For the Love of the Game

Alex Pavlovic's review

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 09:42:27 -0800

“I could see the seam marks on his Adam’s apple. He’s a tough son of a gun. If I was hit in the throat while I was catching, I’d probably be lying on the trainer’s table,” Vogelsong, after his bounced pitch hit Posey in the throat.

“I was pretty geeked up and I saw (Kemp’s reaction) and it fired me up even more. It was a great moment,” George Kontos after a huge strikeout of Matt Kemp.

”I’m sick, unprepared and have a semi-tight hamstring. And I’m still faster than Huff,” Crawford, after pinch-running for Huff the day after the Giants clinched.

“Yeah, but he still has to go home and cook, so…” Bochy, giving a health update on Affeldt.

“I’m known for my Arabian horse gallop,” Zito, on his Game 5 bunt.

“We look back now at our journey, and people say, ‘Was it worth it? Would you do it all again?’ Absolutely. Every minute of what’s going on now is worth it all,” Nicole Vogelsong, before Game 3.

“The second we got that ring, it’s like that taste for that next ring is just sitting right in your mouth the whole time … Oh, that sounds terrible. Let me rephrase that,” Lincecum, after Game 3.

“I told my wife there’s something to it. She’s like, ‘I don’t care. Find another way to make this happen,’ “ Affeldt, who has reached the World Series in all three seasons during which his wife gave birth to a son.

And of course, my personal favorite from this season, on the awesome-ness that is #MVPosey:

“That’s one of the best at-bats I’ve ever had off of me. I threw him at least five put-away pitches, I thought. And he just kept fouling them off. I make one mistake and it’s a homer,” Joe Blanton, after Posey fouled off six straight pitches and then hit a homer during a September game.

Best guesses

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 13:25:02 -0800

Angel Pagan - 3 years, 36 million, leaves the Giants

Jeremy Affeldt - 2 years, 13 million, stays with the Giants

Marco Scutaro - 3 years, 18.5 million, stays with the Giants

Melky Cabrera - Hell no.

Hunter Pence - 1 year, 14 million arbitration deal OR 3 years, 35 million extension with the Giants

…which means a current opening day outfield of: Francisco Peguero, Gregor Blanco and Hunter Pence.

Fuck. Yes. SF Giants. World Champions

Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:22:10 -0800

Fuck. Yes. SF Giants. World Champions

Positively Jeter-ian

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:32:41 -0800

Positively Jeter-ian:

“Fast forward to year three. Posey goes off, winning the batting title, (likely) MVP and the World Series. He won the Hank Aaron award. And will win the Silver Slugger, for top-hitting catcher in the National League. Jeter wins the Series with the Yankees, but he’s not the only straw that stirs the Yankees’ drink, if we may quote Reggie. Buster’s the drink, the straw and the ice for the Giants. ” — Al Saracevic

A ring handed on a plate

Sun, 04 Nov 2012 10:31:04 -0800

A ring handed on a plate:

“What a perfect emblem for these Giants. Even this auslander could see their loose floorboards and foundation cracks, and not the talent and cohesion that would hoist them to a World Series championship one freezing night later.” — Hank Schulman

Marco Scutaro’s playoff contact hot/cold zones

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:11:15 -0700

Marco Scutaro’s playoff contact hot/cold zones

Credit

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:22:34 -0700

There’s a long line of pundits, analysts, baseball men, announcers, reporters and baseball writers carving out a piece of a daily column to announce today that they were wrong. Again. For the second time in three years, the Giants beat the odds as huge underdogs. But whether or not the credit and attention is going to come our way, Giants fans realize, the team simply played better at the right time. More than that, they pitched impeccably at the perfect time.

Two years ago, the Giants beat the Rangers handily. The final triple slash line coming out of Texas:

.190/.259/.288

Yup. A team that on the season had a batting average nearly 70 points higher and an .OPS over 200 points higher, was completely silenced.

Fast forward to today, and the Giants’ sweep of the Tigers shows a similar result. The Tigers final triple slash line:

.159/.243/.246

Yup. The result couldn’t be more identical.

In 2010, the Giants went 45-29 in the second half. This year, the Giants were 48-28. Starting from September and running through the playoffs in our two World Series seasons, the Giants have a record of 61-29. It’s all very simple. The Giants got all the breaks it takes to win a World Series, but more than that, they were hot enough to make the breaks for themselves. Early odds out of Vegas don’t have them in the top 3 to win a World Series next year. Take that bet on your own risk. As many beat writers and prognosticators have discovered, not just once, but twice now, writing off the Giants in the playoffs might be the single dumbest baseball article you can write.

"At a time like this, people like to see nutshells, they like to see epitomizations. There are..."

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:07:45 -0700

“At a time like this, people like to see nutshells, they like to see epitomizations. There are probably people out there writing about how Sergio Romo’s strikeout of Miguel Cabrera captures the Giants’ whole 2012 season. That approach seems lazy to me so let’s put it this way: Romo’s strikeout of Cabrera captured the whole World Series because a Giants player did something good and a Tigers player did something bad. I’m not interested in Romo’s final pitch because of its greater symbolic significance. I’m interested in Romo’s final pitch because it’s interesting. Ballsy and interesting.”

- Jeff Sullivan, FanGraphs

It Rings True!

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:30:41 -0700

I would never have believed myself to be so lucky as to witness two championships in my lifetime. The story lines running through this World Series are just as, if not even more compelling then the 2010 World Series. Take a look at all that went in to this season and the trip to a second ring in three years just becomes that much more improbable. But as Sherlock Holmes has always said, once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable must be the truth.

It’s hard to comprehend that we won another ring, with a start from the formerly most-hated Giants pitcher, a scapegoat for all the failures of management. We won a start with a pitcher who only two years ago, was considering another career, finishing a middling season in Japan. We won two more with the finest, homegrown talent we’ve had the fortune of developing and watching do exactly that, grow. We had a catcher we were optimistically projecting would catch 110 games and hit just near .300. The NL MVP, yes, he will be crowned, caught just another third strike in a world series. The World Series MVP was playing so poorly that two years ago, Juan Uribe took his spot on the roster. The player who scored the winning run, is just another gritty middle-infielder who took his demotion, by the greatest living player on earth nonetheless, in stride. Just like our new super middle-reliever, who took on his new role as bullpen Godsend, in stride. (No Lincecum would have meant using Affeldt last night, and who knows what would have happened tonight?) There’s also the New Beard. The guy who took the meaning of cahones to an all new level. He had the audacity to shake off a slider call from Posey to throw a tailing fastball back over the plate. And then the “AL MVP” looked at it. He took it. And he walked off to a slightly more depressing off-season.

And then of course, there is the great legend of Marco Scutaro. The final chapter on his 2012 season as a Giant ended with him driving in the winning run. Now that’s the kind of storybook I want to read to my kids when I grow up. It’s simply unbelievable.

Does it feel like you really did all this, Marco?

“Not yet, not yet,” Scutaro said. “There’s so many feelings going through me right now. It’s just overwhelming. It’s unbelievable.”

Instead of hitting .500 this time around, he simply anchored the stellar defense that led to the championship. 17 times he was hit a ground ball. 18 times he got an assist, starting crucial double plays and even just being in the same neighborhood as an errant throw from Blanco in game 2. Of course, that relay saves a run and saved the game. Of course. Unbelievable.

If you were to tell me in April or May that the 2012 World Series champions were anchored in the playoffs by pitching performances of Vogelsong and Zito, that Lincecum would become super-reliever, that Pablo would stake ownership to Verlander, that Crawford would play Gold Glove caliber defense, that Hunter Pence and Gregor Blanco would make up an invaluable portion of our outfield, on and off the field, and that Marco freakin’ Scutaro would drive in Ryan freakin’ Theriot to win the final game of a sweep…

Well? It’s unbelievable.

Looks vaguely familiar. #writeusoff

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 23:31:12 -0700

Looks vaguely familiar. #writeusoff

Some quotes on #MVPosey

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:16:54 -0700

I am one of 32 writers who cover National League teams who has an MVP vote. I can’t say who I’ll vote for because I honestly don’t know. I really do like to wait until the end of the regular season and do some good, objective research. However, I will say this. Writers from other cities call one another and ask for reasons that a particular player should win an award.

If I get any calls like that, I’ll point to what Buster has done offensively since Melky Cabrera was suspended. You lose your three hitter and your four hitter steps up?

That’s valuable.

Hank Schulman

“With what he’s done for us — here you have a guy who is your catcher and is hitting cleanup and he’s carried us at times, I can’t think of a guy more valuable for a club than Buster is for us.”

Bruce Bochy

“That’s one of the best at-bats I’ve ever had off of me. I threw him at least five put-away pitches, I thought. And he just kept fouling them off. I make one mistake and it’s a homer.”

Joe Blanton

“How does someone take funky swings like that — and then hit a ball over [the] center field [fence]?”

Posey’s teammate asked, in the midst of the Giants’ 4-0 shutout of the Los Angeles Dodgers, which extended San Francisco’s lead in the NL West to a sturdy 5½ games.

Posey is to the Giants what Mike Piazza was to the Mets’ lineup in the late ’90s: He is the anchor, surrounded by complementary hitters. Piazza had Edgardo Alfonzo and John Olerud, and Posey has Hunter Pence and Pablo Sandoval. As we saw after Posey was hurt in 2011, the San Francisco lineup is so very different without his presence.

And as a catcher, Posey has a whole lot of other responsibility, as well — and he’s better defensively than Piazza was. He can throw out runners when given the chance, as he did Saturday, when he cut down three Dodgers.

But no matter how many extra-credit points Posey should get for being a catcher, this is clear: With 24 days left in the regular season, he’s built a nice MVP-like résumé.

Buster Olney

So Soriano...

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 12:24:22 -0700

So Alfonso Soriano has been quite clear that he’s never, ever, ever going to play for the San Francisco Giants. He’s more or less set to veto anything that comes across with the words San Francisco on it. Guess he doesn’t realize two really obvious things.

1. He hits .217 against the San Francisco Giants pitching staff. This is headlined by a 7/50 line against Barry frickin’ Zito and 45 strikeouts in over 160 plate appearances. He would never have to face them again.

2. He would leave a team with a 51-80 record and join a team with the lead in the NL West. If he thinks a little bit of weather isn’t worth braving for the chance to join a team that has a chance to do something special, chase down a ring, well fuck him. The motivation for a ring is why all baseball players don a uniform. If he doesn’t think joining the Giants will get that done, well fuck him. We don’t want him, either.

"They got a shot! They have a shot. And they have to feel like they have a shot… And now..."

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:45:44 -0700

“They got a shot! They have a shot. And they have to feel like they have a shot… And now you’re in September, and now let it fly baby. But do not think for one second, that you cannot win this thing. And just make sure that you also remember that the Dodgers think it’s over, and that’s a pile of crap!”

- Duane Kuiper

"I wish that our players coulda heard the three or four innings (of the Dodgers game) that I heard,..."

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 10:42:27 -0700

“I wish that our players coulda heard the three or four innings (of the Dodgers game) that I heard, cause it would have hacked them off. They need to know that the Dodgers think this is over right now. I don’t think it is.”

- Duane Kuiper

Keeping it simple

Sat, 28 Jul 2012 18:27:45 -0700

Even if the Giants pull off a few additional moves prior to the coming deadline, the team could make the most of what they have with three simple fundamentals:

Get ‘em on, get ‘em over, get ‘em in

The Giants have been burned quite a few times with runners in scoring position, especially in this series. Just today, Posey and Pagan led off innings with doubles. Manufacturing runs is the only way we’re going to get them. This isn’t the Bonds machine anymore. A sacrifice to move the runner to third by simply putting the ball in play, then a sac-fly to drive in the run changes things dramatically in the early going today.

Pick the ball cleanly.

The Giants defense has performed better but is still pretty atrocious. Some of it is overaggressively pursuing balls that normal fielders don’t have the range to get to, but bobbling one-hop grounders and taking bad routes to liners in the outfield isn’t conducive to clean defense. Today, in particular, Belt bobbling a potential double play with one out and Crawford booting the two-out grounder hurt us badly.

Keep the ball in the park.

We lost yesterday on a homerun. The barrage of scoring today started off with a two-run homer and continued with a shot by AJ Ellis. A team will thrive in this park when they pitch to contact but keep it short of the fence. We aren’t smashing it past the outfield walls, but neither is the opposing team, and we desperately need to keep it that way to have a chance for our offense in games. Guys like Vogelsong and Bumgarner are pitching like aces and a huge key is that they don’t give up a very high HR/FB rate, especially at home.

Making a Move

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:47:01 -0700

With the trade deadline approaching, the Giants have been linked to numerous names in rumors the past few weeks. The team has holes, undoubtedly. To fill the right-handed power bat off the bench, beat writers have suggested Ty Wiggington as a possibility. To fill in a leaking and running on fumes bullpen, ex-Dodger Jonathan Broxton has been rumored, as well as ex-Angels-Mets-Brewers closer Francisco Rodriguez. (That is of course, until he blew so many saves you could see all the GMs running for the fire escape.) The costly Aramis Ramirez was another possible target, and while he makes baseball sense, his ability to pull the ball would do well at AT&T as well as fit the gap at third or first, he is set to make more than his worth, considering he’ll be DH-only material in a year. ESPN threw around the blockbuster idea of landing Justin Morneau, Josh Willingham and Francisco Liriano, built around a package of Brandon Belt and Kyle Crick.

With less than a week remaining, there is still time for a small or even larger move to happen. Brian Sabean might be gun shy after giving up top prospect Zach Wheeler, whose succeeding in the Mets’ system for a rental in Carlos Beltran, that neither landed us a post-season run nor a compensatory draft pick. Smaller moves can come to be extremely useful, like the addition of Ramon Ramirez and Javier Lopez a couple of years ago. But let’s be honest, there is no trade, no free agent, no minor league call-up, no transaction on the face of this planet that could have the impact of a non-transaction, one that would bring us the former most dominant pitcher in the NL:

Tim Lincecum being Tim Lincecum.

The Giants are currently 6-15 in games started by Tim Lincecum. In 10 of his starts, he’s failed to reach six innings, the minimum to record a quality start. The effects of a normal Tim Lincecum would be exponential. He would spare an already patchwork bullpen, lacking an all-star caliber closer. We could get by scoring 2 or 3 runs more often. Posey and Melky could be afforded more rest. The pressure on the back-end of the rotation, Vogelsong and Zito, both pitching out of their minds (in Zito’s case, it’s relative) would ease up a little bit. If nothing else, Tim Lincecum giving us a chance to win games (what we used to say about Zito), eating up more innings (what we used to say about Zito) and allowing us to potentially play .500 ball in his starts (what we used to say about Zito) would be a vast improvement on what we have now and could be the difference between making and missing the playoffs. A Lincecum that could put together some semblance of his Cy Young form, would be the difference between making the playoffs and a serious run and contention for the World Series.

The most we should expect out of Lincecum any more is the ability to keep us in games. That much could bring us a couple extra wins. This says nothing about if he returns to his dominant old-self. But after a five-run outing, not even getting out of the fourth inning, against one of the worst offenses in the league, no less, it’s looking more and more like a lost season for the former repeat Cy Young winner.

Funniest statement in baseball

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:37:54 -0700

Referring to recently DFA’ed pitcher Jonathan Sanchez, Yahoo! writer David Brown described the situation…

The Royals didn’t see this coming, of course, nor did a lot of people around baseball. Just three seasons ago, Sanchez threw a no-hitter for the Giants. And in 2010, he struck out 11 in his first playoff appearance and tagged along as San Francisco won its first World Series.

First of all, L-O-L. Second of all, I’d like to meet these baseball people who didnt’ see this coming. And Lastly, send in your resumes to the Royals’ front office and scouting departments — You will be rewarded with a lucrative job that apparently requires no skill.

In his best season in 2010, his BABIP was depressed, his LOB% was inflated and his walk rate was still as high as ever. The FIP and xFIP were both a full run higher than his ERA. What baseball writer in America couldn’t see this as a fluke and that full on regression was right around the corner?

#givemeabreak

#Representin'

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 19:22:11 -0700

To Sandy Alderson bitching about Wright getting outvoted for his starting job to Panda. To all the Mets’ fans who are up in arms about Cain taking Dickey’s starting job. #FUCKYOU

Flemming for Life

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 14:58:44 -0700

I love my Giants announcers!

The Oklahoman newspaper… The only place where a team loses...

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 22:30:18 -0700

The Oklahoman newspaper… The only place where a team loses an NBA Finals series and somehow a Brian Wilson beard ends up on the front page…

paulkatcher:

The front pages of the Miami Herald, Oklahoman and, yes, the Cleveland Plain Dealer the morning after LeBron James won his first NBA title.

Not too impressed with any of these. The Heat story doesn’t exactly explode off the Miami paper, and I have no idea what’s going on in OKC, where they led with an 88-year-old woman sporting a foam beard.