USA USA!!!!
Well, at least we have the perfect antitdote for that terrible game: July 4th. The greatest of all the holidays. I’m not overly patriotic. I’d say I’m properly patriotic. But I just love everything about this day, man. And today is fun because The Great San Dawg and I have managed to schedule a golf game. We’ll probably be coming off the course during the last couple of innings of the game. So GO GIANTS! But a day like Independence Day is about so much more than just a baseball game.
Enjoy this awesome day however you choose. Just make sure you appreciate it and the country we live in.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Independence from Britain is awesome, and the Declaration of Independence is one of the most important and influential documents of human freedom in human history (although written by a slave owner); but as a holiday, one of my least favorite.
It just seems like an excuse for a lot of people to drink a lot of alcohol, like New Year’s Eve, another least favorite of mine. (I don’t drink alcohol.)
Plus the fireworks are horribly scary to a lot of dogs and cats. And the fireworks have gotten worse over the years. My area will sound like a war zone tonight with lots of people using loud illegal fireworks.
On the positive side: day baseball today!
Plus, living in the California Central Valley, July 4th is usually 100+ degrees. Although, today will “only” be about 97.
The Declaration’s list of grievances against the king is infected with hyperbole that would seem comic if not for the historical aftermath. This is the final entry in the list:
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.”
It’s a day off. Yay!!!
Happy 4th Giants fans.
Happy 4th of July to everyone and especially to the Men&Woman in all branches of the military for your utmost services in keeping the USA safe.I have my patriotic flag hanging 24/7 everyday proudly with Respect!🇺🇸💪👊
This is interesting. I remember a bunch of close corner calls, especially at the top of the zone. This site says the guy did ok.
Coincidentally I was recently listening to the audiobook of David McCullough’s “1776,” read by the author. We all know his voice from his narration of the Ken Burns Civil War series, and some of the other Burns series.
McCullough has passed away. He was a great historian, writer, and narrator.
July 4th is also the anniversary of the most amazing coincidence in U.S. history, of course. Both John Adams and Jefferson died on July 4th, 1826, exactly 50 years after the birth of the nation they helped birth.
Estrada victim like Trout of Manfred juicing the ball just like he did few years ago. The counter to launch angle HR swing is high fastball. Charlie Blackmon said in F/G he sees more of them than ever, as LH who prefers the ball low.
So what you have are pitchers (especially relievers) throwing max effort high hard ones at top of zone. When some of them inevitably lose command this is what happens.
Didn’t the guy who hit Estrada also nearly kill Flores earlier with one up near his face?
Doval lost one last night that was ruled HB. I cannot imagine scarier scenario as a hitter, one of Doval’s (or anyone else’s) high screamers headed right for you.
Losing Estrada for any length of time beyond AS break means Giants have some thinking to do,
Wisely is here for now because M’s are scheduled to throw RHPs as starters, but he hasn’t hit much. Flores can fill in at 2b if needed I guess. Other option is Schmitt, who is only SS available to give Crawford a break. Villar as RH option (2b 3b 1b) was a fail as a hitter earlier.
Would they call up Fitzgerald, who is not on the 40, from Sac? Having nice season, but Ks a lot.
Happy 247th Birthday, USA !
IMO, verse #2 is OUR REAL National Anthem.
Can we continue as a people to strive to reach its soaring words?
Thanks for that it was perfect.
Hope this song has a better outcome than Lennon’s Imagine…
1. LaMonte Wade Jr. (L) 1B
2. Joc Pederson (L) RF
3. J.D. Davis (R) 3B
4. Michael Conforto (L) DH
5. Mike Yastrzemski (L) CF
6. Patrick Bailey (S) C
7. Blake Sabol (L) LF
8. Brandon Crawford (L) SS
9. Casey Schmitt (R) 2B
P: Keaton Winn (R)
I would think the shorter games probably make it a little easier on catchers to play day games after night games as well as older players in general…
From the cover story, “How Baseball Saved Itself,” in the new issue of Atlantic magazine:
“each morning in recent years, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred would review daily reports charting the advancing lengths of the previous night’s games. “It was not a good story,” Manfred told Leibovich. “Last year was so depressing, I just stopped doing it.” In addition to spending time with Manfred, Liebovich spent extensive time with key executives, including Theo Epstein—the wunderkind who, as a general manager for the Red Sox and the Cubs, broke century-old World Series curses and is now a consultant for MLB—and Morgan Sword, MLB’s executive vice president of baseball operations (and the “quarterback” of the project to reinvent baseball). Notably, Epstein and Sword are both figures from the Moneyball generation of baseball who, in using analytics to help teams win more games, helped usher in the unwatchable entertainment product the game had become: more strikeouts, more walks, less contact with the ball, less offense, less action, and (much) longer games. They could see that the sport Moneyball had wrought was dooming the game to eventual irrelevance. “What’s it going to look like 10 years from now, when the league is hitting .215?” Epstein said. “Who’s going to watch that?””
Actually, from an article about the Atlantic article. Liebovich wrote the Atlantic article.
I think the batter who gets HBP should bet awarded 2nd base instead of first. Unless they step into it. It might deter some of em.
Not a great start giving up a run,but Bazooka Bailey says enough of that gunning down his 12th runner since being called up in May, most in baseball!!
Wheels coming off early.
WTF is going on yesterday and today?…
Winn has a ball busting inning, just escapes with only 1 run given up.
So, the 3 Giants hitters proceed to get themselves out on 3 pitches, giving Winn no real rest.
3 pitches, 3 outs.
1 min, 24 seconds of rest.
Hello, is there any instruction from the bench on that, like, take a pitch?…
And, there’s the HR given up…
And now, the hit batter…
And, now a smashed single…
Snarkk..I’m blaming ESPN for that stupid late game and the Giants didn’t get back home till 4am and immediately had to play yesterday, ( how convenient the Mets btw had yesterday off on their road game west)they’re all out of whack but hoping today they get their shit together..
So much for getting their shit together ,Winn’s getting lit up..
Got em right where we want them I guess.
Looks like Mariners finally found a team they could pound.
Giants playing like they are on life support…
The cycle is a big deal to Kruk and Kuip. The younger broadcasters not so much.
Yep. We’ve become the whipping boys again. 2 out hits followed by squadoosh. Skunked by a scrub yet again.
Gilbert is not a scrub. He has nasty stuff. The Giants have always had trouble with Seattle.
The 4th loss of July.
Teams have been beating Seattle like a drum, and they’ve been losing series, all season. But, not now…
They just took two of three from the best team in baseball and have been beating the crap out of the Giants since the ’90’s. Lot of talent on that roster and some solid pitching. They’ve been inconsistent so far, but they were in the playoffs last year. I fully expect them to complete the sweep tomorrow.
2 behind the Dogs all of a sudden.
4th of July shootings have already started.
“Officers responding to reports of gunfire late Monday night found 11 shooting victims in a parking lot in Fort Worth, Texas, police said. One was pronounced dead at the scene and two others died in hospitals.”
The nation overall has mostly forgotten the mass shooting at a 4th of July parade last year in Illinois.
Well, since there are about 3 in any given week, it’s hard to keep up.
Very true.
Since the Giants decided not to show up again..The only guarantee winner today was Joey Chestnut wolfing down 62 hotdogs in 10 minutes at Coney Island.. 8 straight and 16 out of 17 wiener belts to his resume courtesy of Nathan’s the hotdog 🌭 sponsor brand of the wiener event..
That dude is a machine.
Happy 4th, indeed. I was wondering how may shootings there would be today.
HAPPY 4TH!!! The wife and I went the the Huntington Beach 4th of July parade. The largest parade west of the Mississippi. Very patriotic. 1st time since I walked in it with my son when he was in Indian Guides, which are now called Adventure guides due to stupid political correctness. Anyway.. A bad day for our Giants, but still a good day! A fun day.
Columbus thought he had landed in India. He gave Native Americans a wrong name. Some of them are OK with it, but many of them are not.
I’ve seen a couple of episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and they were pretty good.
I read recently that the show has 16 seasons! 16! What? Granted, seasons don’t have as many episodes as they used to, but still.
Yikes! In Calif. we hear of the occasional mountain lion attack. Human civilization cuts into animal habitat areas.
“A woman who was walking her dog was killed in an alligator attack in South Carolina Tuesday morning”
When authorities arrived they found the gator still there, ready to defend its kill.
Gators are everywhere in that part of the country. You have to screw up to get chomped.
She was walking her dog. Give her a break. No word in the NYT about the dog.
Sorry. Looks like she had several dogs and they all escaped.
I think that’s how a lot of attacks happen. You’re not supposed to walk dogs near the water because they become targets of the gators. Basically, if there’s a body of water, assume there’s a gator in it. I only know this because my bio dad lives near Hilton Head.
Looks like the Dodgers won’t have much trouble with the Pirates again. Betts and Freeman are on fire.
De La Cruz went 4 for 4 to lead the Reds to victory. What a huge talent.
Pirates show some competitiveness, and take the lead.
And the Pirates immediately blow the lead. No surprise.
Used to go the Aptos 4th of July parade. Shortest parade in the world. It’s like 2 blocks.
Still pretty cool tho.
Before that was the Highlands parade in San Mateo. They always did their fireworks on July 3rd. Back in the day we lived across the street from the school that had the show. All the streets had revolutionary names. We lived on the corner of Lexington Avenue and Bunker Hill Drive. Till my sister burned that house down.
Best fireworks show in the 70s was in Capitola, launched off the end of the pier that got destroyed last winter. You could walk out a long way on the planks so the explosions occurred directly overhead. Ash drifted down.
It was run by Zumiee…
In Oakland, dogs and cats notice but then relax when fireworks go off. That’s not gunfire.
Pirates win!
I was at Zelda’s last Sunday for breakfast. Weird to see nothing where the pier was. Even the pilings are gone. Most of the Capitola restaurants are back, but not all. Still a lot of damage down the picnic area and the campground. Somehow, my sister a block from the beach in Rio Del Mar, didn’t get flooded but she showed me pics of her street covered in water. She said the waves were coming over the Aptos River bridge.
When I was a kid, we could walk out to the end of the ship. Yeah, those fireworks shows were great. The Boardwalk used to do a lot of fireworks shows back in the day as well.
Dodgers blow the save; Pirates win!
I did not see that coming.
Pirates scored 4 runs off of the rookie that no-hit the Giants for 6 innings. And later the Pirates scored 3 off of the Dodgers’ closer, Phillips.
Total World War soundtrack in my area right now. People must have spent thousands of dollars on fireworks. That’s insane. The fireworks are one after another. Big explosions. Obviously illegal fireworks.
East Oakland’s fireworks earn more time on the evening news than downtown SF’s. The amateur backyard displays span miles and reach impressive heights. I’m sure the cops are on it though.
Dodgers lost? We have to take one of these games.
Dodgers gave up 9 runs.
Ah, big picture: If anyone had said to me in March that Giants would be 6 games over .500 at this point and solidly in WC hunt, and in doing so had brought up lot of rookies into lineup and as pitchers, I’d have been pretty happy, especially even though most of the FAs except for Taylor Rogers have been bust.
Haniger sure looks like Brandon Belt 2.0. Conforto is doing what is expected despite some shakey defense at times. The rooks have cooled off. And the pitching has been all over the place. Doval was looking awesome till that last epic meltdown.
The team needs starting pitching. I just wonder how hard the team goes after a starter or 2. Harrison looks no closer than he did at the start of the season as he’s wild as hell with a 1.56 whip and he’s averaging less than 4 innings a start in AAA.
Hope this Harrison kid isn’t a total hype job and ends up to be a Tyler Beede redux, with uncontrollable control problems. Would be a shame.
Doval probably needs a break, not an All Star break…
I sure would like to see Tyler Fitzgerald added to the 40 man roster, then get a crack for SS/3B/2B and now he’s playing OF as well.His issue is high K rate I’m sure the Giants want to improve on first before a callup, but he’s still hitting close to .300 , has HR power,speed can SB, and a plus arm.
Had to shake my head when are guy Mike Krukow mentioned on air that he thought Blake Sabol could play some 3B are 2B in his years going forward! Lol Mike put down the crack pipe, he can barely get by catching and LF both are a daily adventure. But u can’t knock his hitting as both him and Bailey are easily the best 1-2 catching combo for driving in runs imo..
Yeah, I thought that was very odd seeing as Schmitt and Davis and even Villar are pretty much parked there. Sabol’s decent in the OF, and barely passable at C. I get having flexibillity, but at some point you have to account for all the errors. I mean, we lead the league already.
Sabol at 3rd? Kruk definitely upping his BS content.
Sabol in the OF tracking flies and liners and doubles in the corner looks like a bear on a skateboard. Playing him at 3rd would be a very short adventure…
No matter how well Winn might have pitched yesterday Giants failed to score. Looked at last 14 games, of which SF has gone 6-8. in 6 of those losses they’ve been shutout twice scored 1 run 3 times and 2 in another. Not gonna work. Team ERA still 3rd NL.
Losing Estrada costs them solid top of order bat and base stealing threat–replacements are Wisely and Schmitt, so far very below average hitters. Pederson and few others are in slump and until they pull out of it/someone else gets going, offense is bigger issue than starting pitching.
Sabol has 7 of the last 9 RBI, yeah, a little help please.
Come on. We have 2 starters and a lot of questions.
Might be easier to get another RH bat and relievers “…than a starter who is actually impactful in October”, is what Dogs beat writer Fabian Ardaya in TA said in response to blogger worried about their rotation. Applies to Giants too I think–I like the new guys they have used this season including Winn and there are other prospects beside Harrison in pipeline too.
Losing Thairo hurts way more than losing Haniger…
I was surprised to see Wisely has only 91 PAs. It seems like he’s made 191 outs.
Here’s a Wisely Rivercats walk off, with the call by the son of a friend. I’d never heard Greg before. He does a pretty decent Dave Flemming imitation, I have to say:
https://fb.watch/lBsQLE0aLp/
James, I’m rereading Keith Law’s “Smart Baseball” from 2017, interesting take on improvement made through analytical way to evaluate past/predict future performance of all players.
Anything more recent you’d recommend, as this was done just as StatCast was exploding data for teams 2015-16 seasons?
Nope, in truth I don’t read a lot of baseball books, and the ones I do look at, I usually just peruse bits and pieces of. The latest I have is “Extra Innings,” which is 5 years older than the Law book.
Damn. Shoulda called up Dunleavy . . .
https://www.si.com/mlb/giants/rumors/phoenix-suns-sabotage-sf-giants-shohei-ohtani-pursuit-yuta-watanabe
So they found a small amount of coke in the White House where tour visitors leave cell phones etc. This is a mystery? Reminds me of an article Abbie Hoffman wrote about taking a public tour of the fbi hq while he was underground and one of America’s most wanted.
Rookies back in the LU. If the team was sub .500 we’d be interested. Now suddenly we want a WC.
I guess Hunter stopped by.
Actually, all/most of the rube followers of Trump, et. al., actually believe this to be true. Man, they are dumb.
Rookies are exciting and all until they aren’t . . .
Just found out my next door neighbor, who was in the Timberwolves’ analytics department, was recently hired by the . . . Dodgers.
How are you at stats sabotage?…
The family car tires are an easier target.
Cobb and Webb, then we’re dead.
Webb and Cobb, then time to sob…
Wilmer swinging at ball 4 twice. God, it’s frustrating to watch that against a POS like this.
Another two strike base hit given up by Cobb. God, it’s frustrating to see that against two guys hitting under 250.
Harrison report: 3 innings 3 hits 2 walks 2 runs 1 HB. Threw 60 pitches, 35 strikes.
Bart 2-4 double and HR, plus walk. since coming back, 11-29 with 3 HRs and only 3 Ks.
idk I think Giants are better off with openers/fill ins behind them than added him into rotation. 3 straight not so good outings; he’s not making progress, still walking a lot of batters and expending lot of pitches to not go very far in games.
That makes up for one of the half dozen hard hit at em balls from SF yesterday. The Seattle pitcher yesterday wasn’t nearly as good as the stat line indicated.
I’m sure Murph loves being referred to as a clubby.
Zum, your 2 favorite Angel “whipping boys” are injured (blister and broken wrist).
So it goes for the Angels.
Shocked that they are saying Trout will be back in 5 weeks.
Conforto GIDP. 1-13 since he had 5 hits in 9 ABs vs. AZ. Before that he went 1-24. He’s spent 1 day all season at high of .251 BA. Now hitting .232. OB dropped off 20 points from high of .348.
He hit the ball hard first time up, and looks comfortable at the plate. Hope he has another surge to get his stats where they belong. I wouldn’t bet against it.
Think Sabol makes that terrific stop by Schmitt if he’s play 2B Kruk?
NOT….
Hell yeah, we’ll take it.
Still doesn’t make up for the number of line drive outs in this series, but, yeah, hell yeah.
And another one right at the CFer.
Nice gift run there thanks for the E-8 Rodriguez..
Milone walked 4, and it should have been more.
Jesus.
Cobb pitching out of the madness.
You know who’s due for a Doval like meltdown? Gimmick Dude. Kap, use my intuition and do not follow the plan. Please.
Nice night for Matos. Gotta feel good after top half of inning.
Schmitt for all his struggles is hitting the ball hard
Kid keeps on grinding.
that was Giants 8th triple all year. Team leader is…Joc (!) with 2. wtf?
Huh. That bat I found in the stands at the Stick in the 80s I think is a K55. Dale Murphy.
Watching Bums game with Pirates fan brother, we’re celebrating Suwinski 3-run bomb for 4-0 Bucs lead!