More NFL
As the Giants, and pretty much every other team, continue to ignore the bombastic ways of Mark Trumbo we head into a surprisingly interesting day of NFL football. Each game SHOULD be good and my rooting interest will always be against the Cowboys and for Alex Smith. Go Pack, Go Chefs.
I was fiddling around youtube looking for Bobby Murcer moments and came across the game he won after the Munson funeral. I imagine his short time in SF felt like prison to him….
Here’s a fun stat for anyone who thinks steroid use is exclusive to hitters:
Number of pitches thrown 100 MPH+ in #MLB
2016: 1419
2015: 912
2014: 562
2013: 465
2012: 397
2011: 297
2010: 443
2009: 260
2008: 65
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
WANTED! BASEBALL PLAYER!
Job Description – Plays outfield when not injured or sick. After sixth year, may retire (i.e., be released).
Job Duties – Not much.
Salary – $139.428,142 for first 6 years and an additional bonus of $35 million (upon release).
Flappers, who is this person?
Carl Crawford? I’m not looking anything up, just guessing
Yep
It’s amazing how few pitchers have been accused of participating in the steroid era.
Sometimes I wonder about Pedro Martinez:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/m/martipe02.shtml
An even better ? is, what do you want out of 3b? What you posted isn’t out of the question, but I’m far less interested in what you pay as opposed to the quality of the player at the given position.
Imo Nunez is a lot like a Blanco— basically a backup who can be OK for maybe 300 ABs. Beyond that whatever value there is declines precipitously as BA et al falls off.
Given that out of Mac Parker Gorkys and Span 3 of them have very little ml experience and the other wasn’t exactly stellar, there is a lot of room for growth in LU. Pence? who knows if he can play a full season and still be .800 OPS guy?
3b to me is a position where you are looking for offensive boost beyond a .260 hitter that might be .700-.720 OPS. Guys like Turner and Dozier were/are still available, and imo this is perfect spot for an upgrade.
Anyway 3b is Nunez job to lose, so I’ll let it go and see what happens if Giants can’t find someone better.
What a statement the Giants could have made by signing Turner and Jansen away from the Bums.
But 3 championships says they know what they’re doing…
I’d give Arroyo almost all the AB’s in ST!!
Sink are swim I’m tired of holding a kid back till their 25! If he rakes we have our 3B out of the gate with Nooner&Conor the backups!!
Just won’t happen though, the Giants are to protective and won’t risk early failure on him.
Did the same with Posey when he 1st came up,and rotted on the bench while Big Tiitties continued to catch, and half way until the next season when the lightbulb finally turned bright and they dumped Bengie in July ferchrissakes as Posey was ripping the ball and handling the staff just fine(exception Timmy?)..Fucking play the kid like other teams do with their prospects ahead of schedule instead of always waiting!!!
See my post below AK . . . I suspect Arroyo will be our secret weapon in 2017. Book it.
I agree, Kat. Seemed like they had no big hopes for Panik till they were kind of forced to play him. At least that’s how I remember it. As long as Span can stand up, he’ll bat lead-off over Nunie because $10 million wins out over $4 million…
Finally someone besides me who want to see the young guys called up and not going out to look for some old Vet!!
Here’s what i posted on my blog
Hawks at Falcons – As much as I feel like Seattle is finding their sea legs for this playoff run, I think Atlanta’s offense will kill a banged-up Seattle secondary. Matty Ice for the win – Atl 33 – Sea 20
Texans at Pats – ‘Nuff said. Pats 85 – Texans 6
Sunday:
Steelers at Chiefs – Though I want to pick Pittsburgh, and they probably will win, I hate them too much to go with my brain on this one. Young Sir Alex pulls one out. KC 28 – Pitts 24
Packers at Cowboys – This is a very intriguing matchup as you have the old vet QB in Aaron Rodgers, who yet again figured out how to pull a Hail Mary out of his ass (and kudos to the Giants defense for their abject cluelessness in that situation) and win another playoff game. Dallas on the other hand (another team I can’t stand) looks very tough, with their rookie tandem of Dak Prescott and Ezikiel Elliott tearing up the league. Again though, at the risk of being wrong (and yeah, what’s ever stopping me there?) and going with my heart instead of my brain, I have GB 35 – Dall 27
Nailed the first 2.
And Great Googly Moogly is from Zappa’s Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow
Damn, nice call on the Birds game!
today could be a big day. I have Dion Lewis on 65% of my DK teams…..
What about “great googa mooga” from Temptation’s “Ball Of Confusion”?
Which came first?
for me, it first came from the Snickers commercial. lqtm
yeah thx Chuck. I remembered the line but not the tune. there’s a great little jazzy interlude where horns come in ahead of fur trapper getting it in his “deflicted” eye.
Hope u r right today…so glad Seattle went down, and handily. So weird how ordinary they are on the road.
Preface my comments by saying, that I wish we still had Duffy. However, we stole that trade with the Rays, when we acquired Moore. Now follow me here . . . Obviously, the Giants felt that Duffy was expendable and his rookie year might have been a fluke, i.e., his pedigree was always a fringe player, someone with a utility-player ceiling. When he came up, we were amazed at his college stats (albeit, no home runs!) and loved his gap-to-gap power. He finished second in the Rookie of the Year voting, and he was already one of the best defensive third basemen in baseball. Also, a Willie Mac award winner. What wasn’t to love? Fast forward to last season, he hit .253/.313/.358, with just four home runs. It wasn’t a huge deal, considering his glove boosted his value, but there were reasons – are reasons – to wonder if his rookie season was as good as it will ever get for him. Combine the lack of prospect pedigree, the seemingly out-of-nowhere production, and the slow start, and you can see how the Giants might have been wondering just how much they should really expect from him for the next few years. Yeah, I miss him, but . . .
So I have no problem with the Giants playing Nunez at third. Remember, we only got him for a song (Adaliberto Mejia). This dude was ranked #19 among Giants prospects as recently as 2014. Yeah, he shot up to #4 after after going 7-9 with a 4.67 ERA and 82 strikeouts in 108 innings with Double-A Richmond, but do you seriously think he will amount to much? Currently, the dude has a 7.71 ERA in a small sample size 2.1 innings with the Twins. Yawn.
Oh, one other thing – contrary to what Willie said about us only having Nunez, the Giants are high on Christian Arroyo, who is young and developing in the upper minors. In short, the Nunez trade is all right in my book, as he is only a place holder for Arroyo (or a future acquisition . . . perhaps, this season).
How do the Giants justify keeping the often hurt Panik over Duffy? That was my problem with the trade. I will wait to see if Panik has done anything to fix his back problem, I am optimistic. I still don’t think you should give up a good/great defensive player in the infield.
Well, like I said Kevin – Duffy was my favorite player and I hated to see him go. Duffy reminds me that any one one of us can become a baseball player with hard work and dedication. What I mean is that he’s just a “regular Joe,” who has maximized that talent. This is why I love baseball.
However, the trade was for a stud pitcher, Moore, so I understand the “once in a lifetime opportunity” to improve the team. If this had been for Nunez, I would have been totally against this trade.
I’m not a big Cohn fan. He was alright at the Chron but at the Press Dem he just sounds like a bitter old man usually. But, this was a well written column.
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/sports/6538754-181/lowell-cohn-in-the-final?artslide=0
Outstanding. Thanks for sharing.
When Cohn was with the Chronicle, he was not nearly as into the sensationalistic, bombastic POVs. I think he went that way after going to a smaller paper to get readership…
clicked on the link Loo gave for Pedro Martinez, a guy I always liked. Listed at 5-11 170, seems pretty generous.
Threw over 2800 innings in career with over 3100 Ks. Of all the years spent in boston, 2.52 ERA there, wow. Dominated with Expos too in the NL.
Kruk has long said how much harder guys throw today. I think hitters see this in minors and seemed to have adjusted to how many hard throwers there are today, esp out of pen. I think most hitters can handle fastball if it’s in their wheelhouse (hi Strick) no matter how hard it is. And look at the HR explosion last year.
killion has a decent article re the NFL owners fucking the fans. In Oak and SD.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/raiders/article/In-NFL-change-isn-t-for-the-better-10858293.php
Getting wound up here for Chief game…
me too. I can’t remember being so excited for a game where I don’t give a shit about either team. But TODAY, my man, TODAY I stand WITH you as a Chefs fan.
Excellent, Flav. Just heard from Diggity – he’s ready to go!
I forgot that the criminal dismantling of the 1973 outfield was completed not by a trade, but when Matthews left as a free agent. I’m always a little surprised at how long the DH and free agency have been around.
I agree they should push Arroyo. See what you got. Matt Williams went up and down a couple times. He survived it just fine…
yes, agreed. I’m tired of ballplayers being treated like fragile pussies.
Case in point. Crawford got shoved into the SS position “early” because they had no choice. Hell, he was coming out of A ball, as I remember. He sucked the first couple months, at the plate, and making errors all over the place. He was an error machine the first half of his rookie year 2011. He went down, then came back in 2012 and settled in…
I just read the Fangraphs scouting report on Arroyo. It doesn’t seem like there’s much indication he would provide anything beyond what Nunez gives the team this year. The comparison to Prado suggests that, if he is a successful player, Arroyo’s best years are still 3-4 years out.
Sabes publicly said he thought Panik wasn’t ready. In comes Uggla for a cuppa disaster. Panik then comes in, and rakes, leads Giants to a WS win. Giants need to take some risks sometime on field players, not just on pitchers with 5 and 6 year deals. Maybe they blow an option early or something, maybe they don’t. None of this prediction stuff on players is a lock. If you need help at third, try the kid out. Worst case he goes back down and knows what he needs to do to make it…
I don’t really care which way they go. Arroyo is no Posey –not even close — so there’s no excitement (or frustration at the irrationality of holding him back). The chances that he’ll make a difference in 2017 seem pretty small to me.
I’m not saying he’s a Posey. He could be another Giants “prospect” that doesn’t pan out. The Giants just seem not willing to give field players much of a go, unless they have no choice, or the player is so clearly ready (ala Timmy or Posey) that they have to bring him up. I doubt this Williamson / Parker thing will get a lot of patience from management. That’s why I think they should upgrade the OF now…
Catching onto James, who I suspect likes to “cherry pick.” The report also said this . . .
“Despite a down year on paper — largely a result of the poor hitting environment in Richmond — Arroyo’s feel for contact remains superb and he still projects as a .300-plus hitter with supernatural feel for doubles-producing contact down both lines and to both gaps. He has terrific hand-eye coordination and is remarkably short to the baseball, though his bat speed is just about average. Arroyo actually cut his strikeout rate and increased his walk rate in 2016, though the latter remains poor. As is the case with many high-contact hitters, a large portion of Arroyo’s balls in play are hit on the ground and this may be an issue as he sees better defenses at upper levels.”
Here’s the report, so decide for yourself: http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/prospect-reports-san-francisco-giants/
By the by, the report also says, “That’s an above-average major leaguer and Arroyo is close, especially with Duffy gone, to wearing a Giants uniform.” One question, I can not find “Arroyo’s best years are still 3-4 years out.” James, please assist and show me where it says that? Thanks 🙂
“But 3 championships says they know what they’re doing.”
Or it says they’re very satisfied, and a bit complacent. And lacking urgency. Are they tired of the Dodgers winning the division 4 years in a row? Somewhat.
They’re treating the luxury tax like it’s a hard salary-cap, and it isn’t.
Charles Johnson can pay lux tax out of petty cash. I’d like to know the “culture” differences, if any, between MLB and NFL owners. Do NFL owners figure “anything goes” in getting an edge on the brethren other than salary, since there is a salary cap? Do MLB owners treat competition with their brethren as more “honorable”, and not like to go to far into lux tax? I have no idea. The one thing I can be sure of is they both like money. Why Spanos would move to LA, when LA could give a rat’s rear about the Chargers, has got to be about nothing except making the franchise more valuable. Somehow. And, so what? He has to pay a $500 million or more relocation fee to the league — he could have used that to help pay for a new Diego stadium. The NFL is on the decline, largely due to ownership greed…
“They’re treating the luxury tax like it’s a hard salary-cap”
I think that’s your best point, Zumie. They could have been satisfied, complacent and lacking urgency after the first or second title, but they’ve continued to lock up their guys and make moves at the deadline. Personally, I’m very sick of the Dodgers winning the West every year, regardless of their playoff flops (Hi, Rooster) and wish we would’ve raided them over the winter…
Arroyo has nearly 1500 ABs in 4 minor league seasons, including about 475 in AA. That’s not just a few. I hope the Giants really give the kid a shot in ST…
What I don’t get is why he wasn’t taking some playing time left field in the minors. Other teams are getting into players multi-tasking, and the Giants always seem reluctant to do that. Kris Bryant played games at 3b, 1b, lf, and rf for the Cubs last season.
Here’s a good column by Baggarly about that subject (mostly from Arroyo’s perspective).
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/giants/2016/02/26/christian-arroyo-might-be-blocked-at-shortstop-but-giants-believe-his-hitting-talent-is-irrepressible/
Good question. If you are a good batting prospect, and otherwise have MLB potential hand-eye coordination, you should be tried at several different positions. The kid is 21. It’s not like he’s too old to practice several positions. Criminy, they put Belt in LF. Isn’t this kid a better overall athlete than Belt — supposedly?…
Geezers like me remember the gutsy Mickey Stanley move of the 1968 WS…
I made my comment, blade, before reading your linked article. It makes my point. If the kid is a ballplayer, he can likely play several positions, including LF…
RotoWire News: Arroyo will likely start the season at Triple-A Sacramento if he is unable to win a starting job out of spring training. It is reported that he will exclusively play third base in 2017, according to Alex Pavlovic of CSN Bay Area. (12/6/2016)
Agree snarkk. Also, Nunez is no Arroyo (insofar as fielding) . . . http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/eduardo-nunez-and-the-case-of-the-minus-28/
Cool Baggs article, Blade; thanks!
SF played Pat the Bat quite a bit in LF in 2010. I doubt Arroyo is a worse OFer prospect on defense than Pat…
I sure am handsome, Blade!
It’s weird Loo, because for years you’ve cultivated this man of mystery Danny Devito like look . . .
I was shocked when Mac showed me a photo of you during our lunch in Philly. 🙂
It was mostly for Twin…
Nunez just stinks with a glove on.So what’s his real value as a “Quote Super Utility Player” that can play most infield positions but “BLOWS” at all of them?
Awesome game! NFL needs more games like this. Commercials and the refs were restrained.
How bout them PACKERS!!!
What a fucking great game and Aaron Rodgers is unreal when the pressure is on, he’s the man,the myth,the legend!
I said Rodgers would be the last second dagger in the Cowboys backs. What an incredible catch by Cook. Crosby with ice in his veins. What a finish.
If only the Niners had had a chance to draft Rodgers…
Bell up the middle to KC 5 for 8 yards, where the offensive line just blew out the KC defense. Then 2 pass plays and Steelers end up with a limp FG. Stupid.
Blade, not cherry picking, just going with the Prado comparison in the article. He put up better than Nunez kinda numbers when he was in his mid-20s. I know that isn’t definitive, but Arroyo hasn’t produced any noteworthy offensive numbers yet, either, at age 21.
Chiefs look like shit.
Lucky to be in the game…
2nd halfs (halves?) have a way of being very different…
Kelce losing his cool is gonna help the Chiefs cause!Stupid penalty!
Kat channeling Trump in that Tweet…..But you forgot “Fail!” :-p
I was just checking out Chuck’s blog for the first time in a long time. When did Nipper become so verbose?
Infuckingcredible bullshit holding call in that moment of the game.
As the camera’s still pan on #72 Eric Fisher as they go to break setting up the latest “Wanna get away moment”
did you time that so you’d be the 69th post of today? If so, well done. If not….whoa.
You Niner fans having flashbacks to the ’90 title game?
Fuck it, I’ll go vent on “Arrowhead Pride” (where we don’t have any)…
Right, Loo. 15-13? Alex just can’t catch a goddamn break. 6 FGs? That was a legit hold tho. Smith woulda been sacked.
I had no problem with that call, Chuck. I’ve had it with the coach. Was there a game plan? I didn’t see one.
And the usual clock and timeout cluelessness.
As far as the QB, they dropped balls on him – and he missed a few. He’s ok, just not good enough to put a team on his back when he needs to…
Story of his career Loo..
Mr.Checkdown will never guide a team to the SB..And yeah Andy Reid same case scenario!
Some coaches legacies are just the leftover scrapes from the bone 🍖 and Reid’s one of those..