A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

interesting stat (finally) from Krukow: Giants received 14 BBs in this sd series, and none of those runners scored. none. (I hope Krukow was right. that’s damning.)

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I actually didn’t hear this but I’ll assume you did and that Kruk was correct. This is a good example (admittedly small sample) of why I don’t think it’s so wonderful that Belt takes a lot of walks. I’m typically not against a walk but for our team, with little to no power and no speed, most of our guys sit quietly on the first base bag, stranded by failure at the plate. Belt is one of the few guys we have on the team who can knock it out of the park on  a regular basis. I don’t want his eagle eye coaxing bb’s out of the umpire. I want him blasting balls out of the park.

I think Belt would be a bigger asset on almost any other team.

Cardinals in town. It’s going to be extremely hot in the Bay Area this weekend. Our good friend Daniel has sent me a list of questions to answer and I promise to get to them at some point–always enjoy the back and forth with him.

Disappointing thud as Moore went back to his bullshit ways. I haven’t checked the history, but it feels like Perdomo has got our number.

Driving out of LA today. I spent yesterday afternoon body surfing at Manhattan Beach with my beautiful 14 year old girl, this morning I put her on a plane to Costa Rica for a year. Sad day.

The Giants are rumored to be after Stanton. Again. As usual, the problem of how we acquire him becomes an issue. Giants fans on twitter are all for it! As long as we don’t give up Bum or Posey. Lol. I’d trade Bum in a second for Stanton and I’d throw in Crawford, too. We can find pitchers what we can’t find is hitters. I think Stanton has a no-trade clause though (not certain about that) so he’d probably nix the deal anyway. Still, fun to talk about. I’m headed to LA today. Yikes, I could feel my skin crawling as I typed that.

Wilco Joe! If you read this please check in. Our prayers are with you and your family and everyone in the communities devastated by all this water.

Matt Cain gave up 8 earned runs and only got two outs and his ERA only went up to 5.75? How is that possible? That ERA seems low BEFORE one he took the hill and gave one of the worst performances I’ve ever seen from a Giants pitcher.

Hopefully they DL him and that’s the last we see of him till a reunion team hits the field in 10-20 years. This guy is only 32. He and Lincecum both fell apart when they were only 27/28. Very weird.

Smarge tonight.

For obvious reasons I haven’t been checking the standings much this year. 40.5 games out. FORTY POINT FIVE. That’s a wild ride, man. You know who else sucks? Like, mostly everyone. There are NO GOOD races going on right now. The Yankees are 3.5 out, the Brewers 3 games out. Everyone else is smoking copious amounts of pole. Speaking of pole, this is funny…..

Ok, back to my point. You have to go to the AL wild card race to find even a semblance of competition. The Twins are fighting with 6 other teams for the last WC spot in the AL.

This is turning into one of the most boring baseball seasons of all time. Not just in SF. Everywhere.

Also, if you can find this locally, this is really good….

Sorry, just had to get that out of my system. I actually like a lot of the features on the back end of this blog, but their customer service is suspect. And yesterday they locked me out of my own blog because thousands of log-in info (that they are supposed to protect) got compromised so they reset my password and the hoops I had to jump through to get back in were bullshit.

But whatever, got the blog back now. “I have my weapons back.” Steve Bannon is such an idiot. I digress….

Giants gave Snakes a run but when Span/Parker/Pence/Posey go 1-16 it was bound to be an uphill battle. Wish we had a couple of Belt bb’s to put us over the top last night….

The string of meaningless games continues to play out in Arizona this weekend. Bochy was recently quoted as saying he’s got a clubhouse of champions and it’s not a surprise to him that they have been playing better and winning games lately. Thinks this will carry over into next year. That’s a scary fucking thought for him to express and you have to wonder if it’s a sentiment shared by the brass or if Boch is just blowing smoke up the collective reporter ass just to pass the time in the dugout after the game. If he really believes trotting out an outfield of Pence, Parker and Span in 2018 is the path to revival we are in for another snoozer of season…..

Still a week to go before the Aug 31 trade deadline and I’m not optimistic that Evans is doing anything right now…..

With Belt and others still sidelined, the Giants keep finding ways to win. Moore, I don’t know what to do with Moore. Or Melancon. He was on the radio 2 days ago tempering enthusiasm about his numbers since he recently came back. Refusing to say exactly what is wrong with his arm, he mapped out a hazy off season plan and basically just said “it’s good enough now to pitch.” WTF? What good is it going to do us next year if he’s dragging that elbow out to the mound wrapped up in hope and a prayer?

The crude design Unca Chuck posted at the end of the last thread is intriguing. Stick a waterfall out there and let’s get this done ASAP…..

Kruk expressed genuine surprise YESTERDAY on KNBR when discussing the recent struggles of the bullpen. Felt like they’d been pretty good for a long time. Kuip’s up today so I won’t get to hear delusional Kruk try to make sense of another “one off” from the relievers.

I wonder what the exit velocity and launch angle was on that Thames *bomb*. Anyone know where to look that up? That was one of the hardest hit balls I’ve seen anyone not named Bonds hit. I’ve finally come around. It’s time to start over with the wall in right field. Keep all the archways, or even add some if you must, but it’s time to bring the fences in. It’s nothing but a stupid novelty at this point…..

I see Yu Darvish went on the disabled list 2 days ago. Don’t like ever seeing anyone get injured but I did see this coming:

No K’s for Yu tonight thru 4 vs the lowly White Sox. Hmmmm…..I’ve seen this before. Injury could be coming up soon. Not wanting to see it, I like Yu a lot, but when a K pitcher like Yu throws up a 0 for K’s in a start….all I’m saying is that I’ve seen it before, I’ve seen it before.

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The Dodgers are fine, right? Piling up wins at a record rate, these are the salad days for our *friends* from the south. They are giving me a great reason to care about the post season this year…..

Stratton impressed me last night. He grinded through 6 with less than his best stuff. And for Stratton’s honky ass, there is not much best stuff to spare in there. But we need pitchers who don’t implode. Not everyone is an ace. If he can just avoid turning into Heston we could have ourselves a back end of the rotation cog going into next season…..

I’m actually fairly interested in watching this game tonight. Stratton was outstanding in has last start, something I didn’t think he had in him. Cut from the most classic of honky cloths, I just figured he was another missed draft pick. And maybe he is. But in a lost season like this, we take games like these when they pop up. And Stratton holds the most modest of intrigue for me…..

So what is everyone doing for this damn eclipse? If you are at work, are you going outside to take a peek? Did you buy glasses for this? What is the outer-most distance you would be realistically willing to travel to see this? I read a story somewhere about some guy who’s been planning for this day for 20 years. Fuck that guy.

I guess my question is, how much effort are you putting into this thing? In Palo Alto, we should be shrouded in fog at 10:15am. Just like the Giants season. Huge let down.

I’m trying to remember why I went to the games back in the 80’s. Candlestick was not easy to access using public transportation and I lived 40 miles away anyway. Going to a game was a major journey for me. My dad took me until I was probably 16 or so and then once me and my buddies got cars we started going to the games without our parents. That meant hanging out in the parking lot near that air tower thing and drinking many beers before the game. This thing:

I don’t remember seeing any cops around and no one cared that we were under aged anyway. In hindsight, that was probably a big reason we went to the games between the ages of 16-21ish.

However, we were also in the beginning of a renaissance with Will Clark, HacMan, Kevin Mitchell, and many more. So it wasn’t just partying in the parking lot, we finally had players to get excited about. We were coalescing as a fan base around players that, in hindsight, turned out to be a huge part of our team’s history. Do any of the young players we have right now look like they’re going to go down in SF history like the iconic players from ’86/’87 onward?

Now I’m looking at our future and the landscape that is in front of us and I’m trying to figure out what is going to motivate me to go to the games. The park is nice but it’s nearly 20 years old, the newness and the shine of AT&T has dulled for me. Tailgating is about 5% as cool in the new place as it was at The Stick. CalTrain makes it a lot easier to get to the games, so there’s that.

But if we are going to stink for years, if we are going to drip down the drain of irrelevance that we knew for so many consecutive years when I was younger, what is going to motivate me to ever go to these games? What will motivate you?

Take a good look at the Phillies because they are us in the future. It’s nice to be able to beat up on at least one team in the league but if our guys continue to suck next year we will be facing the daunting task of supporting a team that is full of aging players who aren’t very good anymore pulling down big salaries….and with a farm system that is not good. THAT was the Phillies a couple of years ago and here they are today, the worst team in the league, with a bunch of young guys bumbling around and striking out at prolific rates. That’s us in 5 years.

Matt Moore. I don’t know what to do with Matt Moore. Picking up his option seemed like a no brainer at the beginning of the season and then he imploded. If he finishes the year strong, do we trust him going forward? Do we have a choice?

I know it was only the Phillies but if they Giants were going to lay down it was going to be after a long east coast swing with no off day facing a pitcher who hadn’t given up more than 2 runs in 10 straight starts. That was an impressive win no matter how you slice it. And we give Bochy a lot of shit for piloting this team into the ground, but he should get some credit for keeping them together, keeping their effort collective. And at the end of the day, isn’t that his main job?

I’m diggin’ the upcoming eclipse because buying plastic sunglasses and staring at the sun is a very pre-internet, 70’s thing to do. But all this traveling to Idaho and shit to get on “the path of totality?” I’m not diggin’ that at all.

What am I missing about this eclipse? Why are people traveling hundreds of miles to see it?

Games like these, kinda hard to get up for. The Phillies are in town, they suck, we suck, let’s call the whole thing off. Imagine having to write a daily thread to keep this line moving…..

The rest of this season, for me, will be to see if the Giants can stay about the WWB percentage of .378. I feel pretty confident that they’ll come in above that at the end of the season but who knows, maybe all those walks we are missing out on will show up in the loss column more than I think.

What do you think the chances are that Evans pulls off a pre Aug 31st trade of consequence? I’ll put the o/u on that at 9% and let the betting begin….

Very solid win last night. I think the WAB bumped up to .600 since Aug 4th. I know, I know, we are really hurting without all those walks he took (in between all the strikeouts).

Cain is listed as the starting P today at espn. Is that a misprint?

We can’t even pray for rain in this damn dome…..

With the Mets falling short in New York, the dreams of me turning my fake parlay bets into glory and destiny came to an abrupt end last night. Too bad. I was gonna take my pretend $1326 and play the shit out of the lottery tonight. Prolly woulda hit it, too.

The Giants can’t hit Dan Straily. There is no good reason for this. Maybe tonight the Giants finally hit Dan Straily.

Bum needs to stand down against Stanton. Kinda feels like he’s not gonna do that though.

XOOT sent me more info on Stix case including a legal brief recently filed by his public defenders. It was 18 pages long and a fascinating read. I can’t copy and paste it or I would let you read it. Email me if you want a copy of it. Here’s a pic of the helicopter he shot down. The serial number he *wrote down on an envelope* is clearly visible.

As a teaser, here is the beginning of the legal briefing:

“Carstie Clausen, 72, was about half way through eating his breakfast made from greens in his back yard and was working on a New York Times crossword puzzle in silence when he first heard the helicopter….”

You want to see a tired team? Watch this game tonight. Thankfully Miami isn’t very good and Conley is an extremely average starting pitcher. So maybe we have a chance. Stanton has 9 home runs in his last 10 games. Nine home runs this month. The Giants? In 451 plate appearances in August, they has 12 home runs. That’s actually pretty good for them. In July they had 14 for the entire month.

Blach’s gonna have his hands full today, on the mound and with the bat. “Do it all yourself” day if he wants to win.

Taking a look at the odds this morning looking for another +380 gift, there are none to be found today. The biggest fav are the Cubs at -200 and the Yankees at -180. The Marlins are -140. After NY lost that crusher to Boston last night and the Giants played 37 games yesterday, I have decided to dump my ENTIRE pretend $380 on a 2 team parlay of the Mets and the Marlins. The Mets are at +162. So $380 bet on that 2 team parlay (+162 and -140 at odds of 13 to 5) will pay out a cool $1326. Let’s go baby!!!!!!! Let it ride!!!!!!

Well, we better win the first one….I don’t know who AJ Cole is so I think it’s entirely possible that he pitches as well or better than Scherzer in Game 2.

Harper’s got a bruised knee and is out indefinitely. He sure was writhing around on the ground like it was worse than that. But whatever, Washington is stoked they get him back at some point in the season….

WAB could go either way today……

I woke up this morning to see the Padres closed the deal on the Dodgers and the +380 bet me and San Dawg made last night was ready to be cashed. I walked right through my mind straight up to the teller (no lines!). He quickly cashed my ticket and I was on my way back to reality +380 taller…..

With so many saberstats out there I have decided to start creating my own. First one: WAB. It’s a twist on the WAR stat but mine stands for “Wins Above Belt”. The Giants current WAB is .800 (they are 4-1 since Belt went down on Aug 4th). That day their WWB (Wins With Belt) was .378. Obviously 5 games is a small sample size but lets see if their WAB stays above or below their .378 WWB the rest of the season. Could be an interesting predictive indicator for 2018…..

So, here we go. Chris Stratton shakily takes the hill today and while Edwina Jackson is imminently hittable you have to consider his opponent.

How interested are you in watching this series this weekend? What about it will capture your attention? Anything? Dusty? Harper vs Strickland? Watching Parker and Panda?

This is going to be one of those weekends where I watch baseball if I have nothing else to do…..

Nice little break today as we head off to slaughter in Washington DC. Chris Stratton getting sacrificed in Game 1.

Saw that Gorkey’s vs Billy Ham comparison on the last thread. Good comedy. Question: Assuming Gorks led off and assuming he played in the same park as Billy Ham do you really think he would produce nearly the same amount of runs? Billy Ham is standing on 2nd base all the time, often 3rd base, because of his prolific stealing ability. Gorks would be stranded at first base repeatedly. It’s absolutely absurd to think Gorks and Billy Ham would produce close to the same amount of runs unless you think it’s as easy to get a guy in from first base as it is from 2nd or 3rd and nobody could actually believe that……

And Billy Ham is one of the best center fielders in the league. There is no comparison between the 2 except with goofy saber stats that anyone can find if they want to believe something bad enough…..

I’m probably 40 miles away from SF and there’s a little league field maybe 500 yards from my house. I’m starting off to work this morning and who do I see directing traffic in the little league parking lot? It was like a weird dream.

I look at their line up and up and down they have better, younger, more exciting players than we have. And somehow, they are only 6 games over .500. And we could easily be 2-0 vs them in this series instead of 1-1. I could see a World Series hangover to start the season, we’re talking about young players who probably partied more and gave up more of their time than had they been also-rans. But we are into August and they still seem to be just spinning their wheels.

….baseball is hard.

…just ask Matt Moore. Did he learn anything from watching Blach pitch last night? Maybe he should bunk with Blach on the road. Do players still split rooms or did that stop 40 years ago?

Bumgarner goes for win #2 this afternoon. It’s August 9th.

…..baseball is hard.

Sadly, there would be no game winning rbi hit last night. Not for San Francisco at least. So who got last night’s? Almora in the 5th? The game winning rbi. One of the original saberstats. Actually since it’s attempting to measure *clutch* I guess it was the opposite of that…..

Matt Moore showed no reaction to anything last night and I was actively looking for something. He seems resigned to the fact that he sucks. I’m not sure if I can remember a trade for the Giants that yielded something so worthless as Matt Moore. But in keeping with their long standing tradition of never giving up anything, Matt Duffy STILL hasn’t hit the field. It’s amazing how everything they trade turns to shit. Is it possible that’s one of the problems Evans is having? Finding a willing trade partner who think everything they offer will (is already) turnt’ to shit?

I’ve always thought Jose Quintana was a little overrated. It’ll be interesting to see how he does tonight. Plus, Matt Moore can sit quietly in the dugout and watch a real pitcher (Blach) actually PITCH. I hope he’s taking copious notes….

Ugh. I don’t even care who it’s against anymore. These days are always just such a….drain. But I’ll watch the game if for nothing else because the Cubs have some fun players to watch. And obviously, The Panda.

I’ve clung to the dream that the Dodgers will fall apart in the post season because it’s an easy message to cling to. But the question is, who knocks them out? The Nats are the most obvious team but there is really no one in the AL who I think can do it. I just don’t think the Astros have the experience and the pitching to pull it off. In fact, I could see the Astros easily not making the World Series (sorry Wilco)–at least, as presently constructed. Even if they do, they just don’t have the pitching to shut down LA. The best chance for that would be if the young LA bats got overwhelmed by the moment and just went cold…..which could happen.

If I was going to bet on who will win the WS I would probably take both the WC teams heading into the NLDS and ALDS just because they will have momentum, hope and….the best odds.

From a opposite field double, a re-birth was born….

Ha. The Giants parlayed the good luck of Kirk Reuter and the good memories of The Panda into a win last night. Jarrett Parker played like he wants that left field job. That what I like to see.

Me? I just liked seeing Sandoval back in a Giants uni. With Belt down, this is the best time to see if he has anything left in the tank. And all the *Ryder Jones Lovers* can still watch their guy play. So nobody is getting *blocked* by this no-risk move.

The thing that struck me about the Belt beaning last night was how LOUD it was. Especially for a curve ball. But that thing was heat seeking and it just hit him about as square as you can get hit. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s done for the year. And the day after he tied his highest HR mark for a season. It’s unreal bad luck.

One way to look at this: if you’re into luck/bad luck/karma etc….maybe this is “payment due” for those 3 beauties we got from ’10-’14. And there has been SO MUCH bad luck, maybe we’re getting it all out of the way in a single season. Maybe.

Stratton today. LOL. STRATTON!!!!! He’s just not good. But when the season is lost you look at young guys, or at least most teams do. Personally, I think this has more to do with not embarrassing Cain anymore than it does with wanting to get an honest look at a younger player.

The Giants have had some pretty bad first round draft picks since Posey:

Gillaspie, Wheeler, Brown, Panik, Crick, STRATTON!!!!!, Arroyo, Beede, Bickford, Shaw. Well, maybe not *bad*. But there were some serious misses over the last several years. If Shaw, Beede and Arroyo work out it can’t be called *bad*. Let’s see if they ever turn into anything….

Ty Blach has got a lot of “Kirk Reuter” in him. Both left handed, both had borderline stuff, both have the look of the goofy guy on your team that you like because you know he’s no threat to you whatsoever. Last week we talked about the things we were wrong about and Ty Blach should have gone on that list for me. But in this case, it’s turned out to be a good thing. He’s solid and reliable and even though Matt Moore has better stuff he probably looks at Blach and mutters to himself “HOW does he DO it?????”

Bum vs someone from the minors I’ve never heard of. Both left handed, this will probably be a very low scoring game…..

Two crap pitchers with identical 5.74 ERA’s met last night. One lowered his ERA and pitched great against a terrible team. The other saw his ERA go up. Matt Moore sucks. The Giants suck. This season sucks.

That is all.

After last night’s rousing thrashing of the A’s I had renewed confidence to check the standings for the first time in nearly a month. Big mistake. 35 games back. WOW! It’s too bad baseball isn’t like NBA or NFL where you can tank and get a stud draft pick that can help immediately. Instead of tank, the Giants just laugh all the way to the bank.

MLB wins for a single season, as you probably know, is Seattle with 116 in 2001. With the Art Dealers at 75-31 that record is definitely in play for them. I hope they get there. Fun Fact: The Mariners didn’t make it to the World Series in 2001.

Matty Moore Wednesday. Now that all the pressure is completely off him he might make a serious run the rest of the season. If that happens, I declare him to be Mike Leake….

One thing none of us realized going into this season, and I’ll lump the SF brass in with us on this issue, was just how much the offensive game has changed over the course of the last couple of seasons. In 2014, our last great moment, the league average of runs scored per game was 4.07. The following 3 years it has gone up 4.25, 4.48 and this year is at 4.67. HR’s are being blasted at an all-time high of 1.26 per game. Last year was the second highest at 1.16 per game (only outdone once back in 2000 when it clipped at 1.17 per game). So that is basically 2 consecutive seasons of the most HR’s, on average, hit per game in the history of baseball. All of this is statistically significant. The ball is juiced, pure and simple, unless you think those numbers are random. Do you think those numbers are random?

Conversely, the Giants are scoring a measly 3.92 runs per game. On the road it is barely better at 4.12 rpg (ahead of only 3 other terrible teams). That is a scoring impotence that is impossible to overcome in this new age of juiced balls.

Everyone in the front office, as well as most Flappers, failed to see until now where the game has gone, how it has change, and where it has gone and how it has changed WITHOUT the Giants.

The question now is clear: do the Giants continue to stick their head in the sand and try to build a team the way they did for their 3 championships? Or do they stop being stubborn and realize the game has passed them by and it’s time to change the approach? Because I guarantee you MLB isn’t changing what they are doing. Runs will continue to be scored at a record pace next year and the year after that…..

Of course, we know what they will do. They will fall back on “the core.” They know no other way…..