The Long Hockey’d Winter
Entering a bit of a dead zone for sports around here. No NFL this weekend with but one game to go next Sunday. No baseball. NBA without the Warriors is just ok. Excited for them next year though with Steph, Klay, Green, a stud FA pick up and whoever their top draft pick will be.
Until then I’ll continue to dutifully memorize Ruf’s Korean League stats and stare out this window waiting for Spring to begin….
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
You at least have these brain dead impeachment hearings to watch…😴😴😴🤬🤢🤮
I was at local DC watering hole frequented by tourists on Thursday night and they did not even bother having the hearings on…out of fairness to Sanders, Warren and Klobuchar, they should force Biden to testify until the Iowa caucus🤗😁😛
I echo snarkk’s lament but even for me Warriors are tough to watch. Like WCS, they have a lot of guys who do dumb shit out there on the court (and also have bad haircuts) and their record is not a fluke. Yes next season will be more interesting but I’m hoping they are able to have a good draft and develop some new players fans can get excited about.
As opposed to the fans now leaving game by end 3rd Q because GS is getting hammered.
They should run Trump out of town on a fucking rail.
We would simply renominate him and he will go on and win again…
With Putin’s imprimatur and the Russian GRU helping steal another US election…
What’s wrong with a dismantling of our republic?
Pitchers and catchers report in less than a month I do believe. Other than Castellanos and Puig, neither of whom likely comes here on 1-2 yr deal, not much else out there. So as the song asks, per Giants roster, is this all there is?
this is it. It sucks to have to take a step back for literally no reason but we are definitely going to be worse next year. Remember though, that 77 win thing was a bit of a mirage with that June run that wasn’t based on anything other than momentum. Hopefully we find another Dick and/or Yaz this year. Those guys make it fun. Our pitching tho, that’s a joke.
mm I’m sure you’re right. remember when you used to predict 88 Ws start of every season? I’m trying to do the math in my head for how many games Giants would have to play to reach 88…seems to be more than 200.
he never sent this to me. 😦
stixwiz said, on January 25, 2011 at 7:22 pm (Edit)
Twenty days till the first whispers of baseball begin. Another sign: After last weeks pair of humdingers here in the frozen tundra some 150 miles ssw of Frostbite Falls, things have mellowed a bit with a high here today just about touching 20 above!!! The humdingers last week had nighttime lows of 37.5 and 31.7 according to a sailboat-building buddy over to the other side of Bullshit Valley. Yes, it’s actually called that around here. Got named by a Norwegian immigrant about a hundred years ago. He returned to Norway but left kids and wife here.
Oh yeah, the sign of the impending season. Another humdinger. It’s the One Flap Down trophy, intending to be sent in the direction of Palo Alto before the season opens. Team won the W.S. Trophy as World Champs and for helping them get there as the most solid and informed fanbase in the SF blogosphere; the Flap deserves a trophy too.
Aspiring to be a master carver with a sculptor’s vision and a surgeon’s touch; i’ve been playing around with perhaps the world’s most character-laden carving medium; a tree which i call Wizard Willow and most locals know as Diamond Willow. So the intense cold being over and the light factor getting less condensed, i managed the mood to work a couple hours on One Flap Down. It stands close to 40″ high, has a diameter in no place exceeding about 2.5″, rests on 5 ‘legs’ and has one long, bent flap pointing downwards somewhere past the knees.
Wizard Willow is a cross-grained bitch if you wanna make it do what you want it to be. You don’t just pick out a piece and say i’m gonna make it into a dragon-head. Some are, though. All on their own. So my job is simple enough for a half-frozen Scandihoovian. All i gotta do is remove the stuff that shouldn’t be there any more.
So the frozen northwoods is now past what is usually our coldest week of the year and its February in a week and the crocus of the National Pastime pops outta the ground in twenty days. About time. Looking for the Big Bifecta for SF.
That is just amazing. I still think his attorney could have made use of things like this as evidence of the man’s true character…
exactly. This wasn’t just some rake wielding maniac.
thx Flav that was great!
And “…remove the stuff that shouldn’t be there any more” great piece of advice for Z/Harris.
That being said, still have to come up with viable replacements.
Pavs mailbag piece of nbc local site. Responding to a question on who might capable of possible bounce back, he mentions Crawford at 33 as being “interesting” to see what happens. Just not a word I’d use to describe him.
I did not get a chance to comment on Ozuna. Surprised he only got a one year deal so obviously Giants did not make any type of offer so I will be surprised if they land anyne like Castellanos or Puig. And I am fine with it. I won’t spend much time on baseball this year except maybe I double up on fantasy or start figuring out daily fantasy a bit more…
Cool post from Stix. Thanks! It’s the dead zone of sports for me. Yes we have 1 awesome football game but then nothing till march madness, and Spring trainging and upcoming playoffs!
SF pitching will be ok. Cueto Shark Anderson Beede Webb..Hitting will be better! Posey will rebound some. His hip was still in rehab mode last offseason. Common for players to need a full offseason as an athlete working out vs a “rehab guy”. Craw wont play as much and the young guys are better. Belt will bounce back too. 20+ homers is my lock of the year! My hope is we are doing ok enough to trade Shark and Cueto. My guess is we ill be close to .500 at the end of June!! I’ll remind you guys ( or flog myself) on my B-day in early June!
Close to .500 by June GH?
They will be sending out Mayday signals to anyone who will listen to them in May..
Trump’s a racist non-stop lying criminal sociopath, and that’s his legacy in history.
This will be a bad penny year for wins, true that.
But, it will still be interesting for the player movement.
It’s not going to be watching the same guys fail all the time, which is what the old regime would give us.
Different guys brought in and up will fail, and in that, those that succeed will be identified for use going forward.
Rebuilding isn’t much fun, but it’s necessary…
Totally agree–well said.
Yes.
Guaranteed money Giants are responsible for as of now:
Longoria: $ 49M (I subtracted the amounts TB is paying)
Cueto: $ 47M
Posey: $ 45.8M
Belt: $ 32M
Craw: $ 30M
Smdj: $ 18M
All figures assume buyouts of final year for those who have them…
That’s a lot of garlic fries…
Roughly 22.5 million servings.
Anybody know many garlic fries per helmet?
There’s more if you use a Barry Bonds 2001 helmet…
Just as much using Bochy’s cap size…
Nice Loo, I’m gonna add years left:
Longo thru 2022 (’23 option)
Cueto thru 2021 (’22 option)
Posey thru 2021 (’22 option)
Belt thru 2021
Craw thru 2021
Smdj thur 2020
The one glimmer of hope I do like is Zman is not afraid of moving his minor leaguers up quickly thru promotions,and we will see both Bart&Ramos this year along with possibly the basketball player pitcher 6’11 Sean Heile (sp) Zman is quite impressed with, and for sure Lucky Luciano 2021!!
I don’t want to bring those guys up in a year where we win 60 games and start their free agent clocks.
If I were in charge, the prime prospects would he held off for 2021. Scott Boras can bitch about it all he wants, but I would want to maximize their time with us in as many competitve seasons as possible.
2020 is a throw-away year. Let the Dicks and Rufs and Gerbers hold it down this year.
I think the mighty Gerber was DFAed.
Yeah, Z is eager to get the new guys up. He’s already as tired of the Bore Core as we are.
The image of Stix methodically combing through his backyard woods looking for the perfect piece of wood to sculpt, that’s the way I choose to remember this great Flapper……
We need a picture of that Sweet Bastard asap….
(The Flap woodcarving, I mean. Not Stix himself—we’ve got a great pic of him aleady)
If he still has it I’ll buy it off him. Sadly I fear it was one of many objects he chucked at that damn nosey ‘copter on that fateful day
KNBR replaying Niners/Bengals first Super Bowl…
Nice, thanks
NP. Looks like they’re playing the past radio calls of all the 49er Super Bowls…
I was down in LA on that first Super Bowl, so I saw the game on TV, did not hear local radio call with Don Klein and Wayne Walker (or Soltau?). Niners were 30 seconds or so away from winning the Super Bowl, and they sounded like they were calling a pre-season game. Talk about low key. If the Niners are that far from winning this next Super Bowl, with Papa and Ryan on the call they’ll need saran wrap all over the booth…
Yeah, Papa and Ryan were off the charts at the end of the NFC title game. Papa loves saying “Suuuuuuuper Bowl!!!!”
Imagine my stupidity (really not that hard if ya knew me). I’m coming out to California next week for a couple of days in SF and a couple of days in Bakersfield. I drive back from Bakersfield Sunday morning and fly out of SFO Sunday night, that’s Super Bowl Sunday. I’ll probably get back to SF around 2 or thereabouts, the bars will already be packed plus I’ll have my bag with m, not to mention maybe getting to loaded to get to SFO. If I go to a friends house I might get too comfortable and will still have to get to the airport. So it looks like SB Sunday will find me camped out in an airport bar watching the game while also waiting for my 10PM flight. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Dallas Keuchel gave a kind of halfway apology. He said something like “All the teams were doing stuff like that. I should have done something about it. I apologize.”
There’s no evidence that other teams were violating the rules and the Commissioner’s directive the way Houston and perhaps Boston were.
How about he sell his World Series ring on eBay and donate the money to charity? Or donate his winners stipend? Well, that ain’t happening.
The Astros reveled in having a swagger about them. Good luck trying to trot out that swagger this season.
The pressure will be on their hitters. If some of their hitters struggle this season they’ll get even more flack about it. They have to prove they’re not total frauds. That’s extra pressure on each hitter.
what’s stopping them from just continuing to do the buzzer thing? Nothing.
The buzzer thing is especially problematic for MLB. Do they frisk each player before each game? Do a body cavity search?
Someone could sit at home watching the game and buzz the players.
With the Astros a Full Anal cavity search is in order each game💩
They could be the MLB leader in anal-lytics.
Ouch
They each have to face their family and friends, too. Wives might look at husbands and think “Is there anything else he’s lying about?”
Technology is helping the players cheat better than ever. MLB, not so much.
MLB could use technology to fix soon the idiotic inconsistency in balls and strikes calls, and at minimum, once and for all the bang bang plays at first (chip/procesor with sensor in the bag and in first baseman’s glove; and yes they could do things to make sure the 1b doesn’t cheat). But, MLB management being near brain dead, they won’t do this anytime soon. It is a joke that tennis has been and is using technology better than MLB to assure calls are correct, and in quick fashion…
I think MLB is going to try the electronic balls and strikes this Spring Training. I think I read that somewhere.
Doesn’t sound like much:
https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/28537918/mlb-umpires-union-clarifies-use-electronics-spring-training-sites
Yeah, that’s a let-down.
28-10 Niners lead it, late second quarter in the Super Bowl.
That’s Super Bowl XIX v Dolphins. On KNBR right now.
I’d forgotten how nimble Joe was in his younger, pre-injury days.
He leads all runners in rush yardage so far in the game…
Joe Montana was just sending a message to everyone that he wasn’t going to be upstaged by the media hype drooling over Dan Marino.Never piss off the greatness of Joe Cool 😎
Evans to the Astros?? They deserve each other:)
This is gonna cost him some coin. Nice gesture.
Where’s he gonna put ’em all?
Didn’t Eddie always do that?…
KNBR now with the final “John Candy” drive radio call in the Niners/Bengals Super Bowl…
Lon Simmons on the call!
I think the Chiefs arrive in Miami tomorrow.
If they’re smart they’ll put Tyreek Hill under house arrest till game time…
Stanley Wilson at Niners-Bengals Super Bowl in Miami certainly comes to mind.
Yeah and then they’re is Oakland Raiders starting Center Barrett Robbins (Bi polar issues)who disappeared at bed check the night before the SB and ended up in Mexico on a tequila shots, and pill popping adventure.Then checked into a rehab clinic before the game, and already thought they played the game and won!!
Both the NFL and the NBA have their all-star games coming up. Both of those “games” are travesties. Why bother watching guys jogging and not playing defense? A complete waste of time.
MLB ranking of Giants prospects in the top 100.
Pardon if somebody already did this…
Giants (5)
14. Joey Bart, C (ETA: 2020)
35. Marco Luciano, SS (2022)
65. Heliot Ramos, OF (2021)
71. Hunter Bishop, OF (2022)
99. Seth Corry, LHP (2022)
The Giants are coming off their worst three-year stretch since 1983-85, but there’s hope for the future because their system is stronger than it has been in a decade. Bart and Luciano are their most talented farmhands since Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner, and their five Top 100 prospects eclipse their previous high of two since we expanded the list starting in 2012.
mm 4 of those 5 drafted by Sabe/Evans, btw. Z may be tired of the core however–first, he has yet to dump off any of the older guys with contract that bother everyone except for Melancon and second, doesn’t have a replacement for 1b or 3b. That has to be the next thing he does, while hopefully adding some power to the LU. Didn’t see anyone added this off season that would do that either. Ergo, tanking.
if Luciano isn’t ready until 2022 that means 2 more years of Crawford. Are you OK with that? Because there isn’t a replacement for Crawford either even if they could trade him.
They got Bart because they lost 98 games the season before.
At the half in Super Bowl — Niners v. Denver:
27-3 Niners …
Joe: 15 of 21 with 3 TDs
Elway: 6 for 20
As far as those 6 contracts Mac and I listed above, I’d bet the Giants wind up paying every last cent of them…
That’s likely.
Maybe they could trade Belt, but they’d have to eat some of his contract.
Trade Belt, move Posey to first, and bring Bart up.
Belt is probably the only one that had any value to a contender considering his contract.
He’s ideal for the Yanks, but it’s a long shot.
Nobody’s taking Smrdz to pitch them to a pennant…
you know I could live with platoon of Shaw and Garcia, or adding in one vet RH bat that could hit for more power than Belt. should not be hard to find, at all.
Bart takes over next year at earliest, not this one. He hasn’t hit above AA ball and missed like 6 weeks last year when he got hurt playing A ball in San Jose.
loo they are $50 mil under the cap. that would cover over half what’s owed Belt and Craw combined with room to spare. Or they could have used some of that money to go out and get few low priced guys to tide them over for next year or two.
Instead Z Harris are playing 52 pick up chump change dumpster dives. = tanking.
I wonder if even one 49er fan here will pick against them in the SB…
i mean,what’s the point of doing that? Don’t get anything if you’re correct and it’s just bad karma. I will have some draftkings teams that are heavily weighted towards the Chiefs as a cover more than anything else. I’ll be in Reno this weekend so my main bets will be Niners on the ML and the under. And then I’ll have all that other nonsense, who scores first etc. My fav bet is betting on the exact score. Huge odds there. Hit it once. Hope to hit it again on Sun.
I saw that there are over 1,000 prop bets available.
You could have a nervous breakdown just reading through them…
Do you remember which Super Bowl you hit the exact score?
Here’s a prop bet:
Who will have most.
San Francisco Giants 2020 win total(-15.5)
San Francisco 49ers ..Penalty yards
Ellsbury has one year left on a astronomically shitty deal. Trade him for Belt.
I’m still holding out hope that Crawford is DFAed when he starts the season hitting .183 and tripping over his dick in the infield. I don’t know what happened to him, but he’s fat, slow, and unwilling to hit the opposite way.
Another season of grounders to 2nd will drive me nuts.
And, for fuck’s sake, Jheri Curl went out in the 80s. You look like the lead singer for Quarterflash
Wow. Kobe Bryant, and possibly his 4 daughters, died in a helicopter crash.