That Was Not Good
I didn’t see the final inning but i don’t think a single steal was attempted last night. Am I right? In a meaningless game why wouldn’t you at least try to jazz up a very boring game with some steal attempts? It was fun to see those pitchers throwing 100+ but otherwise that game was lame-o. Even the pick off by Kershaw, he literally lobbed it over there and everyone was like “Wow what a move!”. LOL. He lobbed it like a tee ball coach.
The Trevino mic’d up inning was the highlight for me.
Big Papi and his obnoxious “look at me” act was the lamest.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Thank god…I thought it was just me. Everyone is like “Big Papi is the best!” And I’m like, “the dude was a juicer and half the sh*t he says I can’t even understand!’ How is that even charming? I hated Bonds and he’s a total douche but if one juicer (and there have been many…hello Piazza and Bagwell) gets in then they all get in.
Whoever the first pitcher they mic’ed up was pretty funny. That was mildly entertaining. I mean at least he’s doing something. Mic’ing up an OFer is boring.
Big Papi is up there with Selig and LaRussa as guys who wildly benefitted from steroids yet waltz into the hall with no repercussions while Bonds (and Clemens) rot on the vine.
Ken Caminiti was right.
i foget who he asked but he was talking to a pitcher and he said “what would you throw to get me out?” And I wished so badly I was the one answering that question. “To get you out papi? Well, first I’d get geeked to the gills on steroids and then I’d just throw you my best pitch”
Hah!!! Classic. “First I’d throw at your head, and then I’d get you tested. You’d get thrown out of the game.”
Big convo in Chron btw Slush and Z, takes up entire inside page plus page 1. Lot of stuff said, but couple things stood out to me.
slush asked about all the platooning not favored by fans, and Z said, “I think there are a lot of benefits to operating the roster that way.” Further,…”spreading out the workload among the entire roster has long terms health benefits.”
Later he adds caveat, “you have (italicized) to have three or four players that play every day. You can’t platoon all nine.”
“I think there are a lot of benefits to operating the roster that way.”, so true, I mean where would we be without those contributions from LaStella, Walton, Luke Williams or Stuart fucking Fairchild?
Curious if he mentioned anything about contract extension talks or about any plans going into his 5th year in SF?
Slush didn’t ask about that. Kap and Z are both signed through 2023, correct? Baggs had column in Athletic on this before last season ended, with thought Kap wouldn’t want to be lame duck mgr. and that both seem happy where they are.
Thanks Willie, according to Cot’s, Zaidi is signed through next year and Kapler is through 2024. Not sure about Harris. The reason I ask about Zaidi contract is I wonder how it will affect his upcoming moves. If ownership is happy with him, we may be sellers not buyers at the deadline.
Seems if Kap wants to continue to platoon they are short a RH OF (Ruf is not OF) and LH IF, especially if Belt can’t stay on field and LaStella can’t get healthy or hit enough.
Ramos isn’t working out too well in Sac and there isn’t another option there.
One SP and at least one more pen arm at deadline. Maybe more if Rodon walks out on the option.
Ramos’s ceiling is an average to below average corner outfielder (playing center now). I am looking at Matos as (finally) being the future outfielder the GMen have been searching decades for. Quite frankly, the kid is already an outstanding hitter and I hope they aren’t screwing around with his swing. Bring him up in September for a taste and possibly fill a hole next year. He’s ready imo . . .
I didn’t see any of the game and I’m OK with that.
Pitcher Nestor Cortes cool glove was the highlight for me in very colorful red,white & blue it was sharp..
Why would anyone steal a base are bunt anymore unless? Unless your a stupid 1st time player and will surely get razzed by the veterans..
Carney commissioner Manfred with his latest demoralizing of baseball, was going to have a 3 batters hitting HR’s from each league to end a tie?And what if that doesn’t get the job done? Skills competition by the balldudes? What a doucebag Mantool is for this lost sport now!
Agree about Ortiz, that segment was annoying as hell. As for lack of steals, for the NL anyway they hardly had anyone on base. What’d they get, 2 hits?
From a strategic standpoint, what exactly is the argument against utilizing the platoon? They won 107 games last year, and have a winning record this year despite the injuries to key players. As for Bozo’s list of losers, there have always been scrubs on every Giants team. The fact that Zaidi tosses a lot of them aside quickly doesn’t make the team any more anonymous than when the Joe Pettini’s of the world populated the roster for an entire season.
well, that teams like LA don’t platoon Freeman Betts or Trea Turner. Braves aren’t platooning Olson Swanson Riley or Acuna either. Regression and dropoff has only made things worse except for Slater and Flores.
Looking at present roster, the 3-4 everyday guys in Sf lineup (whomever they are) hardly are comps to above.
That’s still not an argument against the strategy, which was highly successful last year and is hardly a failure this year. Ideally, Belt, Longoria, Crawford, Yaz would all have 500+ PAs this year, and Bart would have stepped up to give the team Buster’s 400. I don’t think the aim is to avoid having top caliber players who hit L/R well.
My view is not so much against platooning as to the revolving waiver wire door of platoon only players. I still think Zaidi is so fixated with his success in signing Muncy, that he continues going after the jack of all trade master of none type of players, and that we have to platoon based on those players lack of skills.
Last year was successful mainly because we had career type seasons from our aging players, that core group wasn’t so much kept fresh from platooning but from time off on the IL.
It would have been better to sign Freeman and Correa rather than Belt and Crawford. I think Zaidi would agree with that. What non-platoon player(s) should he have brought into the fold this year after Longoria and Belt went down, and Ruf’s/Craw’s numbers went south?
Ruf is an example of a player that you should platoon, he should never be a starter. I can’t explain Craw’s number drop but having a player that could fill in for him at least defensively was an issue.
I want Wade in the lineup but not playing 1st, if you bring up Villar to play 3rd, play him at 3rd not 2nd base.
Is it your argument that if the plan worked last year, it shouldn’t need adjustments?
No, my argument is that pretty much everything Zaidi and Kapler have done has been driven by the constraints of the injury situation and the fact that you don’t immediately abandon players who have a track record for you. And that, in the absence of a roster featuring multiple stars, a platoon heavy strategy is entirely rational. BTW, Ruf hit RHers very well last year — you didn’t want to give him a chance to *escape* the platoon role?
No, I don’t want to see Ruf as an everyday player and I doubt you do either.
My snide comment on Willie’s post wasn’t meant to steal the thread or get into some long argument, so I’ll stop.
Of course not. But he is a clodhopper in the fine tradition of Morse and Burrell, and I’m glad his numbers are picking up.
Who are the three-four everyday starters now? Villar, Thairo and Bart? Joc and Yaz get X-d vs. LHs all the time. Slater? Obviously, no.
The problem with 2022 Giants platooning is that the talent level’s low. The alternatives don’t hit and often don’t play the field as members of a cohesive team. Injuries play a part: We miss Craw, of course, now. But we’re looking at a drop off in offense there. His first-half OPS this year is .630 — last year, it was .921. And isn’t it about time to ditch those captain caps?
If the frenetic platooning is responsible for some of the team’s “success” so far — the 437/386 run diff; the slightly above .500 record — it’s also responsible for some of its repeated failures — the costly errors, most memorably. AI can’t effectively plan ahead if the talent’s generally behind the curve.
Agreed, sorry I didn’t see this before I posted above.
Ok, so there’s nothing wrong with the strategy per se. FWIW, Walton, Krizan, Williams, Papierski, Tom, Padlo, and Ford had 140 PAs among them, half of them by Walton. Gonzalez has been a shaky defender, but probably not because of a lack of coordination with his team mates. Is it Joc’s fault?
of course there’s something wrong with the strategy per se this season. It’s given us mediocrity with bells on. Fine if you want to finish just above .500 and out of the PS.
I’d like to see Joc, Yaz, Wilmer and Thairo start just about every game, for a while, esp. at home. Villar, Gonzalez and Bart are probably inevitable. Ruf/Mercedes/Wade/Slater can DH. I guess we do have a SS problem now.
Maybe your proposal will solve the “cohesion” problems on defense. They do seem to be scoring runs at a pretty good clip, despite the misguided team management.
The Pythagorean W/L record, as of today, is stellar, significantly better than SD’s. In seriousness, a FO and stat and coaching staffs as smart as ours all should be able to adapt mid-season. Maybe we’ll get a boost at the deadline.
Sure, we did this last year with Tauchman and Skye Bolt (!), Dick Dick Dickerson, and others. And it is kind of working, but we have NO bench guys worth a damn. When Wynns is your pinch hitter late, we are toasted bread. And forget extra inning games. There’s no one to pinch hit or pinch run late as we have shot our wad by the 7th inning in many cases.
What is irksome to me anyway is the pulling of guys, mainly Pederson, halfway through a game because of one AB matchup in the 5th-6th inning. It’s very short-sighted to yank your best players because on one matchup.
Right it’s the construction of the roster, which unfortunately was full of rose colored miscalculations by FO. I don’t blame Kap much for trying to mix and match who he has–a team of hitters not good enough to overcome how pitching and defense have faded. Bottom line, they’ve gone from a 107 win team to 13th best in all baseball and that’s not a process to trust.
Part of the miscalculation was not taking into account how each team in the Division has gotten better. Dogs lost the oft injured Seager but added Freeman, helluva hitter. Pads with a better mgr. and stellar pitching are better even without Tatis Jr playing at all. AZ and Rox too so if you wanted to win it again Giants would have to be an even stronger team and they aren’t. Heartbreak almost seems inevitable.
Before any company sets a strategy, it must first understand its objectives, and then set a strategy and devise the tactics necessary to implement the strategy to thus hopefully meet the objectives. In that interview mentioned above, Z fairly clearly indicates a main objective: to spread out the “workload” to the entire roster to foster long-term health benefits. That’s certainly a fine objective. Problem is, an “entire roster” of platoony types will probably result in less overall talent. Workload is spread out, but talent is watered down. Question is, do those benefits outweigh finding a handful of solid position player starters who play most games? You know, like, the way the Giants did it in all 3 of their championship years. Is it harder to find fewer excellent players, or to find more platoony types? Perhaps a question of quality vs. quantity.
Obviously the team’s overall objective is to WIN. Not just games, but championships. If Z is saying in the end that yeah, you can’t platoon all positions, need 3 or 4 *starters*, then that combination could be more sustainable than all platoony players. But the main *starters* we’ve seen under Z have included Belt, Craw, and before this year, Buster. Leftovers. I guess Z needs a little more time to see if he can find Belt/Craw type long-term starters. But I’m not sure he wants to; he’s indicated that in this day and age, you’re really only looking 2 or 3 years down the road in building a team, which would likely negate any strategy to have a Belt, Crawford, or Buster playing all those years into the future. I’m not going to criticize Z’s approach; it’s simply a matter of not really liking it so far. I like a set group of starters, that’s my problem. If Z’s approach can work over the next few years, well, so be it.
Objectives are not goals. Back to the leadership academy for you!
Slater is 29. Starting to hit right handers a little. .303 overall with OPS above 800. Leadoff guy who can field. He should play almost every day. Has some power that might be seen more often with more play.
James is right regarding the platoon and I haven’t seen an argument against it or coherent counter proposal – “That’s still not an argument against the strategy, which was highly successful last year and is hardly a failure this year. Ideally, Belt, Longoria, Crawford, Yaz would all have 500+ PAs this year, and Bart would have stepped up to give the team Buster’s 400.”
Perhaps more important, when everyone gave their guesses for what the Giants record would be, everyone agreed that the Giants would still be very good, but not “107 win good” as last season. Why the optimism? No one anticipated Belt and Crawford would revert back to the bore core (or is it sore core now?). Equally important, Longoria would be on the field more than in the doctor’s office. Despite these issues and others, it seems that the platoon strategy has kept the Giants above water. I hate this type of baseball, but I give credit to Z and Kap for adjusting to what the team is at this moment. Their pre season plans went up in flames when these issues cropped up. That’s not their fault.
Obviously, it’s true that the platoony plus PH PH PH PH approach is responsible for the Giants’ mediocre situation now, but that doesn’t mean that it has really wrung the best out of this vast, extended roster. Other, less programmatic, more imaginative approaches might have done better. But, who knows.
I’m going with sore core because they can’t stay on the field.
The only argument against platoony toons ball is that last year’s platoon seems to be a lot better than this year’s.
But everyone is down from last year. Except maybe Slater.
Some money might have helped.