Blasting The Ball, The A’s Reflect on Nothing And March Madness Time
Super bored this morning so I checked the spring training stats. The Giants have, get ready for it, 19 guys hitting over .300. Now, we aren’t talking about a ton of at bats but that stat surprised me.
Reminds me of this epic line from Let it Ride. “The last grand that jockey saw was the Grand Canyon.”
Check out this headline at The Athletic. I haven’t read the article yet. What could A’s players possibly bring to the table in terms of *reflection* on *The Freak Years*? Like, who the freak wrote this headline?
Question for you March Madness nutheads: I’m giving myself a crash course on this season and I’m looking over the team stats–seems to me, the most important team stats to look at would be the following (maybe not in this order):
Turnover margin, 3 point FG % defense, assist to turnover margin, rebound margin and/or offensive rebounds a game…..
Am I missing any you think are critical to March Madness analysis?
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Ohtani might be DHing against Kershaw today. That will draw higher media interest.
Most of the MLB Network pundits don’t think Ohtani will last long as a hitter this season.
Reportedly Bum asked Bochy if he could DH in a ST game, and apparently Bochy doesn’t want to do it.
Hell to the no. After seeing Pence miss half a season with an errant pitch from a low A Cubs pitcher a couple years ago, that is foolishness defined.
C’mon Flav, that Theo Epstein analytical approach ain’t gonna work on the NCAA Tourney. You gotta put in your time watching the teams play. And then you gotta have some luck as well.
Not to worry—-we’ll get it all figured out over some $2 Bud Tall Boys.
Right. And putting down money on a team you can’t stand, no can do.
Used to do a fun thing after it got down to 16—pick your Final four with bonus tie breaker points for ultimate Champ. Me and few friends would do this, with losers paying for steak dinner for the winner. One year my friend’s wife(Tar Heel fan ugh) won and proceeded to order expensive glass of wine and dessert.
Nice gal tho so all you could do was laugh. She never ever tho, beat me at P-I-G (short version of Horse)…esp once I went to all bank shots.
if i have an angle I can put $$$ on any team….And I am counting on San Diggity and WillieD (and anyone else that wants to chime in) on helping me with the *personal touch* angle that you guys bring from watching the games!
So much for the Athletic, and the Athletics.
BTW I finally saw Let it Ride. Hagrid was great! That was a funny as shit movie. Makes me miss Bay Meadows even more.
Awesome! It’s definitely been a movie that’s stood the test of time.
Chuck, where did you find Let it Ride? My Amazon Prime doesn’t have it listed nor does Netflix.
you can get it on google play
BTW, Warren Buffett is doing his Bracket Challenge. Get them all right and you win $1,000,000 a year for life.
The only difference being whoever gets the farthest wins a prize. The caveat being you need to work for Buffet or at one of the hundreds of companies he owns.
Anybody here work for Buffett?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2016/02/29/buffett-promises-1-million-a-year-for-life-for-his-employee-who-picks-perfect-ncaa-sweet-16/#5c7b929b568e
Damn, I think Dairy Queen is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. Might be worth a moonlighting gig making blizzards for a shot at this?
Now that’s funny! I’d prolly get better benefits than I get now . . .
Missing anything??? Mascots?
Ive watched very little college basketball accept for VCU where my kid is going and they have been a disappointment.
Im tired of the one and dones ar Kentucky and this looming scandal I believe is going to be ginormous. So this is turning into the least anticipated March Madness ever for me. I used to run a pool for about 10 years till taking this govt job where you would get points for each seed value. If a 10 seed won you got 10 pts, but if 1 seed won you got just one point. There were then bonuses for Final Four (5), Finals (7) and Championship (10) but it was low enough that you really had to nail a good number of upsets to win. The 8/9 games were murder. People could easily lose all four and fall behind 32-36 points….
No one and dones at KY this year (well, maybe Knox, but that’d be a mistake). On an ESPN broadcast Dave Fleming claimed that every five KY puts on the court this year is collectively younger than any other, ever. The guy working with him grunted but didn’t question it. Sort of a fun, frustrating team to root for.
heavy life advice from Beede’s lady
aw come on, she and Tyler are lovely people graced by their God with beautiful gifts and the responsibility to share those gifts with the world. They make the rounds of Christian talk shows, apparently (true). I think they attend service at Holy Narcissus Baptist Church, schedules permitting.
lqtm… more like fall asleep with a headache and wake up with dread.
Or fall asleep with a 10 and wake up with a 4.
Easy to say when you’re a hot little rich cunt.
Try being me for a day, sis…
Mccovey Chronicles has an article The Giants have the most improved defense. And another article SFGate? That Posey is battling a ankle sprain. The article on defense calls out getting rid of Span was the greatest improvement.
Posey is ‘battling’ a spring training that is too long. it’s Bochy’s plan to have Buster more rested for fall ball. His drop in production after the breaks have been glaring. He’s hit 5 home runs in the past 2 years after the All Star break.
2017 – 10/2
2016 – 11/3
2015 – 14/5
2014 – 11/11
2013 – 13/2
2012 – 10/14
2011 – 2/– injured
2010 – 7/11
The trend sure has been the big fall-off after the ASG.
Bumgarner mowing down the Padres today with no runs & 6 SO through 3.
What’s crazy is Posey hasn’t had a 20 HR season since 2012!
For you football fans out there, the Seattle Seahawks are officially in rebuild mode after trading away Michael Bennett, and (apparently) releasing Richard Sherman). Sherman has been saying his goodbyes to his teammates all day.
In ST this season, Pence is now sporting an .083 batting average, and .166 OPS.
If you’re Pence, you have another $15 million coming this season, so you hunker down, and grind through it, no matter how ugly it gets. Very very few players are going to walk away from $15 million.
And the red carpet leads to left field. The only way he isn’t starting is if he decides to quit.
It’s worth noting that the Red Sox released Pablo before last season, while still owing him $40 million. The Red Sox then went on to win their division.
Wow. Looking up Marquise Grissom, who I thought walked away from the game while with the Giants as he ewas sucking so bad. Turns out we released him. But this tidbit was in Wikipedia:
Grissom has five kids, Micah, D’monte, Tiana, Marquis, Jr. and Gabriella.
During his playing career, Grissom bought houses for his parents and every one of his fourteen siblings.
Utley is hitting .059 in ST so far. That’s pretty funny. But the Dodgers only re-signed him for a couple of million.
Yeah, Pence is managing to look worse than Parker (who sucks).
Let me guess. His one hit is an infield single.
Speaking of the Dodgers, they have an interesting battle for leftfield going on. Out of Kemp, Toles, and Pederson, only two are probably going to make the roster. Toles is an intriguing player. Very talented, but has had injury issues. Kemp, who knows? Pederson hasn’t shown much since his rookie season, when he was in the All-Star home run derby. He did have some nice moments in the World Series last year. But then again, Ishi had great moments in the ’14 playoffs, and what did that do for him in ’15? Every season is a new world.
Kershaw struck out Ohtani, so the sports media will make way too much out of it.
Ohtani is hitting .091 in ST so far.
That’s a better batting average than Pence which is kind of sadly funny.
I think we can declare the Jarrett Parker Experience a no-go. Someone was talking about Rags overvaluing pitchers on this staff, but how do guys like double-o zero, Gorkys Park, and Parker etc.etc. get so many shots with this team while other teams cycle through AAAA guyys 4x faster?
Does anyone know the cause of death regarding Timmy’s brother Sean? I seem to recall reading (a couple of years ago) that he had some personal issues.
he didn’t say but he said his bro made a lot of bad decisions so I’m guessing some type of overdose
Thanks Flav. The odds of Timmy pitching well this season are beyond a long shot in lieu of his age; being away from the game; and past physical ailments. Adding the death of a brother (which I have experienced) is another burden he’ll have to deal with this season. I’m praying that he overcomes the odds and has a decent season . . . doesn’t have to be great, but just decent. In my opinion, that would be an amazing accomplishment and story this year.
i heard on radio he picked #44 (or something like that) because it was his brother’s number at whatever level he played to. Sounds like he was a big beefy power hitter, believe it or not. At least that’s what the radio guys were saying this morning.
Hard to see (thumbnail), but you’re right – he was a fairly big guy.