Summertime and We’re Still in First Place
I know it’s early but it’s hard to not like Sammy Long Legs. He throws strikes, gets k’s, and he’s got a variety of pitches he seems able to command. Plus he’s a lefty.
Now we sit back on our off day and watch the Dodgers and the Padres beat up on eachother.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
“Summertime, and the livin’ is easy”
ridies on the microphone with ras mg.
I have to admit, I was going Gershwin and not Sublime. 🙂
Bradley’s on the . . . which is why the new(er) band never plays the song.
Loved the beat-down yesterday; enjoyed the Bums panic to almost lose to the worse team in baseball; will enjoy the Bums and Pads fight for the crumbs of 2nd place as they stare are the black and orange flag waving atop their stadium position flag.
Maybe the Giants are only in second gear, ready to power shift when Ruf and Dickerson soon return and the confidence and chemistry becomes unstoppable with Longo’s return.
Maybe my 85 win prediction was light. I’ll stay positive and assume mgmt will correct the needs to get there
That’s a cool thought, DZ.
I hope they really do have stadium position flags.
Does every baseball stadium have them?
The Giants’ ballpark has that.
“Them summer days
Those summer days
That’s when I had
Most of my fun“
My first concert…
Sly? Wow! Cool first concert.
And their “unknown” opening act:
Earth Wind & Fire
!!!!
My big claim to fame of seeing an unknown opening act was when I saw Sonic Youth in concert in SF, with unknown opening act Nirvana.
Hope all Bozos are safe from Ms. Claudette.
Thanks, Willie. We are all good here, storm wise anyway. A quick event with some rain and wind, I’m not sure if the winds got up to tropical storm strength, it came through pretty early this AM. Not Claudette related, but it does look like it’ll be a wet week for us in the Outer Banks. Cheers man.
Bums and Padres keep winning. Bums three in a row and padres four. But Giants have won 6 of last 7 and are 7 of the last 10.
Amazing they keep the pace with missing key players, but I think that is a testament to the depth that Z has built into the club.
Otani is scheduled to pitch the 2nd game of the two-gamer. What an incredible talent.
“Every now and then we hear our song
We’ve been having fun all summer long”
The Fillmore used to always have 3 bands a night and sometimes the 3rd act was pretty good. A lot of the shows I went to it was Quicksilver. My memory is a little hazy but if I remember correctly at a Doors show the 3rd act was either Muddy Waters or John Lee Hooker. Those shows were $3.50 to get in the door.
Only hit Fillmore once, not til ’70s. My parents talked about going to Winterland, for skating and Ice Follies shows, before Graham took it over for concerts.
Looking it up, September 1966 first show was Airplane and Paul Butterfield, wow.
Yeah my Grandmother used to take me to the Ice follies whenever they passed through. It was pretty cool stuff.
If I remember right Barnum and Bailey’s Circus passed by there also. It was a 3 ring affair.
That price sounds familiar…
By now I’m sure most of you saw how the Yanks-A’s game ended yesterday. Maybe Oscar Madison was at the game.
Excellent, Mac!
I believe the story was that they wanted Clemente to hit into it, but he refused because he felt it was embarrassing to either himself and/or the Pirates…
So great!
Absolutely priceless!
It really is a great scene. They filmed it before the game, I’ve seen one account that Clemente did several takes but couldn’t run slow enough to get out at first, so they went with the slower Maz.
And superb cameo for the legendary Heywood Hale Broun…
https://sabr.org/journal/article/roberto-clemente-and-the-odd-couple-two-different-stories/
Apparently there’s more accounts and theories on this than JFK…
Hope Long works out…really believe you need solid LHP to handle Seager Bellinger and Muncy (all due back soon). Wood, um, needs to regroup.
Days off coming up give Giants the opportunity to flip Wood into a start late next week and and/or put him on the 10 day IL with whatever faux injury is needed to put him there and get him right…
I’ve always liked 2 lefties in the starting rotation it balances out a too dominant RHP staff and it works well when they were effective like Bum&Sanchez were facing a heavy lefty Dodger LU which still holds true.
Yeah I’m pulling for the kid Sammy Long to succeed, since Wood is spinning out of control lately.
Giants had a pitcher back in the 70’s a lefty I watched pitch and thought this guys going to be special.He went 14-7 in 72 then won 24 games in 73 on shitty Giants team he was one of the bright highlights, but then he battled injuries the next year was terrible and his career was cut short, his name was Ron Bryant who almost won a CY Young made the Allstar team then flamed out, sort of like the same path Atlee Hammaker did, a great season gone amuck after he went to the A/S game and promptly served up a Denny’s Grandslam to Fred Lynn and he was never the same again..
Poor Ron Bryant. Pretty sure he was hurt bad in a swimming pool accident and never the same. Probably best known for his big teddy bear accomplice. I remember Caldwell having a decent year and never understood why they dumped Falcone so quick. Way back then I thought him and the Count were gonna be our Koosman & Seaver…
Pete Falcone! Haven’t thought of that guy in decades. The trying times were fun but they were brutal.
Pretty good deal to get Larry Herndon for Bryant, though.
I do not remember this, though.
Wonder how much alcohol was involved in that fall.
Supreme Court today ruled in a rare unanimous decision that the NCAA, under anti-trust laws, cannot restrict non-money compensation (grad scholarships and paid internships, and in-kind goodies like computers) paid to student athletes. Case rep for female student athletes was Cal basketball center Justine Hartman. This doesn’t approve the image and likeness compensation laws that are increasing across the states that are pro-student. But, the 9-0 decision shows the NCAA that their outrageous stranglehold over the athletes’ terms and conditions of play is steadily and properly being eroded — the fed courts aren’t bailing them out. They better cut a deal before the big schools totally jettison the NCAA as a governing authority and they write their own rules that allow for pay, but stop the bleeding before the kids are totally free to make as much cash as they should, ending the Div. 1 gravy train of compensation-free employees…
Once in a while, you get shown the light…
In the strangest of places if you look at it right…
Some will know this line from a song…
Speaking of Sublime!! : )
That line always reminds me of the line in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
“We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave… So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.”
as I noted before the season started, new swing:
I disagree with sending Wade down. It’s not the right move, IMO.
“LaMonte Wade Jr.’s bat has been so prized he has batted leadoff every time he’s started this month. In Jason Vosler’s last eight games, the flexible infielder is 6-for-17 with a pair of doubles while filling in for Evan Longoria.
Both were victims of the Giants’ depth.
San Francisco optioned Wade and Vosler to Triple-A Sacramento to make room for returning Alex Dickerson (back strain) and Darin Ruf (hamstring strain), who have been activated off the injured list for the start of a two-game set in Anaheim on Tuesday.
The Giants are set to face lefty Andrew Heaney on Tuesday and are in line to possibly see southpaws Sean Manaea and Cole Irvin in the weekend’s series against the A’s, so Wade’s and Vosler’s time in the majors may have taken a dip anyway.”
Dick, Tauchman, and Ruf sure need to show more than they’ve shown this season.
I’m starting to regret that Tauchman grand-slam.
Purely an option play.
Wade and Vosler have options. Plus bunch of lefty oppo starters this week, Wade has been oh-for LHPs. Plus, Tauchman has no options left, he would have to be DFA’d, somebody might take him. All things equal, Tauchman is the guy to go. He frequently seems overmatched at the plate, pure and simple. Not that he’s in a slump, just can’t handle the pitches. I assume Tauchman may be gone sometime later, and when Wandy’s trade for him is further in the rear view mirror…
Right, it’s hard for any team exec to admit they were the loser in a trade.
Yep, Tauchman has had his moments with glove and bat, but as a hitter, other than a couple of super ABs, it looks like his offense is really poor, no matter how much the broadcast crew tries to dress him up with the walks he gets…
Even with the walks, his onbase % is only .287 and his OPS is .558.
Wade’s numbers in comparison are .344 and .814. And he played well on defense, as did Tauchman.
And Wade nailed down the leadoff spot. Now the lineup will have to contort to fill that spot. Probably Yaz will bat leadoff, but over the weekend he twice hit 2-run HRs in the first inning, showing the value of having someone bat ahead of him in the first inning.
Its June 21st..Savor this incredible day as the SF Giants have finally risen to the top of MLB Power Rankings with the BEST RECORD in Baseball 46-26 yes an astonishing 20 games over .500 that could not be denied any longer by befuddled committees always looking for a reason they can no longer keep them from the top spot!!
So savor that best steak 🥩, best seafood 🦞,best wine 🍷, best bourbon 🥃, best beer 🍺 best dessert 🧁
and a damm good Romeo Juliana Cuban Cigar to have a knowing nod satisfaction moment as the Giants are the best of the best in baseball ⚾️ and well deserved!!!
Might the speedy Grave Duggar get a shot at lead off vs. righties with Wade sent down?
Good point.
He’s got a good eye, but obviously has to keep the strikeouts down which he has lately…
Carl Nassib has a lot of courage, good for him. Too many gay kids grow up thinking that being gay is something that has to remain a secret. Really interested to see how this plays out.
also donating 100K to the Trevor Project, as just a fringe guy who could get black balled by the league over this, was a pretty ballsy thing to do, too
If he can play, he’ll have a job…
It definitely took courage to announce it, but it would have been a way bigger deal years ago.
Everything is so on display now, I didn’t even know he was the first to go public.
I would have assumed it’s been done many times.
And no doubt in my mind that there have already been hundreds of gay players in the NFL…
no this is the first active player. We’ll see, dudes in the nFL are not known as the most tolerant of people.
there’s an article from 2014 that said back then 23,000 NFL players have played in a pro non pre-season game. So, there’s probably been at least 1000 maybe more……
The way I think(?), those 1,000 paved the way with their silence.
They’ve already proven it wasn’t an issue…
Them having to live for years “in the closet” is not a good situation.
They deserved better than that.
being silent about who you are is not paving the way for anything.
Vlad, Jr. says he won’t do the HR derby. Good for him. He won’t be risking an oblique injury that would mess up the terrific season he’s having.
“…Wade… has clearly proven he belongs at major league level…” according to Merc beat writer Kerry Crowley, and will probably get more opportunity with big club.
Slater btw also has options. hmmnn
Things were going so well, though. I hate to see the momentum possibly get disrupted.
Also a good move- Steph Curry is not going to accept a spot on the U.S. Olympic team. He will turn 34 in the middle of next season. The U.S. talent pool is very deep for the Olympics.
Has the U.S. ever not won the gold in basketball since they started using pros?
In 2004, the U.S. pros won a Bronze; pretty embarrassing. The U.S. realized it had gotten too casual about winning the gold every time. They realized the hard way that many other nations had greatly improved their programs.
Not that it’s bad for other nations to win the gold sometimes. Probably grows the sport even more globally.
U.S. third ’04 in Athens, Argentina got the gold. Had to look it up.
Don’t understand the idea that if someone claimed Tauchman off waivers it would be a big deal. Weakest teams in NL get first shot at him. Cody Ross he ain’t.
Giants don’t have shortage of OFs either
Z-Harris gotta swallow some pride and admit the trade was a dud.
they gave up nothing for him. There’s no pride to swallow. And he has won games for us. How many games has the guy we traded him for won for the yankees?
Wasn’t former Dodger and A’s Glenn Burke the first openly gay player to come out of the closet?
yes but this is the first time anyone in the NFL has come out while playing (outside of Sam who never played in a real game)
I wonder if Tauchman, Slater are being put on the spot — produce now or else. That’s probably not the case, but pinch hitting Slater for Duggar, allowing Wade to stay in against lefties, sticking with Dubon does feel a little like they’re testing out what they have on a now overcrowded roster. Tough decisions.
It’s not easy being the best team in baseball.
I’m a Z-liever!
you should be. Even Sock Man, just look at that first amazing catch he made on Pujols bomb. He doesn’t make that and they are in danger of being ruined. But he makes it and they went on to sweep LA. He has been a fantastic addition in terms of wins he’s helped us secure, even indirectly like the example I listed above. And, we gave up nothing for him. He doesn’t seem to be able to hit much and as others have noted we have lots of outfielders. But his contributions considering what we gave up have been huge.
Martin Jenkins, now on the Calif SCt, made the Seahawks roster for part of a season. DB I think. Once cut, he went to law school. I met him when he was a federal trial judge in SF. I had no idea he was gay. Wasn’t relevant though. I thought he was a great judge.
Tauchman has helped win some games and helped lose some games. His WAR is currently 0.2.
stupid stat to tout. How do you think the Giants would have done had he not caught that Pujols home run the next few games? I’m glad you noted WAR here it highlights how bad MLB stat analysis has become.
and how has that guy we traded him for done? I honestly have no idea but since you’re so down on the trade I’m assuming you’ve been following the other end of it and that’s what’s got you so bent on this pick up?
That’s not what WAR represents.
Obviously, I’ll be rooting for Tauchman. I like winning. 🙂
Up to GM to put best 26 on field. Ramos n Wade will be up and couple guys will go. I think James is right about Slater and Taucman. What someone you traded is doing is irrelevant.
You don’t think Z is measuring his dick against other honchos’? What kinda jock are you?
Padres/Dodgers is on ESPN.
Mets base running is 1962 quality…
After that early season barrage of PH bombs, the Panda’s now hitting under .170
Darvish’s stuff looked good in the first inning, although he ended up throwing 22 pitches.
Machado 3-run HR!
I like the Padre HR medallion. It’s a fun idea. The Phillies hat thing was OK. More teams will probably do that kind of thing eventually.
Players copy each other.
Urias maybe having a lack of Spider sticky-stuff issue?
Misplayed ball to start the game, Cronenworth and Machado hit tough pitches. Don’t believe the sports media hype until a lot of data backs it up.
“and how has that guy we traded him for done?”
I don’t care about the other guy.
What I care about is that I would rather see Wade on the roster than Tauchman.
I have been about 98% supportive of everything Z-Harris have done. I’ve rarely gone negative on them.
Plus, I’ll rant today, but I’ll get over it. I’m 100% pulling for Tauchman to do well.
“That’s not what WAR represents.”
Well, it literally means “wins above replacement,” and it’s never been totally clear who the mythical replacement player is. Is it a Bowker Gang member?
It’s a flawed stat. I just see it as a stat that tries to remind us that players help win games but they also help lose games. I find that kind of interesting.
The stat’s completely clear. There are wiki pages devoted to explaining it; BBRef and fangraphs explain it. Take a look. It’s a useful stat in context. What would be interesting here is if you compared Tauchman’s WAR with the WAR rates of every other Giants LF this year — but of course, you’d have to put those numbers into perspective a bit, according to innings played. But the comparison might tell us something.
I believe that I already agree with you, so I’m a little confused what your original point was.
Rather than thinking in terms of WAR, imagine if Tauchman had a 950 OPS right now. He could have helped the Giants win games they have otherwise lost, even without the amazing heroics. Over 500 PAs, that would definitely be the case. Still, he’s had the good fortune to be pretty terrible and make a huge contribution in a short stint, there’s no gainsaying that.
The Giants we’re enjoying today are a testament to modern statistical analysis. It is totally awesome that the team is finally being run by people as smart as Billy Beane.
Tauchman needs to be viewed in terms of how he was acquired. We paid shit for him. He’s won games for us. And while it can’t be quantified had Pujols hit that bomb it could EASILY have ruined that series and possibly the season. WAR and OPS don’t like to think about stuff like that but it’s at least a possible outcome……
He fits in as a LH bat in Kap’s OCD platooney ball but right now, he ain’t doing very much with the bat this month so he has only so much value. He plays a nice LF and backs up Dickerson;
James, per your 8:03pm…. I recently re-watched Money Ball (haven’t read the book). Flawed in some ways, particularly how it pretty much ignores the huge contribution made by that young dynamic pitching staff at the time, but I understood most of what it focused on, re: hitters, situations, getting on base, etc. But I’m having trouble translating all that into what the Giants are amazingly doing this year. Can someone help me “get” what the G’s are doing in relation to that film as a way to somewhat and simply explain their success so far this year? Like, for example, who on the Giants is the Scott Hatteberg character? Etc. As most of you know, I am not a stats guy, so I thought I’d try to understand this year’s Giants in terms of a simple movie plot………
One element is grind out long at-bats and draw more walks. At the time, Beane was ahead of the rest on emphasizing on-base % over batting average.
From the book, I can’t remember if the A’s were shifting a lot before other teams. They were definitely charting where guys were hitting the ball.
One element also was the coaches working with each hitter to show definitively where they have the best and least success re: balls swung at in or out of the zone. But I was surprised that teams weren’t always already doing that… .
Yeah, using analytics way more than they had ever been used before, such as using analytics to find productive players on the cheap that other teams were under-valuing.
Paul, I’ve mentioned before I’ve never read the book or seen the movie, there was no need after consuming the Bill James stuff since 1982. More importantly, it killed me that the A’s, a team I hated far more than the Dodgers at the time, were the first to put largely unassailable theory into practice. Rather than elaborate on the fact that Zaidi et al’s MO is statistically driven and that a bunch of past their prime and seemingly interchangeable no name platoon players are leading the league in OPS and are second in runs scored, it may be the coaching that’s worth noting. I’ve never been a believer that it makes much of a difference at the ML level. SF’s all out approach and the buy in they’ve achieved seem innovative and unique. Of course, what they’re preaching promotes exactly the kind of baseball everyone on the Flap ostensibly abhors.
Well, only the aesthetics of it. We all like winning. But the sport, overall, is less fun to watch than it used to be, for the vast majority of us.
That’s why a lot of us support some rule changes.
Launch angle can’t be regulated by a rule change. The importance of getting on base and hitting for power has always been the key to scoring a lot of runs. There will be no more Tony Gynns or Rod Carews. Barry Bonds killed them off.
Fair point. Plus the ball was juiced for a few years, and hastened some changes to the way teams approach things.
The book (and, of course, the weak ass movie) completely ignored not only the three great starting pitching performances that year, but also the AS 3B and SS — Chavez and Tejada. Those five powered the a’s through their 21 game winning streak and into the PS and they do not appear in the book at all. The draft scene in the book tells a lot — the a’s selected college players who had some stats they thought they could crunch and they completely overlooked Matt Cain. In the book, Cain’s an anonymous Giants choice on the speakerphone whom the a’s ignore because they have their eyes on someone else who soon thereafter totally craps out.
Chiefs’ Frank Clark arrested in LA for possession of a fuckin’ Uzi.
It’s almost funny…
A Phil Bickford sighting.
The reason MLB didn’t wait until the end of the season to outlaw the Spider stuff is because teams were hitting so lousy that MLB went into panic mode.
MLB had changed the ball again, too.
mlb announced before the season started that it was going to police pitchers’ surface substance use. They’ve adjusted their policing as the players (and probably the union) have responded to the attempt to crack down.
You don’t think the worst combined batting average of MLB in 50 years was a factor?
The D-Backs won a game!
The Dodgers are kind of fielding a scrubini lineup tonight, although their scrubini lineup is pretty darned good.
Tauchman is 5-42 in June with 1 HR, in other words Casali land. Bar for how well backup Cs hit is pretty low especially when team is 18-5 in games when you are behind the plate.
It’s a little higher for reserve OFs.
Here’s a problem with the sport- Dodgers/Padres match-up is a cool thing, and I’m into it; but we head into the 8th inning of a 6-1 game, and it’s just passing the 3 1/2 hour mark. I know the super long commercial breaks are part of the problem. Those aren’t going to change.
I know, some of us have said it a zillion times.
The 9th inning, finally!
Going to the Giants Angels tomorrow! Excited. My 1st live game in 2 years!!
Very cool!
Padres won. Dodgers scored two runs on solo HRs and struck out 16 times.
The early analytics focus on position players reflected in Moneyball makes some sense. A player like Darrel Evans could put up mediocre batting averages pretty much year after year and be undervalued as a result. If a pitcher back in the day had a good WHIP over several seasons, chances are the ERA would also impress more often than not.