A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

And here’s the latest skinny Panda pic. Not sure what the alien light is.

Tons of players missing fanfest tomorrow: Huddy, Bum, Panda, Scoots, Pagan….maybe others. I’m not going, I think I’m headed to Tahoe tomorrow for the weekend after a basketball game. Any of you guys going?

Sabean was asked by Amy G who he predicts will have a breakout season this year and he went with Crawford. There aren’t too many choices so that answer didn’t surprise. B-Craw had some problems in 2013 against left handers. He slashed .199/.288/.546 against them. That’s unacceptable.

He did drop his K rate from 20% to 17.5%. His bb-rate was a decent 7.6% but that should be higher considering he hits 8th….

Forgetting all of his numbers, when I see B-Craw connect for a bomb I always say “why can’t he do this more often?” He’s got a smooth, sweet swing that back spins the shit out of the ball. So he’s gotta hit more than 9 bombs this year, right? Poll time…..

Andrew Baggerly, who I really enjoy reading, is in the midst of ranking the NL West pitching staffs. He’s releasing one team a day. Haiku Season hits everyone hard.

Anyway, he ranked the Padres 5th, The Rockies 4th and the D-Backs 3rd. You should all be able to see where this is going. He’ll be ranking the Giants 2nd and The Art Dealers 1st. His rankings look reasonable to me.

But how close are we to them in terms of our staffs?

Art Dealer’s Starting 5

Kershaw

Grienke

Ryu

Haren

Beckett/Billingsley

Art Dealer’s Relievers:

Rodriguez, Withrow, Howell, League, Bee-Asshole, and Jansen.

Our Starting 5:

Cain, Bum, Timmy, Voggy, Huddy

Our Relievers:

Casilla, Affeldt, Lopez, Petit, Machi, Huff (he might be competing for a rotation spot), and Romo

Qualifying this thread by saying I’m not doing any research at all. I’m late for work, just gonna churn and burn this bad boy out there.

Thoughts?

I’ll share mine later today.

Chalk me up as disappointed that Sandoval won’t be attending FanFest. The Giants excused him to *continue his workout regimen in Venezuela.*

What *workout regimen* can’t The Panda do here? He obviously wants to finish the Venezuelan World Series or whatever that is. I don’t care about that thing. Are they paying him to play in that or are we? After pulling up lame running to first base the other day (he’s apparently fine now) I would think that he’d be spooked into resetting his priorities. He did what he had to do to get in shape for his big, big deal coming up. Why risk a freak injury at this point?

The Giants are way too coddling of their players, especially Sandoval, in my opinion. I’m not certain of this, but I think mlb players get paid every two weeks like the rest of us, even during the off season. If they say come back for FanFest, you freaking do it. I would think the multiple risks of spending this much time in Venezuela (I’ll leave “multiple risks” up to your imagination) would kick-start Sabean  into telling him to get his ass back to SF NOW for FanFest and whatever else he needs to do to get ready for the season.

If you’re unemployed with no responsibilities, no hobbies and literally nothing else to do with your life from Wednesday thru Friday, you should consider being an extra in one  of the commercials the Giants are filming this week. The gig doesn’t pay but neither does sitting on your couch waiting for something to happen. 🙂

Here’ s the link with the details of what you need to do to make this happen:

http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/sf/fan_forum/castingcall_landing.jsp

Breaking up the news about Ryan Doumit happenings, it seems the Giants have bought a pitcher from the Yankees. He’s left handed and his name is David Huff. Not sure why New York would sell a left handed pitcher to us. He’s 29, he’s had success at the major league level. Last year he pitched to a 0.98 WHIP in 34 innings.

Who sells off left handed pitchers? Especially a team that doesn’t need the cash?

Scott Cousins is still slithering around the periphery of major league baseball. The Red Sox signed him to a minor league deal, probably for depth in the minors. He just turned 29 and has no skills or tools unless you consider being a “hitman” a tool. If so, he’s a 1-tool guy. If you considering “being a tool” a tool, then he’s a two-tool guy. Speed, power, defense? Those tools elude him….

Cousins can’t hit, he’s batting .179 in 193 major league plate appearances. Well, he can *hit*, he just has to turn himself into a human missile first and then he’s good to go. What’s the O/U on higher batting averages, Cousins or Rikkert Faneyte? He’s the worst Giants hitter I can recall from memory. I’m gonna say Faneyte nips him by a couple percentage points but that’s just because I want Cousins to lose at everything. Lemme go check….

Fuckin’ Faneyte can’t do anything right. He’s at .174 for his career. Cousins is also much faster than Faneyte, he’s leading him 2 > 1 in career stolen bases. Oh well, so much for the Amsterdam vs Reno.

As far as I can tell, Scott Cousins has done one thing in his life that can be considered meaningful: His attempted death-launch on Buster Posey impacted, in some way, the decision by major league baseball to outlaw home plate collisions between runners and catchers. This is rule change that should have always been in place, in my opinion….

Forgetting the obvious reason related to preventing injury and concussion, it was always just a puss move by the runner to begin with. In what sport can you run up to full speed, launch yourself towards another human who is standing still, defenseless and trying to do something else like catch a ball, and crash into them?

That isn’t sport.

My daughter’s grandpa found his first glove today. He was cleaning out boxes, got stuck on a picture that turned into a thousand other pictures. In between all of that he found everything else from his past. One of those things was his first glove:

I’m wearing it for the picture. We’re both left handed but it feels awkward on my hand. He used it in high school in the late 40’s. He thinks it says “Rawlings” but it doesn’t look like that to me. I’m positive it doesn’t say “Mizuno”. Either way, tough to say. He told me he remembers restringing it a couple of times. I asked him if it would be cool if we re-strung it one more time and went out and had a catch. He said yes. Beats writing Winter haiku’s.

Where’s your first glove? What ever happened to your first glove??????

Richard Sherman is doing his usual post-dust up, mop up job of another one of his cry baby melt downs. Sherman is a smart guy, he’s quite good at diverting attention away from his behavior. This time it’s racism that was the REAL problem. All the idiots on twitter who vented their racist ways towards him. Is he really SHOCKED that racism is still alive in America? Of course it is. We saw a good example of it from our ex-resident Dennis the other day. There are ignorant people in the world. They aren’t going away.

But racism is not the issue with what Sherman did. It is a separate issue. The common theme always attached to Sherman: It’s always about what someone else did to him. He talked about *being in the zone* and some other stuff. What I wish Rachel Nichols had asked him is this: “Richard, why do so many people want to punch you in the face?” Is Trent Williams racist? Did Crabtree push your helmet after your fake-ass handshake because he’s racist?

Professional athletes are role models. They are role models no matter how many times they say they aren’t role models. And yes, real life adults in children’s lives can do damage control after outbursts like Sherman’s, we can have conversations with our kids about sportsmanship, how to win and lose with dignity; we can talk to our kids about all of that. But at the end of the day, they still admire him. They look up to him. He’s in the freaking NFL, that alone trumps most of the things we tell our kids about what is WRONG with Sherman. They see the money, the fame, the hair, the WIN and they look up to that.

Yes, he went to Stanford. Everyone knows that. There are a lot of smart people who went to Stanford who I don’t admire or look up to.

Sportsmanship is one of the most important things you can teach a youngster. It’s not always innate. And guys like Richard Sherman just make it harder on the “real people” in the world who are assigned the day to day job in the trenches with teaching kids the right way to win and the right way to lose. Screw him.

This Friday is the deadline for Masahiro Tanaka to make his decision on his employer for 2014. There are five or 6 teams in contention (reportedly) with the Dodgers being the front runners. Arizona, the Cubs, the Yankees, Seattle and possibly the White Sox have made or are making an offer to him. He wants to live on the west coast and his wife is a wannabe pop star so you would think that all signs point to him signing with the Dodgers. Although the Cubs are offering the most money. It sucks that 2 of the 5 (or 6) teams interested are from our division.

Whoever gets him will be significantly upgrading their rotation.

Dead zone. Think I might go scour around for a new BBOTD to perk me up.

Let it go….and with 2 time outs remaining, I let go…..

And so we embark on the worst part of the year. I couldn’t care less about the Super Bowl, I hate both of those teams. I’ve feigned my way to half hearted interest in the NBA. But that’s not going to last. Is hockey on strike again? Hockey. lol.

Sure, there’s fanfest and pitchers and catchers report after that. But for me, this is dead in the eye of the haiku storm that hits like clockwork once a year…..

Today is the biggest game I can ever remember for me as a fan. I say “today” because there’s no way I’ll be able to focus on typing tomorrow. Too nervous. I could probably focus on “breathing” tomorrow. I hope.

I HATE the Seattle Seagulls. I despise their fans, at least a dozen or so who call me a close friend. And that’s a good example of how we live our lives in boxes.

I’ve been lucky enough to have been alive for 5 Super Bowl wins. I remember each one like they were yesterday. I was talking to one of my buddy’s kids the other day, a 12 year old boy, and I was struck with his passion for the Niners. He was wearing a Bill Ring jersey that his rad dad scored for him and he was wondering with wide eyes what it would be like to win a Super Bowl this year. And it was at that moment that I realized how many Niner fan kids don’t know what that’s like. They watch their dad’s strut around in their over-sized Niner jackets, bota bags in tow, giving their buddies knowing dude head nods about better days from the 80’s. But those kids don’t know what it’s like to have their team win a Super Bowl. They don’t know the glory. The destiny.

It’s the same now as it was then. When it happens, you just start running. Usually with a crazy smile on your face, sometimes without shoes. Always with abandon. And you just run. And when you stop and don’t know what to do next, you start running again cause you gotta get back to where you started. Only an idiot without shoes keeps running away forever.

Each step is another stride away from your losing ways. Losing days. Every heart beat is the joy of your new life as a winner, for eternity. “Flags Fly Forever” is one of the best things anyone has ever said.

I want all those young Niner fans flying through life flaglessly to come join the Eternity Party. #questfor6

Belt asked for 3.6 mil and the Giants offered 2.05 mil. The Giants haven’t gone to arbitration with a player since 2003 (AJ Jackass) and there’s no way they’re going to start now. They’ll hit 2.75 mil, maybe a touch more. And Belt deserves it. He developed into one of the premiere NL first basemen last year.

I’m pretty optimistic about the O next year. We have a healthy Pagan. A slimmed down-contract-year-driven Panda. A paid Pence. An ascending Belt. And Crawford is only going upwards on both sides. Morse. A former MVP who is 26. I’ll tell ya, if Scoots can make a fist, we might just have a team that can score in the high-600’s runs. Maybe the low 700’s? I can’t emotionally tolerate that threshold. Back down to the high 600’s. Better.

The Dodgers are in serious negotiations with Tanaka.

Feel better?

What just about everyone wanted has finally happened and expanded replay will start next year. It covers pretty much everything you can think of EXCEPT the “neighborhood” play at 2nd base–and that’s great that they left that alone. While I was listening to Tolbert detail it on KNBR this afternoon I was left wanting to know about the logistics of a challenge. He wasn’t clear so I called up KNBR and asked the question myself. “Craig from Palo Alto….”

I wanted to know what would prevent a manager from going out there to argue and, essentially, stall for time while someone from the team reviewed the play to see if it was challenge worthy. Without a time clock there is simply too many ways to stall the game while the team checks to see if the play is challenge worthy or not.

Tolbert agreed this was a great point and it touched off a discussion between he and Ralph-Mouth that was still going on as I drove into my driveway and had to turn the radio off.

I hope MLB has got this figured out because I’m envisioning the game getting extended WAY out with blustery manager field storms designed only to waste enough time until they get the *yay or nay* from the dugout to throw the challenge flag.

By the way, you get one challenge that you can use and if you lose you’ve lost your challenge. If you win, you get another one. Then you’re done. The most you can challenge is 2 plays per game. After the 7th inning the umpire crew decides if a play gets reviewed or not. Presumably, you could still use your challenge after the 7th if you still have one.

SO what do you guys think of expanded replay?

First reaction to the 7 year/215 mil Kershaw deal: I’m not really sweatin’ the Rowand deal anymore. Or the Zito deal (though, in the end, that one was worth it to me).

I’ll give the Dodgers credit for one thing: at least they aren’t doling out a stupid-mega deal like this to a guy who’s turning 32 (see: the Angles). This deal is OVER when he’s 32. So at least they will get the best years of his arm over the course of the deal. Unless he gets hurt. Which is a definitely possibility. He’s already tossed 1,180 innings at the big league level. And he probably tossed double that in his years before MLB. And getting hurt is what pitchers do best. So…..whatever, he’ll probably be fine.

This deal isn’t news, at least in the way it affects the Giants. This is a player the Dodgers already had and there was no indication he was ever going to leave. The Art Dealers didn’t get better with this move.

It’s time to give Sabean some credit. With each passing stupid mega deal that gets signed I appreciate more and more how he puts together contracts. He gets ahead of the market because he knows where it’s going and because of that he doesn’t have to throw out the mega deals anymore. Anyone think Pence could have gotten more money somewhere else? Hell yes he could have, especially after seeing what Ellsbury and Choo got. Timmy got 2 years/35 mil and I guarantee you he could have gotten more if he’d waited. At least in number of years. And Morse? That was a brilliant signing.

Kyle Crick better be the real deal once he gets out of A-ball or we are in line for a LOOOOONG string of years of losing the NL West….

You know, when you look at the all time home run list it’s pretty condemning of the steroid guys. Six of the top 14 on the hr list are known cheaters. And I don’t count Hank Aaron since, according to things I’ve heard, almost everyone was taking greenies. But Bonds, A-Fraud, Sosa, McGwire, Palmeiro, and Manny were all pumped up on that stuff. And while Frank Thomas can look down upon those six with disdain I’m not certain that he wasn’t taking something performance enhancing. Are you?

Question for those that have been to the Hall of Fame: Is there any memorabilia anywhere in that joint related to the six guys I listed above? A bat? A ball? A signed scorecard? Anything? Because if the Hall of Lame is profiting even one cent off of anything produced by those six players then the whole place is a joke and should be closed up or torn down.

And so it has come to this. Back to Seattle. For the life of me I can’t figger out why all new stadiums don’t get built the way they built CenturyLink Field. Why WOULDN’T you want to maximize home crowd noise? Another topic for another time….

I don’t have a problem with end zone celebrations, never did. I enjoy them. TO whipping out a sharpie and signing autographs was one of my all time favorites. And I loved the Price Fielder bowling pin thing (though only in hindsight). Having said that, the constant shit-talking going on in NFL games these days has gotten old, fast. There’s just way too much “my dick is bigger than yours” going on and it’s disrupting the game.

Now, take a quick time out and compare that to baseball players who decide to throw down if you flip your bat a couple of feet too far or if you admire a home run for a nano second too long. I’m trying to imagine what it would look like if I celebrated winning a big pot at the El Dorado the same way football players talk sh!t to each other these days. “What now bitches!” And then I go over the top and chest bump the pit boss out of the poker room and into the video poker machines outside. My bad.

There has to be a middle ground, right? I mean, they’re all professional players getting paid to play a game. And yet there’s never been a wider chasm between the two sports in terms of how players communicate with each other between the lines…..

I’m secretly happy we’re going back up to Seattle. The way Navarro Bowman put the Stick to sleep was a way better burn out than a fade away. I didn’t want to see another game get played there. Plus, we now get to go into Seattle and break their faces. I’m not sure or confident that the Niners win that game. I think they will. Or could. But the sheer drama and energy that will pulsate through that stadium is almost too much too consider.

Manning vs Brady in the AFC championship. Niners head back to Seattle for the NFC championship. It has never been this good on both sides of the conferences with 2 games to go before the Super Bowl. Seriously, name another year that was this epic. I can’t wait for next weekend.

I’ve been watching the Panda fit-pics making the rounds on Twitter. Good for him. Here’s what he looks like today (well, a few days ago):

Here’s what he looked like before:

Well, it’s nice to see that he’s done what we all knew he was going to do: get in shape for money. I’m excited because it means our 2014 offense gets a boost. Of course, it would  have been nice to get a  boost last year. But whatever, let’s just stay in the positive and hope for the best. And by *hope for the best* I mean if Sabean gives this guy a 5 year 100 mil deal in the Spring, I’ll puke. He’s gonna get fat again. Book it.

A good, solid mockery of the BBWAA is making the rounds on the internet. And they deserve it. There is no reason that covering 140 games of baseball a year should automatically qualify you to vote on who goes to the Hall of Fame and who doesn’t. So who SHOULD be able to cast a vote?

Former players? This could work if they were players who played in the era of HOF-eligible player. But what would count as “played in the era”? How many years would you need to qualify? And what if you played your entire career in the other league?

Fans? No way. Then it gets turned into an all-star vote and you’d have way too many “Marvin Benard’s” getting in.

A panel of 9 voters? Kinda like a Supreme Court. Not sure who the 9 would be. I still think 9 (or 12 or whatever) would be better than the 571 or so that get to cast a vote now).

I also think that no matter who gets a vote, it has to come from people who saw the player actually play. You can’t just look at the back of a baseball card AND make a silly determination of character when you didn’t watch the player play regularly. So if you need this as a qualification, who gets to vote? Writers who covered the player during their career? And what happens if the writer is dead or in the loony bin? Does he/she still get a vote?

Thoughts?

I was mildly amused by Deadspin’s pub stunt of buying a Hall of Fame vote from one of the BBWAA writers last November. Deadspin gave the vote to their readers and the results weren’t interesting. Just the fact that they did it was interesting. It was a clever way of showing how dated the HOF voting process has become. There are 571 writers out there with a HOF vote. I wonder how many of them get sold every year? I wouldn’t think it would be too difficult to buy off a voter. And do you know how they submit the vote? In this day and age where electronic voting with personal codes and encrypted emails are the norm, the BBWAA asks you to “mail or fax” your vote in. No possibility for tampering there, right?

The Hall of Fame is the last line of defense for these writers. It’s their way of exacting control and power over the sport. Barry Bonds blew them off for an interview? Oh, they’ll get their revenge. The HOF vote allows these writers to have the last word. It gives them relevancy once a year. I can just imagine them sitting back at home with a beer and watching the internet explode over the results of each voter’s card. You can almost hear them collectively cackle at the chaos on twitter.

The hallowed halls of the Hall of Fame are getting less and less hallowed with each passing year….

…. and I couldn’t care less. I’ve glazed over a few articles written by pontificating writers who are still yammering on about *character still matters* like they know the character of the men on the ballot. They know nothing. The only thing they know for sure are the numbers on the back of their baseball cards. And that’s all the hall of fame should ever have been about. Factoring other things in, things that are assessed with conjecture, was always the wrong way to do it. Because once you exclude one player for cheating or lying or just being an overall bad dude but you let in another player who lied, cheated or was an overall bad dude but you didn’t know they were, the whole system for entry needs to be re-evaluated.

If you don’t like a guy because of how he got to 700+ home runs, that’s fine. But you don’t know how he got there any more than you know how Maddux got to 355 wins. If Maddux was beating his kids after every one of those wins would you still vote him in? If he was taking Adderall without a prescription, would he get your vote? Once you start evaluating character you go down a road that has no ending. You don’t know how you got there and you don’t know where you’re going. Because in the end, you simply “don’t know” unless you are the person you’re voting for. And they can’t vote for themselves.

You can’t have a condition for entry related to character if you have even a single liar, cheater or overall bad dude already elected into the hall of fame. Whether you know they are or not, their inclusion invalidates that condition. It just does.

Ryan Theriot retired yesterday. Officially. We probably could have used him last year but that’s not what Theriot is all about. He wanted to spend time as a full time dad more than he wanted to keep playing baseball. I remember Krukow being pretty hard on his desire to *quit* last year saying that in 5 years Theriot will deeply regret his decision to stop playing. Kruk said “all players” miss playing once they stop. I think that’s a classic Kruk-centric comment. He thinks every ball player is exactly the same. He’s wrong, obviously.

I hope Theriot has invested wisely. He made a little over 8 million in salary, not sure what % went to his agent or if he invested in anything that went bad. It can’t cost much to live in Louisiana though. That’s where he’s from, I don’t know for certain that he moved back there. Although likely, he probably never left.

I think Ryan Theriot ended a career in possibly the best way you could ever end one: with The Slide. Sorry I couldn’t find a short link to it, here’s a video to the 2012 highlights. There’s an annoying song playing in the background plus a loud Red Bull ad at the start (I miss the old red bull ads–stick figures that quietly get wings). At the 3:51 mark you get to watch Theriot slide off into retirement like a kid rocketing down a water slide in his back yard with his buddies.

I bet Theriot had a lot of fun with his kids last Summer.

“Tomorrow morning will feature pussy all over the top of my bed as those little beasties are heat seekers and also go for soft places to hang out. It may be a task just to get out from under cover so I can get up and feed the stoves…” –Stix

That is one of the greatest consecutive sentences ever written here or maybe anywhere.

As I’m typing this, it’s 51 degrees outside. But that’s in the shade so it’s skewing the actual outdoor temp a bit. 🙂

This weekend it’s all about football and yesterday was epic. Alex Smith was brilliant. I was most impressed with his ability to improvise and make something out of nothing, whether it was with his legs or last second shovel passes. He did everything any QB could have done to win that game and I was truly bummed for him since I will always wish him well for the rest of his career. And his pass to Bowe was perfect. The DB did a great job of riding him toward the sideline and Bowe acted as if he didn’t even know where he was. Pathetic on Bowe’s part…..

In Philly it all came down to a kicker who wasn’t even on the team a few weeks ago. I was trying to imagine what he was feeling in the moments before he hit that kick and I’m sure I had no idea what he was feeling.

Today we have the “fluffer game” with the Chargers taking on the Bengals. It’s all fluffer for me, I don’t care who wins that game although I really like Keenan Allen and seem to remember Snarkk imploring the Niners to draft him when I barely even knew his name. Wish they’d listened to him.

ESPN is still talking about how cold it’s going to be today in Green Bay. All the talking heads are tripping over themselves to talk about themselves. And none of them said a single interesting or unique thing. Maybe Stix should score an honorary sideline job for the game. I can only imagine how epic his “pussy all over the field” commentary would be!

According to Stubhub, there’s still a little over 2,200 tickets left for the NFC Wild Card game in Green Bay this Sunday. Packer fans are catching a lot of sh!t on the internet about the possibly embarrassing development of having this game blacked out locally. To which I say: Fuck that. The HIGH is going to be -1. Look, I’m from California. I get irked if I leave the house in the morning and I can see my breath. I don’t own an ice scrapper—if it’s cold enough to ice up my car wind shield in the morning I just sit in the driveway with the defrost on blasting it with my wiper fluid until I can see out of a little hole and then I know I’m good to go–it usually clears up about half way down the hill. I have to deal with this inconvenience about 5 mornings a year.

I own an umbrella but I don’t know where it is……

The point is that when I see that the HIGH is going to be in the *minus* I have great sympathy for the fans of that area who don’t want to throw down a couple hundred bones to go sit in absurd weather to watch a football game. At least the players get to come off the field and sit in front of a heater now and again. The players get to work up a little sweat on the field to keep their body temps up. The fans get none of that.

No, the correct play (if I were a Packer fan) would be to stay at home, eat my giant block of cheese washed down with lots of Budweiser and hope I can secure the game at http://www.vipboxus.co. Black out shmack out. I wouldn’t go to that game with a free ticket…..

It’s anyone’s guess as to what Tanaka will get but it’s almost certainly going to be north of 100 million dollars. It’s been interesting to watch the dichotomy between GM’s wanting to sign him to a big deal and the same GM’s not wanting to sign him to a big deal due to concerns about the volume of pitches he’s thrown over his career. I wouldn’t worry about his arm. He’s been training that arm his entire life. That’s the problem with pitchers today. They can’t throw deep into a game because they don’t have the arm strength to do it.

While I was in Oregon visiting friends this Summer I watched a Little League game that my friend’s son was playing in. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The game was totally dominated by the pitch count. The game was basically just a merry go round of pitchers coming and going. One kid was lights out but was gone after 5 hitters. My buddy’s team lost because he miscalculated the number of pitchers he was using and had to use like the 9th best pitcher on the team in the final inning and the kid walked a couple of hitters and then gave up the game winning hit, a crushed ball that hit the wall out in center field. And this was a regional championship game…..

If this is how pitcher’s arms are now conditioned in the United States then it’s no wonder they can barely throw 100 pitches in a game even if they’re pitching well.

Back in the late 70’s I was one of 2 starting pitchers we had on our team that won the city championship. Either I pitched a complete game or Steve pitched a complete game. I have a hazy memory of getting relieved once in a game we were dominating. We lost one game that year–Steve was sick so Kendall had to pitch and he got lit up. He got relieved by our first baseman, I think.

The point is that we have pitchers on strict pitch counts now because we’ve trained arms down to the need for pitch counts. And that’s just dumb.

Tanaka’s arm will be fine.