A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball

My current biggest problem: While I should be pouring over data trying to figure out who’s going to hit the bottom rungs of the super in the Derby, I find myself consumed with the question of when to take down Anna the Slutty Real Estate agent. I know, I know, no one knows *third world* problems like I do. 🙂

She’s 12-0 as the BBOTD (8 wins to close out last season + the last 4 played this season). Part of me wants to take her down so I could use her during the dog days of August. Part of me misses searching the internet for a new BBOTD. And then part of me says, *leave her up there till we lose. Squeeze every last win out of her that she’s got to offer.”

Pfffftttttt…..I can’t decide. Maybe a poll:

I was gonna do a Derby thread but I really don’t have the time. If you read yesterday’s thread you know I’m alive in the Oaks/Derby Double with 3 live longshots today (#6, #12 and #19). The field is 19 strong and the weather is gonna be bad–a certain recipe for chaos. The best thing about this live ticket is that I can leave all three out of my pick 3 and pick 4 as well as the win end of my tri’s and super’s. Anyway, it promises to be a weird, wild race, as it often is. I’m excited.

Oh, and the Giants won another one late with a bomb, This one was a walk off by Posey. Yawn. So predictable. And Salty, you’re going to have to tighten up your predictions if you want to hang with this crew. League instead of Belisario? WTF is up with that mistake!?!?!?! 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’m still struggling to appreciate the advancement of the Warriors into the second round of the NBA playoffs. Forget the ref’s, if anyone seemed to be part of a *fix* it was the Warrior players. Mindblowingly stupid turnovers and bad shots in the 4th quarter. And the number of times that Jackson calls a TO only to have his team turn the ball over coming out of the TO (or not being able to even get the pass in) seems to happen way too often. I guess just chalk it up to the Dubs being a very young team and mistakes are going to happen. Still, the only reason they won last night (and taking nothing away from Bogut who was a man-child) was because the Nuggets couldn’t knock down a shot. They were horrible, offensively.

Giants going against Kershaw tonight. *Dumb-ass Eye Goggles* is back. Early May games don’t get much more exciting than the one tonight at AT&T. Anna needs to start scattering her particles into the universe NOW.

April 21st was the last time the Giants won a game flag-fall-2-that’s-all. After a come from behind victory on April 22nd, they lost 5 in a row before *closing escrow* on 3 straight vs The Snakes. This was easy to see coming, right? Get swept by the pitiful Padres and then storm Chase Field with 3 late inning miracle wins?

I said this last week and I’ll say it again. I love every hitter in this line up. I wish there was a *Rowand* to call out but there isn’t. The line up is stacked with competence and on any given night a new hero will likely emerge. And getting swept in your home park after leading all three games is not exactly the way to generate team chemistry.

The Giants are sending out notice to every team in the league: If you want to beat them, build up an insurmountable lead. Right now, the definition of *insurmountable* is fluid.

Anna’s winning streak just hit 11.

And another fantastic call by both Kuip and Miller:

One of the best things about mlb.com, and its awesomeness is hard to measure, is their “Must C” videos. You get the tv call and the radio call of the play. The only bummer about this one is that you don’t get the muted, sad-sack call from the AZ broadcast. Sometimes they include that, too. I never get tired of hearing a Kuip or Miller HR call, especially one as important as last night’s:

Some scribes are giving Hunter Pence credit for whispering into the ear of Pablo Sandoval in the on deck circle. Yeah, right. Flap vets know where to attribute the REAL credit for that game winning bomb: Mass kudos to Anna the Slutty Real Estate Agent who is now riding a 10 game Giants win streak (8 to end last year and both of these games in Arizona).

So she’s gonna stick around till we lose……

Here’s a link to the list of all time wins by Giants pitchers:

http://tinyurl.com/cbwcdwf

As you would guess, it’s a long list. On page two I saw some of my favorite ex-Giants. The Count, Bob Knepper, Rick Reuschel, Ed Halicki— Bumgarner is already on page 2! Dirrrrty and Lowry are there as well. Casilla made page 3, tied for 144th with 18 wins. At the bottom of page 4 I found Dave Dravecky. Ozvaldo Fernandez is locked into page 5 with his 10-17 lifetime record with the Giants. Al Hargesheimer is a name I’ll never forget and he’s on page 6 with 5 wins. Anyone remember Andy McGaffigan? For some reason, I do. He’s on page 7. Somehow Wellemeyer won three games for us, he’s on page 8. Midway down page 9 you get into the guys who won a single game for us. It’s the beginning of 6+ pages of names of guys who are tied for 435th place on the all time Giants wins list with one win. Because it’s listed in alphabetical order, that’s where Jean Machi, his friends and his family can find him—specifically page 10 about half way down sandwiched between Shane Loux and Goerges Maranda who went 1-4 for the Giants in 1960.

Congratulations Jean Machi on this great personal victory. For a guy who toiled in the minors for 12 longs seasons before he got his shot, last night must have felt so freaking good…..

I’m not really a *tip your cap* kinda guy—after Denorfia caught that line drive hit by Torres I just exhaled a little bit and said, “Shit happens”. I don’t even fully understand what “tip your cap” means. I’m assuming it’s some kind of respect given to your opponent after you lose, but what happens if you don’t have a cap to tip? Would a salute work? A fist bump? Anyway, the breaks just did not go our way in San Diego. I have low expectations for this upcoming series, it feels like we always get swept in AZ. Maybe a few “knowing dude head nods” with strangers I pass in the street today will change my attitude. There’s nothing like a good, solid, committed, extended, genuine, *knowing dude head nod* with a fellow Giants fan……..

How ’bout those Warriors, eh? I’ve distanced myself from NBA basketball over the last several years—the game just doesn’t interest me that much anymore. Most of the time, especially as the game is nearing an end, it might as well just be a 1:1 game. But it’s pretty hard not to get geeked up a little every time Curry launches a shot. I don’t get it, I have never seen an ankle be declared sprained and yet it never looks like he’s hurt out on the court. I’m assuming they’re shooting him up with something but how long can you do that before you make it much, much worse?

Match Ups:

Tonight: Cain vs Kennedy –we never hit this dude well, tonight feels like an L

Tomorrow Night: Bum vs Cahill– get the ball in the air off Cahil and good things happen. But Bum is due for a stinker. This one feels like an L, too

Wednesday Night: Timmy vs McCarthy– high scoring, but we finally get a W.

“He just couldn’t get that last out”– Bruce Bochy.

No, he couldn’t, skip. And it’s incomprehensible to me that Zito couldn’t play through an even MORE incomprehensible error by Torres. What is the deal with Zito in San Diego? It’s a pitcher’s park. He’s from there. The Padres usually suck. And yet Zito hasn’t won a game down at PetCo since 2008?!?!??!!? I had to look that up to make sure that was correct. And it isn’t just the colors they’re wearing, he shut them out last week at AT&T.

I’m not sure which was the worse error, Torres missing a freaking line drive right at him or Scutaro bumble-fuckin’ an easy DP. Considering the moments, it was probably Scoots.

Jean Machi: Where have you been all my life? I look at this career minor leaguer’s stats and shake my head, refusing to believe. The guy I saw last night didn’t have a flaw (as long as I focused on something other than his disturbingly short arms). More Machi please.

Down 2-0 to the worst team in our division, we turn our tired eyes to The Chainsaw and beg for redemption. He’s probably sprinkling nails on his Fruity Pebbles as I type this.

I read Bagg’s blog this morning about the Giants not getting a hit with RISP since Panda got thrown out by 632 feet last week. Normally, a stat like that would have me doing a slow burn but I’m finding it hard to fuel thet rage. In years past, I can usually look up and down our LU and find a target to seethe at. This year, I’m just not feelin’ it. I love all 7 of our starters as well as our platoon in LF.

And even with this latest RISP slump (and I think they had another stretch earlier this year that was grim) the Giants still rank above most teams in the NL batting .279 with RISP. The league average is .251. Side Note: St Louis is batting an unreal .352 with RISP. How are they not undefeated right now, lol? Answer: they’re batting an MLB worst .207 with none on. Two of the weirder *First/Last* numbers you’ll see a team put up in the same season….

With RISP and 2 out the Giants are only hitting .220 but the league average is .217 so they aren’t really out of line there. St Louis is hitting .376 nearly .100 points higher than the 2nd place team.

The bottom line is that it’s still April. Every time one of our guys come up to bat I feel good about the ultimate outcome–at least as they step into the box. Maybe next month, if they’re still slumping with RISP, I’ll try to get worked up about it.

Well, in a bit. It’s a Game Time Thread though and that’s just straight $

Here’s the LU:

Pagan CF
Scutaro 2B
Sandoval 3B
Posey C
Pence RF
Belt 1B
Crawford SS
Blanco LF
Lincecum RHP

Nothing much to noodle on here. Off the top of my head, I’m predicting Blanco strikes out twice, walks once, steals a bag and he might throw a triple in there, too. That’s a lot going on from the 8-hole but god dammit, it all just sorta rushed over me, as if delivered from a dream….. 🙂 🙂 🙂

I’m fully expecting that Giants fans take over Petco Park this weekend. If they can turn Wrigley into a home game taking over 80% or so of the seats in San Diego seems like a done deal.

This is a good time to hand San Diego their collective ass. Colorado is going to lose at least 2 of 3 in Arizona this weekend. We need to beat the “6-Win” teams like a drum. I like our rotation of Zito, Timmy and Voggy, I think all three will have strong starts this weekend.

I’d also like to see Pagan bang out a triple or two. He needs to get going.

And please, no more lost or misplayed balls in the outfield. These guys are all good defenders, they need to start playing like they’re good defenders.

I don’t mind losing 2 of 3 but I do care HOW we lose them. Way too many mistakes got made in this series by the Giants. Missing ground balls, losing them in the sun or misplaying them, bad throws—it’s like our guys weren’t totally focused. And speaking of that, what was Casilla thinking when he casually fielded that fair ground ball? How could he have thought it was foul? Wasn’t he focused on warming up for an appearance? And if he truly was watching the play unfold how is it that he was like the ONLY person in the park who thought the ball was foul?

Bochy is the best manager in baseball, that’s nearly a fact. But the best get questioned too, and I want to know why Romo wasn’t out there to start the 9th. When you’re at home, tie game going to the 9th, that’s a standard play. Especially with a closer who is probably a top 3 or 4 closer in all of baseball right now. This gives me a chance to mention Jason Grilli– I’m fascinated with the late blossoming of his career. Out of nowhere he’s become one of the most dominant closer’s in baseball (I know this is really his first full year with the gig but he was equally dominant last year in a set up role)…..but back to the No-Romo thing…….Was he hurt? Hungover? I couldn’t find an answer because not ONE of the beat writers seemed to think this was an important question to get answered. That’s a typical oversight by those guys.

I didn’t really mind Bochy’s decision to leave Bum in the game. He’s a great hitter and he was dominating. But the No-Romo/Yes-Mirares thing? I didn’t get that at all…….

These 9th inning heroics from Belt off the bench are going down easy like a cold brew in the Summer time. Or any time. Baha. I’ve gone back and forth on the Flannery call. He might have thought Panda got a better jump than he did and by the time he started sending him it was too late to stop him. I dunno. Bochy wasn’t having any of it when he got asked the question about the Flannery-send. Of course, he’s not going to call him out publicly, ever. But even had Sandoval gotten a good jump he was dead at the plate. Even had Noonan ran for him—also dead at the plate. Ross was playing shallow and his throw was perfect.

I’m not sweatin’ the Flannery decision. He put the pressure on Ross to come through and he did. Tip your cap.

_________________________________________

A great win by the Warriors last night and they could easily be up 2-0 right now. But Marc Jackson calling Klay and Curry the best shooting back court in the history of the game? Um, wow.

Well his shoulders weren’t slumping as he rounded first base and made a detour to the pitchers mound. And it’s a good thing they weren’t, he had to square up when Pablo blasted into him with a “Carlos Quentin* greeting. There are few things dumber than basedball walk-off celebrations. I wonder how Kendrys Morales celebrates a walk-off now? I’m guessing he’s toned it down a bit. The worst part about them is that most of the guys go half-way. They’re sorta trying to do it in a restrained way but all that does is make it look awkward and when you’re doing something awkwardly there’s a good chance you’re going to hurt yourself. Anything that involves tackling someone or jumping into the air and making contact with another onrushing human is not something you want to see.

But aside from the risky-bash into each other-bullshit, it sure was great to see that huge smile on Belt’s face after he won the game for his team. And he did it against a lefty.  Apparently, all that attention he got from Bochy in the cage yesterday paid off. 🙂 BamBam must be worrying about job security this morning.

Between Voggy guttin’ out 7 innings, Posey blasting another bomb, the rally-video, Torres scoring the winning run (again), Belt driving it in and Ted predicting it, I’d say that last night’s win was as sweet as they come.

Ah, so elusive. But when you find one, how much hotter do they get?

Much. Regardless of how hot they start out. And this chick is good looking even without the necklace.

It is so awesome that there is a spot in New York that lives and breaths SF Giants baseball. That place is Finnerty’s.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j32xR0_d3j4

Thousands of miles away, our brethren celebrate with us in unison, from where it all began…….

MacDog and Pawlie talking to the Necklace/Bead fan:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J41-9BVZt_0

Body language can be a powerful tool when trying to understand the mood or attitude of another person. In baseball, body language ebbs and flows and seems to both drive and interrupt the production, or lack thereof, of most baseball players. When he’s going bad no one has worse body language than Brandon Belt. He addressed this last year when he told the media not to read anything into his slumping shoulders, that’s how he looks all the time. Of course, slumping shoulders is but a single message one can send non-verbally.

At fanfest, I was struck by how Belt sounded–not really the words he said, but how he said them. He gave off an air of confidence that he didn’t have last year (or at least, that he didn’t show publicly). He went on to have another of his usual dominant springs and I actually thought this was going to be a very productive year for him. Then he got sick and lost 10-12 pounds. Then the season started. And 19 games in, we’re still waiting for Belt to get started. Bochy talked with him yesterday and it sounds like he’s going to sit vs the lefties coming up in the Arizona series.

I haven’t heard him interviewed since fanfest. I hope he’s still carrying the confident tone he had with him that day. If I was Belt I would chalk my slow start up to the pre-season illness and bad luck–he’s hit many balls hard, especially earlier in the year, that found gloves. And that’s just baseball.

I like the fact that Bochy called him into his office because running him out there over and over, especially if he’s failing, isn’t the way to handle every hitting slump. In fact, i wish more players would sit during a slump. Watching the game can sometimes be better for you than playing it or practicing it (somewhere far far away, I’m sure Aaron Rowand is still perfecting his swing in a cage). As long as Bochy reassured Belt that he is the starting first baseman, I think this break will be good for him.

1) how easily Andre Miller blew past Draymond Green

2) Tim Lincecum walked less than 13 hitters in a game

3) Boston and New York being 1/2 in the AL East

4) Colorado having the best record in the major leagues

5) people getting bent that Big Papi said “fuckin'”

…But I’m out of town. Nice win last night. Golden State just might win this game today. Think it’s kinda cool that The Red Sox are on a 6 game winning streak. And while I don’t give a rip about the Celtics I will be rooting for them vs the Knicks. Timmy pitching today. Hope he leaves his bad inning in the bullpen.

Matt Cain has been abysmal this year. And I really don’t care even a little bit. Yet. Most of the guys on our team have banked enough slack to use (with me) for a long time. How long? Well, I went back to see when my *rope* ran out with Timmy last year. It was May 21st. Here is that thread:

https://oneflapdown77.com/2012/05/21/tim-lincecum-needs-to-get-his-head-out-of-his-ass/

It would be the beginning of many threads that called out Lincecum for his failures in 2012. So if 2 Cy Young’s and one World Series (at the time) bought him not quite 2 months of slack with me, how would that transfer to the slack I ultimately give Cain this year?

Matt Cain:

No Cy Young’s and he’s making 20 million dollars this year so expectations are naturally higher. But, he endured years of no run support, never complained about it or the team, has 4 post season wins, a hot wife, threw a perfect game and….probably a lot of other stuff, too.

So even though Matty is sporting a 7.52 ERA and an 0-2 record, I have nothing to say about him except I think he’s rad. Nothing but thankful, encouraging, positive vibes coming from Big Flavor’s corner of the earth.

I’ve finished my calculations. Turns out Matt gets slack from me well into late May/early June. But if he’s still pitching like this in June…..

I might start off easy and tell him I had sex with his wife. If that doesn’t work, a thread starting “Matt Cain needs to Get His Head out of His Ass…” might be appropriate…..

Finding something to complain about in this 2013 season has been a challenge for me. Maybe I’ve been softened a little by yet another World Series win. Maybe I’m just getting old and the little things don’t bother me as much as they used to. That’s not it, little things piss me off more than ever. I have greatly enjoyed all of these comebacks that the Giants are pulling off seemingly daily. Though it’s not always resulting in a win, we’re only 15 games into the season so I have still have a high tolerance for ultimate failure as long as there are positives to be gleaned along the way.

So basically, I’ve got nothing today.

Here’s how our offense is performing at each spot in the line up:

I find this fairly interesting. Our 4-5-6-7 hitters aren’t hitting. Still, I love our 4-5-6-7 hitters so I’m not looking for a rant, just noticing something. Then you get the 8 spot and 9 spot significantly outperforming their expected production. I’m not sure if pinch hits are included in the 9 spot. But regardless, .268 is more than acceptable from the 9 hole. As is the .345 we’re getting from the 8 hole (almost exclusively Crawford).

But even with the limpness of the 4-5-6-7 guys, our offense is still solid:

Being 13th in HR’s isn’t gonna fly for the entire year. Or will it? Of course we all remember our HR pro(?)duction from 2012:

But I don’t think trailing the field in HR’s every year is the blueprint for “How to Win a World Series”.

If the 4-5-6-7 spots in the LU get on track, this offense is really going to be fun to watch.

Hello Flappers!

WordPress seems to be having some problems this morning and I can’t upload any photos. That was a change up I wasn’t expecting–unlike the one that Betancourt was sitting on last night. Anyway, this will probably only be an issue for my BBOTD disciples.

Awesome things from last night:

Brandon Belt’s 3 hits (that could have been 5 hits)

Pablo’s 4 RBI’s

Chad Gaudin

Crawford’s big fly. As I said last night, when I watch his home runs sail majestically out of the park I don’t understand how he doesn’t hit 25 of those every year…….

Below is a list from mlbtraderumors.com that I was planning on posting this morning but had some tech problems. Listed are each team’s highest paid players. Quite the incongruent relationship between salary and production, at least for many of them…..

16 wins in a row. I still marvel at that streak. I tried to find what the record is for most wins in a row by a team with the same starting pitcher. I found that over the course of 2 seasons, Carl Hubble won 24 in a row– obviously a much more impressive streak since those were all W’s for The Hubbster. I didn’t find out what the actual record is but it has to be at least 24, obviously. In my search I also found an interesting record that I have a hazy memory of: Greg Minton didn’t give up a home run between June 1st 1979 and May 1st, 1982–nearly 3 full years and 269.1 innings. Incredible that he stay that focused during a period of our history that was littered with losses, failures and Stennett’s.

But regardless, the Giants are going for their 17th win in a row today with Barry Zito on the hill. It reads almost as ridiculously as it types. But there is one snag in the plan. And thy name is Miller Park. And Miller Park is Barry Zito’s death-blow, black-hole of kryptonite. Many of his greatest pitching nightmare have come on that hill. Let’s take a look at the numbers, shall we? You can try squinting but it doesn’t help much. Looking at this list is like try to look straight at an unsightly BBOTD for 8 straight seconds. Speaking of that widget, I brought her back!

7 starts

0 wins

4 losses

31.2 innings/39 hits

7 HR’s

28 strikeouts/23 walks

His ERA is 7.57. His WHIP is 1.96

The Brewers tee off on him at a .302 clip.

Now, some good news. Big Fat Price Fielder is in Detroit. Also, Corey Hart and Aramis Ramirez, two guys who crush him, are on the DL. Zito can pitch around Braun if he wants to. But who knows, the man is walkin’ the earth with a newfound Zen-fueled pride that just might propel him to a well pitched game in Milwaukee today. He hasn’t given up a run yet this year. His teammates have all marveled at the way in which he’s throwing and mixing up his pitches. Today just might be the day Zito wins in Milwaukee. Come on, do you guys believe? Say you believe! All together now!

Nah, he’s gonna get crushed again. 🙂 🙂 🙂

We took 3 of 4 from the Cubs. They gave us a couple of those. The Cubs are truly an awful baseball team. Between the errors, the walks, the mind blowing number of wild pitches and passed balls, it only seems right that we would win yesterday’s game because of a balk.

If you haven’t heard the Kuip or Miller calls of Pence’s game tying bomb, take the time to. Goose pimple stuff, especially Miller’s….

I can’t get over how many Giants fans there are at these road games. LA or Sand Diego, i get it. But Chicago? I guess they are the trendy team to root for with the 2 world titles in 3 years. How far has this fan base come since the days of Barry Bonds? We went from one of the most hated teams to one of the most loved.

Day off today. Dark day. I hate these days. How do we ever get through 5 months of days like these?

Like this pic

The Giants have won both his starts this year but that doesn’t tell even a tenth of this tale. I didn’t look up the weather in Chicago for today. Does it really matter if the wind is blowing in or out for a Timmy start? If he struggles today it probably won’t be the long ball. It’ll be because he’s walking too many guys. I’m just hoping that he doesn’t start out the game sans mechanics. Is it too much to ask that he starts a game mechanically sound?

Whatever, I am getting my mind set straight now so I don’t blow a gasket during the game. Forget the 2 Cy Young’s. Focus on him being  a #3 or so. Maybe a #4. I’d settle for a #5 who is pitching like a #3. Yes, that’s the vision. I’m locked in. Go time.

Welcome to the CQ-ZG-Free Game-Time Thread!

So, what’d everybody have for breakfast?

Just to clarify a few things from last night since I wasn’t there to defend myself. I wasn’t happy about Greinke getting injured. I am happy because it weakens the Dodgers. I don’t care one whit about Greinke, I don’t know him, I don’t care about his injury, I don’t own him on a single fantasy team. I’m happy that the Dodgers have been weakened. Gleefully so, in fact. And so is every Giants player. I’m also ecstatic that every fantasy owner (who are my opponents) also got weakened yesterday. In fact, I freaking LOVE that–reveling in copious amounts of glee over that. For those who don’t understand the definition of “glee”:

And every Giants fan I know is happy that the Dodgers have been weakened. I also stand by my comments about Grienke getting off light. He completely instigated the brawl by hitting Quentin and then swearing at him and tossing his glove down. And only a damn fool stands there waiting to absorb the full blow of a steamrolling man who is ~60 pounds his senior. Try getting out of the way, dunce. “Hmmmmm, a train is coming, I wonder what I should do????” He’s lucky it was only a broken collarbone, it could have been much worse. And Quentin didn’t go out there because he thought Grienke was trying to hit him—it was payback for a vendetta he has held for years. There’s no timetable on a payback, especially in baseball. It comes when it comes. Oney Guillen’s tweet confirms this:

This clearly explains why Quentin waited till now to go after Grienke. He doesn’t hit him again, he doesn’t come out there. And when Grienke swore at him and threw down his glove, it was on, triggering the FIRST TIME that Quentin has ever charged the mound.

Here’s an article that has Quentin’s response. Some of you may have already read this:

http://www.cbssports.com/mlb/blog/scott-miller/22059298/quentin-suspended-amid-ugly-history-with-greinke

The bottom line with this: Greinke hit Quentin one too many times. Regardless of the intent the other night (and I do believe it was probably an intended  brush back pitch that was PAYBACK for brushing back Kemp earlier) if ZG doesn’t hit him he wouldn’t be injured right now. That is FACT.

Here’s another thread I wrote (recently) about my feelings related to a player getting hurt:

https://oneflapdown77.com/2013/03/20/when-im-happy-a-player-isnt-playing/

I hope you all caught the Dodger/Padre brawl last night. It wasn’t as good as The Mexico/Canada fight but there were a few Tyson fights that weren’t that good, either. Grienke hit Carlos Quentin and it was on. Grienke broke his collarbone in the melee. Apparently, there’s history with these two and Quentin had finally decided it was time to kick Grienke’s ass. I’m not totally sure what ZG was trying to do in this fight. He’s displaying an odd fighting technique. Check out where his left hand is on Quentin in these 5 pics:

Anyway, the game ended on a Juan Uribe pinch hit home run and he even threw up his jazz hands a little which made me smile even a little more than I already was smiling. Too bad the Dodgers won but Uribe is one of my top 3 favorite players from the 2010 team so it’s nice to see him produce after being so putrid for so long down in LA.

Here’s the only negative that might come from last night’s brawl: the Dodgers come together, rally together, coalesce or whatever you want  to call it and play together as a team instead of a bunch of overpaid individuals. Brawls, especially when you lose your ace pitcher, tend to bring guys together. That would be an unfortunate fall out to this sorted, shocking(!) display of neanderthal behavior 🙂 🙂 🙂

Romo and Wheezy have traveled some parallel roads. The dude who just *looks* illegal isn’t yet at Wilson status in terms of stardom. Wheezy dominates him on twitter (645K > 82K– and Wilson hasn’t tweeted anything since last October while Romo fires tweets off at a furious pace). BW had the tonight show appearance. Of course, Romo had that too. Both have fantastic *closer* personalities, both have had fantastic success as closers, one is healthy, the other one is getting there….

I’m on record as saying I didn’t think Romo could ever handle the grind of the closer role over the course of a full season. He wears knee braces, he’s whispy as fuck, he throws sliders that look like each and every one should be breaking down precious muscle fibers on the way to an accelerated visit with Dr. Andrews…..But he has ALWAYS had the stuff to close. He keeps the ball in the ball park and he knows where his pitches are going with an INSANE K/BB ratio. Sickeningly insane. And this year he’s started off in spectacular fashion. He’s got 6 saves, 2 hits allowed in 6 innings pitched, no walks and 10 K’s. He’s making Craig Kimbrel look like Matt Herges (admittedly, in his prime)….

So where is this going? Bochy dropped hints all Spring that Romo would get some help with closing, there would be an influence of the BP by Committee that worked so well last year. But he’s pitched 6 times in 10 days. I don’t think that’s the blue print of success for Romo over the course of the entire 162. But how can Bochy do anything but what he’s doing now? We’re talking about the most dominant current closer in the major leagues. How do you rest a guy like this in a 1 run game in the 9th?

Do they make knee braces for knee braces?

…for those of you in that 18-120 age range who are able to watch the game today.

I love baseball in the daytime, but that’s more *romantic* love than it is *practical* love. I’ve never understood how so many people can attend day games. Since 90%+ of the population works and kids are in school during the day, how is it that so many fans can find the time to pack these stadiums during the daylight hours? Even in the Summer time, these days most kids are funneled through a strict schedule of camps. If I take my kid to a baseball day game in the Summer it means I’m pulling her out of a Tara VanDerveer bball camp and at close to a buck fifty a day, that’s just not happening. 🙂

So when I see 4 day games in a row (and technically it will be five since yesterday was a day game) my brow begins to furrow. I start to do a slow burn. At least 2 of them will be on the weekend but again, that’s right in the middle of *get sh!t done time*. The Cubs play 30 night games a year, we couldn’t have played even one? One of the most electric baseball games any of us have ever watched was played at night on October 4th, 1989. As my mind’s eye recalls Will Clark losing that ball into the blackness of the Chicago landscape, I wonder how *electric* that would have been had it been a day game? Ok, it would have still been electric, that’s a bad example.

Regardless, we are headed into Chicago to play four day games against a team who’s leading hitter is Nate Schierholtz. Of course, their team batting average is .198 so temper your fear of Nate-Dawg’s bat……

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In the photo bucket I’ve dumped 2 new pics. The first one is Zumie at the game yesterday brazenly rockin’ the Rod Beck look. The 2nd photo is of UncaChuck and Gregor Blanco inside someone’s home with Chuck awkwardly wearing Gregor’s WS ring. Chuck, you got a story to tell? lol

The Giants just finished off the Rockies with a 10-nada thrashing. Zito pitched his usual “no runs allowed” game. Seriously, at this point I almost want the Giants to lose one of his starts just ’cause the streak is starting to consume me. 16-0? This is getting into *twilight zone* territory. And it couldn’t happen to a better Giant. A GREAT Giant. The sh!t this guy took from his fan base and the media was non-stop and relentless. And before the start of the 2012 season, it was certainly deserved. Before his first start shut out in Colorado last year,  I wrote “Zito is completely done as a major league pitcher.” And I wrote 20+ other threads skewering him and wishing a big wave would take him away from us forever.

But this is the thing I love about Barry Zito: he never gave up. He never got complacent with the money. And he finally got it right. And by “finally got it right” I mean he is largely responsible for our most recent world series win. If he doesn’t shut down the Cardinals we don’t make the World Series. And as magical as The Panda was in Game 1, Zito’s the guy who out-pitched the supposed greatest-pitcher-in-the-world that night.

As a fan, I long ago forgave him for all his past sins. Quite easily, I might add. But it wasn’t just the World Series that he brought to us. He’s now in the midst of “THE STREAK”. Sixteen bad boys in a row.

Here’s what he’s done in his last 4 starts (post season games vs Cards and Tigers + his first two starts this year): 27.1 innings pitched. 22 hits allowed. 6 walks. 17k’s. And…wait for it…. exactly 1 earned run.

I will never understand the Giants fans who can’t forgive or forget his first five years with us. Although that number is thankfully dwindling if the standing-o he received today is any indication. In ’07–’09 the Giants sucked so it’s not like Zito losing was going to change anything in those years even if he was winning. In 2010 we won the World Series. We won it again in 2012 and never would have without his man-child performances. And in 2013, he’s un-scored upon in 2 starts.

So what, exactly, keeps the few remaining haters hating so hard on this guy? Stubbornness? Likely. He is one of the great Giants in the history of this storied franchise. I represent Flavor Nation with the highest honor we can bestow a player:  Two Flaps Up. Barry, we salute you.

I’m not sure which of his starts was worse. In the first one, he walked 7 but he got the win. Last night, he walked 4, but he k’d 7 in 6 innings. He walked the pitcher twice and I know one of those at bats was a 4 pitch walk. Were both of them? I can’t remember.

I would have to say that last night’s start was better than his first start of the year and Baggs sent out a tweet last night that nailed the reason why:

Timmy says he watched some tape after the 2nd inning and made adjustments. Whatever he did after the 2nd inning he needs to do more of in his next start. Aside from the MONSTER BLAST he gave up to Tulo in the 5th, he pitched very well in innings 3-6. And our dominant bullpen took care of the rest.

Lincecum has 11 strikeouts this year balanced evenly with 11 walks. 1:1 k/bb ratio is not exactly what you’re striving for as a pitcher–at any level.

If you forget the first two innings, this was a rousing, fantastic come from behind win. The East Coast Moonlight Crew (P-Koko, Mac-diggity and Bozo) represented throughout.

I have no expectations for Lincecum’s next start other than he’s going to do another hatchet job on his WHIP and probably K a hitter an inning. But we’ve won both games he’s started in 2013. If I’m gonna count Zito’s 15-0 I gotta count Timmy’s 2-0. Although who among us could even dream of another 13 in a row for the Giants in Lincecum starts after the way he’s pitched so far?

If I close my eyes and completely forget the 2 Cy Young’s and then imagine that it’s a #5 out there, I just might make it through his next start without gnashing my teeth to pieces…..

I can’t get enough of the ring-bling-thing.

I love all of it. I didn’t care for the designs of most of them until probably the late 70’s when the Yankees started pouring the diamonds all over those things. The rings pre-70’s just look like class rings. There’s nothing special about a class ring, at least in how it looks.

Marty Lurie was fishing for topics on Sunday night and he took several calls on how these ceremonies could be done differently. In other words, he was saying that this first home weekend was a distraction to the team and that’s why they lost 2 of 3 to the Cardinals. You know your team is on top of the baseball world when talk-show callers are lamenting those dang championship celebrations and the detrimental effects they have on the players. Jeez.

I think the only change I might make is to combine the flag raising with the ring-getting and maybe do Buster’s MVP trophy a week or two later. But that’s only if I was looking to fix something that really isn’t broken. And the day Larry Baer gives up an opportunity to sell tickets to an event is a day we won’t see happen.

Anyway, they’re back to their routines, their *creature of habit-ness*, and their *focus* has found it’s long lost *re*. It’s time to settle in for the grind of the 2013 baseball season. Our view from atop the peak of this great mountain is crystal clear. In fact, the sun couldn’t shine any brighter off a diamond than it does for Giants fans today…….

I’ve never really taken the time to appreciate the gaudy detail of these championship rings. Here’s Dave Flemming, proudly showing off the last 3 years of bounty for his alma mater and current employer:

Here’s the White Sox ring from 2005. I like the look of this one:

Here’s a pic of all the Yankees rings up through 2000:

Here’s the Yankee ring from 2009. I think it’s cool with the 4 diamond bases:

Here is a pic of the Cardinals bling:

Here’s the Oakland A’s ring from ’74. They really went all out on the design of this one, eh? 🙂

I was expecting to see him today with all the other MVP’s. I was going “conspiracy theory” until I read that the Giants had invited him and he never RSVP’d. Why no RSVP? That suggests ANOTHER conspiracy theory. 🙂

After Barry retired, the SF Chronicle published a Letters to the Editor section that had (from my memory) like 18 Bonds letters posted and 15 of them were anti-Bonds. As a long time subscriber, I canceled my subscription the next day. After the Chronicle made 15 years worth of sales off their stories of this dude, it pissed me off that they ran almost all negative letters against him. And I know SF Giants fans and they aren’t 15-3 against the best hitter they ever had. And I haven’t bought a single Chronicle since I canceled my subscription. Though it still has me doing a slow burn that they logged all those sfgate hits I gave them when I blogged at the Splash. Whatever, that place is dead to me.

He’s been seen at the ballpark several times times over the last couple of years. At least a couple of times that I remember. Today was a perfect day for him to come back. He didn’t RSVP? It’s not making any more sense the more I type…..

True Giants fans love Barry Bonds for obvious reasons. He will be celebrated for as long as flags fly at AT&T. And I have to believe he’s not so consumed with biking around California that he couldn’t find the time to RSVP to today’s event.

But what do I know, he’s pretty lean and focused these days.

🙂 🙂 🙂

“We Score We Win” has never been accurate than when discussing the four Giant starting pitchers in 2013. Four starters, 26 innings pitched, zero earned runs allowed. I can’t imagine what Voggy will do if he gives up an earned run today. The dude already takes the hill gnashing his teeth into broken pieces, if if becomes the first starter to give up a run he might execute himself.

Yesterday it was Barry’s Zito’s turn and he was magnificent. I discussed his different approach to pitching last year when I noticed how many fewer fastballs he was throwing. I incorrectly cited an increase in sliders thrown (I misread a chart at fangraphs) but it was actually an increase in cutters thrown. Here is his career chart (and I’m using a different one than last year because it’s easier to read):

Combine the FA% and FT% and you will get the percentage of 2-seam and 4-seam fastballs thrown. FC% is the % he throws his cutter. And while a cutter is a type of fastball, it’s not counted in the FA or FT% in the chart above. For reference, a cutter is usually described as a pitch that is somewhere between a fastball and a slider. Clearly, Zito decided to finally stop throwing his shitty fastball so often because he wasn’t able to get anyone out with it. Throwing more cutters has balanced out his pitch type enough to keep the hitters off balance and guessing. He obviously needs to locate all of his pitches to be effective. But from the chart it is clear that the difference in his pitching is less fastballs and more cutters. He seems to be throwing the curve and the change up about as often as he always has during his Giants career.

If you’re wondering about the differences between a 4-seam/2-seam/slider/cutter, you are not alone. Here is a chart that shows where a pitch typically ends up if it was thrown by a right handed pitcher (the view is from the catcher position). For a left handed pitcher, it would be reversed.

By the way, this is the chart I used last year.

I’ll admit to still not understanding this chart as it appears to assign a 32.5% of his pitches to the slider. I’m assuming this chart lumps in slider/cutter together, but I don’t know. Regardless, the first chart listed is the one that shows how much more often he threw his cutter in 2012 (and in his first start of 2013).

I still wouldn’t ever add Zito to a fantasy team. He doesn’t strike out enough hitters and he still throws in disaster starts that I now am attributing to poor location of his pitches. Of course, you could use that excuse for most pitchers. But he has become a reliable starting pitcher, something you can’t say about Tim Lincecum. And we’ve won 15 of his starts in a row. Some will point to run support as the reason. Well, he got 1 yesterday, so I guess they’d be right. He did get *some* run support. Enough to win, anyway. “We Score We Win.” We haven’t lost a Barry Freaking Zito start since last August 2nd. His comeback has been remarkable. I will forever honor him as a great Giant.

Here’s a pic one of my friends took yesterday:

I’m ripping myself off from last February…..

It’s tough to complain about taking 2 of 3 from Dodgers in their house. But 7 walks against 4 strike outs? Everyone is talking about how Tim gutted out that win but this was more of a case of him lucking his way to the W. He lost his velocity, just like last year, after a few innings. By the 5th he was throwing his fastball 88-90 mph–with very poor location. That’s not gonna get it done over the course of the season. I’m awaiting Kruk’s breakdown on KNBR this morning where he tells me it was all a mechanical flaw and that Tim is juuuuuuust about there. Of course, he said that all year last season, too.

Chad Gaudin seems to have rocketed up the ranks, yes? What was that all about? He should be 2nd guy in the showers by the 8th inning….

I still find it amusing how starry-eyed the Dodgers fans are when a fly ball gets him…

The two bombs we hit were uber-impressive. Pence hit the shit out of that ball to right center. That’s hard to do. And Panda hit his by hacking at a ball around his neck. But he blasted it.

Too bad St Louis isn’t coming in to play today after playing the longest game in Chase Field’s history last night….

I’m really looking forward to adding a pic of the 2012 World Series ring to the right….

Sandy said, on April 3, 2013 at 6:57 pm (Edit)

How about a new thread for the game?

The Dodgers can’t score unless Clayton Kershaw is starting the rally. Trip on that for a bit….

_____________________________

In the meantime, I thought I’d toss out my list of teams that can’t make the 2013 post season. It’s actually a very short list. The A’s and O’s proved last year that you don’t have to have a 100+ million payroll to make the playoffs. And there are many recent years that prove that anyone can win once they make it to the post season and get hot. And if you do some shifty book keeping and subtract Zito and Rowand’s salaries from the Giants 2010 team, we won that World Series with a payroll of about 65 million. So not only can you win a World Series on a budget, getting to the post season is doable for every team in the league. With the exception of….

The Houston (L)astros. Bud Norris is their highest paid player at 3 million this year. Their team payroll is 26 million. I love Altuve. And that’s about it. Obviously, they have no shot at the post season in 2013.

The Minnesota Can'(T)wins. Kevin Correia is their #1. ‘Nuff said.

The Miami Mar(losses). Loria is scum. And the team has no chance. Free Stanton.

The Chicago Flubs. I like what Theo is trying to do in Chi-Town but this is not the year. No chance for the playoffs.

The San Diego Patsy’s. They have a decent bullpen and a couple of hitters, but there’s no way they make the post season having to play so many games against LA, SF and Arizona.

God dammit I want to put the Yankees on this list. SOOOOOO badly. But I can’t, mostly because of their ability to add-on, if they choose to do so, before the break. But they are stuck right now. Their team is old and/or on the DL. They’re playing a boatload of games against a division that is rock solid right now. But I just can’t put them on this list.

But I will put The New York Mess on the list. They have a couple of starting pitchers that I like (Niese, Harvey and Gee) and their corner infielders (Wright and Davis) can bang when they’re healthy (never guaranteed) but I still don’t think they have a chance to make the 2013 post season. But what do I know, maybe a mid season call up of Zach Wheeler will put them over the top. 🙂

Baseball is back and I always forget how much it consumes my life. The one thing that sucks about winning the World Series is that I go from a total focus and obsession with the game and my team to…nothing. My emotions are all over the place and then I’m hit with this unreal rush of excitement and happiness culminating with a deep exhale of completion. But then it all just stops. I get my b-a-s-k on, of course, but quickly I’m hit by a period of withdraw. Voids are created and filled, slowly, with other things in my life. There’s an adjustment of not setting my day around the time a baseball game is played and waking up and NOT checking the box scores or setting my line ups for the different fantasy teams I have. Haiku’s get written, BBOTD’s get uploaded and football happens and it’s darker and colder for a long period of time. And then Opening Day happens again and I get right back into the intensity and the excitement and the overall consumption that baseball brings to my life. I imagine it’s the same for all of you or maybe it’s completely different. I don’t know.

This year I have 5 fantasy teams, my team is defending it’s world championship, I have a full time job and a daughter who’s a year older and I don’t know how I’m going to fit all of this into my life. Except I know I will because it’s part of the cycle of my life. It’s like riding a bike or throwing a ball. I’ll be able to do it because even when it’s gone it’s still part of me. I love all of it and my life really isn’t the same unless it’s all happening at the same time.

So I’m pumped and excited for this season. Winter officially ended yesterday. What the calendar says  means nothing to me.

The starting 9 position players ( Blanco and Torres are considered starters ) and 6 pitchers are required. The required stats are xFIP, XERA, BABIP, and UZR/150…just kidding.
Required for position players are BA, HR, RBI. For the 5 starting pitchers it’s W-L, ERA. For Romo it’s W-L, saves and save opportunites. Very basic stuff. I’ve added OPS for the position players and WHIP for the pitchers. You may add any stats you like. There’s no prize (unless Craig decides to award one later), there is just the pride in knowing that you sucked less than everybody else.
And additional required prediction is the order of finish in the NL West and the Giants W-L record. Since there is no prize, feel free to use other Flapper’s numbers as a guide, no need to hide your picks to prevent someone from stealing them.
And remember- unless you make the required predictions you may not laugh at, trash, or snicker derisively about other predictions.
So have at it!
( you’ll have until noon tomorow to make changes – if you make any, repost your entire prediction slate, not just the change)

Uh, it didn’t help…

The Panda Watch carries onward with more pain in that cranky elbow. He felt pain on a swing that resulted in a ground out to shortstop so he’s been shut down again. Because of the uncertainty of Sandoval, Nick Noonan has made the team. I have many questions about Noonan’s chances of succeeding at the major league level on a consistent basis. He’s been fiddling around in the lower levels of our system for a while now. He’s a slower, weaker version of middle infielder Charlie Culberson and I don’t see too many of us lamenting that loss (traded to Colorado for Scoots). And while he’s probably going to play 3rd base, he’s never really played much 3rd base. He’s a middle infielder.

But if I was forced to choose, I’d rather see what a homegrown guy like Noonan can do over something recycled off the waiver wire. I haven’t checked his splits but will just assume he hits righties better than lefties so maybe a few spot starts early on vs a right handers might be the way to go. Of course, that’s assuming Pablo is gonna be out for a while and I’ve assumed that since the day I heard about this injury. I also said I’m not too keen on Arias playing every day, mostly because I think he’d be more valuable coming off the bench. I have no idea what Noonan would be more valuable doing but he’s got more experience as a starter so….

Not much else going on. Buster got paid. Good for him.

I’m continuing to research what it was that Pablo actually said to Jeff Passan. I read JDR’s blog and the reference made to this but that didn’t clear anything up for me. I read Chico’s comments here at the Flap from 11:28pm last night and that shed a little more light on this but again, it was two guys (Chico and someone named *Mimbres*) who were saying what they heard Passan say during a radio interview. As I understand it, Passan was paraphrasing what Sandoval said to him. And from what Chico and Mibres said, his paraphrase was totally different from the direct quote in the article he wrote at Yahoo.

I searched the internet this morning for the radio interview and struck out. I had to listen to a 16 minute interview that John Wetzel did with Passan that was utterly worthless. It was the only one I could find that might have been the interview referenced by Chico/Mimbres. Tip to readers: Do not spend a second listening to a Passan radio interview. He says nothing for most of it, cracking dumb jokes and talking about personal things and when he does talk about baseball he just blathers out the typical crap that any east coast fan would say at a bar.

More of my research…..

I am embarrassed to say that Passan is one of the guys I follow on twitter. Here were his 2 tweets referencing the Pablo article:

The top tweet is in direct contrast to the quote printed in his article. Again, what Passan SAID Pablo said was this:

“I’ve got this year and next year to change all the things. It’s going to take me a while but I can do it. I know I can do it.”

And yet as he sells his article via his tweet, he says with his own words that “he’ll lose the weight WITHIN the next 2 years…” The key word is *within* suggesting that Pablo said he will work on losing it from now until the 2014 season is completed. Pablo didn’t say *within*, Passan did.

I tried to read to Ostler article on this but it was at the Chron pay-site and I will never again pay a cent for a Chronicle article. Besides most of them not being worth more than *free*, I vowed back in 2008 when I canceled my subscription due to a hatchet job they did on Barry Bonds that I would never buy their publication again— and up till then I had been a subscriber for at least 20 years. And I’ve kept my promise.

If anyone doubt’s my feelings about Jeff Passan, here is a sample of the tweets I sent out about him last year:

There were other tweets, but these 2 give you a (big) flavor of my long standing feelings about Jeff Passan.

So I am done researching this until/if new information surfaces. Based on the recount by Chico and Mimbres of his radio interview and the two tweets that Passan himself sent out, I believe his Yahoo article to be, at best, a distortion of what Pablo said to him and at worst a flat out lie. It wouldn’t surprise me if Passan made the quotes up completely. And if that’s the case, he should be fired immediately. Ostler said Pablo rarely will talk about his weight and wondered why he decided to speak about it so openly with Passan—another sign that points to the article being misleading.

I read Passan’s article at Yahoo a couple of days ago. Now, listen to me, I loath Jeff Passan. He hates the Giants, it’s clear in all his article over the last few years, and I’ve traced it back to his panties getting bunched about Bonds and his PED use. He’s a fool, as are most of these internet writers who somehow have jobs.

But he wrote an article about Sandoval on Tuesday that I’ve been ruminating about since then. There was something about Panda’s comments that rubbed me the wrong way and it wasn’t the obvious stuff. If you read the article, you’d know what I mean. Here’s a link to it, read it before you read the rest of this thread.

http://tinyurl.com/cz9t5qk

You have no idea how much it pains me to give Jeff Fu*kwad Passan even the slightest bit of acknowledgement other than the usually twitter zingers I fire off at him in the Summer……

Before I comment negatively on The Panda let me start by saying that I LOVE HIM. I didn’t always feel that way about him. I didn’t always love Barry Zito. But feelings are fluid and I have no problem changing mine if you give me a reason to do so. For instance, him being overweight used to bother me. I didn’t think his poor conditioning was good for his play, his production or our team. He was a mess in 2010 and he didn’t deserve to be on our post season roster (even though he was). He didn’t deserve it the same way Barry Zito didn’t deserve it. And he was a non-contributor in the 2010 world series. Just like Zito except the Panda sucked up a roster spot (along with anything else he saw on a dinner plate)……

But he transformed his body before the 2011 season and went out and had a fantastic year. He dealt with the hamate thing (#1) but he hit .315 with a .909 OPS, he seemed to have matured, seen the big picture, and he was ready to mine his unreal talent to the surface.

Then the Giants did something that surprised me a little. In the off season, they avoiding arbitration and gave him a 3 year/17.5 million dollar contract that would cover him from 2012-2014. I was surprised because they didn’t have to do it. He had proven to be unpredictable in his approach to his conditioning and one year of production isn’t worth 3 years of guaranteed big time money. And yet, the Giants did it. To me, it was a show of faith. And I liked the fact that they were showing faith in him. I hoped it would push him to showing faith in himself, his team and their goals.

But he showed up fat before the 2012 season and there was the Santa Cruz story that embarrassed the team. I understand that ball players are targets and I fully believe Sandoval was innocent, but I also believe that he put himself in a bad position that more *aware* players don’t put themselves in.

His 2012 season was underwhelming, he had another hamate bone problem (#2) and a hammy issue, he hit .283 and his power took a major dive (12 measly bombs).  All in all, I would grade his 2012 season about a C.

And then the post season began and he turned into a player that looked like he was the product of a Babe Ruth-Reggie Jackson love-child. He was brilliant and epic and I will never forget his post season. And those are my complex, real, current feelings about Pablo Sandoval….

Now, to the Passan article…… It was typical on the surface, a classic Passan hatchet job on the Giants. This one focused on fat jokes. Every article he writes is terrible. But then I read Sandoval’s comments, which are not-disputable (unless you think Passan manipulated them and I can’t think he’s THAT bad). Here’s the comment that bothered me on Tuesday, festered within me for 2 days and ended up inspiring this thread:

“I’ve got this year and next year to change all the things (referring to his conditioning/weight). It’s going to take me a while but I can do it. I know I can do it.”

I like the last part of the comment. He’s talking about fact. He HAS gotten himself in shape in the past. If you did it before, you can be confident that you can do it again. But the middle part doesn’t sound right, I don’t understand why it’s going to take him “a while” (and he referenced 2 full years) since he got into shape before the 2011 season in about 2 months. He’s clearly talking about the duration of his CURRENT contract with this statement.

The first section of the comment is the one that pisses me off. This dude was given a gift from the team to the tune of nearly 18 million dollars. That was a show of faith. When you show faith you are expected to receive it and reciprocate. He did not do that except for his fantastic post season performance which, while worth it to us as fans, could easily have just been a guy who got hot for a couple of weeks.

Now he’s got the fucking gall to publicly snub the rest of his contract by shooting for 2015 as the season that he finally starts to get his shit together. A year in which he can sign with the highest bidder on the open market. You’re giving yourself “this year and next year?” Well that’s awfully generous of you. Hopefully you get yourself in shape by the end of the 2014 season in time to score a 100+ million dollar contract with your next team. And if you don’t take that contract seriously, as you are not taking this one, you will underwhelm and disappoint that team, too……..

Giants back in town tonight playing the A’s at AT&T. Timmy pitching to Buster. I’ll go ahead and pencil him in for 4 innings, 5ER, 6k’s, 4 bb’s….

The Giants will unveil several new theme’s at AT&T this year and I, for one, will be sampling all the edibles. There’s now going to be a Willie McCovey Grill that will feature pulled pork nachos. I’ll take two, please.

Two of San Francisco’s historic restaurants will also make their debut at AT&T in 2013: Lefty O’Doul’s Bar featuring their famous bloody mary’s and Original Joe’s burger which will be served at the Derby Grill.

Countless bobble head’s and other trinkets will be given away. My understanding is that there will be a Scutaro snow globe give away but that instead of snow it will be water that rains down upon Scutaro in his now-famous pose.

And in an effort to further distract the casual fan, the Giants have added several more mobile device and tablet charging stations. Yawn.

And of course there is Orange Sombrero Night which promises to be the Night of the Year not just at AT&T but probably for the entire city of San Francisco, too. Countless Flappers will descend upon the stadium wearing orange sombrero’s and dominating all areas they bestow their presence upon……

(ps, there are still over 5K tickets left for that game. We decided to have it be an “every flapper for himself” event and encourage anyone who wants to join us to buy tickets in the Club level. Besides being an awesome view, it’s a fluid area that will make it easy to meet and mingle. And if it turns out you can’t stand us you can always head back to your seat. 🙂 🙂 🙂

Right now, it looks like 2 tickets in the club are going from $130 to $160 total.

I went to the Forbes website to see just how much Bud’s Machine is churning out these days. Not surprisingly, everyone is making gobs of money. The Yankees are worth 2.3 billion, the Dodgers check in at 1.6 bills, and the Giants are worth 786 million, up 22%. Even the lowly A’s have been raking in the cash seeing their value increase a whopping 46% from last year to 468 million. Their revenue last year was 173 million. Their 2012 team payroll was 52.8 million so even with Wolfe reluctantly paying the hot dog guys and the parking lot attendees, he still made out pretty good last year….

Got me to thinking about how much Giants teams have sold for over the years. The team has changed hands at least a dozen times over it’s history. There were 4 or 5 owners before Charles Stoneham but I didn’t feel like looking up all of them so I started with C-Stone. He purchased the Giants for $1,000,000 from Harry Hempstead who had bought the franchise in 1912 from his father in law.

Charles died in 1936 and his son Horace was the lucky heir. He held ownership of the team for 40 years until he sold it to Bob Lurie in 1976 for $8,000,000. Stoneham was set to sell the team to a brewery in Toronto but Lurie stepped in to save the team and keep them in SF.

Lurie would pull a *Horace* 16 years later when he tried to sell the team to an investment group in Florida 115 million. Thankfully, major league baseball stepped in and nixed the deal forcing Lurie to sell the team to local investors. Can you imagine Bud forcing something like that? Peter Magowan stepped up and bought the team for a cool hundred mil.

At this point we’re getting into “managing partners” and in 2008 Peter-Mag’s stepped down and handed the reigns to Bill Neukom who took over as the principal shareholder and lead investor of the team. As all of you know, The ‘Nuke stepped down in 2011 giving way to the new CEO Larry Baer. Charles B Johnson bought additional shares of the Giants at the time to own 25% of the team and became the largest individual shareholder.

And now Forbes says they’re worth 786 MILLION dollars with the loan on the stadium set to get paid off in 2017.

I think they’re probably worth a lot more than that……

Because I’m getting interviewed about this topic later this afternoon, this question was on my mind this morning. The rivalry goes all the way back to New York. In fact, since 1901 the Giants and Dodgers have played more head to head games than any other 2 teams in major league baseball (thank you, Wikipedia). Having not been a part of that, I don’t know what the rivalry was like back then. But according to history, it was quite heated between both fans (Brooklyn Dodger fans saw Giants fans as Manhattan elitists) and management (a long standing feud between Dodgers owner Charles Ebbets and Giants manager John McGraw saw the two men use their teams as fighting surrogates which caused incidents between players both on and off the field as well as between fans at games and in the community (again, thank you wikipedia).

But I don’t have a connection to any of that so none of it matters to me. It’s the same reason I wouldn’t ever buy that hat that claims 7 Giants world championships. My team has won 2, not 7.

I’m sure there are those who would point to the famous game in ’65 at Candlestick where Marichal beat down Roseboro with a bat touching off a bench-clearing brawl. Again, wasn’t alive then, don’t have any feelings about that event as it relates to the rivalry as I know it…..

I’ve told this story before, the first Giants/Dodger game that I remember going to was sometime in the late ’70’s. I’m sure I went to an SF/LA game before that, but this is the one I remember as my first rivalry game. It was a weekend day game and Candlestick was packed. My dad and I were in the nosebleed seats along the right field line. I remember noticing how loud it was and when the crowd would roar it almost frightened me a little bit. But I got used to it quickly and started to partake in the different crowd chants that were cropping up. At some point early in the game, Don Sutton’s name was announced (it might have been as a hitter, I can’t remember). I was pretty flushed with Dodger hatin’ fueled adrenaline and felt like announcing my presence with authority (for those keeping track, that’s my second Bull Durham movie reference in the last week). I took a deep breath and yelled as loud as I could, “Kill Don Sutton!!!!”. I think I even yelled it twice. Very quickly I could feel the fans around us get tense and quiet. My dad, a man from the south who was a big believer in children being seen and not heard, was absolutely not feelin’ my bold public call for Sutton to die. He glared down at me, I don’t remember if he said anything, but I didn’t utter a word for the rest of the game. Re-reading this, I’m making it sound worse that it was. I did learn a good lesson that day about proper fan etiquette at a baseball game and it was the last time I ever called for the murder of anyone…..

The last Giants/Dodgers game that I went to was 7/31/10. Burrell hit a 2 run home run off Broxton in the 8th inning to propel the team to a 2-1 victory. It was a fantastic game. I said at the time, I can’t remember ever being a part of a louder moment at a sporting event.

But I don’t know if I would say I *hate* the Dodgers. I obviously don’t like them more than any other team and I am most happy about a win against them than any other win we get. But as I’ve said before, fantasy baseball has ruined me a little bit in terms of my rigid hatred of all-things-Dodger. I’ve owned a few Dodgers over the last couple of years. It was hard to hate Kershaw when he was carrying one of my fantasy teams to a glorious victory in 2011. It was easy to hate Matt Kemp after he got hurt last year and hobbled his way through games even after he did come back–tough to win a league when your first round pick is pussin’ his way through the 2nd half of the season. In our flap fantasy league a couple of years ago we had a rule that you weren’t allowed to draft a Dodger. That didn’t really work since one guy (I think it was WilcoJoe) forgot to exclude Dodgers from his draft list and he ended up with a team made up almost exclusively of Dodgers.

The Brian Stow incident didn’t make me hate the Dodgers or their fans, it just made me hate the two hoodlums who nearly killed him.

I have a couple of friends who are Dodger fans and it doesn’t bother me. But they aren’t hardcore fans, maybe it would be harder to hang with them if they were.

I will admit to not understanding people who wear split SF/LA hats or the dude who wears a Giants jersey sitting with a girl wearing an LA jersey–that’s just a *look at us* moment, it has nothing to do with a rivalry.

As far as the players go, I remember starting to hate Casey Blake when he mocked Brian Wilson in the dugout. And I hated the smugness of Ron Cey and Steve Garvey back in the day. And who couldn’t hate Tommy Lasorda? A better question would be who could ever like Tommy Lasorda. He’s an obnoxious, (usually) fat, self-absorbed little man. Lasorda was Exhibit A of why no manager should ever have to squeeze themselves into a team uniform. That was not a good look, man.

But the current crop of Dodgers? Eh, not too much hate for them. I was annoyed by Hanley’s *eye-goggle* thing last year even though I didn’t understand it (and still don’t). But it looked like something that should bother me as a Giants fan.

The bottom line for me is that there isn’t a single incident that I can point to that reinforces the concept of this being a *rivalry*. I was conditioned to hate the Dodgers over the course of the last 35 years or so just because I’m part of the fan base that hates the Dodgers. I do think that this rivalry will be taken to the next level in the coming years, possibly as early as this coming season. With the Dodgers new approached to spending (how ironic is that considering their working class Brooklyn roots?) and the Giants settling nicely into a pattern of winning every other World Series ( 🙂 ) we are poised to see two good/great teams facing off regularly. And that’s the best way to keep a rivalry going–or at least have it take the next step into the future of it’s long and storied history……

As most of you know, Sandoval was shut down on Saturday when he wasn’t able to play catch—you know, *catch*. That thing you instinctively do when someone throws something at you. He had more x-rays and a CT scan done. Andrew Pavlovic at The Merc opened his blog post by saying:

“Trainer Dave Groeschner said Pablo Sandoval’s X-ray and CT scan revealed nothing unexpected or new, but it’s clear just from the test-taking that the Giants are more concerned about Sandoval’s elbow than they first let on.”

Wow, what a huge surprise.

There seems to be some discrepancy as to what exactly is wrong with his elbow. It’s most often reported that it’s a bone spur irritating a nerve but in an interview with Marty Lurie on KNBR, Bobby Evans said it was a *loose body* that was causing the problem. Guys gotta start getting their stories straight.

Bochy says they “haven’t discussed surgery at all.” Of course they haven’t. Riiiiiight!!!!!!!!

So, the typical bs is getting slung around while everyone prays for a miracle. Meanwhile, days continue to slip by, wasted. Opening Day is 8 days away. All the days up until opening day are basically free recovery days that apparently aren’t going to get used. He’ll probably have the surgery a week or so into the season…

As I said on March 18th, I will “up-play the fuck” out of this disturbing development. Just get the surgery done. NOW.

Arias will probably be fine at third base. But why not do something bold and let Noonan take the starting job in place of Pablo? Sabean doesn’t like to have rookies sit on the bench and for that reason Noonan might get passed over in favor of a re-tread like Betancourt. But Arias is much more familiar with the job of coming off the bench and Noonan would probably be much better playing in the normal flow of a game from start to finish. If you’re gonna take a chance on Noonan, it seems to make more sense to have him starting than playing a utility role and having to enter a game cold in the 8th or 9th inning……

Well, maybe not to any of you. But I have marveled at his career for years now. He was drafted by Toronto in ’97 and debuted for them in ’99. So far, nothing to marvel at. He scores a starting gig in ’02 and does well, 23 bombs/100RBI’s. In 2003 he goes a lil’ sideways crazy and drops 215 hits/33 bombs/117 RBI’s and a .317 batting average. Very nice. Everyone started talking about him being a 5-tool guy but he never really exploded in any category in ’04 or ’05. He did have another very nice 2006 season with 32 blasts/17 steals, but still, we aren’t talking about a 40/40 guy, or anything even close.

So what does Toronto do in the winter of ’06? They sign him to a 7 year/126 million dollar extension. WOW. Where did that come from? Stupid? Maybe, but mlb teams do stupid sh!t all the time and back then Toronto had just won 87 games in ’06, their most wins since they won 88 in 1998. They were ready to flex with the big boys down at muscle beach. They wanted to “announce their presence with authority* (for Bull Durham fans). So they went all in with that dumb ass contract…..

Wells went into the tank the next year, hitting .245. The dream of his 5 tools turned into a nightmare of him just being a tool. Toronto had made a huge financial blunder and unlike the Yankees and Red Sox who could give a s!t about busted salaries, they were gonna have to wear this one for years.

And then Vernon zigged while we were zaggin’ in 2010! He left earth 31 times and stole 6 bases–not exactly 5 tools but at that point Toronto would have taken a freaking tool belt in exchange for this guy. But no one would offer something as valuable as a toolbelt since there wasn’t a GM in the world stupid enough to take that dumb ass contract off of Toronto’s books….

Suddenly, a suitor emerges! The Angels decided Wells was back and they had to have him. They traded Mike Napoli and Juan Rivera for him. But don’t think for a second that the Angels are dumb. Cause they aren’t and stuff. They hoodwinked Toronto into throwing in 5 million bucks to the deal. Five Million. The Blue Jays were on the hook for 86 million and not only did they get players for him but they only had to chip in a fraction of that dead deal. Amazing.

Here’s the blog comment I made when I heard about the trade back in January of 2011:

Flavor said, on January 21, 2011 at 7:01 pm (Edit)

“the Angels are fucking  morons. Trading for Vernon Wells? I don’t give a flying fuck what he did last year, he is the most overpaid player in all of baseball based on production (besides Zito). And they TRADED for him. Shit, Napoli, if given a starting spot, might hit more HR’s than him. They coulda paid him 6 mil to do that. Instead they trade for “Mr Nagging Injury” and get to pay him 86 more million. Shit, why didn’t they just overpay for Carl Crawford?”

Moronic side note about the Blue Jays:  they traded Napoli a short time later for Frank Francisco who sucked. Napoli went on to hit 30 bombs and .320 for Texas that year……

But back to Wells….

In his first year with the Angels he hit .218. He lost his starting job and hit .230 last year. Angels owner Arturo Moreno opened his mouth as wide as it would go and prepared to eat the rest of the 42 million he’s owed in 2013 and 2014.

And then today happened. The Yankees, desperate for anyone who can swing a bat in the direction of a thrown ball blow all minds by trading for Wells. They’re only paying 13 million of the remaining 42 on the deal, but even 13 million less is a much more manageable load for Moreno to swallow…….

And Wells will do nothing that a soon-to-be waived free agent outfielder couldn’t have done for the stupid Yankees had they just waited another week……

The Vernon Wells story staggers onward…….

I said yesterday that I’ve grown weary of the monotony of win-total predictions each spring. Predicting whether the Giants will win the World Series or not is more appropriate now a days……..

So now, we’re taking it up a few notches here at the Flap. This year, we will predict batting and pitching lines for all our most important players. Now, DO NOT start throwing your predictions out yet! That thread is scheduled for March 31st.

The categories will be….

For the hitters, list off your projected batting average, HR total, RBI’s and SB’s

For the pitchers, list off win total, ERA and K’s (except for Romo, just list off Saves, ERA and WHIP)

The List of 15:

Buster Posey

Mandown Sandoval

Brandon Crawford

Marco Scutaro

Brandon Belt

Gregor Blanco

Andres Torres

Angel Pagan

Hunter Pence

Tim Lincecum

Matt Cain

MadBum

Voggy

Barry Zito

Sergio Romo

A final rule to the game: you no play you no allowed to comment on other bloggers predictions.

________________________________

A bonus prediction (we’ll call it a tie breaker if you will): Predict the season stat line for Yasiel Puig. He’s the Cuban Dodger who isn’t even supposed to be on the team. Right now, I think I’d prefer him in Cuba. He’s making his demotion quite difficult on Two-Trips. He’s 10 for his last 11. For the spring, he’s batting .547. In 55 at bats he doesn’t have a walk but still has an OBP of .527 and a 1.414 OPS. Wow. If they don’t have a place on the team for this dude, we are in a sh!tload of trouble this season. 🙂 🙂 🙂