Today Is Sunday
Looking forward to the game today to distract me from the horrendousness of my CBB brackets. I penned an open letter to my league demanding that the commisioner cancel the contest and refund all monies because of the VCU forfeiture. We’ll see if that works. I had Oregon so it’s unlikely to break my way……
Did the Giants not play yesterday?
What’s the Grave Duggar doing right now?
What has happened to Stix? I fear the worst. He didn’t respond to my emails.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
I’m still irate about the Grave Duggar getting optioned. San Diggity is telling me to be patient but I feel this is a fuck up by Z that I can never forgive.
I missed this horrible development…
You don’t think I feel even more pissed about Davis the better athlete..
Bottom line BF is the Giants have no plans for Duggar are Davis they have made that clear with there quick moves to send them packing to Sac to rot away..
Take back this slander, now
Main local pool I am in with 455 entries I moved up to 16th hitting Abiline and UCLA. This is a pool heavily weighted to upsets. If Ohio State had not lost, I would be just a point behind. I have UCLA with two more wins. They have a lot of offensive weapons. But I need Michigan to lose before Final Four and Illinois as well to potentially win…
Think fix is in for OF–the preseason favorites Slater Ruf Dubon Dickerson Yaz–are gonna be 5 guys going forward to start the season. Key word being “start”. Best option for Davis/Duggar is to be somewhere they can be in the lineup, get regular ABs and play D as opposed to being yanked around as part of Kapler’s platooney ball.
Not gonna take much for changes and call ups to be made.
Now can we focus on who IS here and will be on Opening Day instead of who isn’t?
There really isn’t a strong case for moving away from the position players who were successful last year, not at the outset. They’ll need similar performances from them to be competitive at all.
Longoria, Belt, Posey all not 100% 10 days before the season starts. Wood, their best chance at getting a solid starter out of the various projects, is not right yet. Sanchez and DeSclafani haven’t looked that great. I know, don’t put too much stock into ST performances. The oft-mentioned injury record and ages of the OFers suggest Duggar will be here a lot of this season, although if he’s not, that would be a good thing.
78 wins looking like a stretch right now.
Ballplayers can be like racehorses.
The entire story is not in the past performances.
They are eligible to improve – and not necessarily out of nowhere.
The best handicappers and talent evaluators know how to recognize the signs…
Is that for Duggar? His spring stat sheet points to real improvement at the plate. The news of his recall won’t be as much of a drag now, if Ruf or Slater falters. Even if there was an eyeballing expert saying, you know, Duggar looks like he jumped ahead of Slater, it’s unlikely it’d turn into an urgent recommendation that simply had to be followed. Maybe if Duggar was RH.
Heliot Lemuel Ramos
They are talking CF for him after the reports he wasn’t headed there. The moves will be made more quickly, if he lights it up in the minors.
Dodgers ditched couple of Roberts’ platooney guys in off season, Pederson and K Hernandez. I’m interested to see how that works this year for them, and if Roberts continues to platoon out of LF 2b and maybe 3b too. Muncy was not near as good as previous seasons while Taylor excelled.
Is this how Giants, given background of Kapler and Zaidi, are going to try to play it going forward– few standout regulars surrounded by versatile players you rotate in/out of lineup to maximize matchups?
Looks like they are going to go with 2 LU’s as much as possible 1) For RH pitchers, dominant LH hitters 2) For LH Pitchers,dominant RH hitters..
That giant Jesuit’s pretty quick.
The Loyola win gets me to 8th overall…:)
I had Loyola Chicago too advancing over Illinois!
One thing I’ve found out early on playing NCAA tournaments for years,
u have to have 2 really good guards to go with your real athletic big men who can run the floor if you expect to go far in the tournament.And if a top seed gets to cocky and expect to easily roll over their opponents that’s when they lose to teams that have nothing to lose..
Still in the end the cream rises to the top and I have Gonzaga/Baylor in the championship game with Baylor beating Gonzaga in a great final game..
Buried in between the ads, videos, and pop-ups is an article about what’s happened to baseball…
https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/03/17/baseball-preview-pace-of-play-crisis
Every pitch is a ball in play.
Thank you.
This is the article that Snarkk posted on Friday. I think it brings up some interesting stuff, but apparently I’m just an old fucker yelling at MLB to get off my lawn.
I can imagine what it says. Reducing the time it takes to play a game from 3 hours to 2.5 isn’t going save anything except those 30 minutes. The casual fans will either stick with it or not in the long run, because baseball is inherently a slow paced game. As for this old fucker, watching a Greg Maddux shut out the shitty team you’re rooting for on 90 pitches with 15 weak ground balls is about as boring and tedious as baseball gets. When my team is in contention, I’m happy to watch for as long as each victory takes. I could give a crap about the aesthetics.
“I can imagine what it says.” Well read it and be sure.
I am not into slowing the game down just to slow it down. I do understand and enjoy the flow of a game and do not, and have not, agreed with most of Manfred’s proposed changes to try and adjust the flow. I like homeruns but not homerun derbies. I like people who played and love the game running it. Like I alluded to on Friday, most of the changes MLB has installed have made the games less interesting and so has stat ball.
Two pitchers going at it, low scoring, hit and run, sac bunts, Managers reading the situation not the spreadsheet, Giants win, now that’s a great day at the yard in my opinion.
Now get the fuck off of my lawn!
Yes, Mr. Bozo, sorry, Mr. Bozo!!
Ahh, it’s ok lil James, I’ll find a way to tolerate you youngins. Now get yerself out there and have ya some fun, be sure to stock up on Saran Wrap and bring us home a winner.
Isn’t it a ROI thing? mlb starts losing money when a game goes past ten or eleven innings. Fans go to sleep. Players wear out. So, put an end to that waste. Speed the game up not to make it more interesting, but to make it easier to insert regular commercial breaks into broadcasts and streamcasts. And, of course, make more rational (more vicious, I guess) labor decisions with the new data magic. But is mlb any worse than football, with the strange “targeting” and “roughing” penalties, or basketball with its reign of threes? They’re all trying to figure out how to keep going. If mlb loses the interest of old men who vaguely remember Willie Mays do they give a shit?
There was a time when longshoremen got off work and went to Red’s Java House for a breakfast of cheeseburgers and beers. A better time? Slower, surely. And any of those guys still around may or may not remember Willie Mays. Or anything else.
As long as those longshoremen didn’t eat the chili at Reds, they should be ok.
Longo’s going to be a good DH.
I think Tampa would be a good fit.
Taking a liking to Dodger pitching today too, always a good thing.
Yaz is looking locked-in.
Loo, that SI article link is the definitive roadmap (roadkill?) of the demise of baseball. Thanks for sharing.
Your post the other day might have inspired it!
One of the guys on the CBS NCAA halftime panel just said this about Baylor:
“The longer they’re in this tournament, the more dangerous they get”
My all-time favorite broadcasting moment is Tom Brookheiser talking about a talented young player and saying: “His future is really ahead of him.”
Brookshier, I meant.
For a few years, he and Summeral did a lot of 49er games.
Remember this guy, RIP? And I think this is not the best compilation–just the easiest to locate.
https://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/quofair.shtml
We could do worse than Chadwick. Remember Eli in 2011?
I think Tromp is starting the year in Sac.
Yeah Trump will start in Sac for sure.
But on his Birthday today he had a nice present with a Grandslam today..
I’m concerned about Buster.
And. https://www.mccoveychronicles.com/2021/2/20/22292427/san-francisco-giants-curt-casali-hamate-surgery
Don’t think I’ve liked anything about Syracuse b-ball since Dave Bing.
I had an inexplicable fascination with Wendell Alexis…
Pearl Washington was a helluva good college player.
oh yeah plenty of good players have come through there, definitely. Didn’t he miss game winner in Tourney?
Louis Orr with Knicks maybe.
I remember when Indiana’s Keith Smart hit the game winner against Syracuse in 87 to win it all..
I think Derrick Coleman missed a free throw before Smart’s game-winner.
March Madness, which tracks do the horses circle for this festival?
I am so freakin’ lazy . . . I have a tax accountant for my annual taxes, but even gathering all the bullshit documents is a pain in the ass. Red letter date today, as I finally wrote the letter, with the dozen plus attachments. I have been screwing around with this for the last 3 weeks and finally sent the email. This year he has more work to do, as I moved to California in the first quarter of last year.
Anyone else hate doing their taxes? My next “chore” is renewing my passport. Another ordeal as I am not certain I can do this online . . . Our damn city post office will only process passports if you make an appointment. Ugh. If it’s anything like my experience with the DMV (half dozen trips to get a simple registration and driver’s license), I may cut my wrists. lol
well, this year since I’d spent most of 2020 on EDD (and only had deductions taken out last quarter of year or so)
knew I had to pay Federales. Finished return, sent $$ online out of bank account. Shortly thereafter, Biden’s stimulus package passes–with a policy that IRS will forgive first $10 K of EDD earnings, so I should have larger portion of what i paid coming back.
Relative who goes to H R Block told me feds still unsure how to handle that–they don’t want to process all the amended returns involved, so they might just send whatever $$ owed back. But no refunds will be sent at all right now and H R said best move is to wait maybe til May. Deadline has been extended to file iirc May 17.
Plus whatever you put on AGI to feds gets automatically sent to state of Cal, which of course in my case is incorrect figure by $10 K or so. So state also has to figure out how they will handle it. Plot thickens.
Willie or anyone else . . . I did not get anything from the State of California. Is that normal? I did get my property assessment from the county, but nothing like I normally got from Colorado (1099-G).
Should all be online free of charge, run by an all seeing, oppressive central federal authority. There shouldn’t be a job called tax accountant, or services like TurboTax. Manually filling in data the government or other financial services already have on you is absurd.
Agree unequivocally. Unnecessary bullshit.
Would that be the old flat tax thing that they been kickin’ around for decades?
Loo, that would simplify writing the software for sure. Want to get a rational tax code? You could do worse than adjusting your business processes to contain the cost of software development.
Ever think of how insane professional sports drafts are?
In what other profession do you have no say in where you’re going to earn your living?
from one point of view, you’re just going to work for the league and the league decides which office you work in. Don’t like it? I guess there’s always Japan, Korea, Italy, Canada, etc.
If there were no drafts, wouldn’t the talent eventually have to spread itself around anyway?
Monopoly power’s gonna monopolize.
Tru dat. Unless you are Eli Manning or John Elway.
Argh, brutal loss for Rutgers vs. #2 Houston, two late turnovers and not getting rebounds did them in.
Xoot, I hear ya on Fairly. He was a tough listen. Fortunately the Giants were good during his time on Giants broadcasts so that helped a lot.
Remember Herb Caen’s running tally of fairleyisms? Good times.
My favorite musical video discovery on YouTube today was the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing a cover of the Beach Boys’ “I Get Around,” at a Brian Wilson tribute concert in March of 2001. They totally nail it.
I am going to share this with a friend who’s completely stuck on early to mid 60s pop. He loves the Beatles more than you do, and the Beach Boys aren’t far behind. This cover will annoy him to no end, should he bother to listen. I am just feeling that way today.
Nice video Zumie!
Hot Chili 🌶 Peppers nailed it!
that wasn’t half bad.
Zumie I agree Ron Fairly was a hard sell to listen too, for me though it had to be Lindsey Nelson( he was terrible broadcaster imo)with his outrageous butt ugly outlandish suits he use to wear! Talk about a clown 🤡 act ( no offense Bozo) having to listen to him are on the tube for 3 long years are so?
Especially having to listen to those guys after having the great Lon Simmons set a high standard.
I read a thing recently that reminded me that Mike Love of the Beach Boys is brother to Stan Love, former Chicago Bull.
But I don’t think I previously knew that Kevin Love is Stan’s son, and Mike’s nephew.
Zumiee, you might be thinking of the great Bob “Butterbean” Love, an all-time great Bull.
Stan never played for the Bulls. (looked it up)…
Oops. Yeah, Stan Love was more of a journeyman player.
“He loves the Beatles more than you do”
Well, that is a high bar, indeed. 🙂
“and the Beach Boys aren’t far behind”
I get that. I’m totally onboard with them, too.
Pac 12 yet to lose game as Beavs hold off Okie St. Tough one tomorrow as 2 seed Iowa, one of few Big 10 teams still left, takes on Oregon.
Michigan Iowa Maryland only 3 left after 9 selected.
Blade I’m with you. I hate gathering the crap for my taxes!!!
Who knew Will Ferrell was such a good drummer?
Fucking turbo tax is the same. I used it last year and they don’t export the existing info well at all.
Looks like we might get money back this year for the first time in a while.
Thanks, Donald.