Remembering Better Days
Honestly don’t have it in me to even think about the Giants much less write anything about them. Enjoy this cool pic from back in the day.
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A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
If they can’t beat the Dbacks with Rodon, then the roster furniture needs some serious re-arrangement and replacement. They should think seriously about trading him, I don’t see him sticking around for another season of this…
No, Rodon is gone and I don’t want him. Toronto needs SPs so he can hang with Gasman.
I’m thinking our pitching woes could be that Andrew Bailey is missing Posey to help with the staff, I recall a lot of visits to the mound that Bailey just let Buster do the talking.
Also, letting last year’s main hitting coach, Donnie Ecker, take the bench coach job with Texas just may have added to our hitting woes, especially after he got the three amigo old fucks to buy into his program.
And lastly, our defense, shift/placement isn’t the only thing, the players have to execute correctly and that seems to be lacking a lot, so could we also actually be missing Ron Wotus? Could it really be that losing those three guys is a major part of the difference from last year?
One thing I do know, that guy who is named the quality assurance coach, sucks.
Interesting points. Watching the crowd of coaches, I thought it was hard to tell how much Wotus actually did last year outside the 3B box, but the hitting coach must have been key. And I’m not sure we fully appreciate the importance of Buster’s return and revival. He led the team in intelligence, RH hitting, and D. At his retirement conf, when he praised Webb for developing into an ace, he modestly underplayed his own role in that triumph. We miss him in many different ways now.
technically, Ruf had a slightly better OPS than Buster, but with142 fewer PAs
Oh definitely miss Posey for so many things. That’s a great sentence, “He led the team in intelligence, RH hitting and D.” All things lacking in current Giants. I think it also shows up in pitch calling and general downward trend of pen guys, especially with Casali out for so long.
absolutely
Well, if you really miss Wotus and Vogelsong…
https://mail.yahoo.com/b/folders/4/messages/AJp3Sy9CYzrJYuARIQRdMORW6VY
Ahhh. The Stick. Our favorite shit hole. Pre-erector set bleachers even. Still get a little sad/angry that the Stick is gone and there’s no football stadium there. That spot was fine for football. The weather in September through mid November was perfect. Had my share of rainy games, but all in all it was great. Fucking Kedorkian had to let the lease slide so he could build his cracker jack tinker-toy heat-box stadium in the fucking mudflats of Santa Clara. Fuck him and all those other Yorkdorks. Eddie, you stupid greedy bastard.
The Giants? The crux of the biscuit is the sore core. They were supposed to at least play some of the time. They haven’t, and Yaz/Slater/Joc/platooney guy du jour has not worked like last year. There’s no consistency off the bench like last year, and everything Mr. Kotter tries turns to shit. The septic touch.
I just can’t really blame the coaching for shit like Slater missing fly balls and throwing to the wrong base. Or shit like Garcia coming in and walking a .156 hitter on 4 pitches when his job was to get the one righty out to end the inning and instead faces 2 lefties and gets shelled. Or even the hitters watching pitch after hittable pitch go by as they flail at the balls in the dirt.
Mercedes and Gonzo are what they are. Below average defenders. I’m sure they are being coached on how to catch but there’s only so much the coaches can do. Estrada and Villar are pretty much the same. Below average defenders. I just find it hard to believe that they have gotten this far in the game w/o being very good at reading the ball off the bat or making the most basic of plays. This is high school stuff. I mean, Joc ain’t all that but at least he’s competent.
At some point, the players have to be accountable for the quicksand they are mired in.
Maybe they all need a plateful of Mrs. Vogey’s enchiladas. Fuck, I don’t know.
that’s a helluva digest of alimentary metaphor. well done.
lol.thx – digest/ alimentary. I saw what you did there!
I just hope the front office has the plums to trade Joc and Rodon if the team goes like 2-6 these next few games before the deadline.
i never got tired of Candlestick. It was all i knew. Sure I was excited to go to the new yard like everyone else but I still miss the days of the Stick terribly—so much fun had at that place.
Agreed. Me and buddy froze our asses off one night, while watching the awesome Gary Sheffield whack a couple loud fouls in one early AB, and then straighten one out later on that was just crushed with that wicked swing of his.
George Foster’s return trips there as a Red usually featured line drives bouncing off or over the fence.
When we were 12, my buddy John and I would hop on the SamTrans express to the Stick for $2.00 and buy $2.50 bleacher seats. Mom wouldn’t let us do that for night games, but we did play hooky a couple times and did it for weekend games all the time.
So many forgettable baseball games with some epic ones thrown in. But SOOOO many awesome football games.
One of the greatest games I saw, aside from the 1994 NFC Championship win over Dallas, and the epic Minnesota playoff game where my friend Kevin bailed me out of jail an hour before kickoff to make it to the game 5 SECONDS before kickoff, was a shootout between Joe Montana and Dan Fouts. Beautiful September day that saw the Niners lose 41-37. Both offenses were on fire and couldn’t be stopped. And we had a very good defense.
Just saw Stanton on IL with achilles tendonitis. Yaz would be nice fit over there, no?
Yaz on the Yanks? Carl would disown him!
What I love about that pic of Will is it looks like he’s working on going the other way. Closed stance and looking down the line.
OMG. We should get someof these made a la the Bore Core.
BTW, screw the Yankees.
How hard is it to be a Yankee fan?
Like being a kid in a candy store with an unlimited debit card.
Should we keep Judge next season? Cost a lot, but whatever.
Should we trade for Soto and extend him now?
Hell, let’s keep Judge AND get Soto…
Oh, and let’s get Rodon from the Giants, they suck and will deal. Throw ’em a couple of bones from our top 15-25 minor leaguers, see if they bite…
You know Snarkk, for the past 20 or so years they refer to their fans as “guests” in all their promotional ads.
“The first 15,000 guests receive a Derek Jeter bobble head.”
So annoying – to me anyway…
Cubs Giants is Sunday ESPN game this week. Looking at WS, no one has repeated since Yanks of 2000. Even in last 10 years look at what happened to some of the teams–Rangers Royals and Tigers that Giants beat are all awful. the Cubs are tanking and so are the 2019 Nats, who’s best player (that they have left) won’t take $400 mil to stick around. Guardians RedSox and Rays are fringy WC teams, and LA as we all know has 1 cheapo crown.
How many of you west coasters can identify the building dead center?
Flat Iron, stayed at a nice B&B on East 23rd a few times.
Correct, James (except it’s one word)…
https://www.history.com/topics/landmarks/flatiron-building
The B&B was probably W23rd, too . . . .
I had it as well:)
I don’t know that building? But didn’t they build a statue of the Fab 4 near by with them all in black?
I think it’s in the Pier Head district near the Mesery ( sp?) ferry building?
There’s a similar but smaller flatiron building in downtown Oakland, where Telegraph angles into Broadway; it’s featured in the very fine Boots Riley film Sorry to Interrupt You.
Could be Rodon’s Giant finale.
Hope it’s a good one…
1. Austin Slater (R) CF
2. Wilmer Flores (R) 2B
3. Darin Ruf (R) LF
4. Yermin Mercedes (R) DH
5. Thairo Estrada (R) SS
6. Brandon Belt (L) 1B
7. David Villar (R) 3B
8. Joey Bart (R) C
9. Luis Gonzalez (L) RF
P: Rodon (L)
Hope Rodon doesn’t pull an oblique or some such, need him available to be dealt…
mm I’ll miss him. I’m with Krukow–he battles out there and has high hard one always at the ready. Also think he doesn’t give a flying F about pitch count.
I won’t. More often than not, he’s at 100 pitches by the 5th inning.
He’s a minute away from TJ surgery.
Bingo…
ah Dr. Nostradamus has checked in.
I’m sure there are GMs out there who would love to know if any of their pitchers are “a minute away from TJ surgery.”
Can’t recall the Giants ever blatantly selling off at the TD even in down years.
But my memory ain’t what it used to be…
When they were bad they had nothing to sell.
I mean, can you get a fungo bat for Guy Sularz?
Well, thinking a little more recently…Ray-Ray? Winn? Feliz?
Rodon has 10 quality starts out of his 19. In each of those 10 he’s gone 6 innings and allowed 2 (not 3) runs or less, including complete game shutout.. Only allowed 5 HRs all season.
In total he’s allowed 2 runs or less 15 times out of those 19 starts. At 110 innings, second most on team only to Webb who has made one more start and pitched 13 more innings.
He’s good, but a rental.
Giants won’t sign a LT expensive deal with a guy that throws that hard, just begging to have a TJ. So, he’s outta here next year anyway, let’s get something for his services to a (hopefullly AL) contender down the stretch…
Quality starts? 5 innings and 3 runs isn’t a quality start when you’ve thrown 110 pitches.
It’s on B/R game log–10 starts of 6 innings and 2 runs or less allowed is what he’s done for SF this season so far.
#1 problem, in my opinion, with baseball is something that can’t really be fixed. When I was a kid, all you ever heard about was batting average, HRs, and RBIs. On-base-percentage was hardly mentioned, and players didn’t get paid for that. In those days, a guy hitting .220 but walking a lot was still considered a .220 hitter.
But now this is the era of get a lot of pitches, draw walks, grind out long ABs, etc. Players get paid for the walks now. But baseball wasn’t invented to watch players grind out walks. The strike zone was invented to cause the batter to swing. But drawing lots of walks, and grinding out long ABs and pushing up the opposing pitchers’ pitch-counts helps a team win. Plus, batters are real good nowadays at fouling off nasty pitches and prolonging ABs.
So there’s no answer to this boring element of baseball these days. Unless tamper with the strike zone, I guess, but then there would just be more strike outs, and that’s not better.
If your team is winning, you don’t care about all the walks in baseball. But if your team isn’t winning, or you’re watching some other teams play a game, it’s a different story.
Rodon’s already had his one TJ surgery, don’t know the percentages of players having 2, but he seems good to go with his Steve Austin 6 million dollar rebuilt arm.
They have to beat Gilbert Grape tonight , this guy is terrible! No reason not to tattoo him,
I’ve been saying for 10 years if they called the strike zone right it would speed up the game.
Robo umps will do the job if the actual umps won’t.
Calling the strike zone better would get the bat off the batter’s shoulder.
Making this bum Gilbert throw 28 pitches and they still can’t score, it’s just the Giants way lately, no clutch hits!!
my 7-yr-old son and I attended that Jeff Kent 10th inning walk-off game they just featured on the tv feed. He remembers every detail. I remember the walkoff.
a competent outfielder might have jumped and caught that ball. Ruf just bumbled into the fence. He’s a fucking DH like 10 other guys on our team. If you’re wondering about why our defense sucks, that’s the #1 reason.
Ruf never jumped.
Not one inch…
Kap keeps running a bunch of DH’s out there to play defense and this is just going to happen all year.
Wow. Nice job, Ruf. Do you know how to jump? He may not have got it, but that was feeble.
Well, jumping is not one of the 5 tools of a baseball player.
It’s just something you’d think they would do when it’s called for…
Ballgame!!!
He catches it if he’s outfielder but he’s not.Needed Tauchman on that one..
The whole outfield sucks on defense..
Wilmet fixes Ruf’s bungled stumble into the wall.
Offensively, Gonzalez has been a nice upgrade over the Grave Duggar anyway.
Has any media person come right out and asked Crawford why he thinks he’s been incapable of hitting anything like he did last season?
Wilmet!
Mr.ED with a cool red bat goes yard!
They have to keep Mr.Ed Clutch around , he’s betsolid throughout his career here..
A pulse. Wilbur!!
How many Martes are there?
4-5 active…
Sell Sell Sell.
Jesus Christ.
Walk, HBP, 3-run bomb. Good riddance to this stiff.
Rodon’s trade value…
There is no good news, Kruk.
Someone will trade for him. 20 pitches an inning. Can’t hold the lead. Fuck Rodon.
In the spirit of comity in this, the Flap’s final year, I didn’t hit “post comment” and deleted the following after the Alcantara HR:
The real question isn’t about Ruf’s defense, it’s “how the fuck did Rodon give up a bomb to that utter zero, piece of shit Alcantara?!?” It’s time to unleash some Tyler Rogers style hatred on Rodon’s ass!
Kruk..Yeah Mickey Mantle was a great bunter and was a LH hitter?
Uh no Kruk he was a switch hitter, which means he batted RH too, hello McFly??
Bart’s body language in the batter’s box reminds me of a pitcher hitting.
Like he doesn’t really want to be there…
He does look super confident when he adjusts those straps just outside the box, though.
it’s the perfect stubble beard, freshly cut and styled by a barber only hours ago — gives him a lift.
Wonderful. Fierce competitor Rodon is a fucking head case, too.
What a PÓS was Rodon there, kicking a leaning bat and nailing Estrada with it is inexcusable.Where did he think the bat would end up in a narrow dugout but hit someone.Estrada needs a Marichal revenge moment on him, what a knucklehead and dangerous situation that could of been. Then to go up and get hit by a pitch, Estrada has to be thinking WTF why me??
Not his worst “why me” moment…
https://www.pinstripealley.com/2018/2/16/17020672/yankees-prospect-thairo-estrada-shot-venezuela
wait a minute, Thairo should take a bat to Rodon’s head in revenge? hahahahahaha!
That 98 Candlestick game I mentioned above, with my 7 yr old son — I didn’t want to haggle over seating charts so I bought walkup tickets in the upper deck above homeplate at the rail. Not a bad view. No one around, except two old timers. We talked for a while. One of them claimed that his father had taken him as a child to the Roseboro-Marichal game. Inherited the season tickets up there, apparently.
Meanwhile, the Giants’ ballpark field is getting chewed up by a soccer game tonight.
shot of the park earlier, just before kickoff, or whatever it’s called, showed the sprinklers on. Is that normal for soccer?
Belt did stuff tonight.
From NY Post article covering tonight’s Met-Yankee showdown…
Aaron Judge — second batter of the game — delivered the kind of homer to right-center that he hits often in New York, just in a different borough. But there could be no claims of short-porch favoritism on this 423-foot blast. It would have been a homer in every park in the majors except against the high right-field wall in Oracle. Free-agency alert: That is the home of the Giants, the team Judge grew up rooting for and the one currently viewed as the biggest offseason threat to the Yankees to land the slugger.
I like Rodon even less now. Wilmer looks at him like ‘what the fuck, dude?’
However many Martes there are, Giants have the worst one.
See my 7:47. . . . hah
And we have the shitty Marte.
Out-hitting them of course.
Mudding baseballs…