A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

Still struggling to go baseball right now. Just saw an unreal stat:

Since 1968, five players have dropped 50 and recorded a 3/Dub at MSG: Stephen Curry, Lebron, ‘Melo, Patrick Ewing and one of my all time favorites, Bernard King. That is insane….

Throw me a bone. Anyone going to spring training? Besides Chi and his daughter? As rad as it is that they’re going it’s pathetic that so few Flappers are following him.

I am embarrassed to say that my mom has a 5 bedroom house in The Boulders and I have never been to spring training or cobbled together a group to go to spring training. And she wants me to come. She begs me to come and friends are always invited.  I always have something else to do. “Cats in the cradle shit”—-I guess.

It’s raining outside my window right now. I hate the rain but I love listening to it pitter patter on my roof.

I wonder how E-Adrianza did today?

I’ve heard two Ehire Adrianza at bats on the radio. Two. Total. The first one, he hit a bomb off Andy Pettitte to break up a no hitter at Yankee Stadium last year. Yesterday, when I turned the game on in the 9th inning, he roped another one. So clearly, if Adrianza wants to make the team, he needs to pay me to listen to his at bats on the radio. 🙂

When I got home, with the excitement of yet another HR from Adrianza brimming within, I decided to check out how many he’d hit in his lengthy minor league career. I knew he wasn’t a power hitter but still…..

Let down: Since 2006, yes he’s been toiling in the minors for nearly a decade, he’s hit 17 home runs. He’s hit an underwhelming .248 in that same career. Players who bat .248 in the minors typically don’t make a smooth transition to a major league batters box.

Yes, he was signed when he was 16 so he’s had a lot of growth room to fill, and yes he’s out of options, but watching him battle in out with Abreu for the back up infielder job is not really doing it for me. Especially considering the very real possibility that Scutaro will be missing an awful lot of time in 2014. Whoever backs him up is going to be playing a lot.

I suppose one option would be to just use Adrianza’s plus glove as a later inning replacement but a bench of Arias, Abreu, Adrianza, Colvin and Blanco is just about the lamest combo that we could cobble together.

Big props to Dirt for picking up what I wasn’t throwing down yesterday….

Longer ride into work than usual with all the rain today. Got to listen to two interviews on KNBR this morning. The first one was with Ron Wotus. Listening to Wotus is like listening to elevator music. He’s a nice guy, been around baseball forever, but it’s no surprise to me why this guy gets passed over for a managerial job. He’s more than a  standard deviation away from being an electric personality.

Same with Heath Hembree. Still, I had never heard him talk before and that was interesting. He’s a country boy from South Carolina. He bailed on University of South Carolina after his freshman year citing wanting more innings as the reason. I wanted the KNBR guys to ask him who was in front of him on the depth chart that led him to leave his dream school after one year but of course they never did.

Who would you be most interested in hearing get interviewed? From the Giants, for me, it’s hands down Voggy–he’s the best interview on the team.

An experimental rule, 7.13, intended to increase player safety by eliminating “egregious” collisions at home plate was jointly announced by Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association on Monday.

The timing allows for managers, coaches, players and umpires to use the entire Grapefruit and Cactus League schedules to acclimate themselves to the rule. The intention to enact regulations was adopted at the Winter Meetings last December; now the exact wording has been agreed upon. The highlights:

• A runner may not run out of a direct line to the plate in order to initiate contact with the catcher, or any player, covering the plate. If he does, the umpire can call him out even if the player taking the throw loses possession of the ball.

• The catcher may not block the pathway of a runner attempting to score unless he has possession of the ball. If the catcher blocks the runner before he has the ball, the umpire may call the runner safe.

• All calls will be based on the umpire’s judgment. The umpire will consider such factors as whether the runner made an effort to touch the plate and whether he lowered his shoulder or used his hands, elbows or arms when approaching the catcher.

• Runners are not required to slide, and catchers in possession of the ball are allowed to block the plate. However, runners who do slide and catchers who provide the runner with a lane will never be found in violation of the rule.

• The expanded instant replay rules, which also go into effect this season, will be available to review potential violations of Rule 7.13.

Maybe I am missing it but I don’t see anything here addressing launching oneself as a human missile so I read this as a lot of words that don’t really address the issue.

I know this is a Giants blog but baseball hasn’t really started yet.

Is Brian Cashman for real? Or is this just a big joke he’s playing Hal? If he doesn’t like Hal, then this HAS to be a joke. Four years/54 million for Brett Gardner? Are you KIDDING me? Cashman must have a thing for speedy guys heading into their 30’s. Cause he’s given Jacoby and Gardner 200+ million this off season. Think about that. 200+ million for 2 guys who can’t really hit, who have no power and who are getting slower every step they take in this life.

Cashman must be making a play for his job–like, “look, I signed everyone I could possibly sign. It’s not my fault they all sucked.” Nothing else explains this.

The Jacoby/Gardner signings make the Tanaka signing look like a slam dunk success…..

Now THIS is a quality tweet:

And another Orioles physical flunky bites the dust and this time ends up in San Francisco. I’ve always kinda liked Tyler Colvin although admittedly that was a couple of years ago. In 2012 I predicted he’d hit 20 bombs and I missed by 2. :

He’s had some injury problems and the shine has dulled a bit off his promise. But I am all for more players in camp who haven’t shown that they suck yet (at least, in OUR OWN minor league system). And it’s not like he’s been helpless at the major league level. He’s had 2 seasons  where he hit 20/18 bombs in limited at bats.  He’s still only 28. More power, Scotty!

The Marco Scuturo situation is starting to irritate me. The last thing I want are any of our old guys burning up on the Spring Training circuit. I don’t care if he plays more than 5 or 6 games this Spring.

But his back seems as screwed up as it was last year. And as usual with the Giants, they aren’t saying much about what’s wrong with it. It’s time for a back up plan and Arias or Abreu shouldn’t be it. I like Arias coming off the bench and I don’t like Abreu at all.

If I’m Sabean, I call up Seattle and see what they want for either Nick Franklin or Brad Miller. One of them is probably going to end up at SS with Cano sitting on his 240 at 2nd base. I’m not sure if the Mariners would do a deal but it couldn’t hurt to float one out there.

All I know is that this Scut-back thing isn’t going to fix itself. And this team isn’t built to absorb any blows to it’s starting line up….

The Giants and Brandon belt agreed on a 2.9 million dollar salary for 2014 just eight hours before his arbitration hearing. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why they waited so long to get that done. Belt was forced to fly out to Florida for his non-hearing and you would think the Giants would have tried to avoid that inconvenience. Considering what Freeman is making, the Giants are now getting yet another bargain player (Mad Bum, how’s that deal feelin’ to you?) so making Belt fly all the way across the country to give him what you could have given him without making him do this seems like the more reasonable approach to contract negotiations.

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Thoughts on the lawsuit against MLB wanting more $ for minor league players? Less than minimum wage is a little over the top. I mean, when the hot dog vendors are taking YOU out to lunch, it’s time to take another look at the single A ball pay structure for the ball players. Can you imagine if a San Jose class A player married a Raiders cheerleader? There wouldn’t be a broker couple anywhere in the Bay Area!

I’m still pretty blown away by the story about Masahiro Tanaka nearly collapsing after running a mile yesterday. His admission afterwards confirms he wasn’t simply having a bad day. “I didn’t know I was going to run this much.” Giving 155 million to an *athlete* who can’t run a mile is a lot of cheddar to leave at the end of your string. They didn’t hire him to play professional golf.

If I’m the Yankees (or a Yankee fan) this is either going to be an awesome thing or the next disaster drama-rama side show for a franchise that seems to feed off such things.

Think about it. This guy went 24-0 last year and he can’t run a mile! If he gets himself into shape you would have to feel confident about the prospects of him succeeding and maybe even dominating at the mlb level.

If he doesn’t get into shape and he gets hooked on American food the same way many foreign players do, he’s going to be a failure. And remember, in New York, the bar that separates you being a hero and you being a rejected outcast is high and thin.

Speaking of guys who got in shape, The Panda said all the right things yesterday giving credit to his teammates for waking him up enough to finally get in shape for good. We’ll see if he sticks to it, unlike after the 2011 season, but I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until he proves otherwise. He’s talking about growing up and while that’s an easy way to deflect away from those who think he just got in shape for money, it still is, on the surface, the right way to go about living your life. We all made mistakes when we were younger. Pablo never seemed like a guy who gave a sh!t about growing up. Maybe Pence, Cain, Posey etc talked some sense into him. We’ll see….

Well, I made it through the Wells Report. It was appalling, all of it, as expected. I refuse to believe that all NFL locker rooms are like that. And the fact that Miami always sucks supports my belief. If sub human ogres like Incogidiot and his minions spend all of their time tormenting specific targets on THEIR team, they must not spend too much time, you know, practicing football.

Incogidiot went out in a blaze of glory last night on Twitter. He re-tweeted every tweet anyone sent him yesterday (90% of them were calling him a piece of sh!t or whatever the equivalent to that is). This was a way to be a dick as all those re-tweets clogged up the timelines of anyone who follows him. And then he deleted his account. At least he’s consistent in terms of being an asshole.

Can you imagine if Michael Sam gets drafted by a team with even half an Incogidiot on it?

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here’s the first picture of the Panda in camp– taken about 10 minutes ago.

Here’s one of him in the dugout this am:

Pitchers and catchers officially starting filing in today. Does that do anything for ya?

Several position players are all ready there. Any word on when the Panda is set to show up?

A big Flap high five to whoever finds the first pic of him in camp this year.

Feels like a good day to play a little pepper, maybe have a catch, too……

I watched the Cubs sign 2 below average starting pitchers today: James McDonald and Jason Hammel. The Cubs have one decent starting pitcher: Jeff Samardgjjadjgiigjaca. They need tons of help, and J-Mac and J-Ham don’t fry it hard enough to make that happen. They sizzle, but they ain’t the steak…..

Theo isn’t a dope. And the Cubs have money. Why would he sign those 2 stiffs with Ervin Santana and Ubaldo Jimenez still available? I don’t care about either of these players enough to look this up. I do know that signing Ubaldo would also cost you a 1st round draft pick. I don’t think the same is true for Santana (but correct me if I’m wrong).

Still, it makes zero sense to me why a team like the Cubs would  pad their already shitty starting 5 with guys like McDonald and Hammel when they have the resources to sign either Santana or Ubaldo. Or both.

And the draft pick? Why is the draft pick an issue? Baseball is the worst when it comes to predictability with draft picks—1st rounders or 40th rounders. It’s a total crap shoot. You don’t pull the trigger on Ubaldo because you’re worried about a draft pick? Huh?

What is the likelihood that a team would draft BETTER than an Ubaldo Jimenez with a late first round pick? Ubaldo was positively Koufaxian in the 2nd half of last year. He finally learned how to pitch with lost velocity (Tim Lincecum: call Ubaldo, STAT). And Ubaldo’s pedigree at the mlb level is layered and deep. There MIGHT be one or two Ubaldo’s coming out of the first round of next year’s draft. Maybe none. You like those odds?

Anyway, P’s and C’s report tomorrow. The sun tilted a little different today to me. I noticed it on the drive home and smiled. Spring is coming. Can you dig it?

For you Dubs fans out there, how’s your morning going? Still shaking your head sideways? Man, what a game last night. Steph Curry is almost single handedly getting me back into the NBA after years of not caring about it. That dude hits the crispest, cleanest 3’s I’ve seen since my main man Purvis Short spent his career casting off super high from behind the stripe. Saw World B Free on tv the other day. Still my favorite basketball player of all time……..

Anyway, Labron did what he did. Unreal. Before he shoots you can hear Barnett in the background going, “you can’t let him beat you!” And then he beat them. I’m not in the “camp of second guessing” the decision not to double team him. A step back, 25 foot fade with a hand in his face?” Yes, I will take that all day long over an easy 2 or a wide open Ray Allen 3. No second guessing from me and Marc Jackson said it best: “We witnessed greatness” last night…….

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Speaking of greatness, Derek Jeter announced that this will be his last season. Ah, The Captain. I read his facebook post that brought tears to the likes of Heyman and his east coast cronies. Sorry, it did nothing for me. I appreciate Jeter as a great baseball player, first ballot HOFer etc but from an emotional standpoint, he wasn’t part of my sphere. And I can honestly say I never owned him on a single fantasy team. How many times did I even see him play the Giants? Maybe 5? Never in the playoffs and I don’t think he was always healthy enough to play in all the inter league games the two teams have played since ’96. How many series vs the Yankees have the Giants played since ’96? Our New York Flap contingent might be able to answer that one……..

Anyway, so long Jeter. Next…..

I just read a post from our friend MacDog on the last thread. He just watched 42. I offered a quick follow up post. It got me to thinking about Michael Sam Jr. While not quite the same thing, it’s the same ballpark as the color barrier being broken in major league baseball in 1947.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this. It’s just a thought and we needed a new thread. I share a lot of the same feelings as other people, I admire his courage to do this. I don’t see why it should have ever been an issue in the first place though I am not in a locker room with players who, apparently, might have a problem with sharing a locker room with Sam. If you subtract any religious reason you might have to be against Sam, and I think that reason is also stupid, then there is simply no reason you shouldn’t want a gay player on your team. None.  Zero. Unless he sucks at football, then I’m on board. Get rid of him.

One thing Sam doesn’t have going for him that Jackie Robinson had in the bag: He’s not the best of the best. Robinson showed up dominant. Sam is probably a 5/6 round guy. GM’s can pass on a 5/6 round guy all day long if they don’t want to deal with the drama that’s going to come along with him being on the team. Robinson was impossible NOT to have on your team. Ultimately, his talents beat down all the racist bullshit that tried to keep him out. Sam could certainly turn out to be dominant but he doesn’t have what Robinson had going into this new chapter of his life.

But it’ll be interesting to watch unfold. I’m rooting for him. In the end, if he wins, we all win a little bit…….

The Giants gave Tim Lincecum 35 million this off season and were derided by many. I wasn’t one of the *deriders*. I happen to think Timmy is going to be very good in ’14/’15. His lost velocity is well documented but you don’t need velocity to pitch well. And he’s on record as saying he’s taking a new approach to pitching now and how  he had been stubborn about trying to re-capture his lost mph’s. Plus, everyone thinks Tim Hudson will be a great mentor for him now that they’re on the same team.

The thing Lincecum needs to figure out is how to stay out of the big inning. His W/L splits are ridiculous.

Last year:

wins: 1.64 ERA, 0.98 WHIP, .155BAA, .505OPS

Losses: 6.53 ERA, 1.68 WHIP, .306 BAA, .844 OPS

If you remembered Lincecum having rough starts to his outings, you aren’t imagining that. In terms of OPS, he improved as the game wore on.

pitch 1-15: .732

pitch 16-30: .755

pitch 31-45: .571

pitch 46-60: .582

pitch 61-75: .568

pitch 76-90: .724

pitch 91-105: .534

pitch 106-120: .542

He has to figure out that first inning and that random inning that usually pops up around the 5th or so. The bleeding starts and he can’t figure out how to stop it. And it’s not that he’s tired, if he makes it out of that one bad inning and gets a chance to come back in the next inning, he’s usually lights out (as the OPS chart above shows).

His K rate remained outstanding and his xFIP was once again far below his actual ERA suggesting that he didn’t have as bad of a year as it looked on the surface. We’ve got him for another 2 years. Would you rather have Timmy for 2 or Bronson Arroyo for 2? I don’t think there’s a reason to even slap up a poll to find out that answer.

I didn’t ask Kokonuts if I could write a thread highlighting his latest book but since the haiku’s aren’t even trickling in anymore from you guys, I decided to write a short review about “Rounding Third. Zen. Baseball. Poems.” and provide a link for you if you’re interested in reading it on a quiet, lazy day like today.

First of all, it wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I knew it was going to be a collection of poems but when you throw “Zen” into the title of the book you’ve pretty much “glazed” me. After reading it, I don’t know whether it had anything to do with “Zen” or not. If “quietly enjoying a few moments in time” is Zen then it was Zen. The book is a collection of poems written about individual players. What is brilliant about the book is how he perfectly describes each player while simultaneously allowing you to go back in time and feel what it was like to be a fan of that player. I don’t think I explained that correctly but if you read the poems you’ll know what I mean. For instance, here is “Clemente” :

He writes one for many of baseball icons though I was hoping he would have written one for Tom Seaver (but didn’t) 😦 . He also writes about the 2012 Giants and of course I won’t spoil it for those of you who are planning on buying it later but here’s Zito’s that I especially enjoyed:

The end is titled “Post Game Wrap” with “The Fan’s Lament” and “Coming Home” being two perfect poems to complete this enjoyable, short read.

If you like Pawlie’s writing you should click on this link:

http://tinyurl.com/lory57n

If you’re like me and don’t have a kindle, I did that “kindle cloud thingy”. If you have a kindle I’m assuming you’ll know how to download it. It’s .99 cents so unless you’ve got “99 problems” (Jay Z pop culture ref) the price should be right for you….

There has been some crazy money getting thrown around this off season. Sabean ended up looking crazy like a fox when he quickly locked up Under Pants for *only* 90/5.

Before any of these guys even play a pitch to their new deals, which of these four do you think is the worst of all?

Shin Soo Choo— 30 years old, he’s a nice little 20/20 high OBA guy. He got 130 mil/7.

Jacoby Ellsbury: 29 years old, he’s fast, very fast. He had one outlier power season, otherwise he’s got very little power and he’s known to be an injury risk when he sneezes. He got 153 mil/7.

Masahiro Tanaka— only 25 years old, he was 24-0 in Japan last season. Having never thrown a pitch in the major leagues, the Yankees gave him a 155mil/7

Freddie Freeman– the baby of the group at 24, he signed an 8 year, 135 million dollar deal last week.

My take: At least with Freeman, you have some upside. The Braves will at least get the best years of his career. Same general thing with Tanaka although he’s certainly not going better than 24-0 for the Yankees. But if his arm stays healthy and he is a dominant pitcher, he’ll be worth that dough.

Once Ellsbury and Choo start to slow down, as everyone does sans steroids as they go through their 30’s, I’m guessing both of those teams will regret those 2 mega deals. I think Choo is a more complete player than Ellsbury who isn’t nearly as brittle. I’ll say J-Ell will turn out to be the most regrettable deal.

However you evaluate mega deals, what do you think?

Andre Baggerly is listing off his offense rankings for the NL West and the Giants checked in at a surprising 3rd. At least, at first I was surprised. The part of his article that had me double taking was the “Who’s New”/”Who’s Gone” list.

Who’s New: Michael Morse

Who’s Gone: Torres, Pill, Peguero, Monell, Francoeur and Tanaka.

That “Who’s Gone” list is spectacular insofar as its underwhelming nature. Talk about 6 guys who were either done or were never going to do anything at the mlb level. And say what you will about Morse and his wrist and his fragility, but he is still not far removed from 2 or 3 productive seasons.

Paper can always be a deceptively manufactured material, but on PAPER the offense going into 2014 doesn’t look half bad–as long as you are a *line up half full* kinda guy. And as long as not a single one of our starting position players gets injured, we look great on paper.

The Dodgers are a different story. They could have 5 guys go down and freaking bring back Matt Kemp or Andre Ethier off the DL to plug into the starting line up. They’re like the Miami Hurricanes of Jimmy Johnson/Dennis Erickson years. The second string guy is better than the first string guy. Or at least, just as good.

And I think I just nailed why I’ve posted so many negative posts this off season. I’m jealous of the Dodgers depth. I’m going to try to stop worrying about what they’ve done or what they’re doing and just hope we don’t suffer any major injuries in 2014. What would be the point of taking any other stance?

In ice cold Giants news, in case you missed it, the Giants sent someone way down on the totem pole to watch Suk-Min Yoon pitch at UC Irving. Suk-Min is a South Korean pitcher who I am begging the Giants to sign just so we can have fun with his name. But the Giants will not be signing Yoon– there are 5 other teams interested in him and his agent is Scott Boras. Sabean don’t play those 2 games separately much less together.

And that’s fine because after screwing around with his name I’m not that interested in him as a pitcher….

I don’t think we need another pitcher with Yusmeiro Petit waiting in the wings. Assuming Voggy continues on his long, deep slide I do think Petit will be an effective 4/5 next year. People like to naysay him because he came out of nowhere last season but Petit added not one but two new effective pitches to his arsenal: a curve and a change up. Both were devastating. And he’s always been a strike thrower, something that Lincecum could learn from. Maybe he’s taking steroids too, that would just increase my interest in him as our 4/5. Who knows, maybe Voggy’s spending his off season doing the same thing. 🙂 🙂 🙂

Here’s a fun graph to look at as your morning unfolds. James, try not to shoot that load on your keyboard as you type your post. lqtm:

And today, we sink into the true dead zone. The bottom of the bottom. The Super Bowl is over and all there is between today and opening day is hockey and the NBA. If you told me hockey was still on strike, I would believe you. I’m mildly following the NBA but honestly, without a fanduel.com team or two going it’s hard for me to give much of a crap about basketball and the way it’s played today at that level.

Yesterday we had our first day of rain in 2 months and I already miss the sun. Rain is lame. While I recognize the necessity of it, I still find it quite lame. I want to smell Spring and see the sun shine at a different angle. I truly loath the day after the Super Bowl.

A buddy of mine who I’ve been friends with for close to 20 years is a die hard Seahawk fan. He grew up there but lives down in the Bay Area. His allegiance to all Pacific Northwest teams is unquestioned as he routinely makes the trip up to Seattle for games. Yesterday, he finally got to the top of the mountain. In football, I got there when I was 10. It took him much longer. Congrats, Jeff.

The Broncos, and especially Peyton Manning, can kiss my ass. The ONE THING they did right yesterday was convert a two point conversion easily. I had them at 100-1 scoring 6 points total in yesterday’s game. One more reason for Manning to suck it.

February. Ugh. There’s nothing good about this month. Thank God it’s only 28 days long…….

I can say, without the slightest hint of hesitation, that I am tired of posting pics of The Panda. Especially shirtless pics. And yet….

Ok, that’s it. I am not posting any more pics of Pablo Sandoval. Besides, today is actually a sports day. Super Bowl Sunday. I have no idea how this game will go and I’ve spent a fair amount of time considering it’s direction. The spread is Denver -3 and the o/u is 47. If I was betting on the game, which I’m not, I’d probably take Seattle on the ML and the under. I feel better about the under. Since I hate both of these teams I’m sure to be happy with the outcome as long as I just focus on the loser………

I did my usual prop bets. I’ve got 3 guys for “first player to score a touchdown”– Ball (15-1), Decker (8-1) and Caldwell (30-1). My angle is that Denver is almost certain to get the ball first since Seattle always defers and Denver always accepts. And I’ll take Peyton on a first drive of the game all day long. So I took one of the favorites (Decker) and 2 longshots (Ball and Caldwell).

After that, I just have *exact points scored*. I always pick the same point total for each team and hope for the best. My exact final point totals are 6-16-19-24-26-29. They’re all between 15-1 and 100-1 so if either team scores exactly one of those 6 point totals I’m good to go. If the game ends 29-26 I’m picking up the next tab at Flapalooza. And of course, I’ve engaged in the requisite office pool square game……..

And other than that, it’ll be a relaxing afternoon on the couch. Still haven’t come up with a meal yet but that’ll fall into place as the day ages. Right now, I’m feelin’ like spicy wings but I reserve the right to do whatever the hell I like.

What’s your Super Bowl Sunday look like?