A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

Thank God the Giants front office hasn’t gone completely off the rails. They traded McCutchen for what will basically amount to the second coming of Agent 000. And that’s fine. They were so up against the lux tax line they were going to have problems bringing up rookies for Sept call ups. Think about how lame that is for a second…..

And now they have the freedom to do so.

Later days, ‘Cutch. You led the team in pretty much every offensive category but I honestly can only remember a handful of your at bats. I’ll look back on your time in SF the way I look back on Steve Carlton’s time in SF.

The hits just keep on comin’ and not the good kind that go over the fence. Duggar has a torn labrum and while I wasn’t all in on the kid it was nice to have someone young out there running around.

We scored another run yesterday. Runs are nice, aren’t they?

Freaking Blanco got the call to replace Duggar. Lol that is hilarious. The Giants are wandering around the wilderness and instead of bringing up someone young to evaluate they bring up The Old White Shark! Too funny.

This team is run by buffoons…..

A great win, however meaningless, to be sure. I think it’s a little dangerous to get too excited about 1-0 victories since it masks the true reality of how bad our hitting is. As I said at the end of the last thread, scoring 1 run and being forced to shut out the other team is not a clear path to the post season.

But hey, a win is always better than a loss…

Well, we finally caught The Pirates. That’s rad. Arizona had the worst VMI number for hitters last night, not a big surprise to me that Stratt shut them down. Well, a little of a surprise since Stratt sucks.

I didn’t catch too much of the A’s game but they got their ass handed to them by the better team last night. Houston has Altuve back, that’s gotta be a big boost both emotionally and from a production standpoint. And this “Throw a 5th starter out every game and see what happens” can only work so long for Oakland. You’d think, anyway.

Bummie goes today as we continue chipping away at the 6 teams in front of us in the Wild Card….

Lots of chatter preparing us for the possibility of Buster not being ready for opening day. If he’s a week late then you can chalk pretty much any loss in the first 7 games of the season up to the dumbass mismanagement of the team by Sabean and anyone else in charge of that petrified move.

I’m sorry I questioned Boch yesterday for bringing in Melancon on Sat. Obviously he needs to see if Melancon is healed enough to help the team in a high leverage situation. And we should all be happy if Double M has taken another step in the healing process to be counted on next season…..

Now, please, pretty please with sugar on top, trade Andrew McCutchen this week….

Pretty unseasonably cool weather out here this month. San Francisco hasn’t see the temps his 70 degrees since August 9th. Trip out on that, east coasters.

Even though that was a pretty meaningless mid-Aug game vs 2 teams who suck, that was a pretty ballsy move by Bochy to hook Smith and bring in Melancon. Did you guys see the look on Smith’s face? He wasn’t having that. And to bring in Melatonin? The risk of exposing yourself as a dumbass was high. But hey, it worked out. On one hand, Bochy needs to see if he can count on Double M for more than just mop up duty next year. On the other hand, why piss off your closer like that?

Our Japanese ace goes today for the series win….

Another team with a worse record that us beats us. Not at all surprising. We are one of 15 teams in mlb that espn gives a 0.1% chance (or less) of making the playoffs. Somehow the Dodgers are at 61% and the Rox are at 39% even tho the Colorado has a better record than LA. Not sure how that works.

Buster getting cut up on Mon. This has been a wasted week and if he’s not ready by Spring Training I hope everyone remembers this debacle.

Full Metal Jacket was just ok. I liked the scene sets but the movie was too long and its length didn’t really allow it to tell a better story than it could have if it was shorter. I’m giving it 2 Flaps Up and feel pretty solid on that rating.

Well, we’re back home. Probably ready to go on a nice little run of wins to get us right back in this bad boy. That is, assuming Buster made it off the plane alive. This is what I think about these days when I think of Buster:

San Dawg my old man got a kick out of your AMPM burger pic. Me? I’m still trying to sort out that tomato…

Facing Drew Hutchinson tonight. He’s a classic honky mlb pitcher. I’m sure we’ll crush him, right?

I’m still laughing at the NBC Bat Area analysts who claim the Giants are waiting till they’re mathematically eliminated before they cut Buster up. Really? Do they even know Sabean? This is the same GM who waved the white flag on the 2013 season on July freaking 8th calling it a “Bad Penny Year” and using that as the excuse for doing nothing at the deadline that season. This is the same team that is a single event away (two Mets smashing into each other) from losing 6 straight to the Reds and the Mets over the last week.

So this *mathematical nonsense* is just fodder for the lame fans who still think we’re in this if we can just go on a little run. Just. One. Run.

It’s completely disrespectful to try to sell *math* as the reason Buster is still playing…..

I wouldn’t say the Giants have a chance tonight but Syndergaard hasn’t really been his dominant self this year. Of course, facing the worst offense in the league can bump up your dominance level pretty quick.

And we are the worst offense in the league. Either league. Everyone likes to talk about OPS and we are last, dead last in mlb, with a .583 OPS in August. There’s really not much more to say about it.

The Giants are hitting career .222 off The White Knight or whatever this guy’s nickname is. Collectively they’ve hit 1 bomb off him. You guessed it, it’s Hunter Pence.

Lol…..

Last night I wasn’t begrudging the dearth of dingers. I was more in awe of us not being able to hit a ball that would even roll up to the wall. I’m pretty sure we didn’t hit a ball that got to the warning track. Man, if only we had a guy with warning track power. Buster did hit a fly ball (oppo field of course) that got near the warning track. I nearly fell out of my chair when that happened.

No, our runs were scored the old fashioned way. Pop up bloopy-ass lucky ground finders. Oh, and this. Man down!

That game was filled to the brim with players who stink. On both sides.

Zach Wheeler wants to be no one else in the world today. He’s done pretty well vs the Giants in his 4 career starts but today he’s plotting a total wipe out. He’s getting to face probably the worst offense in major league baseball. And, especially if you listen to San Dawg, Wheeler has turned a corner and is now an ace.

And now he gets a chance to blow away the team that traded him?

Tonight is going to be ugly, at least for us…..

Speaking of San Dawg, he sent me a pic of his AMPM meal from the other day. My favorite part: upper right, “Enjoy by 6pm”. Eat it, and eat it quickly…..There is a lot going on in this pic, feel free to comment on the highlights as you see them.

Can you imagine how many beers Harvey pounded last night to celebrate his 5th quality start as a Red? Man, I bet he was slammin’ them. And San Dawg will be slammin’ them, on me, next time I see him in Reno.

Today Brandon Belt is leading off. Why not? That’s actually something I’ve wanted to see for a long time now. Unfortunately, Belt walking a couple of times will do little for the overall production of the offense.

It’s funny to listen to the KNBR talking heads try to make sense of all of this. They seem at a loss why the Giants can’t beat the Reds. The Miami Marlins castoff announcer kept talking about the Reds being better since they fired their manager—that happened in April, lol. All of this is nonsense. We have a better record than 4 teams in the NL. Basically, we are one of those 4 teams. That is the reality that nobody at KNBR wants to talk about.

Here ya go, Dirt. How’d today’s haul stack up to yours? Sun golds, early girls, tie dyes, lemon boys, we got ’em all here at Casa de Flavor.

It is absolutely uncanny how none of our bad players ever get hurt. Turns out there’s an injury from the scrum? Oh really? Who was it? Casey Kelly? Hunter Pence? No, sorry, it was your ROY candidate, the best player to come out of this letdown season. D-Rod. Of COURSE it was D-Rod.

The only thing that could save the season for me, in terms of maintaining interest, would be if we traded for Matt Harvey and had him pitch against the Reds. That would be an old school move that never happens anymore. And really, though Harvey’s game has become rather staid, I’d certainly prefer seeing him jog out there than a guy like Casey freaking Kelly or someone from The Social Media Gang.

Also, if we traded for Harvey we’d probably need to cancel the Matt Harvey bet due to some type of contingency. We’d need to read the fine print of the bet, eh Dawg?

Not sure what qualifies this Casey Kelly dude to be on the team. As far as I can tell, it’s because he’s pitched a lot of innings in Sacramento. He was at 130 this year, by far the most of anyone else down there. But whatever, apparently he’s more reliable than That Doughy Fuck or any of his other social media friends….

Despite the loss that was a fun series and for a team that is out of it that’s about all you can hope for this time of year…

As has been discussed, Matt Harvey needs only one more QS to get to 5 (during his time as a Red). San Dawg offered me this buyout bet last night:

That half inning sucked, but this buyout offer I will allow Flav to present me is awesome:

-You only need to cover my beer tab for the Saturday in Reno
-Lunch on you at the Top Deck Diner at Cal Neva
-You carry around my Toomgis coffee mug for 4 consecutive hours on Saturday. You can’t explain that you are
doing it because you bought out a bet. You just have to act like that’s the way you roll. (Feel free to fill it with
the beverage of your choice.)

__________________

It was an amusing offer and I appreciate the time he took to put it together. Of course, Big Flavor has never and will never succumb to the shame of having to offer a buyout bet to anyone. If I ever did, it would be, as you know, in the form of a powerpoint presentation. This was not. Thus…..summarily rejected.

It would be much more sensible for Diggity to offer the buyout bet. It was something I would have considered had it been presented in my preferred medium of appraisal. Sadly, the window of time that I would have considered such an offer has closed. It shall never reopen.

The mug I would have to carry around Reno for 4 hours:

Is there anything better than a game that makes Puig look like a little slappy bitch? I’m assuming the interest in acquiring his bitch-ass has gone down a bit? I hope?

I missed most of this game, one of our cats got hit in the eye by a snake and I had to take him to the ER. On the way down there he ripped straight through the cat carry case I had him in. That was an interesting ride and visit, let me tell you.

Carson is a big boy, I bet the snake took the worst of that tangle…

Anyway, you guys saw it. That was a game designed to embolden a team and a fan base. From that standpoint I couldn’t appreciate Slap(uig) any more!!!!!

POTG is a tie: Hanson, Suarez and Hundley who is going down as one of my favorite Giant catchers of all time.

The only thing that sucks about last night is that the Nick Hundley hit had a chance to rank right up there with the Brian Johnson bomb (well, below it but up there) but with our dire place in the standings it’s just a nice win against a team we all hate. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Fun win.

Also wasted this year: Nick Hundley. This guy has been so important to so many wins this year. He’s the type of grizzled vet Bochy loves and he’s been the back up catcher we’ve literally never had. It’s just too bad we aren’t going to get to see some magical moments from him in the post season.

If I told you that the only thing you could take from this season was the surprise of Dereck Rodriguez, would that be enough for you? I’m not talking about one of these *Stratton/Suarez* fliers that work out a little and then fall apart, I’m talking about a legit ace of the staff. A free ace can’t be understated.

We’re still screwed going forward because one or two aces isn’t gonna get ‘er done. After him and Bum we just have a bunch of guys (assuming Smargerine is done and we don’t see Cueto till 2020).

That’s the problem with building a staff. Nobody wants to give out the big 5 year deals anymore and I get that. But it’s not like there are any low hanging fruit freebies like D-Rod out there.

And then there is the unpleasant thought that maybe Rodriguez is a mirage. That this will all flitter away into a warm summer breeze and never be seen again…

Fixing this mess is going to require a lot of luck. How many times does a lotto winner hit the lotto? D-Rod could be it and then nothing but a bunch of losing tickets thereafter….

San Dawg and other Buster apologists, you might want to avert your eyes from today’s post…

What he said:

Fun fact:
Buster has not homered this summer.
I have him at 157 PAs.

What I said:

he’s ridiculous. Tomorrow I’m gonna look up his second halfs over the last few years. Without looking I bet he doesn’t have 10 home runs in the second halfs of the last 3 seasons (including this one)

And of course I was right. He has 5 (FIVE) bombs in the second halves of the last 3 seasons. In order to get to 10 you need to add the 2015 second half too when he had 5. That is 10 bombs in the second half of 4 straight seasons and that is pathetic and absurd. If that isn’t a direct sign of this guy’s decline I don’t know what is.

It is stupid to keep playing him at catcher. It’s only gonna get worse from here.

I was surprised they were able to blast off against that triple A pitcher. Usually guys like that shut us down easily.

I was out last night and missed the game. Apparently there was an issue with Crick? Will we be seeing some beanball payback today?

Freese homered. Bell homered. Diaz homered. These are not home run hitters. The Giants can try to cobble together all the fringe-OPS guys they can, if they can’t hit the ball out of the park they will continue to be one of the worst teams in major league baseball.

Other teams hit home runs at AT&T. I always wonder what Sabean thinks when he sees ball from opponents getting rocketed out of the yard. And then our guys try to get walks, hit the ball the other way and hopefully get the coveted “good at bat” from Kruk regardless of the outcome.

I am so tired of having a team that can’t hit the fucking baseball every single fucking year…..

______________________

I received this from PaulinAsia this morning. He and Blade having lunch in Saigon. Flap Nation represent.

New thread time. Sorry it took so long to get it posted. I kept thinking to myself “you’ve forgotten something, what was it? Did you leave the stove on? The front door unlocked?” And then, boom, it hit me.

I see Suarez getting back on the beam tonight. He’s been ragged lately but he’s back at home and Pitt is coming out of Nepal, always a good bet against hitters in the first game off the mountain….

Nova sucks so I’m sure he’ll shut us down easily….

Did a slow burn last night listening to Bochy use the “they’ve got good pitching” argument to defend our pathetic output vs the Astros. You’re in the big leagues, buddy. Who cares how good their pitching is. How good is your hitting? Look in the mirror Boch and stop making excuses for our limp bats.

I’m going to try to stay positive though and even though I ended the season on August 2nd we can rank the players who have surprised us in a good way with an eye to next season.

#1: D-Rod. He’s obviously locked into this spot

#2:  This one is gonna be a tie between Morota and Will Smith. Both surprised me in a good way and both will be critical cogs next season.

#3: Suarez. With all the pub Beede and his idiot new bride got a guy like Suarez flew under the radar. He’s been getting hammered lately but I am hoping he’s just a little worn out and that he’ll take another step next year.

#4: Derek Holland. He’s been very reliable and flexible in terms of how we use him. Not sure where we’d be without him but we’d have several less wins I know that for sure.

#5: Gorkhead. I’ll put him in here just because his power surge came out of nowhere but this guy has been pretty lame since June and he shouldn’t take starts away from Slater who should be playing every day.

#6: Stratton (who sucks) but the surprise is that he’s still the team leader in wins (by 2 over Blach). That’s pathetic in its own right but it’s still a surprise worthy of making this list.

#7: Alen Hanson. Just because he came out of nowhere and he’s been the energy boost this team has lacked for literally years. I’d wave bye bye to Panik next season and let this guy play.

#8: Ray Black. He’s been a surprise for sure but I’m not counting on him going forward. This guy is going to get hurt again, probably soon, so we shouldn’t get our hopes up with him.

Who’d I miss? Any quibbles with my rankings?

I’ve always wondered what happened to this rad fur coat. Apparently it’s in the 49er museum. Here’s Jerry wearing it recently…

Tough loss and while that one is obviously on Will Smith I’m not sweating him for a second. He’s been our best reliever this year and a very reliable closer. I recognize that’s off a pretty small sample size. But look, we scored 1 run, these guys aren’t machines. Smith finally gave up a home run this year. Our offense FUCKING SUCKS. AGAIN! How is it possible to have a shit offense EVERY SINGLE YEAR!?!!??!?!

We don’t need to ever go out and buy another closer again. Develop them from within or get them young and give them a chance to succeed. It’s not like closer is top on our list these days, anyway. As usual, we need players WHO CAN HIT. The Giants have been burned by the money they threw at Benitez and then Melatonin. I’m calling it right now: We will never see them pay big bucks for a closer again. Nor should they.

Agree with James at the end of the last thread. Walks are important. Appreciated him adding “they only look like the pussy way out when you don’t have a good offense.” That’s actually one of the reasons I’ve been arguing against Belt on this team. He’s fine for another team. He’s wasted with us. As is anyone else coaxing walks and getting on base only to be stranded at first base by their those following who break the fellowship and make outs.

OPS has sort of become the most obvious thing to look at when considering your team’s offensive output. The other day I noted we have a better record than only 4 (shit) team in the NL: The Reds, the Mets, the Marlins and the Padres. Guess the only teams we out-OPS in the NL? The Mets, the Marlins and the Padres. Only the Reds are above us and they play in a bandbox so that’s understandable.

Finally, here is the list of teams at the bottom of total home runs. Shocker. The Reds, pathetically, are 10th:

We can’t hit. We can never hit.

When I was a kid I checked the standings every morning. There were only 4 divisions back then but I had every team’s record memorized and their place in the standings. These days, I don’t check too often. Maybe once a week. I don’t know why, maybe they just gotten diluted with the wild card races. They just aren’t as interesting, or straight forward, as back in the day…..

Anyway, this morning I was surprised to see that the Giants have a better record than only four teams in the ENTIRE National League: Mets, Marlins, Reds and Padres—the absolute dregs of the NL. And that’s funny to me because KNBR spends nearly all of their SF coverage talking about the Giants post season chances and that they’re still in this, they just have to go on a run, thank God they won Sunday’s game, etc….

The Giants would have to leapfrog seven (7!) teams to win the second wild card spot.

S-E-V-E-N.

We should send McCutchen to Pittsburgh for future considerations and then send Longoria and Shaw to the Yankees (maybe they bite if we throw in Shaw and they really do need a 3rd baseman. Possibly give them Watson, too)……And we should do all of this TODAY.

Look, the D-backs have some hitters on that team. The Escobar pick up will turn out to be huge for them. The fact that they’ve been blasting our tentative young pitching all over their yard (and outside of it) is hardly a surprise.

The Giants have simply run out of….something. Gas. Mojo. Players. Whatever you want to call it. If they had a healthy Cueto and Smarge pitching the last two games it may have been a different story. Maybe not. We’ll never know.

It would be cool to see the Pirates claim Cutch and see what kind of boost he could give them. He would certainly do more for that town than the one he’s playing in. It’s time to bring up all the kids and if all these injuries keep chipping away at the base there’s a decent chance Bochy will grit his teeth and play these guys.

Posey took another shot to the head and now the rest of his season is in doubt. Secretly, his hip is probably happy about this. The idea of keeping Buster behind the dish for the rest of his career is just absurd and maybe this latest injury will wake up everyone involved.

Bochy claimed Stratton’s stuff was good, he was just lacking confidence. If I sucked I’d lack confidence, too.

The injuries suffered this year seem worse than I can ever remember. It’s a miracle we’re still on the right side of .500.

Keenland story is probably better told in the comment section, not the main thread……

From the Flapalooza that just happened in NY:

San Dawg and lovely daughter, Loo and Mac

I don’t attend fancy shows but I’m enjoying San Dawg’s updates from New York…

Four in a row and the light will definitely be kept on for us…..

Stratton’s back! Let’s see how elite that spin rate is….

The answer lies in the dreaded topic of *innings pitched*. I hate that topic. If I was the Baseball Czar the number of innings you throw (and pitches you pitch) should be determined by your competitive fire and how badly you want to finish a game you started. It’s too late, we can’t go back to the old days. These puss arms have been de-volved and devalued for the last 20 years by pitch counts that go all the way back to little league. Do you know that little league score boards now have pitch counts on them? Ludicrous. In 1980 when Palo Club was busy winning the city championship, we had TWO starting pitchers: Me and Steve Johnson. That’s it. We went 19-1 that year. There were certainly no pitch counts and I honestly don’t even remember relievers. The one game we lost Steve was sick and Kendall Simmons had to start… I’m still doing a slow burn about that.

Anyway, fast forward to THIS year. I already noted D-Rod’s inning numbers yesterday but here’s the recap:

2016: 132

2017: 143

2018: 116 and counting….

Now Andrew Suarez:

2016: 143

2017: 155

2018: 123

Finally, Chris Stratton:

2016: 156

2017: 138

2018: 109

I’m not gonna look at Bum or Holland, they’re vets and wouldn’t get monitored like these young guys. But even if we went on this *run* that Longo called for, even if we started winning a bushel of games because Sabes said “we started playing best the longest* and kept that going….We are still stuck with 3 guys, 60% of the starting rotation, who are going to get shutdown sometime in September.

How the hell would we be able to finish off the month and then storm October with these 3 guys icing their arms on the bench?

So right now, despite the nonsense the team may spew, I am effectively ending 2018 right now. We have no chance. It is over…..

D-Rod has been a revelation and you’d have a hard time arguing otherwise if you watched him pepper the corners of the strike zone yesterday. He’ll fill in nicely for Cueto next year. I’m not sure how much more to expect out of him this season. In 2016 he threw 132 innings, 2017 he tossed 143, this year he’s up to 116. What’s he got? Five or 6 more starts in him? Probably guaranteed to be shut down by mid September.

Longo is just as bad as Sabean saying “We got two tough wins here. We just need to go on a little run.” I know he has to say stuff like that after a game but SF was ALL OUT to beat the Pads. The worst team in the NL. When you are “just enough to win” over the worst team that should tell you something about your team.

After doing nothing at the deadline and seeing the writing on the wall for the team this year it makes zero sense to play Pence even one more inning this season. Let Belt heal as usual on the DL. Bring Shaw up. Let’s go, it’s time to take a look at the young kids. Bochy needs to grit his teeth and just do this…….