A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

Now THAT was a throwback game. Timely defense, excellent pitching and one had-to-have-it hit—and some luck, too. When Turner hit that ball that was foul by an inch I thought “maybe the ball is bouncing our way tonight.” And sure enough, for the rest of the night it did. When you look back on a game it’s amazing how the signs of a win or a loss are sprinkled throughout the game in subtle moments. Think about it….

Still, this is no time to celebrate, gents. Nothing’s happened yet.

But I can see the sun rising and it might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Imagine if we pull this off…..

This feels like an upcoming….loss. We don’t hit Scherzer well (besides Craw and Stelly) and everyone of their guys hits Wood well. Whatever, that’s why they play the game though, right?

http://dailybaseballdata.com/cgi-bin/dailyhit.pl

I’d like to hope that Wood might rise up to the challenge and Max might finally start to be slowed a bit by his 37th year on this planet but that might just be wishful thinking.

Well, the dream may have been to beat them 3-0 and move on to the NLCS but that wasn’t too realistic. Some questionable moves by Kap last night starting with bringing in Leone for Gausman who was still pitching effectively. I could see it MAYBE if he replaced him with a lock down reliever with post season experience but Leone is just a rando guy pitching in his first playoff game. Whatever, LA seemed pretty locked in last night so maybe they would have done the same thing to Gasman but letting the game get away there was inexcusable.

I’d like to see The Grave Duggar in there tomorrow.

Nine years ago yesterday I got this text from Kokonuts

Now do you guys see why I wanted LA so badly? How sweet was that?

There is obviously a long road to hoe. No guarantees, though winning Game 1 is enormous in a five game series. All I know is that I had some extra pizzazz in my *fuck yeah!* fist pumps last night.

I still don’t know where Log Dog came from or why we deserve this. Since the Bumgarner draft the Giants have had a putrid record of drafting pitchers. Tim Alderson, Kyle Crick, Tyler Beede, Phil Bickford, God those are just the first round busts. There were so many more….But we got Log Dog in the 4th round of 2014. And he was largely underwhelming and easy to ignore. Except for this April when he was awful and I cursed his name. And then BAM! May 11th came and he struck out 10 Rangers and he really hasn’t looked back since.

LA fans didn’t know who Webb or Doval were before last night.

But they goddamn well know who they are now….

I was thinking this morning about how excited Twinfan would be for this series. He’d fire off a furious number of posts to deal with the anxiety. If you can’t get up for this I have bad news for you: I have nothing to offer you in the future as a baseball fan that will top the lead up to tonight’s game. Once the first pitch is thrown this could go any number of ways. Some good, some bad, some VERY bad and some so gloriously nirvanic I might start to weep if I even begin to consider them….

Since SF has never faced LA in the post season I am prepared for this to be the only time this happens in my lifetime. For that reason alone this series is more important to me than any World Series win ever could be. Look, we’ve won World Series trophies and it was fantastic. Now how bout we do something we’ve never done before and send these bitches into a Winter-long slumber they’ll never truly be able to completely wake up from. I know for certain that if that happens I’ll never forget the 2021 season regardless of what happens after……

____________________________________

BOZO is LOCKED IN

Oh baby here we go! I don’t know much but I know this has the potential to be the greatest sporting moment of our lifetime. Texts from my buddies seemed to appreciate the weight and gravity of what is upon us:

Is this also possibly setting up as one of the greatest sporting letdowns of our lifetime?

Absolutely.

But the gambler in me say LET’S GET IT ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No matter what happens I am all in on this series. Five Niner Super Bowls. Three recent Dubs championships. And our Three Beauties from 2010, 2012, and 2014—all pale in comparison to the pending excitement I have about this upcoming series with LA….

Normally, I’d say a team with 106 wins is very likely to win their play-in game. But don’t understimate the emotional drag this epic lost division will have on Roberts and his band of baby blue idiots. They also don’t have Muncy. And Adam Wainwright, goddamn, at 40 years old is doing things we used to see old pitchers in the steroid era do. The Cardinals are the hottest team in baseball and they have an excellent chance of knocking off the Dodgers tonight despite the rather lopsided career at bats vs each pitcher.

http://dailybaseballdata.com/cgi-bin/dailyhit.pl

While there is a part of me that LOVES the post season format giving us essentially a Game 7 tonight I accept how lame this is. This has to change and it sounds like it will in the next CBA: more teams with all first round series’ being three games. If that happens it will limit the bonus of winning one’s division. But whatever, something has to be done about a team winning 106 games and having to burn their best pitcher just to get in–or, what I think is going to happen, they aren’t even going to get in as St. Louis looks tough on Wednesday.

Still, if LA manages to win I will be excited. As Vicki said in Let it Ride, “nothing ventured….nothing ventured.” And while that didn’t make any sense, her sentiment is mine. The risk of getting knocked out by LA pales in comparison, to me, to the glorious excitement of being the team to knock their sorry asses out.

Honestly that would be almost as good as winning a World Series. Think about it. Something SF has never done to them. The closest we came to that was the Joe Morgan bomb in 1982. We still talk about that and that was just one at bat and it wasn’t even the post season.

Knock them out of the playoffs? Oh yes please, I want me some of that….

Gotta keep this one short and sweet, got a long drive in front of me and I’m late to work. Oh well. Anyway, this one feels different that the others and we are in completely uncharted territory as one of the favorites to take down our 4th beauty.

But let’s worry about later. For now I’m happy to laugh LOUDLY in the faces of LA who won 106 games and still have to burn their best pitcher to make it to the dance. Too funny.

Not much to say about this one. A loss would be devastating as it would force us into a one game playoff with LA where we burn a good pitcher. Then if we lose that we burn about pitcher in the Wild Card game. ‘

I’m with this guy, bring this energy today….

Well, there’s nothing new here. You want something you have to do it yourself.

I did have October 2nd circled on my calendar though:

Closing This Out

Posted in Uncategorized by Flavor on September 20, 2021 Edit This

“I’m going to be in Reno on October 2 with BirdDog and Pasalon and some of my other main men from college. It would be quite sweet if we took down the division on that day….”

So while it would have been nice to finish them off yesterday, let’s make it so today. If I’ve ever been prescient about something let it be this. You have no idea how badly I want to dance on LA’s grave today….

I’m trying to imagine what this would be like if we hadn’t had 2010, 2012, and 2014. We would all be descending into madness. But because of the 3 beauties it feels like we’re mostly grounded, taking all this in stride. In some ways that’s good I guess. Back then I was running with my daughter, sockless, through the rainy streets of Palo Alto. Damn, in so many ways that feels like another lifetime ago….

I had to scroll way down into the archives for this one but it’s worth the read:

Maybe I’m wrong and you’re all going insane about this improbable run. After 3 World Series WINS as the decided underdog it is weird to be pummeling the league with 105 wins while LA weeps at our feet. And yet here we are? I’m weirdly emotionless about it all. You?

Something to remember next time any of you want to disparage The Grave Duggar.

Regarding the Dodger game last night: Hey Roberts, bring it on. It won’t matter. We’re just gonna keep winning. Tingler’s band of pussies could give up 37 home runs tonight. Nothing changes. You’re still gonna come up short.

Between the dreaded Cardinals winning 17 in a row (and counting) and SF and LA on their way to 106–108 wins each, I’m not sure if the National League could put on a more dominating show. It has become accepted around these parts that the Giants need to win-out. Just to be sure. The way this season has gone I don’t expect anything less…..

I’ve let the dust settle on this Belt news and I’m not as bummed as when I originally heard about the thumb break. For one thing, I’ve never liked Belt. Constantly injured, obsessed with his version of the strike zone, he’s always been one of my least favorite. I couldn’t understand how a man that strapping could be so timid in the box. But this year, for whatever reason, he’s removed the shackles and swung away—with exciting results.

Ironically, trying to bunt led to his demise. One more reason to not sweat this: he’s the streakiest hitter on the team. We were likely in for a dry spell at the worst possible time. His loss weakens us to be sure, especially defensively. But I’m not throwing myself off the Golden Gate at this news. Speaking of that way to take yourself out, does that make any sense at all? I’m sure many of you have looked down to those icy waters below–a more grim, terrifying death I couldn’t imagine.

I thought we’d kick off this Monday with something different. Here’s an email I got from Stix. My man, I don’t know what the problem is. Clear out your cache. Then make sure you’re signed into wordpress. That’s where I’d start.

From: Carstie Clausen <carstieclausen@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Sep 26, 2021 at 5:41 PM
Subject: 102-54
To: Flavor <bigflavor77@gmail.com>

Flav:  Howdy from Minnesota.  Accessing iMac about every 3 days as cleaning up the homestead after 5 years of neglect is a constant draw on my energies.  But this evening, after the game three loss to the Padres, I made it over to Markko’s and tuned into the How Sweep It Is over the Rox,  Wow!  Those taters keep on keeping on, with Belt, Yaz and Crawdaddy pounding em out.  Evidently, management is cosseting the starters and employing the pen for most of the innings.  Doval seems to be coming around nicely and Curvin Kervin is wowing them.  The strategy employed this year has transformed a so-so team into a monster.  A lot of teams will attempt to copy that new template.

Haven’t even attempted to engage with WordPress yet as my time is pretty limited.  If you have any good ideas as to how to get back on the Flap please let me know ASAP.  Who would have imagined such a season.  Six to go with a two game edge.  At this point the schedule may favor los Gigantes as I simply cannot see the LaBumbos sweeping Milwaukee. Breaking the monopoly on Division titles would be a perfect start to the PostSeason.  High Fives to all the Flappers.  Go Giants!   -Stix

We win 7-2. LA loses 7-2. And we’re up 2 with 7 to play.

I can’t BELIEVE we got help from Arizona. Today we’re all in on someone named Humberto.

Gasman goes for us……

Niner game not till tonight so all knowing dude head nods need to be pointed towards Nepal in perfect harmony….

Though it’s been murmured a bit here at the Flap lately, it’s become obvious that if we want to win the division we just need to win-out. Maybe we get lucky and lose one or two but LA isn’t slowing down.

It’s a joke that two 100+ win teams have to fight tooth and nail to avoid the dreaded play-in game. That should be reserved for the mediocre teams who are looking up wistfully at the power houses of the league.

MLB really needs to change the post season format. Either re-seed after the wild card games OR just do what the NBA does and have 2 conferences.

LA is 14 games up on the wild card teams below. But because maybe they *only* win 104 and SF wins 105 they have to burn a stud pitcher in a play-in game and pray nothing crazy happens?

It’s stupid.

Every time I start feeling an inkling of hope that we might possibly be able to close this deal, dread and despair drag me right back down again. For a brief moment yesterday I had dreams of the Rockies finishing off LA after we had tied SD. Then it all fell apart.

Now WE are the ones being fed to the head of the volcano in Nepal. Ugh.

Knowing Dude head nod is horizontal today…..

Scott Kazmir in a must win pressure packed September game? LOL, sure why not. When this dude was a damn rookie Barry Bonds was busy taking down the batting crown in 2004 with a .362 batting average. I think The Kaz also took down a silver medal this year in the Olympics. Maybe it was bronze, whatever, this dude is piling up wins for us on top of Olympic medals and I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore!

Two up with 10 to go! Let’s fucking go!!!!!

The most important thing you need to be able to do in life, if you want to get better at living, is to admit when you’re wrong. As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to celebrate it. Let’s take a look back at February 5th, shall we?

Now before you all line up to jizz on Big Flavor’s grave, relax, don’t do it, when you want to…..gloat?

We were all wrong, go read the thread below.

Lamonte Wade Jr. is Andres Torres without the adderall. He’s Marco Scutaro without the post season batting average. He’s Cody Ross without the bat flip. He’s all of Zaidi’s genius rolled into one glorious man.

And he’s ours. He’s all ours….

In a perfect world, Gasman rediscovers his early season dominance, SD rediscovers their choking ways and Urias gets blown up in Nepal.

Now, how much of that will actually happen? Stay tuned.

This is why we love sports….

____________________________

Last day of Summer and…..

Happy Birthday to the GREAT Giant Head!

One up with 12 to go. When you have to win nearly every goddamn game it actually feels like 12 down with one to go. Some way we gotta find a way to hold off LA. San Diego, Colorado, Arizona and then San Diego. Those are all winable games.

I’m going to be in Reno on October 2 with BirdDog and Pasalon and some of my other main men from college. It would be quite sweet if we took down the division on that day….

“This isn’t about you!!!”

Come on, tell me you can look at Fernando Tatis and not think that at some point his teammates weren’t gonna call him out on some self centered shit…

I looked at the standings today and continue to be dumbfounded by The Padres. 20 games out?!??!?!!

Ah, but then I’m reminded of Machado’s wise words: “This isn’t about you.”

Look at what Bryce Harper is doing. He’s literally murdering the ball. But his team ran Kap out of town. And Washington won it all WITHOUT him. Nice hair though, right?

The Giants have what Tatis and Harper teams will never have: a team pulling on the same rope not driven by an egomaniac.

We are lucky to have the guys we have…

Name a more exciting sacrifice fly in SF Giants history. I’ll wait. The pitcher? In that situation? And how did the lumbering Crawford get home on such an intermediate fly ball? As both my main men in Portland (BD Inc) and Reno (Pasalon) texted at the same time, “even better that it was on Pederson!!!”….

How great is this picture?

Or this one. Two SF Bore-arriors. Uh, sorry I mean WARRIORS. None of this is happening without the Core.

Yes gents it’s true. We’ve played 147 games and but one lone contest separates us from LA. Not much of a buffer, to be sure. The baseball season is long, nobody giving away a trophy for the nice Spring months we had….

Atlanta rolls into town and while I usually like the drag an east coast team takes to the best coast it’s just not happening with the Braves who got rained out yesterday. So they got their off day. LA has to go to Cincinnati. Eh, they might offer a challenge. The Reds don’t roll over the way AZ and SD does.

I have no idea what’s going to happen this month. I’m just so thankful we get some meaningful baseball. Sit back and enjoy the ride…….

When you’re only working with 3 starters for going on 3 weeks you’re bound to lose games now and again. Well, we lost one last night. It’s really incredibly they were able to rip off 9 wins with all this opener nonsense which I will never support. It only takes ONE of those dudes to be off to torpedo the game. More than one and you’re sunk.

Good time for Gasman to rekindle the magic he had earlier in the season. Being up 2 games sure sounds a lot better than being up only one.

The Dodgers have to be doing the slowest of burns. Win 5 in a row? That’s pretty good, eh? Not so fast you blue ho’s, that gained you precisely zero games.

We have 17 games left. They have 16. Their day off is tomorrow. It would be fantastic if we both win tonight AND then we win again Thursday for an even 11 games won in a row and a clean 3 game lead on their dumb asses. So they win 6 in a row and still lose ground. Bahahahahaha!!!!

Anyway, that’s how I’m drawing it up, make it so.

They say baseball is a game of failure. Right after they say that they say even the best hitters fail 7 out of 10 times at the plate. In this stretch run that’s poppycock. You want to succeed? You gotta be perfect. Run the damn table. These two teams are engaged in an epic battle, one we may never see again…

The pussification of San Diego continues onward with their complete laydown last night. Of course LA won. One good thing about this ridiculous bar getting set by both teams: they will go into the post season razor sharp. There’s nothing worse than winning your division by 10 games, resting guys and then trying to ramp it up all of a sudden. I like that this is a battle to the end….

This text from my buddy Luke in Portland pretty much sums them up:

EITHER LA is one of the greatest baseball teams of all time OR it is as Luke said….

Remember the start of the year and everyone was freaking out about the LA/SD rivalry? Hmmmm where’d that go? It lasted about 3 weeks. A rivalry that lasts 3 weeks. That’s cute.

Anyway, back to business. Apparently we are going to have to play .900 or better ball the rest of the way to win the division. Strap it on and let’s roll….

One of the few weekend days where baseball will be taking a back seat for me. Webb will continue his march towards under the radar Cy Young votes and Max Scherzer will be laying waste to the pathetic Padres.

Meanwhile…..NFL! Opening Sunday. Oh my does Draftkings ever have some spectacular tournies today.

No surprises in Detroit. Just go in there and treat them like the Dodgers do the Padres. Seriously, does San Diego have any self respect at all?

65 years ago. How many of you guys are 65?

San Diego continues to offer zero resistance and at this point Tingler should be checking the want ads for 2022. Personally I would love to see Bochy managing them. What a story line that would be and we’d get to play him 18 times a year. That would be fun I just doubt he’d want to fire it up again but who knows? La Russa did.

Big time hitting weather today gents. It’s hot and the wind is blowing out double digits. Rocket launch time, I hope NASA is ready to track some bombs….

Bring on some easy wins, woo hoo let’s go! Ah, not so fast. The Cubs are still a major league baseball team. Sure, their front office gave up on them but they didn’t seem to care. They’re 8-2 in their last ten games. They are a bunch of no names with the slow and weak Duffy batting in the middle of the line up. Nice weather in Wrigley today with the wind blowing out a bit.

Kyle Hendricks is beatable if you lay off his sinker. We are good at laying off pitchers and only hitting what Kai Correa has instructed us to hit so we should put up some runs today.

But we are going *opener* and all you have to do to be scared of no name guys is take a look at our line up once in a while. The guys who can get hot and take two put of the ballpark in a game are Schwindel and Wisdom, two cast offs. Their catcher bats lead off but he’s got big power, too.

Anyway, let’s go, we need to keep winning. I am NOT winning over 100 games and settling for a damn play in game…..

Well, a lot happened yesterday. The Giants swept the Rox in Colorado, simply unheard of. The Dodgers FINALLY lost. And we got to reaquaint ourselves with an epic picture from the ghosts of Flapalooza’s past.

And now a well deserved day off–well earned after that tough stretch. But don’t get too comfortable! We’ll be playing again before you can either shake a stick OR Shaun Anderson gets waived again……

Talk about running it up. If we win today we will be 40 (FORTY!) games over .500! I still can’t get over what’s happening this year. And with The Grave Duggar STILL with an OPS over .800 how can we not have him playing regularly? He must have been doing a slow burn after he got sent down digging many graves and writing many names on his list….

This popped up on my facebook feed today. Eight years ago today. I think this was the day Unca and Diggity discovered their kids were dating. How crazy was that?

We got Lamonte Wade Jr. for Shaun Anderson who I barely remember. Here’s what Anderson’s been up to since the trade:

How much more could Kevin Gausman have stepped up yesterday? The answer: none more. He was brilliant at a time when we absolutely positively had to have brilliance.

Ruf leading off? Why not. How’s a bomb and a triple sound to ya? Thairo crushing two deep ones, Doobie with 3 hits, even the lumbering Buster got in on the act.

The first game in this godforesaken hell hole went about as well as we could have hoped for.

You guys know what today is right?????

It’s LOG DOG Day!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the late thread Flap Nation, those tennis balls weren’t gonna hit themselves…

Not much to say except woo hoo! I don’t know how we did it but we took the series using 2 goddamn openers and like 40 pitchers. It felt like thaty many anyway.

Now we only have to go to Colorado with literally no pitchers available. LOL. I’m sure that won’t be a problem.

This is the headline at ESPN today.

hmmmmmm I dunno, how bout the team that doesn’t have to trot out openers in back to back games? Jeez where is our savior LOG DOG when you need him?

Sadly, Log Dog can’t pitch every game. And he can’t hit at all which is something none of our paid hitters seem to know how to do anymore.

I love screen shotting Dodgers in dumb, compromising positions….

The ghost of Steve Sax really came through for us last night.

Yeah bitches, dats how we beat you. Suck on it, LA.

Without question the biggest series of the season. Disco kicks it off tonight followed by the *undecided* brothers Sat and Sun. To say I feel confident about winning this series would be a lie. But, this entire year has surprised me so why not one more surprise?

Can’t hit. Can’t pitch. The eyepopping comebacks from weeks past are no longer. And we are now in second place. It’s a terrible start to a Thursday gents, but at least we have a 13 game lead in the wild card. Now THAT is an eyepopping number!

Cueto getting destroyed and JosieQ swooping in to plug the dam is really the exclamation point on this terrible rut we’re in right now. September 1st and still in first place but it doesn’t feel like it. Our starting pitching is in shambles. Long season, stretches like this are inevitable. Still, bad time for it….

Jose Quintana is listed as our starter tonight. Oh boy, this entire operation is falling apart at lightening speed. Not sure how to fix any of this. Have we gotten any word on whether or not Cueto and Wood were vax’d?

Nothing else to do but turn our tired ours to Jose Q and just hope for the best….

This could be a really tough game. Long east coast trip with no days off and right back at it against one of the best mulleted pitchers in the league. Our team is resilient. Some how they’ve got to find a way. In a way though they did take yesterday off, right?

A fantastic east coast trip could be taken over the top with a win today. We are winning at an unreal clip but it’s a clip we must sustain to stay ahead of LA.

Hurricanes are such a trip to me. You’re literally waiting for something to arrive. You know it’s going to happen. Destruction is guaranteed. Earthquakes give no warning. I feel terrible for the people who will die today. I don’t believe The Flap has any boots on the grounds in that area……

not much to say about that one. Win some, lose some. At least LA lost. Nobody hates Joc Pederson more than my main man in Reno, Pasalon. I’m sure last night’s catch at the wall had him doing the slowest of burns. Of course he went to Gunn High and probably hates all things that come out of Paly.

How’d you like to be San Diego? Spare no expense at building your team. Make every bold move you can make. And it’s not quite September and you’ve barely got a 20% chance of making the post season. I expect that number to drop significantly in the coming weeks. They are worthless right now. They’ll have a new manager next year guaranteed.

In other news, this Scherzer guy is definitely going to be a problem.

In other other news, let’s play *guess the year*. What year was this picture of me and my dad taken? We were in a Euro airport I think.

Quite a bizarre game in SD. I didn’t see any of it but if you check the boxscore you’re just left scratching your head how that could happen with those 2 offenses…..Would have been nice if the Pads had been able to hang the L on the front of the A there but it doesn’t seem like those dudes are capable of losing anymore.

Cousin Flavor sealed the deal for us, sorta, right? We’re still all in on him?

Belt hitting 2 bombs in honor of his late grand mammy is about as good as it gets and is par for the course for this magical season.

We hit the 81 win mark. Which optimistic pollyanna Flapper had 81 wins? We could lose out, 37 losses in a row and .500 would still have blown my pick out of the water….

I woke up wondering what Kap will be right about today. Everything? It’s a lot easier to push the right buttons when you’ve got literally every match up in your favor as the game wears on. A lot of that credit goes to Z and how he built the team.

Mac I forget are you going to these games? Loo wasn’t something threatening your trip?

Roll up your sleeves, every game is big from here on out.