A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

Watching the Niners go so willingly into the bent-over position vs the Seahawks last night, I noticed three similarities between the two San Francisco franchises with the main difference being the outcome. Over the last 3 seasons the Niners went to the NFC championship twice and the Super Bowl once. They lost all three. The Giants, well, we know what they did with their three chances.

And as a Niner fan, with 5 SB’s already in the bank, I can tell you that I absolutely took those 3 recent playoff appearances for granted. After each excruciating loss (and each one was brutal) I just told myself “No big deal, we’ll just get it done next time.”

But watching the 49ers descend into chaos I now realize I should have been more bummed about those 3 losses. There are no guarantees for your sports teams.

I talked to a Royals fan at dinner last night–a legit Royals fan who lives there and grew up rooting for the Royals. He’s older now, probably in his 70’s. He was like most of the Royals fans we saw on tv during the post season. Polite, gracious, happy to be there. He was unyieldingly positive (surprise) about the prospects of the Royals going forward.

With the 49ers falling apart on a tv in the background of the conversation and this Royals fan telling me how stoked he is about his team next year, I quietly thanked (again) the baseball gods for what they gifted us over the last 3 in Five.

In the Giants Dugout store the other day, I predictably found nothing to fit my 6 foot 6 frame. There were tons of shirts with different mantras scrawled across the front. One of them said simply: “Champion Blood”. Even if it fit, wearing a shirt like that isn’t really how I roll. But it told an accurate tale. And after last night, impossibly, I’ve found an even greater appreciation for what the Giants have accomplished. I think I might go back and buy the shirt, have it framed and put it up in my office. No two words set next to each other describe our team better.

No more Panda thread. Need new things to talk about.

The prevailing scuttlebutt seems to be what will the Giants do with the 100 million they’re saving on Sandoval going to Boston. The problem is, Sabean doesn’t like to compete for coveted free agents. And those are the only ones I’d want him to go get. So on the eave of this great holiday, rather than lament the players I don’t think we’re going to acquire I’ll just stop and appreciate the ones we have and the unbelievable gift they gave to us in 2014.

I still can’t believe the Giants won the World Series this year…..

Reflecting back, why should we have expected Sandoval to stay here? For loyalty? Hogwash. Fans have a very skewed version of loyalty. First of all, this is his job. He does this primarily for money. And before you mount your high horse, we all do that.  And he grew up in Venezuela, this isn’t his home. He probably liked playing here and living here 6 months out of the year (really though, 3 months of that was on the road) but we’re not talking about a guy who ever looked at San Francisco as his childhood home. This isn’t a “LeBron” thing.

Newsflash: We loved him more than he loved us. We don’t get paid to love our sports heros. That love is stronger. It’s better.

If you think I’m FOS about that, here’s what Sandoval posted on his Instagram as soon as he signed the dotted line:

Excuse me while I puke……..

Still, we aren’t saints. Our love comes with strings attached. If the Giants don’t win *3 of 5* (with Sandoval largely responsible for 2) would we give him the same love we gave Edgardo Alfonso or Pedro Feliz? So there was never any real reason, related to emotion, that should have led him to decide to stay here. The player was here for money, the fans loved him because he gave them rings. That’s not a *love* that’s based in a very healthy place.

I was wrong about David Ortiz being a thorn in this deal. He was a big part of the decision. What’s that old saying? “Bros before ‘Friscos?” Hmmmm. I don’t think that’s it. Close.

Another possible bonus for him: he’s about to get the media spotlight shined on him like a motherfucker. Maybe that’s a big deal to him. Can you blame him for wanting that? Throw the DH thing in that he’s going to slide into like a warm XXL winter coat and you find yet another reason for him to leave.

My final Panda fat joke: I feel like a big weight has been lifted off me. Now we *know* and that’s a lot better than twisting in the wind. And honestly, I’m totally fine with this. With him and Big Titty gone, the fat jokes are going to be few and far between unless you want to take aim at Hector Sanchez and that just seems like overkill……

Few things last forever. Thanks for the memories Panda, your status as a “Great Giant” will last generations. And I don’t throw that term down loosely the way Krukow whimsically tosses a baseball in the tv booth. I mean it. I’ll never forget what you did for this team. And that final out, where you fall on your back clutching the ball in your glove shaking on the ground for what seemed like as long as all the years that I’ve lived?  It’s all part of the supernova, baby. As I’ve said a thousand times a thousand, that bitch burns forever……

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Timmy’s public goodbye to Panda

The Panda has accepted that relatively modest deal offered to him from the Red Sox. Thoughts?

The Red Sox only offered 5 years/95 million? If that’s true, this should be a done deal on coming back to SF unless there’s something we don’t know about. The Giants should be able to match that without even blinking.

San Diego offer coming in today and I’m not worried about that one.

95 million? He can feed his family on that.

If the Giants don’t make the post season in 2014, would everyone still be gaga over The Panda? If you say you’re paying for what he’s going to do in the post season, I wouldn’t (and really couldn’t) argue with that line of reasoning. But Pablo didn’t have a very good year in 2014–and with it being his contract year as well as coming into the season with the body of a taut, pre teen Swedish boy (credit: Kramer from Seinfeld) you would expect he would have a monster year. But he didn’t.

Pretty much all of his statistics were his worst since 2010.

And yet teams are tripping over themselves to give him 100+ million dollars.

So I ask again, if the Giants don’t make the post season in 2014, what type of contract would the Panda be getting offered? Three years/40 mil still sounds about right.

Serious question: Assuming they had the option, would any of you guys have wanted the Giants to give Johnny Stanton 325 million over 13 years? This just makes no sense to me. Why pay a player you don’t have to really pay for 2 more years all that dough? Wouldn’t it make more sense to sign, you know, good players to put around him? Even if the Marlins did it just to sell their new cable deal to their fans, are the fans really that brain dead that they’d rush to sign up now just because Stanton became a 325 millionaire?

And Billy Beane: good luck with Billy Butler. For a guy who supposedly cares a lot about his players getting on base, here are BB’s last 3 years of OPS: .882/.787/.702. I’m no math wiz but that be trending downward.

And some people thought it was a folksy throwback story when it came out that Butler went to a KC rib joint and powered down a plate of ribs with all the fixin’s just prior to Game 7 vs the Giants. I thought it was stupid. If that’s how this dude gets ready for the biggest game of his life….um. You can have him.

Pretty happy with where the Giants are so far this off season.

Here’s a comprehensive breakdown of Sandoval’s pros/cons as seen from the eyes of a non-Giants fan. Well written, I think:

Ok, no more Ashkon talk. Not that the internet was abuzz with it anyway.:)

New word from the underground is that the Padres are dipping their toes into the Panda sweepstakes. If true, that means the Giants, the Red Sox, the White Sox, the Blue Jays and now San Diego are considering competing for Sandoval.

I can’t imagine the Padres will be making a competitive offer.

But it’s November 17th and there’s nothing else to discuss unless you want to talk about the latest Isis video. Jeeeeezus, don’t click on that if you haven’t done so yet.

I’m a big Ashkon fan. Well, I should say that I enjoy 3 of his videos, I don’t really know anything about him. I’ve been hoping for a new one to come out commemorating the 2014 championship but I haven’t seen anything yet on youtube.

Here are his 3 videos, all epic in their own way.

The first one was great because of it’s novelty. I also love the Will the Thrill impersonations he does.

I loved the vibe of “Feeling Like a Giant”. I also loved the slo-mo’s of the fans–super-ass confident and proud. Knowing dude head nods in motion….

“We Are the Champions” is probably my favorite. His Freddy Mercury impersonation, especially when he’s talking about Verlander, was epic.

Which of the 3 were your favorite? Or did you hate them all? Maybe this is more your speed:

This one was really good, wasn’t it?

The Cy Young Awards were won by Clayton Kershaw and Corey Kluber– both were worthy winners. And really, can you remember a CY winner who wasn’t worthy?

CY bonus awards are what I always find interesting. If I was a GM, I would build huge bonuses for MVP and CY awards into every contract I write. Why wouldn’t you? Give the players something to shoot for. It would also fix salary inequities. As it stands, the bonuses are largely underwhelming. Take Kluber for example. He made $514,000 last year. He scored a 10K bonus for winning the CY. That’s about 2% of what he made in 2014.

ClayKersh made 4 million last season and got one of the biggest bonuses I’ve ever seen for winning the CY— 1 million. Not bad. By the way, next year CK starts making 30 mil a year…….

And here’s the biggest bonus I would offer: World Series MVP. Make that 20 mil for every player on my roster. What GM wouldn’t gladly pay that out? And yet I never see WS MVP bonuses written into contracts. Isn’t being the WS MVP the most esteemed award any baseball player could win in a single season?

CK won the CY and he is a most deserved winner. I think he should win the MVP, too. No one was even close to more valuable during the regular season, in either league, than Kershaw.

Listening to Kuiper on KNBR coming into work this morning and he was commenting on The Panda going to Boston to visit with Red Sox brass. At one point he said, “hey, if we’re lucky they’ll take him to an all-you-can-eat place.” Clearly, he was making a joke about Pablo “eating out his welcome” with his new potential employer. At first I couldn’t believe he said that on the air. It just seemed so juvenile. And then I remembered the countless Pablo-fat jokes that I’ve made here at the blog and elsewhere. And in that moment, I regretted those comments.

But still, I don’t understand how a team employee gets away with making comments like that on the air.

Did anyone else hear that? I’m sure it’ll be on the KNBR website later today……

Looks like James put a fair amount of work into this and rather than leave it to die as the last post on yesterday’s thread, I’m turning it into today’s thread. Enjoy.

It’s treated as a given by many that Morse did a fair bit of damage to the Giants defense while playing LF. I’ve always thought this was pretty suspect, especially in absolute terms. LF gets relatively few plays, and most are routine.

I also think the Fangraph defensive stats like UZR that downgrade the WAR value of players like Morse are suspect. I noticed that FGs now has a section called “Inside Edge” fielding. It looks like what they’re doing is categorizing each ball hit to a fielder into degrees of difficulty, ranging from Routine to Impossible, and giving the percentage of outs recorded in each. For LF in particular, a very large percentage of all plays fall into those 2 extremes, which is kinda what you’d expect. What’s remarkable is the very small number of actual plays that fall into the other categories. This aligns with my own hunch that a handful of missed plays can highly exaggerate the view of a player’s defensive shortcomings.

Here are Morse’s numbers:

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=3035&position=1B/OF#iefielding

Here are Matt Holliday’s:

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playerid=1873&position=OF#iefielding

I swapped out the percentage of balls Hunter Pence got to in the various middle categories for Morse’s. The difference between Pence and Morse is about 4 more outs made.

There’s some light hearted chatter about the Giants being “in” on Torii Hunter. Here’s hoping that’s not true. The Giants should be “out” on Hunter. Besides there being competition for his services, we already have an outfielder with an iron glove who can hit. His name is Mike Morse. And while you could certainly argue that Hunter has been more durable I’d rather sign Morse who is 7 years his junior. And while I can appreciate a good dick joke as much as the next guy, Hunter spends way too much time talking about his junk to the media. I’ll take the dude who’s banging out NLCS game tying home runs over the dude who’s firing off junk-jokes. Right?

This is the first year I’ve missed playing the free agent contest @mlbtraderumors.com. I always do badly. That’s the contest where you try to predict where the top 50 free agents (as ranked by mlbtraderumors) will ultimately sign. The contest is closed, but here is there top 50 list:

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/11/2014-15-top-50-free-agents-with-predictions.html

Hanley Ramirez is projected to get 4 years/70 million.

James Shield is projected to get 5 years/95 million.

Romo is projected to get 3 years/21 million.

See anything out of line with any of those projections? Looks reasonable to me…..

Pablo’s agent says he’s firm on 6 years and if that’s the case, “bye bye Panda.” I thought it funny that he cited his age as the reason to do 6 years and that if he was 32 or 33 years old, less years might be accepted. As I have repeatedly pointed out, there is chronological age and then there is how hard that body has had to work over those 28 years. Organs, joints, muscle tissue—- all those things have been under major pressure sustaining his super-sized body throughout year-long baseball programs (with no breaks) since he was a kid. That body is EASILY 32-33 years old, maybe older.

So while I appreciate all that he’s done for the franchise and I wouldn’t be devastated if he returned on a multi-year deal, I am more than happy to move on from The Panda. Holding on to your sports heroes when common sense should prevail is one of the shortcomings on most fans….

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A couple of Giants fans sent me this. Love it.

This “3 in 5” thing….more basking…..it’s changed me as a fan and the way I look at sports. It makes all the individual awards like gold gloves and similar individual awards look just so…..secondary. There’s probably a better word. I guess if you’re a fan of a team like the Dodgers or the A’s, and you haven’t won the World Series in decades, you get excited about trivial things.

And I’m not just using this thread as a way to dog Dodger or Oakland fans.

Do any of you care even a little bit about a freaking Gold Glove award? I seem to recall that I used to care. But with all these rings piling up, I dunno, I just don’t see the importance of them anymore…..

I love Rich Aurilia, always will. And I think it’s rad that he’s actually doing something with a career after baseball that doesn’t have anything to do with baseball. But I can’t support him re-tweeting a review of his wine that uses the word “pretty”. lol. Even if he just hit 90 points for the first time. You’re a baseball player god dammit, baseball players don’t use the word “pretty” unless they’re trying to score a whore past their prime in a bar that’s beneath them…..

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Now for some baseball talk: I am against signing The Panda. 100 percent >

I have been against signing him for a long time. We got the best years out of him. Celebrate that, don’t pay 100+ million for shit that’s already happened. I love him for what he’s done, will never forget him, but I don’t want to watch him play 5 more years, into his 30’s, while he’s fat and living off the back end of his baseball card. I do think Sabean will try to resign him, although his star power and post season production might sway dumb GM’s into overpaying. I will just sit back and hope the latter unfolds. You don’t pay 120 million and hope a guy won’t get fat(ter) and keep producing in the playoffs (if you get there) into his 30’s. Pay that type of money to someone who will be consistent and take you over the top. This year, that’s a pitcher. #freePanda

Play *anyone* at third base and sign a monster pitcher. That’s what this team needs to keep it going for the next 2 years. And keeping it going for 2 years at a time is all you can hope a team will do in this age of baseball……..

You’ll all champion me at the top of Flap Mountain after his demise, as long as we don’t sign him, trust me. Be the guy who laughs at the Yankees for fucking this up.Unfortunately, likely, you’re all still hammered off this 3rd trophy. But handing over 100+ mil to Sandoval is not the answer. Trust me and throw this thread in my face in the future if I’m wrong. It’ll be here, just like me. I’m rarely wrong.

Baseball is over and we rule the world yet again. The NIners suck and the Dubs haven’t gotten it going enough yet for me to care and hockey is eternally on strike in my world. So today, it’s time for a funny story.

Back in 2012, I worked with this dude named Tre– very cool guy except for one thing: he was a huge Raider and A’s fan. I used to needle him (nearly ever week because they sucked) by wearing a Raiders shirt and posting a pic of myself on facebook every Monday after a Raiders loss. Here’s one of the pics:

Haha, funny motherfucker, this is the type of friendship you get out of me. 🙂

So he leaves after about a year and I haven’t talked to him since but we follow each other on facebook and I noticed that this year he got a job working at a college in Missouri (he played college football somewhere).

Then Game 7 starts and Tre is at the game and posts a pic. Here it is:

I was like, “Right on, Tre-mendous (his nickname) is at the game. Kinda funny cause he’s an A’s fan but he lives there now so it’s not that surprising.”

He then posts a pic of the big screen:

actually that was a movie clip but I can’t get it to transfer to the blog so I just snapped a screen shot of it.

Now the game is over and to my shock, Tre is on the FIELD! Here’s a video screen shot he took WHILE ON THE FIELD:

Lucky ass A’s fan is now on the field after the Giants win the World Series? This ain’t right. But still, I’m happy for him. Can’t wait to ask him how he got his ass on to the field.

But Tre-mendous takes it up a notch. Now he’s in the locker room. About an hour later, here’s the next pic he posts:

Um, WTF is going on? And now he’s drinking a beer with Pence?

And for good measure, a pic with the World Series MVP:

And finally, this A’s fan who doesn’t even like the Giants and who hates the Niners is seen holding this:

You have no idea how hard I was laughing out loud looking at these pictures. As far as I know, he has no connection with the Giants, he’s just working as a football coach or something for some college in Missouri. But I’m giving you the 2-flap up Flapper salute my man. If I didn’t know better I would say you photoshopped yourself into these pics and frankly that would make it even funnier.

Driving home yesterday listening to the Niners game, KNBR came off a commercial break and the crowd was going wild. I thought something good must have happened. No such luck. The big screen was showing Bochy and Sabean. It was an awesome reminder of what just happened. What I still am having trouble processing.

And after Colin Kaepernick decided to hold his own personal sack party in the backfield yesterday, it was also a reminder that I’m gonna have to wait a while to see one of my teams win another world championship–cause it damn sure ain’t gonna happen with the Niners this year.

NFL day. Had a fun interaction yesterday. I was in a sportsbook, turned a corner and literally ran into 2 dudes also turning the corner. They were both totally decked out in Dodger gear. At first I put up my hands to give out a halfhearted “my bad” but I think it looked more to them like I was pointing to the jersey I was wearing. One of them just shook his head, said “fucking Giants” and both kept on walking. I’m sure they heard me say “3 in 5” as they got further away.

I’ve said “3 in 5” a lot this weekend….

Watching the parada on tv, it was so clear what a special group of men these guys are. As improbable as it all was, there were several enduring post season memories for me in 2014. I think I’d rank mine like this:

1) The Perez double. Seeing where that ball went on the wall, basically taking a divot out of it, on a day that was devastating for Perez might be my most enduring moment. Knowing he had to swing the bat against that sick reliever fighting back tears throughout…..jesus.

2) Pence on the Fence. I changed my facebook pic to the black and white of Pence on the Fence (thank you DIRT) and I don’t see that coming down. I said at the time, it was as if the fence caught HIM. If it was possible to burn a single image on to my soul, that would be it. I gotta see about turning that into a shirt.

3) Ishikawa’s blast. I mean, how is this not # 1, right? It easily could be I just think the other 2 might be slightly more enduring. For me.

4) The Panik double play. I still can’t believe that play was reversed. But I’ll take it and gladly ask for seconds. We’ve all seen a flip like that a hundred times but the timing was impeccable, Crawford’s turn rock solid, and all under the great magnitude of Game 7. Just a stunning display of grit and skill by both men.

5) Morse’s bomb. I could have seen bumping this one up a space or two. Miller’s home run call nearly brought tears to my eyes, as did the child-like jaunt around the bases by Morse. For a guy who had to wait and wait and wait and still come back and not me completely healthy—to do THAT in THAT moment. His homerun gave us something we were desperate for: hope.

I know there were others but I have to get ready for a big BC day. List off or rank your favorites, it’s a fun thing to do.