Trying To Make A Point
Blade seems to think I was contradicting myself. LOL. Whatever, I was definitely “on one” yesterday. I appreciate all you guys, I hope you know that. I certainly don’t think anyone here is eating Tide Pods to pass the time. But there are things we are never going to agree on and after a while mean words might start coming out. Although I’d argue that *bedazzled is a rad word and should get used more often in all contexts. I’d also argue this place is nothing like it was back when Twinfan ruled the roost. That can be taken good or bad I suppose.
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| Steven Melikean | Thu, Aug 3, 9:27 PM (8 hours ago) |  | |
| to me | |||
You can post this if you are of the right mind . . .
“Only someone with blinders can’t see the upside”
“I seriously don’t get how educated people get sold on his bullshit.”
“what’s always hilarious to me about you is that you tout stats to only suit your take.”
“It was fucking stupid to not trade some low level bullshit for him and it’s even stupider that you don’t get that.”
“But we already had him. We needed more and Farhan did nothing but his typical Boardroom speak that too many Flappers got tricked by.”
“i get why some of you are bedazzled by Farhan. He’s an excellent talker. He sells well. His boardroom speak is peak. But if you look behind the talk that’s all it is. It bums me out so many of us here have been fooled by his words.”
So, let me get this right . . . Typical Flapper is educated, but blind. Although we are educated, we are stupid and sometimes even more “stupider” than just stupid, despite our education. We also have a tendency to be tricked, bedazzled and fooled by excellent talkers, particularly if they are behind a boardroom lectern. Despite all of these traits, we Flappers are a hilarious bunch.*
* We still love ya Flav!
Blade
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
Ha, funny. Blade is right too at the end there. Giants are anything but boring and this is quite an enjoyable season. And blog is wonderful place to engage all.
thoughts on SP beyond Cobb-Webb…Kap could go back to starting Manaea Stripling Wood or even put Beck in the rotation to be more old school conventional. But as he said about Beck, the guy is doing fine where he is right now, so why bother? So are Manaea and Stripling.
In other words SF could have entirely conventional starting 5 (or 6), with Harrison sure to be added at some point. They used Winn earlier as SP and he’s looked great though not sure if/when he will return.
Bottom line quality of pitching staff is top 3 of NL as is. I think Kap smart enough for it not to have type of meltdown that has defined some epic collapses in baseball history.
Re Beck: He’s doing great pitching the middle innings AND he may have carved out a niche as a 10th inning man.
I think that was also the day 2 Yankees got thrown out at home plate on one play.
Dale Berra and Bobby Meacham?
It was 2 days before…
https://tinyurl.com/ycy72hnr
Seaver was pitching in ’85? Wow. Don’t recall that.
Yeah, reading through yesterday’s late posts this morning, I don’t think you were contradicting yourself, you were being an asshole. It felt a pretty Twinnie. Funny stuff!
I guess I’m in the middle. I certainly wouldn’t have done Flaherty for Schmitt without some kind of guarantee we get a deal next season, but I would have done it in a second for Wisely and another 15th ranked body. Which is what Baltimore did.
Yeah, we are 15-5 in pen games, but it just doesn’t seem to be a viable path down the stretch. If we DO make it, having 2 solid starters and a bunch of middle guys will be tough to pull off.
Hey, maybe it works. TB has been doing this shit fairly successfully I guess, but it seems like Flaherty was a low hanging fruit that Farhan didn’t even bother with.
The lead singer is an old friend from Seattle. He did the Chrissie Hynde thing and joined an Irish band in the early 80s that was pretty big in the indie/underground circles called That Petrol Emotion. They included a couple guys from the Undertones. Fun stuff.
That’s still quite a crazy, out of the blue connection to have to a pretty cool band. I played my copy of their debut record for the first time in decades the last time you mentioned them.
Yeah, they have some very cool stuff.
Morroco doesn’t give a shit about high hanging fruit ,middle hanging fruit,are low hanging fruit Chuck..He’s been way to loyal to his players to make any trade deadline deals, 1st year holds on to Bum and others cause they win a few near the break and hallelujah they think there going to make the playoffs Not..
Mole face only does what ownership tells him to do, I was surprised they even let him get Kris Bryant about the only time it’s felt like they bought in. Ever wonder why they always say they’re in with a star player till they’re not? Smoke&Mirrors always prevail.
Wisely who the fuck wants him are Diaz? All glove and no hit!he along with a couple mid tiers was not getting a Solid Pitcher like Jack Flaherty who I can see now helps propel the Orioles to to a W/S favorite in the AL,real an exciting team, Orioles are stacked with great young talent in they’re LU and farm system that top rate. Easy to see why Cards dealt with them,especially since the phone never rang from Farhan I assume.. He’s funny as Secret Squirrel’s side kick though it’s a 60’s cartoon I guess I’m the only one gets his resemblance..
Seaver won his 300th with the White Sox. I had forgotten that.
A lot of baseball fans around the nation have probably forgotten that Randy Johnson won his 300th as a Giant.
300 game winners are gone like the dinosaurs.
Seaver was also on the ’86 Red Sox and was in Shea Stadium to see them blow the WS in epic fashion…
Seaver’s bio really good read. Complicated guy to the end in wine business.
Randy Johnson will be the last. Like Carlton getting his 4,000th K with SF, a weird conclusion to a great career.
Don Sutton pitched 23 years and won over 300 games, but I never thought he was all that great.
According to Baseball Reference, he threw 58 shut outs and had a career ERA of 3.26.
He WAS all that great.
He’s always gotten the “compiler” label…
I guess his image was hurt by his pitching style. He wasn’t dramatic or dominant. He was consistent, though.
He used to kill the Giants I remember the first time I saw him pitch and just couldn’t believe the fucking Dodgers keep coming up with good pitchers.
That “compiler” label is a totally bogus criticism perpetrated by abstract stat fetishists. Sutton is every bit as qualified as Nolan Ryan.
They didn’t use no stinkin’ openers in his day. All he wanted to do in the 756 times he started a game was maintain the tie or lead he had in the 1st inning, and get as many of the 27 outs as possible. He was wildly successful, BECAUSE, not in spite of having a long career.
These pencil neck geeks are more impressed by deGrom’s 80 something wins.
I think there is something to that “compiler” label.
How about this guy?
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/n/niekrph01.shtml
Think he’s a HOFer?
Another compiler and juiced out of his mind in his 2004 contract year…
https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/beltrad01.shtml
The 3000+ hits gets him in, I would think, even wth the steroid cloud.
I have very little memory of his career.
Your style over “substance” observation about Sutton is equally apt for Beltre. But as is the case for all the PED users in the Steroid Era who made the HOF, the “style” is how they related to baseball writers and how contrite they were.
Grade them on a steep curve: Pudge, Bagwell, Piazza, Ortiz, and Beltre deserve to get in. Obviously Barry, Clemens, and ARod do too.
Ha poster child for “contract year” phrase. Hella player though for long time.
baseball prospectus Nate Silver said this in 2006 about steroid era: “The players who have been most responsible for the Juiced Era home-run boom are the middle of the road players: those guys who used to hit 15 or 20 homers a season and are now hitting 25 or 30.” Graph provided too-the guys already hitting 30 or more in pre juiced era had much lower “power spikes” 1994-2004.
Brady Anderson’s stat line always makes me laugh.
HR’s: 13, 12, 16, 50, 18, 18, 24, 19 . . .
Nope, nothing weird there.
Fred Lynn:
21, 22, 23, 23, 23, 23, 25
Adam Dunn:
40, 40, 40, 40, 38, 38
As far as I know, this long career thing as one qualifier for real HOF consideration is not some written requirement. Someone can tell me if I’m wrong. Whether it is stated or not, I think it’s crap. The HOF is a museum of baseball. To me, somebody like Timmy who electrified fans for a fairly short period of years with fantastic, dominant, electric skills and success and led a team to its first ever WS win in its existence in its current city deserves to be in the HOF, just as much or more than some dude like Harold Baines, Bill Mazeroski, et al…
Agree. Wish the sportswriters were taken out of the process all together. Coaches, and players would tell a more complete assessment IMO. The media is full of jokers.
That would include past and present players and coaches. Sure there would be favoritism involved but at least they were part of the game. The people who used to play or coach and who moved to the media should get a vote also.
Agree for the most part with this, although Lincecum falls a bit short for me with his ratio of good seasons and bad. And as the greatest defensive player at his position, Mazeroski is as qualified as Brooks Robinson.
There SHOULD as you say, be a wing for very exciting, colorful, and “famous” players. Maybe have fans vote on it.
My nominations: Lefty O’Doul (this is by far the most egregious snub, he’s got the 3rd best career average, a great manager, was instrumental in the post-WWII baseball boom in Japan, AND for our purposes, a legend in his own right.)
Vida Blue
Thurman Munson
Will Clark
J.R. Richard
Roger Maris
Graig Nettles who I saw a ton of, was every bit as good a 3B as Robinson if not better…
Add Jeff Kent and Albert Belle to that list…
Nettles qualifies for both the actual HOF, and the Hall of Legends. In my mind,except they were at night, the plays Nettles made in the ‘77,’78 WS are identical to BR’s against the Reds in ‘70.
Albert Belle and Manny Ramirez are good enough, no matter how steep a curve you grade the PED users on.
Kent should be in, but I’m not sure he gives a shit.
Ultimate demise of Lincecum and Cain are kind of sad cases to me, Tim the more so. Rapid rise to 4 years of electric excellence but for whatever reasons basically done after 2011. What followed was truly awful including the comeback attempts. Dad was unlikeable control freak.
Cain’s career lasted longer but once the big contract kicked in post 2012 he was also going downhill. Giants were paying him $20 mill per for those 5 years and he couldn’t ever recover.
Sabes signed Cain to the huge deal when he had a sack of bone sand rolling around in his elbow…
Wasn’t the (now superseded) Modern Days HOF Committee that infamously elected Harold Baines comprised of HOF players? I hear they gave him projected credit for what he would’ve done without the 94 strike. It’s all bullshit. Exclusion of Barry Bonds alone proves that fact. Both the writers and petty, clubby HOF players who claim they never juiced (and who didn’t accomplish half of what Bonds did) are responsible for the continual travesties.
Been a few years since I was a regular. Flav, glad you didn’t retire the blog. So here is my take on the current way baseball ⚾️ is played. Love the pitch clock, hate the man on 2nd in extra innings, hate analytics based on righty/lefty match ups, Wilmer and Joc are your best hitters they should be in the lineup every game. Not a fan of openers, but when you don’t have a legitimate 3,4,5 starters…what are you going to do. Glad the shift is gone. Not sure how I feel about a reliever having to face three batters, could
care less probably.
Yesterday’s game was like 2 hours, on KNBR they asked would you rather have a 2 hr game and win or a 3+hour game tha you lost. I want the win.
Would I rather have the horse I bet win by a nose or lose by 30 lengths?
Lemme sleep on it…
😂😂
I guess the one downside would be someone like me who has about a two hour journey to the Giants’ ballpark. A total of four hours travel time to watch shorter games. I could see a few fans feeling like it’s kind of not full value for all that travel time.
As for TV, the shorter game times is awesome.
Plus the traffic after the game. Probably more than 2 hour to get home.
Very true.
Part of what ticket-buyers are paying for is the “ballpark experience.” Hanging out at a ballgame. Shorter game times does cut into that.
Winning is still the most important thing. But “time at the ballpark” is a real thing.
Don’t sleep on the best change in 2023, the schedule. I’d much rather see Texas, Hou, TB, Bos, Balt than the NL West teams an additional 5 (7?) games.
good point. Plus rotating road/home trips. Next year Giants hit Fenway etc.
Wish NBA could get schedule sorted–fewer trips no more back to backs.
Could not imagine in old days having Spurs in town and missing Iceman.
Me too. Definitely makes the season more enjoyable.
Shit, even a guy like Dale Murphy, who was dominant for a while should get consideration. Like Will Clark, it wasn’t for decades but in their prime, they were killing it. Like Timmy and Matt and Kent. Rewarding Baines for decent play for a long time is weakening the idea of the HoF. Baines was never the best guy on his team let alone the league.
But it is the onus that Frank Gore will wear as he gets voted in or out of the football hall of fame. Just a compiler. My take is Gore was a great player on a lot of shitty teams. His fucking head coach (Singlebraincell) said “We will run Frank 30 times a game.” And he did. And he had Harbaugh that gave up on Gore’s pass-catching ability. Under Nolan he was getting 40 catches for 500 yards in receptions regularly.
Z still believes in Bart. The question is how does Bart really fit into a future with the Giants, given Bailey’s emergence?
On KNBR, Z regarding whether to trade Bart:
““He’s still a guy that interests teams because of the pedigree and the power,” Zaidi said. “As much as anything, he was one of the best defensive catchers in baseball when he was up earlier this season. We know how valuable defense is.
He’s really valuable to us. It’s really important that we have catching in house that has familiarity with our pitchers and feel like we’re set at that position, so those conversations didn’t get very far.””
He’s in his 4th year with the Giants. He turns 27 in December.
4th year with the major league team.
All the work Bart has put in, he deserves a shot somewhere else with a team that could use him as more than a AAA pitcher polisher.
“the power” lol
The Cubs beat up on the Reds, but they’re getting a dose of reality today from Atlanta.
“Getting a dose” once had a very specific meaning – probably not a Brooklyn exclusive…
I posted this once before, none of the other lyrics fit, and it’s a remnant of a country populism (or least a notion of it) that existed at a time when hopelessly outdated movies like “Harlan County, USA” had you rooting for the poor slobs. Still a pretty great, mellow honky tonk tune:
No Opener Needed https://g.co/kgs/jnbemg
Kind of sounds like Hank Williams, which ain’t a bad thing.
Much of the rest of the album’s got a country swing feel to it. An obscure sorta classic.
Back then I was still hoping for the snobs, especially the half educated. Neoliberalism did em in. And here we are.
There’s a case to be made it would be better for the Giants if the Dodgers won this series against the Padres, in regards to wild card spots. But, I just can’t root for the Dodgers in this series.
Any combo of Arizona, Miami, Chicago, SD losses > Dodgers win.
I see that point, but emotionally I’m not there yet.
great pic. Moment in time
Dodgers won that one, first in franchise history. they lost rematch of WS to Yanks in 56 and left after 57 season. Was watching story behind this on PBS re broadcast of Ken Burns’ Baseball recently.
I watched that chapter on NY baseball recently too. Maybe the best of the bunch. The Willie Mays segment was pretty good. Shot heard round the world, ok. Though I really enjoyed seeing footage of Don Newcombe pitching.
That play was as close as a play can be. Out or safe by less than an inch probably.
Luciano back at SS for Sac last night with Estrada (and D Walton) at 2b. Baggs in TA thought Luis Gonzalez, also in lineup but whose rehab assignment ends Sunday, might be the PTBNL going to Seattle in Pollock deal. He’d have to be activated and put on 40 man by Giants and can’t be optioned to Sac.
i have low expectations for Estrada upon his return.
Lower than .053?
Ah yes. Where have I heard that before, hmmnn…
Estrada is an overly aggressive hitter, like 2.0. You need to invest some supportive 2.0 magic on him. Show him the love, and we’ll all be happy.
https://www.mlb.com/video/thairo-estrada-homers-5-on-a-fly-ball-to-left-field-lamonte-wade-jr-score?partnerId=web_video-playback-page_video-share
Justified, a show we just got to, is set in Harlan county. Good stuff. Got to that from Deadw00d.
James Olyphant is great in both.
Its good. A trip to a club where Dave Alvin plays Harlan County Line is a funny scene. My Kentucky friends and cousins enjoy it. The new Justified, Elmore Leonard Detroit redux, is ok. Noticed Walter Mosley’s name on the credits.
Re read one of Leonard’s Raylan Givens books not too long ago, “Raylan” (3rd in series I think) with the Crowe brothers, set in Harlan county. Great stuff, fantastic character.
Haven’t read those in decades. Gonna have to revisit.
I’ve just started Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead. Read an excerpt in the NYer before it was published and won all those awards. I liked it. It’s as good as I recall.
Timothy.
He’s originally from my local area. 🙂
Olyphant
Olyphant had a great supporting role in Once upon a Time in Hollywood — an apparently under appreciated masterwork.
“.053”
Legendary manager Leo Durocher played for the Yankees in his younger years. He was a good fielder, but such a bad hitter that Babe Ruth nicknamed him “The All-American Out.”
Players nowadays generally aren’t as cruel as that.
whoa Dodgers CF Outman makes leaping grab at the wall to rob Tatis Jr of 2 run HR in first. SP Miller has thrown 5 pitches 100+, including one Tatis Jr. almost drove out.
Bill Walton must be attending a month long silent retreat in Big Sur.
What a mess. Btw enjoyed “Harlem Shuffle” a lot. Sequel coming soon iirc.
Yeah it’s out. 70sPanther vibes drawing diss reviews.
Yes, the sequel just came out.
I’m on the waiting list for my library’s audiobook copy. A couple of people ahead of me, so not a super-long time to wait.
The audiobook of Harlem Shuffle is very good.
Check out Palo Alto, Malcom Harris. Smart passionate history of the valley, the bay area, the state, et al. You’ll recognize the orchards turning into the chip fabs.
I did read Palo Alto, quite interesting. Oh the Leland Stanford family legacy.
Sour reviewers of the new novel claim that the HS voice is not enough. That voice is what prompted me to reread it. It’s masterful. But I bet the new novel is better. Just too politically edgy. Sounds good to me.
Hoover Reagan Shockley. Elon.
Harris’s accounts of the Stanford radical anti war movement and of the Black Panthers are the best, most accessible summaries I’ve seen.
Thiel. Without Thiel there is no Elon. Or JD Vance. Et Alia.
I’m going to get to the Palo Alto book, definitely.
Darvish through 6, only 3 hits 1 run on Outman homer. 71 pitches.
Padres pen has had issues setting up Hader or closing when he’s not available.
They just coughed up five runs in the top of the 8th. It”s realty hard rooting against the Dodgers here. By that I mean it’s futile. If the Padres were Seattle, the Giants could could have loned them a reliever.
Without playing tonight, the Giants still lengthened their wild card lead.
Padres, lulz. This team might win a World Series someday, maybe in the year 2089.
“Padres pen has had issues”
Willie was on it.
well that came from SD beat writer Dennis Lin in TA, who said their problem had been btw 7th-9th. What an epic meltdown that was. Darvish left after 7 w 3-2 lead.
Bloop single scored 1 then back to back bases loaded walks to force in 2 and Amed Rosario double down RF line. Then 3 more in 9th after Padres had cut lead to 7-4.
wound up giving up 6 hits 4 walks 8 earned in 1.2 innings.
7 of 9 in immCulTe grid