A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

Finally no more days off and we get right into it with LA tonight.

I missed yesterday’s game. It went better than Saturday’s did.

I’m strangely confident in Webb winning us this game tonight.

Here’s a pic during happier times. Before Stripling. Otherwise known as “BS”. San Dawg, me and we got a surprise visit from his nephew Joe. Joe is young and positive about everything. We could use more Joe’s in the world. He said he’s been a long time lurker but that he would post something today so let’s see if he’s positive AND a man of his word.

There’s very little to say about that game except that it will go down as the worst loss of the year (likely).

And now I sit. In the dark. Drinking my coffee. Waiting for the 3rd round of the Masters to finish up.

Happy Easter everyone.

Super irritating home opener. Small sample size but this team is showing all the hallmarks of inconsistency which is also a hallmark of a .500 team.

Golf was wild yesterday. It rained nearly the entire time, we were soaked by the end of the round. We had no one behind us and as far as I can tell we were the only players to finish the course, I never saw anyone on the back 9. Diggity went down on hole 1 in the mud and that’s why he looks like he just emerged from the jungles of Nam.

He found the hat last week at a restaurant. 1924 is the year his mom was born. For that reason please excuse the fact that he’s wearing A’s colors. 🙂

I’ll try to tweet out pics to and during the game today so if you want to see any of that you can find me on twitter at @1flapdown77

Singer is a good young pitcher, Manaea better bring whatever qualifies as an A-game with him to the mound today.

….against our arch rivals, The Kansas City Royals. I shudder to think about all the times Brad Keller has shut us down…..(checks notes)…..uh, Giants hitters actually have almost no at bats against him. Roberto Perez is 1 for 10. Hopefully he spills The Book on him.

Weather is a little shaky this morning but the game should play fine. This weekend is all about baseball, golf, sprinkle in some Saturday Derby prep races, more baseball, Sunday Masters…..salad days on the immediate horizon, my friends.

A couple of you guys have mentioned this, .500 is a roller coaster ride, man. It just is. Back to the grind today in Chicago. Lots of weather in MLB today, four games already postponed.

I got to talk with San Dawg for a few minutes last night. Sad to hear about his mom passing but know there is relief in many ways with that happening. A couple weeks ago we had it planned to golf tomorrow at Crystal Springs and then hit the Giants game on Saturday. Both are up in the air now for obvious reasons.

But I hope one or both still happens. He and I have always talked about “salad days.” It’s loosely taken from the movie Raising Arizona but it’s not the same thing. Basically a salad day is a day you have where you stop to appreciate its awesomeness because you don’t know if you’ll ever get another day like it again. No matter how old you are, but especially as you age, in some ways, salad days are all that’s left to look forward to.

So I hope I see you my man, but if you can’t swing it that’s ok, too.

And to my old man who is reading this up in Medford this morning, I just want you to know that I love you and I appreciate you. I just wanted to say it. I can think of more than a few salad days you and I have had together…..

So, I’m cool if we don’t hit 7 home runs today. Not cool if we score no runs. Is there something they can settle on that’s a little more middling? A week like this is why I don’t like looking at runs scored per game to gauge the success or failure of an offense. Maybe near the end of the year it’s ok.

Major crosswind in the game today, 25 mph.

Got some rain for the Masters with the biggest rain day being Sat. We will probably finish that tourney on Monday.

Baseball is a weird game, man. I would have bet anything that we were gonna go into Chicago and lay our bats down swiftly and meekly. Nope. Seven bombs. I want Villar to do this so badly, yesterday was a great show for him. Everyone, in fact.

So much ugliness in that first series of the year I don’t really know where to start. That’s the first time they’ve been shut out twice in an opening series in their history. They struck out 41 times smashing the previous record of a whopping 32 strikeouts to start a season.

It’s only 1 series and it’s barely April.

But that was ugly.

WOW! That was a fun game yesterday. Obviously the win was brought to you by Loo, James and MacDog. I didn’t even know they were getting together for the game.

I honestly believe that if we sent 3 Flappers to every game we’d go undefeated.

Giants facing a guy I’ve never heard of, Clarke Schmidt? I hate everything about that name. He’s 27 so I can’t imagine this guy is a legit prospect. There’s some weather in NY today with the wind blowing out to left at a pretty hefty clip.

Into the second paragraph and I’m still doing a slow burn about this dude adding an “e” to the end of his first name…….

Whatever, we should at least have a chance against this guy. Cobb is an enigma. Every pitch he throws looks unhittable.

And then…..

Let’s just try to score at least 1 run today and then build off that.

Today we got steamrolled by a stud pitcher. It happens. I didn’t see the game but I started thinking about the roster moves they made today and it started irritating me so today’s thread is tomorrow’s thread. To be honest this is why i re-started the blog, to vent……

Let’s start with Bryce Johnson. Is he a prospect? Eh, probably not. But he was very good in Spring Training hitting .310 while being a perfect 12 for 12 in SB attempts. This guy was drafted by us in 2017. A 6th round pick. Instead of rewarding a homegrown guy with an opening day roster spot we jettison him for…..Matt Beaty? Why? Why are you trying your best and doing, frankly, everything you can do in Spring Training, only to be sent away for…..Matt Beaty?

Ok now Stephen Piscotty. Nice Stanford lad. Knows how to hit bombs. Absolutely Bay Area homegrown from birth. But did that matter? Not to Zaidi. Even with all these injured outfielders they ignore Piscotty and he’s got to end up asking for his release. So kind of them to honor that request.

David Villar was supposed to be the starting 3rd baseman right? Homegrown guy finally getting his shot? Nope, not today. He’s on the bench.

Joey Bart….you don’t get to start. Come on man, Roberto Perez? On Opening Day?????

Running a baseball team isn’t just punching numbers into your calculator. The Giants had a great opportunity to respect the hard work of their minor leaguers and native Bay Area guys and they rejected all of that.

It’s tone deaf shit and another reason why I don’t like Zaidi or Kap…..

Pretty cool to start right out of the gate in New York. Thairo gotta be chomping at the bit for this chance to do some damage vs his old team. Honestly, after Cole quickly disposes of us today and we have a day off to get over that we really do have a decent chance to win the next 2 games. At least if you’re just looking at the pitching match ups.

Prediction time! I used to love making season predictions until I realized the team we are making predictions about TODAY will be nothing like the team we will be watching in September. So really my prediction is just a carryover of my feelings about how this off season went. I wanted to come in at .500 because that is a perfect label for the boring team Farhan has put together. Nobody remembers .500. But I couldn’t pull the trigger. I think we are an injury or two away from having to dip into the minor league system and all hell could break loose at that point. I’ll say we win 75 games in 2023. And if our AAA guys do nothing this season when they’re called up Zaidi needs to go……

And now we sit and wait out just one more day. Irritatingly the game is on at 10am my time which is not exactly in my wheelhouse for watching it live. It’s a fun match up, too.

Who’s your *guy this season? There aren’t a lot to choose from unless you’re down with the retreads and housewife favorites. For me, without question, it’s Blake Sabol. Besides being a dead ringer for Javy Lopez, he’s a great story, too. And someone who could really help us with his bat. Let’s see him draw a start on Thursday and watch him rake a bomb off Cole in one of his 2 at bats before Kap pulls him in the 5th inning for one of his over-managed switcheroo moves.

People will say, “it’s spring training, it doesn’t count.” But when you give up 9 earned runs in your final start before it does start to count that isn’t gonna make anyone feel good. Stripling, like Manaea, is just another guy. Don’t call me a Doomer, I just want everyone prepared for what’s going to happen to the Giants this year. Clubber Lang said it best…..

I haven’t seen enough spring training baseball to have a take on this but so far I am in favor of the rules changes. At least the pitch clock for sure. I hadn’t realized how much the game has dragged on till I watched a game where the players were actually playing and not standing around stroking their balls and spitting. I don’t get it though, baseball has always been about stroking your balls and spitting. When did it turn into an extra 45-60 minutes of game time?

I am the biggest stolen base advocate out there but I’m worried this maximum throw attempt rule will do too much for the runner.

The shift change is also something I support.

What about Flap Nation? What looks good/bad to you guys?

All I wanted for Christmas were new players. Honestly, that’s where most of my frustration stems from with the Giants. I’m tired of platoon guys. I’m tired of none of our hitters doing anything particularly well other than keeping that OPS/OBP up. Estrada, Wilmet, Crawford, Yaz, etc….just don’t do it for me anymore. I want a home run chase. Or a guy who leads the league in stolen bags. Baseball, and specifically my team, has gotten kinda boring for me.

Having said all that and now that the dust has settled I am fine with us not getting Correa. Or Judge. Or Rondon. But you know what? All 3 of those guys would have held my interest in the team this year. Even one of them. We got Stripling and Haniger and….twins. Lame.

Anyway, Merry Christmas Flappers. I have appreciated you guys and this place for many many years. But it is time to take a break. I have backed off my plan to dump the blog–at least for now. I think what I need to do is to take a step back, not worry about the team or writing threads or anything else for a while. This place used to be therapy for me but not anymore. Maybe in a few months I’ll find a different reason to fire it back up again. Spring time really is an exciting time and a re-birth or a re-boot of this wonderful place might be just what the doctor ordered.

But for now, let’s shut this old girl down for a bit.

If you guys need to get in touch hit me at bigflavor77@gmail.com or on twitter @1flapdown77

Conforto. 2 years. Boring. He has an opt out after 1 year so either he’s good and he bails or he sucks and he stays. That’s a Farhan specialty that I think he should probably fucking stop doing.

So the Giants have run and hid on this pretending they don’t have to answer questions because this is a HIPAA issue. But there are a LOT of questions that should be answered that wouldn’t violate Correa’s HIPAA rights.

For instance….

“His medical records with this information were available to every team in MLB who was interested in seeing them. Did you review these records prior to making your offer? If not, why not?”

“What did you do prior to making the offer that would qualify as due diligence?”

For Farhan to issue a 2 sentence press release that ended with “We wish Carlos the best” is a complete and total cop out.

I’m not really even that interested in what the medical issue was since I think there’s a high likelihood there was no medical issue in the first place. I just want to know the process. Right now the Giants look like a complete and total clown show run by buffoons in over their heads.

What research did they do prior to making the offer? According to Slusser all of this was available to any team who wanted to see it PRIOR to making the offer.

They announced this signing A WEEK AGO. Supposedly the Giants found something in his physical and doctors disagreed. That’s from Slusser. I don’t really understand what that means. If the Mets don’t flag the same thing when they do their physical then what exactly is going on here?

At best this makes the Giants look like incompetent bush-league run fools.

At worst, Farhan needs to get fired.

Can you imagine a Boras client ever doing business with us again? Hell, ANY big contract guy is going to treat SF like the plague going forward.

This is our Chernobyl.

I’d still love to know the offers Zaidi received for Rodon. I don’t think i’ll ever get over him not trading him at the deadline and only a fool would think we were offered nothing for him. If the offers weren’t good enough, like I said would love to know what they were.

Regardless, Farhan gets a passing grade for this off season. I’d say C+ or so. He picked up a stud and 3 other guys who make us better plus he kept Joc and he didn’t bring back Belt or Longoria something I thought he might do.

But today isn’t about the Giants it’s about basking in the glorious glow of yet another NFC West title…….

Really surprised to see the Niners 3.5 favorites tonight. It’s one thing for Big Cock Brock to do what he did in the friendly confines of Santa Clara–it is quite another thing to go up against the 12th man in Seattle. And supposedly he’s banged up, too. At least the weather will be decent.

Seattle can’t stop the run, maybe we just have BCB hand the ball off all game and we steamroll them.

Still, if I was a gambling man I’d probably take those points. Games with these chumps are usually close.

Ok, uh, yeah, about that “Farhan doing nothing in the Winter” stuff…..

THIRTEEN YEARS. That’s the first thing that jumps off the page. I think the longest deal Zaidi did before this one was 3 years for the broken LaStella.

I mean, short term this guy is no Aaron Judge. He’s not going to sell tickets and he’s not going to carry the team.

But he’s an excellent baseball player and you can’t have too many of those guys.

The contract is absurd but I’m not going to hate on this. Zaidi was backed into a corner because of how far ahead LA and SD have gotten AND, and this can’t be understated, how TERRIBLE our farm system has been at producing hitters. You can’t grow ’em you gotta go buy ’em……

Welcome aboard, Carlos.

Imagine losing Rodon (which is happening soon) then doing almost nothing in the off season then trying to sell to the fanbase that you’re better this year because we picked up Hitch Maniger or whatever his name is and Sean Manaea.

It’s ludicrous.

But this was Farhan’s off season. Underwhelming AGAIN.

The negative way to look at this is that we exchanged Rodon for Manaea thus automatically making us worse. A more negative way to look at it is realizing that Manaea sucks. I don’t think he was even still in the rotation with SD by the end of the year.

This is a glorified Brebbia Aisle pick up. He might do ok here because most pitchers do ok/better than ok at Snoracle Park. But we are worse today than we were at the end of the season. And that is the wrong direction for a team to go when facing the behemoth’s in our division.

Quite an interesting game vs my arch nemesis. Any rational thinking football fan knows that Joe Montana is the greatest QB of all time. And yet there are still those who believe that honor goes to Tom Brady. Absurd. Brady never would have lasted even half this long if he had to operate under the rules governing Montana’s time. And longevity is what has allowed Brady to achieve this this fake level of greatness. Perfect is perfect and Joe was 4 for 4 in his SB appearances. You give me 1 game I need to win and I pick Montana as my QB 100 out of 100 times…..

The oldest going up against the youngest. Can’t beat a match up like this. If Brady doesn’t regret coming back for this year already he’s going to after this game…….

While Farhan continues to sit on his hands, AJ Preller continues to make bold moves. I personally wasn’t targeting Bogaerts but he’s yet another star who makes a team already better than us, better than us. It’s easy to say “Boy I’m sure glad we aren’t getting saddled with a deal like that” but you know what? How many years you guys got left? How many years are we now stuck behind LA and SD? I’d like to see us be competitive in the NL West at least a few more times before I die.

Right now, LA and SD are so far ahead of us it’s embarrassing. And with the payroll flexibility Farhan has he should be the one feeling most embarrassed…..

9 Years. 360 Large. Turns out the pull of good ol’ Linden Ca isn’t what it once was….

For the first time ever I do think we were actually in this. The original Yankee offer was known so it looks like he went back to them with the Giants offer and allowed them to match it. He shopped our offer, that motherfucker…

Oh well. I actually feel like we dodged a bullet here. Although I would have celebrated had we gotten him.

Now Farhan is truly on the hot seat. No more Brebbia aisle bullshit. He can sign 37 catchers this weekend if he wants to and dump all of them by Monday.

But he needs to get in the game. The Man’s Game. Stop acting like you’re broke.

It’s wild how many people I talked to yesterday who now have me believing in Big Cock Brock. One game smokescreen? Or is this guy gonna take the reigns and run with it?

I like Bozo’s call at the end of the last thread. We don’t get Judge, then we go get Correa, Nimmo and the Japanese pitcher.

Either that or we don’t get Judge and then Farhan plows his way through the Brebbia aisle with all the discount coupons he can cut out at one time.

I’m just sick to death about this Grappy news. Question: When was the last time some rando QB took over mid season and brought a team to the Super Bowl? Did Brady do that with Bledsoe? I can’t remember if this is the possible comp or not. Either way, anyone think Brock Purdy is the next Tom Brady?

Don’t even bring up Cam Newton’s name. He sucked even when he was good. All Cam cares about is Cam. He would be a complete waste to sign.

Uh….at least Kapernick’s well rested?

Ugh. What a waste of a great defense. We’re done this year.

Big game today. Today is the day I decide how quality this Niner D is. It’s been nice shutting down the Andy Dalton’s and Colt McCoy’s of the league but it was only a few weeks ago that the Rams and the Chiefs dropped 31 and 44 on us, respectively.

This Miami offense is legit and we have the added pain in the ass of having their coach know us inside and out.

Shut Miami down and I’ll be on board with this being an elite, special defense.

Spain losing is a bad omen for them winning the whole thing. I am starting to question whether I know enough about soccer to bet on it……

Had a buddy text me last night asking if I remember the Matt Cain perfecto. LOL. Yeah, I would say I remember that one. One of my greatest predictions of all time.

Unlike Spain who appears to be rolling over like a dog.

As I understand it today is Win Day for my favorite soccer team and my all time favorite soccer player of all time, my mainest of men, Alvaro Morata—he got us this far and he shall carry us on his back to the next round!

I never post political stuff but this is just too funny. I get about 20 emails a day from Trump’s camp begging for money. A couple of years ago I signed up for the emails. When they asked for my name I just put in Fuck You.

So all the emails start out Fuck, which is funny just in itself. Read this one:

For starters, the % impact is always going higher. It used to be around 400%. Now up to 1300%. It is never explained where this magical extra money comes from. The Percentage Impact Gods? I don’t know. Next, apparently my name Fuck You, who Trump has specifically asked to see on his list, is supposedly going FIRST on a 2024 Donor List. The FIRST ONE. All these dudes do is beg for money, how could this be the first donor list?

Anyway, they all make me laugh but this one especially so.

That win certainly wasn’t as fun as the Mexico win but the W is all that matters. I personally think the waters are going to get very steep vs Miami. Who is going to cover Hill and Waddle? Those guys are insanely fast and they have an arm that can get them the ball. I guess we’ll see. Our D is great but those 2 guys are studs and then you’ve got Jeff Wilson Jr. playing with a chip on his shoulder. Think we could use him now with Mitchell banged up again? As I said at the time, it was completely stupid to trade that guy.

They say he resigned and that’s probably true although it’s also entirely possible the alumni had a *talk* with him and all parties decided this was the best way to handle it. Shaw has earned going out on his own terms.

Whatever you want to call it, he’s gone. I don’t rejoice because I don’t see how Stanford competes at the highest level anymore with the way the landscape and the rules have changed. Shaw is smart, maybe he just couldn’t see a successful path forward either.

But it is past time for a new voice to be heard on the farm. A new voice with new plays that don’t involve running off tackle over and over and over and over and over and over…..again.

His time at Stanford was very successful. Those days are long gone.

Black Friday, over. A day which saw me golf and buy absolutely nothing.

Michigan a +7.5 dawg? Harbs blows covers like these when he’s the favorite, gotta think he’s got something up his sleeve as a dawg.

What’s happening in the World Cup? Has Spain won it all yet?

Happy Thanksgiving, Flappers. Our 13th at this fine establishment. I honestly thought I’d have deep 6’d this place by now but it just hasn’t happened yet. We always had some great holiday threads. Feel free to post your best meal/side dish for today. Twinner, Stix and Snarkk used to always bring the heat, as I recall.

Here was Thanksgiving #1 if you care to tip toe back to the past….

Now that was more like it! Finally a game that went the way we thought it would go. This team is going to be peaking come playoff time. This is our year!

Pretty excited for the Niner game tonight. We should be fine but AZ always seems to play tougher than they look and who knows what can happen at that altitude? Hope everyone stays hydrated.

Giants are interested in Mitch Haniger which is fine with me I guess. Although this line at mlbtraderumors was more than a little concerning….

“Due to a ruptured testicle and a torn adductor muscle, Haniger played in just 63 games in 2019”

Ouch.

I am so done with this guy. Luke is too here’s our text exchange.

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ZZZZzzzzzz. Man, I remember when this day was one of the most exciting days of the year. This year I had to check to see where it was even getting played. I went to exactly 1 game at Cal’s stupid stadium–yes, THAT game.

I’ll watch a little today if I get bored.

Speaking of twitter accounts that are worth following, you really should give this guy a follow. He’s a diehard Yankee fan (he’s also the guy who exposed the Astros for trashcan cheating) and he puts out awesome short vids like this one.

I like Joc, I really do. He’s probably our least boring hitter and that goes a long way with me when you consider the long LONG line of boring at bats we trot out there every game. I still don’t get 19 mil for a platoon guy.

Farhan also made a bunch of other moves that weren’t interesting in the slightest. “Goodbye Vosler” is about the extent of it.

Now that he’s brought back Joc and fiddled around with a bunch of Rule 5 BS it’s time for him to do some man’s work. Spend some money…..

Excited about the win but I’m just about done with Shanny. A supposed offensive genius, he still can’t get anyone open. He still runs the same boring things that defenses laugh at and see coming. And if he does get something to work he inexplicably goes away from it. CMC, Kittle, Deebo, Aiyuk….and then it’s Jennings who’s getting targets. LOL.

I dunno man, Kyle just can’t do this at the level we need him to do it at…….

Excited for tonight. Kyle and Jimmy have everything they need. If they can’t score points tonight I give up. At least 35. Goddamn what is so wrong with scoring 35 freaking points? Teams do it all the time. We did it once this year vs lowly Carolina.

Come on. Score some goddamn points with these 4 studs you have.

Just keeping the line moving……..

eom.

Congratulations to Dusty. And the Astros definitely earned this championship.

And now we head off into the typical darkness of Winter. Somewhat different this time. Feels a little darker, a little more uncertain.

I have a plan for how I want The Flap to go out. Not sure when. It’s hard, shutting this down is going to be like putting a pet down.

I’d like to say I’m counting the days till P and C’s report but that just isn’t true. I love baseball but not the way I used to. And as we get further away from 2014 I’m finding it hard to muster up the emotion I once had for this great game. Maybe that’s a penalty for winning those 3 beauties over such a short period of time. I don’t know.

This World Series has really lived up to hype for me. If only McCormick rhymed with *Fence but it doesn’t and that’s the only bummer here.

Day 2 of the Breeders Cup, gents. Now this is a day that always lives up to the hype for me.

Is it possible that today is the final day the Flap gets a baseball game thread?

We shall see, we shall see…….

A Co-No is just not the same thing to me but still fun to watch. All of a sudden, Houston is back in the drivers seat. Despite his struggles in the WS I will take Verlander 10/10 times over Syndy and a bunch of bullpen guys.

Critical game for both teams.

Let’s roll.