The San Francisco Giants in the offseason: still can't take a walk

Our pal Simon from the cleverly titled blog SimonOnSports asked us some questions about a Giants team that makes us holler in joy and scream in agony. More often scream in agony.

You can read all about the Giants here. To hear about a team who knows how to move a runner over with less than two outs, check back with SimonOnSports at a later date.

When you break it down, you want to hurt Brian Sabean that much more

Two "big" mid-season trades for the Giants: Ryan Garko for pitcher Scott Barnes and Freddy Sanchez for pitcher Tim Alderson.

At the time of the trades the Giants were eight over .500. Entering Wednesday, they were 11 over. That has nothing to do with either of these acquisitions.

Garko: Hitting .233 with 2 HRs and 12 RBI as a Giant. Barnes hasn't made it to the Bigs, but is still responsible, somehow, for three Indian wins.

Sanchez: Since joining the Giants is hitting .283 with 1 HR, 1 double, 2 walks and 7 RBI. He's played in 25 of 52 games and will require offseason surgery. Alderson, one of the Giants' top prospects and a former first-round pick, hasn't made it up either, but will push Adam Wainwright and Chris Carpenter for the NL Cy Young Award this year.

Sanchez will likely be the Giants' starting second baseman in 2010, but will be coming off surgery. Garko might be selling used cars.

Hated the trades at the time. Still hate them. Singles hitters who can't take a walk are characteristics of everyone else in the FUCKING LINEUP! Go get a fucking power hitter or hoard your pitchers and you'll have the best rotation in baseball!

We'll talk when the Giants go get Matt Holliday and Adrian Gonzalez. And Albert Pujols, Hanley Ramirez, David Wright and anybody else capable of hitting a home run or moving a runner over with less than two outs.

This guys looks like Joe Montana. But probably isn't. But maybe is! Nah, that's not Joe Montana.

This is what happens when the Giants have three hits through seven and two thirds.

It's high and outside: strike 2 for the Giants

The following is written by David Kamoe, a life-long sports fan whose sister is a close friend. David is an avid A's fan, wen to to high school with Drew Gooden and can't believe that Giants commentator Mike Krukow used to refer to the right-centerfield expanse at Pac Bell Park as "Finley Alley," referring to Steve Finley who remarkably wore a Giants uniform for a season. David will likely be stopping by these parts a few times a month, so treat him right. And no sister jokes.

The infield of my youth was the 1989 World Champion Oakland Athletics featuring Mark David McGwire at first, Mike Gallego at second, Walt Weiss at short, and Carney Lansford at third. I still hold these men in high regard save McGwire who cannot be shown on film or in still photographs from his rookie year until the mid-90’s because of “the juice.” This will not be an article about the 1989 Oakland Athletics infield. It is instead about Carney Lansford and hitting.

Lansford is currently the hitting coach for the San Francisco Giants. One of the Giants bright young stars is Pablo Sandoval, a free-swinging 22-year old from Venezuela. Most of the Venezuelan major leaguers I can think of are not free swingers. People like Magglio Ordonez and Omar Vizquel are fairly patient hitters. Marco Scutaro is leading the Blue Jays in walks and ranks high in the AL lead for runs scored. Sandoval, on the other hand, is a disciple of the “You don’t walk off the island” mantra common to the Dominican Republic.

Highlighted in a recent Sports Illustrated column by Lee Jenkins, Sandoval was in A-ball with a cousin of Vladimir Guerrero. Whether or not Guerrero had a direct influence on Sandoval is not certain. What is certain is that Sandoval, like Guerrero will swing at anything close to the plate. This is much to the chagrin of Lansford who is quoted as saying, “We don’t have a lot of what I call ‘professional hitters.’”

Lansford does not stop Sandoval from free swinging but I’m guessing he is probably trying to curtail it. Lansford was himself a long time Major Leaguer playing for the Angels, Red Sox, and A’s. During his time in “the Nation,” Lansford re-worked his swing so that he could bang doubles off the Green Monster. Playing the original Coliseum, he became a gap-to-gap hitter with some pop and a masterful ability to cover the vast foul territory down the left field line.

As you can imagine, I am in the Carney Lansford camp all the way. It really isn’t even bad that Sandoval is a free swinger. What is the problem is that the Giants seem to have allowed free swinging to become the order of the day. As someone who remembers tales of Will Clark having 20-10 vision and dominating the 1989 NLCS, I can’t figure out the change. People harp on the Giants for not having a lot of power hitters since the departure of one Barry Lamar Bonds. I’m no studier of the Giants for the following reasons: I’m an A’s fan and I’m not being paid to follow the Giants.

Consequently, I cannot say for certain that all the Giants hitters are free swingers like Sandoval. What I do know is that if they are, it is not likely that they’ll go far in the playoffs.

This'll make you punch a hole through your motherfucking TV. And your garage door. And then we'll go ahead and break some more shit and kill a kitten

Sure, go ahead and walk Dexter Fowler to lead off the bottom of the 14th in a three-run game AFTER HE'S FOULED A BALL OFF HIS FUCKING KNEECAP AND CAN'T WALK AND SURE AS FUCK DOESN'T WANT TO SWING THE MOTHERFUCKING BAT.

Sure, go ahead and walk pitcher Adam Eaton, who hasn't had an at-bat all fucking season, WITH THE BASES FUCKING LOADED. ARE YOU FUCKING MENTAL? THROW THE FUCKING BALL UNDERHAND IF YOU HAVE TO!

This is the worst game in the history of baseball and the history of organized sport. No need to play the rest of the season. Everyone on the Giants should be fired. They can field a team of monkeys against Arizona tonight. The Rockies are going to the playoffs and the Giants are going to hell.

Don't talk to us until football starts.

What may be Brian Sabean's 2009 version of Francisco Liriano, Joe Nathan and Boof Bonser for A.J. Pierzynski...

...Tim Alderson for Freddy Sanchez.

"Oh...fuck," is pretty much the reaction coming from Giants fans. McCovey Chronicles says the Giants overpaid; The San Francisco Chronicle's Bruce Jenkins says it doesn't feel quite right; SI.com's Cliff Corcoran doesn't like this coming after Monday's Garko trade.

We say: FUCK ME WITH A PAIR OF HEDGE CLIPPERS.

Freddy Sanchez is a good hitter. He'll improve production from the two-hole. He'll probably get a few base hits, maybe even sometimes more than one in a game. But he'll get singles and doubles and singles and then, two batters later, Benjie Molina will come up and still hit into a double play.

For Tim Alderson, one of the Giants' -- and baseball's -- better pitching prospects, the Giants land a guy we confuse with Felipe Lopez. (We're not really sure why).

Alderson for Victor Martinez? Maybe. Alderson for Cliff Lee? Yeah. Alderson for Albert Pujols, Matt Holiday and Chris Carpenter? If they threw cash the Giants' way, yes.

Alderson for a .300, 10-homer guy? We'll be holding our breath. Brian Sabean should be holding his, too.

A giant on the Giants now among giants

Lowercase "giants" are figurative, uppercase one is literal. Thanks for asking.

Congrats to Randy Johnson on win No. 300. That's one hell of an accomplishment.

It happened against the organization that drafted him, no less, in front of 16,787 fans on a rainy afternoon in Washington. Tip of the hat to the fans there for supporting Johnson and the Giants on this day. The Nats aren't going anywhere; this gave the fans something to cheer about and they seized the opportunity.

And to all those experts who suggest no one will never win 300 again: That's a fucking bogus statement. It probably won't happen to any pitcher pitching in the majors today, but it could -- should, even -- happen again. This era of low pitch and inning counts will likely change at some point with medical advancements and the such. So when pitchers are throwing every third or fourth day, there's no telling what will happen.

Nothing's impossible, that's all. And nicely done, you tall, tall man.

The post where I jinx the Giants pitchers

All the hype about San Francisco's starting pitching was accurate this weekend against Arizona.

Three Giants starters (Sanchez, Lincecum and Johnson) combined for 21.2 innings, 0 runs, 0 ER, 6 walks and 24 strikeouts. Because the Giants' hitting was also as bad as advertised, San Francisco was only able to take two out of three from the struggling D-Backs.

Each game in the series was 2-0, meaning there was a total of six runs in the series, less than half of what the Indians scored in the second inning Saturday.

Still, probably a good sign for the Giants, who throw Matt Cain -- the team's best starter thus far -- Tuesday against San Diego. Of course, though, the hitting is beyond awful and will force the starters to throw shutouts every game to win, even though a 0-0 tie is seeming increasingly possible with this team.

And on pace for 162 wins...

...your 2009 San Francisco Giants! And they're on pace for 1,620 runs which we think might be some sort of record.

GREAT SUCCESS!!

Beats the last three Opening Days when the Giants scored a combined three runs. Last season, it took the Giants six games to score 10 runs. And they didn't score in double-digits until mid-May.

So, yeah, they might as well make those World Series rings now.

'Woohoo'

Cool hat.

Tim Lincecum will be your NL All-Star Game starter

We're both clairvoyant and optimistic, but Tim Lincecum -- who should probably be our favorite player in the history of sport (he went to Washington and now plays for the Giants! That's like so us!) -- is the best pitcher in the history of pitching and over-hand throwing and will start for the National League in next month's All-Star game.

The argument for Lincecum: He's 8-1, has a 1.99 ERA and is second in the league in strikeouts with 92. Wears cool glasses.

The argument against Lincecum: None. He's the best player to ever play. He could start in centerfield if he wanted.

The actual argument against Lincecum: Edinson Volquez. The Reds' youngster is 9-2 with a 1.64 ERA and leads the league with 105 strikeouts.

Um, Volquez is better than Lincecum in just about every category. Hmm. But he didn't go to Washington. Or play for the San Francisco Giants. You lose, Bitch.

So there. Tim Lincecum, NL Cy Young. Or All-Star starting pitcher. Whatever.

Tom Brady...not so bad after all

We always considered Tm Brady evil. He wins MVPs, Super Bowls, has millions of dollars, endorsement deals and doesn't exactly struggle with the ladies.

If that's not the epitome of evil, we don't know what is.

But then the above photo appeared on The Big Lead Monday and we remembered that Brady is a Bay Area native. He rides BART, witnessed "The Catch" in person and roots for the Giants. Now what could possibly be evil about that?

We believe that lady next to him is his sister, who we would consider after, oh, two Long Islands.

Shawn Estes. Shawn Estes!

It's always a good thing when you read a Padres-Cubs recap and get all exclamation point-y! Because longtime Giant Shawn Estes is back in the league -- and got his 100th career win. Yay!

Estes pitched 5 1/3 innings and the Padres' bullpen secured the win with 3 2/3 innings of hitless relief.

Estes (1-0), who pitched 1 2/3 innings in relief on Thursday, only made one start in 2006 for the Padres and missed the 2007 season recovering from Tommy John surgery.

Comeback stories are always fun and Estes was one of those good guys in baseball, with little ego, a sense of humor and some charisma.

So welcome back, Shawn Estes. If that is your real name, Aaron!

The Pirates could be World Champions (if they played the Giants more often)

No need to sugarcoat this: The Pittsburgh Pirates are a very bad team and have been for a very long time. They haven’t had a .500+ season since 1992. That was only a year after the fall of the Soviet Union! Yeeesh.

Normally, we’d sympathize for an organization in such shambles. But not the Pirates. We fucking hate the Pirates. If their sunflower seeds tasted like spoiled sour cream that’d be fine. We’d also like it if they never learned to read.

Because, Jesus, they fucking kill our San Francisco Giants.

After the Pirates 5-4 win yesterday, which completed a three-game sweep, they are now 20-8 against the Giants dating back to 2004. That’s a .714 winning percentage. Their winning percentage over that five-year span is .427.

The Giants haven't exactly been a successful team during that time period, either. But still. They're the Pirates.

Now please, Pittsburgh, go lose 10 in a row. And may your iPods only play Hannah Montana songs.

Gorgeous park, though.

Moving Zito to the bullpen is the wrong move...

...because the Giants should send him back to the minors. But that's not the case, unfortunately.

The Giants have a $126 million long reliever. Barry Zito is heading to the bullpen.

Zito was told the news before Monday's game, one day after he surrendered eight earned runs in three innings to the Reds and fell to 0-6 with a 7.53 ERA.

"Barry is all for doing whatever he can to help the club," Bochy said. "This is the best for Barry and the ball club right now."

No. No it's not. If Giants brass could swallow their egos and accept that they spent nearly twice Kiribati's GDP on a player good for an average of seven and a half runs per game, they'd send Zito to Fresno.

In Triple-A, Zito would be able to (presumably) work out his kinks at no expense of the Giants. He could keep his same routine -- seven runs every five days -- against minor-league talent and not fuck up the Giants' record even more than it already is.

In long relief, Zito could turn a 5-0 deficit into a 10-0 hole in an inning. He also won't get the consistency of pitching once a week in the bullpen. And yes, he'll fuck up the game. He's already done that six times. And at 0-6, he's made approximately $3 million per loss, which is significantly less than what he's making per win.

ESPN.com mocks Giants' offense

We know it's going to be a long season, but we didn't know runs would be this hard to come by.

Doing the math on Barry Zito

Just about the only thing more painful than watching Barry Zito give up eight hits and four runs a start is knowing how much money he's making doing it.

It's one of the strangest thing in sports: the highly paid starting pitcher. If healthy, he plays once every five days, and while incredibly valuable in the postseason, the best of the best help their team once a week. And rarely more than seven innings of the game.

And then there's Barry Zito who doesn't exactly "help" once per week and seems to do it in about five-inning stints. His $126 million, seven-year contract is both unfathomable and brilliant, of course depending from which perspective you look at it.

So let's breakdown Zito's salary, based on an average of 35 starts per season, six innings per start and 11 wins.

The numbers are humbling.

-$18 million per year
-About $515,000 per start
-Nearly $86,000 per inning
-About $1.6 million per win
-Almost $29,000 per out

That last number is the most upsetting. Zito makes more money per out than many people make per year.

He better not be getting that $600 tax rebate.

A sign of things to come?

Fuck.

Boston Fans Wuss Out on Bonds

(Hey kids, this is Marco from Just Call Me Juice. I'll be the first of your guest writers while Zach is off getting drunk in the woods)



Zach isn't even here, but you are getting a post about the Giants. That's because since I now live in Boston, I got to see Barry's "epic" trip to Fenway last weekend. And after almost a week of build up by the Boston media as to how bad the fans would treat Bonds, the Sox fans were actual quite terrible in their heckling of Bonds. Hell, Barry even said he enjoyed his trip to Boston. Yes, the same Boston he said was too racist for him to ever play there. I don't think you would ever hear that from Barry about Philly, a place that knows how to boo. Very disappointing with zero creativity. Asterisks? Wow, never saw that one coming. Syringes? Very original.

I made my into Fenway for Game 3 of the series, the one where Bonds took Wakefield deep. You could actually hear some cheering after Bonds hit the homer (granted, their was a large number of Giants fans in Fenway....who knew they traveled?) which was eventually turned into boos. I guess with all of the creative taunting of A-Rod and the rest of the Yankees over the years, I expected too from Sox fans. Oh well, I'll just have to go back to throwing D-Batteries at Bonds from the outfield of Citizens Bank Park in Philly and hating Sox fans. At least Philly fans know how to heckle. And oh yeah, fuck (wouldn't be a TBP post without fuck, would it?)

The Giants aren't going to score any runs all year

OK. That headline is blatant lie. The San Francisco Giants will score a run this season. Maybe even two. There are like 8,000 games in the season, so the chance of getting shut out of the entire year would probably be along the lines of historic.

But after a 7-0 Opening Day stinker, who knows if the Giants' anemic lineup -- Ray Durham, ladies and gentleman, is your cleanup hitter -- can manufacture a run.

From our favorite SF Giants blog, McCovey Chronicles:

The game in summary: The bullpen wasn't good, the lineup was awful, the bazillion-dollar ace was okay-not-great, and I don't like watching Pedro Feliz play baseball. That has the potential to be a season in summary.

Pedro Feliz is still my least favorite player to watch from the past decade. The line between rational dislike and irrational hatred is now completely indistinguishable in my own mind. Is Cla Meredith good enough to get other hitters to chase that 3-2 sinker nine feet off the plate? Or is Feliz just that bad and there is no hope and the team is doomed and I can't believe this team really plans to give him 600 plate appearances? Feliz is a complete failure of imagination on the part of any general manager who thinks he could be of any use to a starting lineup.

Ditto.

Expectations around the Bay are pretty low, but still. Shut out? We're aware that Opening Day is just one game -- our editor/boss at The Seattle Times just gave us a throat-slash gesture after hearing what sounded like a cliché get written -- but that first game seems to dictate the mood for the season.

And that mood is going to be pretty foul. We might piss ourselves if the G-men break through for a run today. Though if they miraculously do, it'll probably be unearned.