things That Surprised Me
1) how easily Andre Miller blew past Draymond Green
2) Tim Lincecum walked less than 13 hitters in a game
3) Boston and New York being 1/2 in the AL East
4) Colorado having the best record in the major leagues
5) people getting bent that Big Papi said “fuckin'”
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5) people getting bent that Big Papi said “fuckin’”
That was very strange but even more strange to me was the FCC saying they were OK with it. Maybe the NFL will be able to start showing reruns of the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show, for those of us that missed the wardrobe malfunction the first time around.
BFD
The van must be up and running again.
1. Jackson put Green on Miller earlier to get a bigger body on him, it worked when Miller pulled up to shoot. Green had no chance if Miller chose to go to the basket, as he did on the game winner. Bogut needed to step in.
2. Where’s the love, Timmy? Where’s the love ? The post game interviews left bus tracks all over poor Hector’s back… seriously- time for Hector to go down and get some schooling. Bring an outfielder up ( boo boo from me, I said Kieschnick hit his 12th HR… close, it was his 3rd.)
3. Vernon Wells 5 HR, CC 32, Kuroda 38, Pettitte 41: 8 wins 2 losses
Boston? Go figger
4. If you’re going to be second, those are the guys you want ahead of you
5. I’m with you. This is your fuckin’ blog 😉
The Yanks won the other day with big game from a trio of rejects Vernon Wells, Lyle Overbay and Travis Hafner, all on the same day, scoring enough runs for ancient Pettite to pick up a W. There’s a go figure for you.
Don’t really care who the back up C is, but SF doesn’t need two of them. If Hector were to go down, the objective would be he improves his defensive/game calling skills…given their current state that shouldn’t be difficult. But more than ever, Posey stays put at C
If you are going to bring up someone to play LF/PH (or give occasional off day to Pagan/Pence), whomever they bring up better be ready to go right after any opps they get, because they’ll have 4 guys ahead of them. As the Mexican dicho says, “when you are in the saddle, ride well.”
Didn’t see Ws game, but Andre Miller always burns them, no matter what team he plays for/how old he is. He has never been the most athletic looking guy out there, esp for a point, but he knows how to make things happen .
This is a new and learning experience for GS (including Jax as a coach)–playoff ball is more about match ups and half court game. You have to take better care of the ball, communicate and play better half court D, and definitely rebound to have the most possessions, whether ahead or behind.
am I the only one that wants to hear that talk between Bruce and Buster before this start catching Tim? Then to hear the pre-game talk between Tim and Posey would be informative. We can speculate all we want, but this game spoke volumes. Tim was throwing alright and while we are quoting Twinfan1: If you’re going to be second, those are the guys you want ahead of you.
The start of this season has produced some odd successes, but the kids are alright as Harper has 2 HRs in a Nat’s win and Trout has his first grand Slam.
nice
As far which OFer to bring up, Peguero has been hurt and while has the nice BA, he has just one Xtra base hit. Gillespie would be the guy who would fit most as a 5th OFer but he’s doing nothing. If they want Roger to play everyday, Pill could be the guy even thougfh he’s not a real OFer, of course. And with Belt unable to get it going for more than one day at a time, Pill could be getting some 1B starts.
Outside shot and maybe even the best choice would be Javier Herrera, in Richmond now- whose ceiling is probably a 4 or 5 OFer anyway.
It’s nice to be surprised sometimes.
“scoring enough runs for ancient Pettite to pick up a W. ” That infers that Pettitte needed a bunch. Fact is, three veteran pitchers are throwing great ball, hardly surprising. Nothing to figger.
Yanks scored 2 runs in 12 innings the night before and lost at home to the DBax. Hughes pitched better than Pettite did, giving up only 2 runs in 7. Difference was Yanks got Pettite 5 runs in the first 3 innings with a LU full of stiffs like the guys I mentioned, which was *surprising* to me, not Pettite’s line.
All three of those stiiffs have been productive recently enough to make some early season success not terribly surprising. But whatever, I have no idea why you chose to mock my “go figger” remark.
Last night Kruk got all over Amarista of the Pads for hitting the ball in the air and flying out to LF, saying that’s not at all what the pads want out of him. I saw blanco do the same thing twice last night, and I think it’s the exact same issue. He has 2 XBHs all year in 47 ABs, so again hitting the ball into the air at night at ATT doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. He does take a lot of walks and plays great D and finished strong last season
It will be interesting to see what happens in LF this year. Seems there are a lot of potential candidates for the job, and Bochy and Sabes will have tough decision. If you bring someone up, do you work him in 2-3 games a week and sit blanco/torres? How much rope will they have if they do get brought up? Is it better for the kid to play everyday for a while (original FO speak for why Peguero went down) or to let them try and play themselves into a spot at mlb level and help the big club?
It’s probably a good bet that neither of them conspired to hit fly balls into the air at night at ATT. You think?
Would Belt be sitting if 3 of those 4 line drives he hit at defenders early on had fallen in and he was batting 250? The continued value placed on batting avg. by managers over small stretches is baffling. Arias gets hot for a week, Belt sits for the next 3 while Joaquin starts to suck, but the manager lets him keep playing in the vain hope that he will get hot again. The end result is that the total production goes down over that time as an inferior talent plays way too much. I’ll call it the Velez Fallacy in honor of Fred.
Don’t get your point. Joaquin started at 1b one game when Brandon was sick.
I am anticipating the overreaction to Belt’s slow start. He was supposed to sit yesterday, and there was speculation that Arias will start against the next 2 lefties.
It seems to me that Brandon is letting the hard hit outs get him down. But despite the rather hilarious props Arias got for making routine plays, Joaquin is not a first baseman.
6) Chris Stewart hitting a home run before Buster Posey this season.
A good piece about Panda:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/robinson-cano-pablo-sandoval-and-hard-contact/
If there is replay review, Pagan obviously takes first from being hit. Unless the ump says he didn’t try to get out of the way, which I don’t think he said. Instead of taking 20 seconds to review and a replay official says Yes, he was hit, take first, we have longer than that for Bochy to argue it, then the ump takes time to yell into the Giants dugout after they get on him for blowing it, after they see the replay. Stupid to not have replay for these things…
The Giants parade little leaguers past the camera. A bunch of upper middle class white kids. Where are the kids from the Junior Giants program? Something is still amiss somewhere.
Pablo must have been a killer wiffle ball player growing up.
Looks like a sunny day out SF way. Damn, I wish I was at the Yard today.
Me, too.
I do get to be at a few of the games this year, though.The next game I will be at is Wed., May 8th, vs. the Phillies.
Just bought some tix for tomorrow night’s game, even though our beloved Baby Giraffe will probably be riding on his ass.
Yeah, it sounds like it’s going to be a platoon at firstbase for a while.
“This isn’t a case where he’s getting benched,” Bochy said. “But we need to get Arias out there, so (Belt) is going to miss a couple of games.”
Bochy had a “talk” with Belt. http://blog.sfgate.com/giants/2013/04/21/sf-giants-lineup-behind-barry-zito/
I guess he had a similar talk with the Gamer, except it took Bochy about 3 1/2 years to arrange it…
Henry does more guessing on what was said than Pavlovic does. There’s no indication of an impending platoon, nor should there be.
i hope not. I don’t see a positive of putting Arias in for LHPs. Belt’s stats last year showed he hit LHPs better than RHPs, I think. Plus, Belt’s D will be missed. I hope they’re not thinking of sending Hector down and bringing up Pill to play 1b for LHPs. I don’t see much reason to really have Pill in the organization, other than as a roster filler in Fresno and a possible injury replacement type guy…
Well, Mr Zits is tossing a nice one today.
So we just need to keep Zito out of MIller Park and he’ll be fine.
Very good pitching this weekend by the Giants.
Did I say Javier Herrera earlier? Well, I meant Juan Perez. Garcia lives!
And it needs repeating- who kidnapped Gaudin and replaced him with a major league pitcher?
a lot of people felt the same way about Casilla. He was pretty awful with the A’s. With us? It’s like a different pitcher.
Gaudin has been awful with pretty much everybody. This is his 5th or 6th organization since he first left Oakland in 2008. Not the same as Casilla at all.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/g/gaudich01.shtml
Casilla: Oakland 5.11 ERA, 152 games,. 4 saves.
SF: 2.20ERA, 184 games, 34 saves.
Maybe Casilla doesn’t like green…
Gaudin had several suckintudinal stops in between.It’s not the same at all.
Gaudin:
2008 Oak 5-3 3.53
2008 Chi 4-2 6.26
2009 SDP 4-10 5.13
2009 NYY 11 games 2-0 3.43
2010 Oak redux 12 games 0-2 8.83
2010 NYY redux 1-2 4.50
2011 Wash 1-1 6.48
2012 Miami 4-2 4.54
“THEY” aren’t the same. Is that what you meant? Because you said “who replaced Gaudin with a major league pitcher” and my comment linking the 2 was accurate in my first response to you as far as them both sucking before getting to SF. Casilla sucked in Oakland (his only previous major league team) and then has had an ERA almost 3 runs less for the Giants—thus RESEMBLING a major league pitcher (unlike in Oakland)–which was the point of my original comment.
But if you’re talking about their CAREERS obviously they aren’t the same careers and I never claimed that they were, you inferred it.
and Gaudin was actually BETTER with the A’s than Casilla was.
I’m not going on and with you. Just drop it, it wasn’t the BFD you want it to be.
Well, maybe the demon only shows up for Zito and brats in Milwaukee. Another kinda astonishing effort by the Zitman…
atsa my team, playing well
Pagan still hot and Posey’s first homer
Bum is the ace, Zito is next, Timmeh maybe finding himself. That’s not bad to build on. If Voggie and Cain get in gear, well, we’re in business…
Zumie, your comment about the little leaguers reminded me of an experience my daughter had. She attended public schools in Berkeley, where diversity isn’t just a slogan. One of her 5th grade teachers thought it would be cool if her class entered the breaking barriers essay contest:
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130418&content_id=45152228&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
You guessed it, she was a finalist or something like that, and was honored by Jackie’s daughter at ATT before a game. The biggest barrier she’s faced in life is being waitlisted at a couple of the fancy colleges she applied to.
Pads need to play the Dodgers more. I think I picked SDiego to come in as a surprise second in the NLWest — looks like that pick may be down the dumper by about this Wednesday … 😉
Doghairs just put Billingsley onto the 15 day DL for that elbow again…
He must be afraid of needles or something– he should have had this done last year.
After Vogelsong’s rebirth, don’t know why Gaudin is such a shock. He did show promise early on with the A’s in 2006. I dunno. Maybe they taught him the cutter Zito throws.
So you aren’t surprised he’s pitching like this? I’d have to doubt that.
Its surprising he’s been this good but not surprising to me he could be an effective ml pitcher.
Gaudin is doing what they expected him to do: save the bullpen/eat innings. His ERA and WHIP are not sustainable. But he’s been with 9 different teams and he’s not a lefty so almost a third of the league decided it was a good idea to pay him to pitch. So no, not shocked or surprised that he’s pitched well.
If he just does what Mota did 2 years ago, we’re set with that semi-peripheral part of the bullpen…..
There wasn’t anything in Vogelsong’s history to suggest a “rebirth”, and there’s nothing in Gaudin’s, either. And there’s also nothing in the history of the hundreds who don’t suddenly become good MLB pitchers after years of sucking. So of course it’s a shock.
it’s totally not a shock that he’s pitching well. It’s been 11 or 12 innings or whatever. He’s going to get lit up at some point but being a *save the bullpen* guy isn’t a total shock. He pitched pretty well for the Yankees and I think he won a ring with them, too. Comparing him to Voggy is misguided, in my opinion, because Voggy has been very effective as a SP for 2+ years. But I got Brian’s reference.
He pitched pretty in well in 11 games with the Yankees in 2009, and pitched in one postseason game. They released him before the 2010 season. The A’s signed him and then released him 2 moths later. Yanks tried again, and he had one of his great years, recording a 4.50 ERA in 30 games. He then became a free agent and the Nats grabbed him for 900,000… he pitched only10 games…and so it went.
“But he’s been with 9 different teams and he’s not a lefty so almost a third of the league decided it was a good idea to pay him to pitch” And rather quickly changed their minds.
I understand his job, thanks. But the fact remains that he’s hasn’t shown himself to be acceptable in that job in recent years. That’s why he hasn’t been able to keep that job.If, after the other shoe drops he’s as good as Mota was, then I’ll be delighted, and surprised..
exactly, I felt the same way about Casilla. My A’s friends loathed him. But I’m happy he’s had so much success with us after being so bad with Oakland.
The A’s fucked up with Casilla. He came here with (at the time ) a 97- 99 MPH fastball. Righetti helped him develop a nasty curve, as well. I asked a week or so if anyone knew if Gaudin had added a pitch, I haven’t seen or heard that. Our local talking heads, including Kruk, really miss the boat on this stuff. He should do better at digging into what changed with guys like Vogie. All we get are maeningless platitudes. Did Nicole get one of those vibrating twisters?
Dirty, Ramirez, Casilla, Vogelsong, Gaudin. What do they all have in common?
Dave Righetti
that’s true. And while the personal story my friend told me about him a few years ago stands, he’s clearly an outstanding pitching coach (something I doubted 3-4 years ago)
I must have missed you retelling that story. From Roberto Kelly, Flannery, Bam Bam the whole staff Bochy has assembled impresses me. Righetti being a long time company man is most impressive though.
It’s not a very good story. My buddy stumbled into a bar late one night about 5 years ago and Raggs was wasted.
Tough break for Lee and the W’s…
It’s been so long since I paid much attention to the NBA playoffs, maybe someone knows why they wait from Saturday until Tuesday for Game 2.
Because that playoffs aren’t long enough as it is . . .
Thanks, I knew there was a great reason 😉
James, that’s a very cool story about the writing contest.