Wild Card Series Done, To the DS We GO!
Fun to see those fans all get to celebrate and there was certainly a lot of electricity in the games (minus The Rays) but all 4 series ending 2-0? With no late inning comebacks or lead changes? Yikes. From that standpoint it was a little boring, eh?
Ok, I get why the Niners are favored to win on Sunday. Nobody believes in the Cowboys. Say they haven’t beaten anyone. But we’ve beaten Pitt, Rams, Giants and AZ–none of whom is over .500.
Seems to me like both teams are good measuring sticks for one another.
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
I did not watch much of any of the games. Couple of the last outs against AZ. AZ was one of my picks in that Yahoo game but I had Tampa all the way to the WS. What a joke that team was for two games at home and what a joke fan base. A complete embarrassment. I am shocked the Rangers just rolled right through them. They can obviously hang with the Orioles.
What I dont get and saw on Sportscenter this morning, the Phillies celebrating like they just won their first world series. What a bunch of chumps. They were in the WS last year. Act like you are on a mission, not like a bunch of pansy little leaguers. I am clearly rooting against them now and certainly want the Braves to knock the snot out of the Dodgers.
i don’t see it that way. Seems to me like Philly has got something cookin’ and it seems like ballplayers are more inclined to show their emotions these days. Also, I have them winning it all. LOL
That seems to be a challenge thrown??? I propose a bet of green fees at your place by 280. I am hoping maybe I might be out there for a couple weeks early next year…
Whatever one might think of Harper, I truly loved it in game 1 when he ran full steam ahead through the 3B coach’s stop sign. “Fuck that shit” was the look on his face ….
i’ve come around on Harper. Imagine if we had someone like that on our team. We have a bunch of faceless, boring platoon players.
I’ve felt that way watching most of the teams in this opening series. They all just look so much more athletic. And it’s been fun to see the 3 players I wanted last off-season — Turner, Correa, and Bell — playing in the post season (Bell now out of it).
we are slow and plodding, pretty weak in general, and full of a bunch of platooners. It’s outrageous that Zaidi thought this bullshit would compete against other good teams….
West teams went 4-0, Central teams 2-2, East teams 2-6 as Marlins Rays and Jays all gone.
Started out with 2 each in West, 1 in Central, 3 each in East.
Idk, 6 teams in from each league seems like overkill/$$ grab from owners who get to host more home games at playoff ticket prices, plus TV $$. Liked old format better-1 WC game, in or out and best 4 battle it out.
though I guess Billy Beane didn’t prefer that format.
Everyone does the champagne and goggles shit now.
And AZ was down 3-0 and 2-0 in both of their wins. Those games were cool. Didn’t watch much else.
Just want to see the Dogs choke again. Last year was the Pads, this year will be the D-Backs.
that’s funny, I watched both of those games and somehow forgot they came back in both of them
Pretty ironic that Bochy is marching to the next post season round, where the Giants are busy trying to act that they’re not in chaos. It didn’t help with Farhan having that press conference the other day that was a complete PR faceplant with the media and fans. I did not waste time to listen to it, but read some media reports. Seems like the overall view was “more of the same next season, with some tweaks”. If that’s the plan, count me out…
Well, Bochy has an owner willing to spend. $800 mill these past couple seasons.
I won’t be surprised if next season is a true rebuild year with a placeholder mgr at the helm, like a caretaker skipper hired to supervise the work in dry dock. We should know as soon as Zed announces the new hire. But the public sacrifice of Kap just before the Willie Mac ceremony, the sorry state of the roster, and the middling farm system will make it tough to lure a good mgr now, not to mention top line FAs. Who’d want to work for this FO if they had a choice? The famous coaching staff, or what’s left of it, must be texting constantly with their agents begging for updates on the job search results.
If Zed leaps over that dung mountain and fields a real team, he may be worth keeping. Otherwise, may be time to add: Zed’s dead, baby.
Yeah, that was my thought after they fired Kapler. They won’t be able to get ANY experienced manager what with the state of the team and Farhan being on his last leg, uh year.
I was really hoping Greggie would shit-can them both, but it appears the team is content with the strategy of signing middling guys to short-term deals while the farm sputters to life.
We are becoming the Pittsburgh Pirates of the west. Or the San Francisco A’s.
Gonna be a real disappointing season if they stay this course.
Im afraid it’ll be the year one tear down of a three year rebuild.
Makes me feel nostalgic: Webb may be analogous to Cain, Harrison to Timmy, but we’d still need a Buster and a MadBum. And a lot has changed in mlb since then, too.
We need a couple Corbin Carrolls.
Trade Conforto and Stripling, if they don’t opt out. Opt in Disco and Cobb then trade em. Trade Haniger. Re-sign Thairo and Lamonte and some pitchers to one year deals. Play the kids. Fuck it. I’d watch that melee.
Conforto and Manaea are gonna opt out. They showed enough to get a big payday from someone else. Although Manaea I wouldn’t mind seeing stay. Hanginail and Stripchat can go pound the pavement.
Didn’t know we have a club option on Cobb. We can buy him out for $2 mill or he gets $10 mill.
Disco Sucks gets $12 mill. Love how we sign the shit guys (LaStella, Haniger, Disco) to 3 year deals.
Yeah guess I skimmed cots too quickly. Disco won’t bring much on the market but he’ll probably bring less on the mound here.
Yeah, those were the only ones I paid attention to. AZ is a fun team. Would be great to see them knock the Dogs out.
BJ manager Schneider pulling Berrios in the 3rd after he was cruising is the death rattle for the game. That’s a dumb-ass move. He should be fired, but it’s the “third time through the lineup” bullshit that doomed them as the next guy loaded the bases and gave up a run-scoring single and a run-scoring DP.
Fast and loose is the way to go. You KNOW Roberts is already tightening up as we speak.
Fast Eddie Felson. Great movie. (The Hustler, not Scores Easy’s dull sequel.)
Walter Tevis, love that guy. Read a collection of his short stories, lot of pool ones in there and some futuristic stuff as well.
I think Conforto would be nuts to opt out…
Well, Scott Boras is his agent, so he ain’t gonna put the Giants at the top of his list.
He’ll be the Giants highest paid player, won’t he?
This is not part of a melee that would interest me.
https://x.com/baseballmarty/status/1710028149550198885?s=46&t=k0FDC_rVBvlG86Y-OHTiNQ
Bags in TA brings up Steven Vogt for manager. Interesting column on Z presser and 400 comments.
I’d be in for Voight. Not Posey. If he fails it will ruin all the good will this guy has, and he won’t want to show his face:(
Ah, doubt given 4 kids and missus he’d be in for daily grind, worse as mgr. than a player. Plus, can’t own a piece of club and manage.
Ownership supervisor of baseball ops. Like Baer with teeth.
Owners can’t manage. Buster could be the new GM. Or whatever Farhan is. Which I could get behind.
Ha, “Baer with teeth” and a commitment to team and getting it back on track. Some sense of proper direction has to come from the top.
Dick Butkus, gone at 80…
and Al Michaels is like “nothing can explain this first half” and I’m like “uh really?”
Agree with Flav, give Harper a lot of credit. Played last month plus at 1b and DH’d while hurt all season. .900 OPs guy who made lot fewer outs than Castellanos and Schwarber. Makes ton of $$ but also team’s best hitter.
Harper would have been a great guy to build around. If only.
I’ve rewatched that vid several times of Harper barrelling through the stop sign, such a great baseball moment. A lesser talent probably woulda been chastised for that, but he showed that he knows better and he wasn’t heeding Wathan’s stop sign. Wathan made a couple other questionable decisions coaching 3rd.
“More of the same” next year in some ways, according to Z himself, who has already said they won’t be looking to add starting pitching, which seems pretty stupid to me. But he also famously said that *everything* will be examined, right before he fired Kap. Haniger, Joc, Conforto, Stripling, Disco… these guys should all be gone but who would trade anything of value for any of them? No one. Probably stuck with some of these until their contract runs out. 2 more years of Haniger as a *key* in the OF? Ugh. Wonder how important it is to Greggie that the fans are, in general, fairly pissed off. He could still pull a surprise and really start over by firing Z during the off season. Wouldn’t bet on it, but it’s possible.
Yeah, I love comments like that, Paul. “Let’s close doors that we haven’t even checked out.”
Once again the team has a lot of dead weight.
Who can name the Giants GM without looking it up?
I couldn’t…
Pulito? Pubic-o? It-doesn’t-matter-o? Seriously, it’s a silly situation overall.
Half credit, Paul…
I came across his name while scrolling through cot’s and was surprised. Oh, yeah!
This gets reaction in TA, as if he (Putila) is a missing person. Supposedly main focus is on minors guys and development, stuff he did with Stros.
Odd how baseball FOs have become like NBA coaching staffs, expanding exponentially.
Look what’s happened with Mets, from Showalter to Eppler, a year after winning 100 games.
We’re 2 years from 107. As far as the GM goes, it’s like Lynch being GM on the Niners. He may have input, but everything goes through Shanahan. I mean, who did they hire first? Shanny. He gave the OK for Lynch to join.
Would Pulita be better without Farhan looking over his shoulder? Who knows?
Cal invader Hoist the Gold wins and gets in Breeder’s Cup Sprint with John Velasquez aboard. Holds off Irad’s horse in great finish. Andie B at Keeneland…looks great uh riding along trackside in post race interview
Horse named Dusty Springfield ran in 3rd at Santa Anita. Quite interesting singer, passed from cancer 1999.
Dusty did ok in the UK post Oct 1962, as a rare woman on the charts with the sudden profusion of unruly boy bands. She hosted the tv show Ready Steady Go and well may have been the woman I recall introducing fab new rockers The Rolling Stones who say they haven’t had haircuts in more than a year. Marianne Faithful was another good woman singer then.
Got 2 tickets to the Niner game for $250 each. Could sell them $1200 for the pair.
Never saw this one before. Jeeeez!
https://www.facebook.com/reel/838044004097552
A fluke of the playoff format gave LA an easier bracket than Atlanta, even though Atlanta had the better record. Philly being in Atlanta’s bracket makes it the more difficult situation.
Some pundits on the MLB network were debating whether the D-Backs would win one game or none vs. the Dodgers.
Granted, the pundits were saying the same kinds of disparaging things about the Giants during the ’10, ’12, and ’14 playoffs.
Yeah, I don’t really understand the format. Seems like lowest seed AZ should go to Atlanta and Philly to LA.
What to make of Z’s recent comments about needing to sign key players to longer contracts now, instead of the 2-year opt-outs he’s been giving, in order to, you know, build a sustainable team and give players a better sense of belonging, etc.? That would be a big change, perhaps the biggest of the “we need to do everything differently” mantra. I’ll give him a lot of credit if he actually does that. Certainly his most important off season in SF…
Sure, Zaidi could have handled the firing of Kap better, but I’m not onboard with how Webb and some of the other players went to the media.
Cain never did that, and Cain got Cained so often the term was named after him.
So congrats to Baggs for finally finding some Giants who would undermine the manager.
Webb kind of acted surprised Kap was fired. Makes me wonder how bright he is.
Also made me wonder just how demoralized the players were those last 2 months of the season. Was Webb speaking collectively? You’d think if low morale had been a problem, we would have seen it or heard of it before Webb spoke up. I mean, there certainly were times that the team looked unenthused and kind of sloppy toward the end there, but who knows….
The second best division champ record is in the same bracket as the third best division champ record (Milwaukee.) So the top wild card ends up in Atlanta’s bracket. I guess in theory the third best division champ should be better than the best wild card team, but I’m guessing that rarely is actually true. Seems like there is usually at least one division champ that is not all that great. It’s a flaw in this format.
And, of course, the Brewers laid their usual egg in the playoffs. There was no way the Brewers were going to eliminate the Dodgers anyway, so maybe the D-Backs can make a series of it.
Related to the discussion about player morale, just read something by Barry Tompkins of the Marin Independent, but now can’t find the link. He opined that there might have been some environmental factors that drove a bit of a wedge between the players and Kap; namely, as soon as Murph retired, his office was turned into a computer room for analytics (and it wasn’t big enough so they had to knock down a wall), and apparently the press interview room was also converted to a computer room. That was all next to Kap’s office, I guess, and the players just stopped visiting those areas altogether. Again…. who knows.
Well, all the talk around Kapler about how he didn’t like talking to the team collectively but preferred to talk one-on-one with the players.
At some point that would seem to be counter-productive to trying to rally the guys without talking to them as a group.
Who knows? But I have no problem with Webb speaking out based on what was coming out of the clubhouse with Estrada and Yaz as well. There was something obviously going on, and I can understand Webb being fed up.
I mentioned this, but still seems relevant. During the fatal series in Colorado, Slusser wrote that before one game she watched Webb and Kap walking together in the OF, heads down, talking intently. The pacing and talking went on for a long while. When they stopped, they faced each other and shook hands.
A lot of shit was hitting the fan as the season crashed. Who knows how it flew. But the bizarre public sacrifice of Kap before the season ended threw up a screen.
Losing, and the seeming inability to reverse course, will certainly contribute to lower morale. Possible that lower morale in the first place could contribute to the losing. Don’t know which came first….
Low morale is only one part of dysfunction. Cause and effect get tangled. The nosedive after the deadline and the bizarre firing of Kap were both startling, one in slomo, the other out of left field, Both suggest deep problems, and not just on the roster.
Yeah, there’s something to be said about doing nothing at the deadline after Zaidi said repeatedly that he would be aggressive and try to get RH power and a pitcher.
I mean it wasn’t like they were loaded with talent at the time. The pitching was already struggling.
Fuck morale.
Do your job.
Baseball is their fuckin’ job.
Do it right…
Whatever you do, do it good.
Whatever you do do do do do it good.
It’s not what you look like when you’re doin what you’re doin.
It’s what you’re doin when you’re doin what you look like you’re doin.
Doo bee doobie doooo
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