I Was There
It was great.
It was great.
All right, Marlins pitchers. What story are you going to tell your grandchildren? That with the greatest home run hitter of all time on the verge of history you went the way of all mediocre pitchers and simply walked him? Or you manned up to the challenge and got him out? Sorry to break the news to you all, but 99 percent of you middle relievers will be out of the league in a few years with precious few stories to tell anyone. So here's your test. You a big leaguer or not? He doesn't homer every time, you know.
Hoorah, the Giants offense went nuts, but watching the team is an exercise in frustration. How do you get picked off not once but twice when down by three runs? That's not big-league baseball, Dave Roberts and Ray Durham. (Really, does anyone on the bench or on the field ask these guys "What the hell are you thinking out there?")
Just another day at the office for Omar Vizquel. Ah, yeah, bad toss to second, guess I'll barehand it and relay to first for the double play. Yawn. Grounder up the middle, barely get the glove on it -- ah, what the hell, I'll play the carom and roll, then throw the guy out while sitting on my ass. Ho hum. This guy is from another planet.
I was curious about the Giants VORP, so I looked a few things up at Baseball Prospectus. Here are where the Giants stand at each position in the National League (actual figure in parentheses, followed by the positional leader, except for Bonds, who has the second-place guy):
c Bengie Molina, 8th (5.7; Russell Martin, 36.8)
1b Ryan Klesko, 12th (10.2; Prince Fielder 35.4)
2b Ray Durham, 14th (3.6; Chase Utley 48.5)
3b Pedro Feliz, 26th (-3.5; Miguel Cabrera 45.0)
ss Omar Vizquel, 25th (-9.1; Hanley Ramirez 45.8)
lf Barry Bonds 1st (38.7; Matt Holliday 37.4)
cf Dave Roberts 16th (1.1; Aaron Rowand 33.2)
rf Randy Winn 10th (7.5; Ken Griffey Jr. 31.9)
Add up those Giants and you get 54.2, which in Phillies terms equals Aaron Rowand plus Ryan Howard. And Howard's been having an off year.
The Giants offense looked bad Monday night -- again -- but there was the saving grace of having the Cubs offense looke equally bad, thanks to Tim Lincecum. Plus both looked marvelous compared to Aramis Ramirez's stylin' admiration of his, uh, double.
The Giants haven't won since the All-Star break, which is good is some ways. After Monday's loss in Chicago, the team is 38-52, seven games out ... of fourth place.
Yeah, it's a bad team, and it seems that there will be no deceptive winning streak to let the front office try to con fans into believing that there's a chance for the postseason, opening the door to trading a young pitcher for yet another out-making machine.
Making outs is something the Giants are good at. On the rubber, yay. At the plate, it's painful. Here are the OBAs of the batters with the most plate appearances for the Giants, at least those not named Bonds: Winn .332, Feliz .276, Vizquel .287, Durham .321, Molina .294, Aurilia .286, Klesko .374, Roberts .310.
Those are on-base percentages, not batting averages. Just for comparison, the OBA for the entire NL is .329. That includes pitchers. Congratulations, Ryan Klesko.
It's not entirely bleak. We still have Lincecum, Cain and Lowry to watch. (Lincecum makes me giggle at times, when he makes big leaguers look plain overmatched.) Omar Vizquel in the field is flat-out amazing, still. (Sunday he made a bare-handed grab to start a 6-4-3 double play. At the park, my section was agog, but we were never treated to a replay on the giant screen in center. I know they have the technology to replay these things, since later in the game we got to watch a gigantic Dave Roberts settle under a routine fly ball again, in case we missed it the first time.)
And there's Barry. He's struggling, to be sure, and I wonder how much of it is a mind trick. Take Sunday's game against the Dodgers. He looked bad all game, then came up with two outs in the ninth with the Giants down by two. The Dodgers swung the infield around and pulled the left fielder near Alameda, basically gifting Bonds a free single, just hit it somewhere to the left of the pitching mound. Barry declined. At that point, only one thing mattered -- don't make an out, extend the game. Well, unless you're up there just playing for yourself, that is.
While I was writing an e-mail about Barry Bonds to a Phillies fan, Jon tipped me off to the hottest news yet in the PED universe. Yes, Neifi Perez tested positive. My world has been torn asunder.
Now that's what we like to see out of Tim Lincecum. Seven innings of shutout ball, four hits, four walks, eight strikeouts. The stadium radar gun even had him hitting 100 mph in the first.
The woeful Giants offense played along, giving Lincecum a small lead to work with. Vizquel hit a very un-cheap homer to open the scoring, then run No. 2 came on a very un-Giants sequence of double, grounder, grounder.
Then came the bullpen, well-schooled in these kinds of things. For reasons I can't fathom, Kline was summoned to pitch to the left-handed Cruz and Hernandez to start the eighth. Perhaps Bochy liked the performance in the Yankees game and wanted to see if the semi-good times could continue. Alas, Kline gave up a pair of seeds and left the game with runners on second and third, no out. Correia delivered the coup de grace, via Mike Cameron. After that, the bullpen shut the Padres down.
This is just how the Giants have to win games. Great starting pitching, stingy bullpen work, and a few scuffling runs. Then maybe they can eke it out in the Xteenth. Hooray for the win and three in a row, but this doesn't mean things are turned around.
Rod Beck died over the weekend, causes undisclosed. He was 38.
I'll always remember him for getting the win in one of the greatest Giants games ever, the Brian Johnson HR game against the Dodgers in 1997. Beck entered in the 10th and gave up three straight hits to load the bases with no one out. It had been a sketchy few weeks for Beck, and the Candlestick crowd started to grumble. Manager Dusty Baker stuck with Beck, and Shooter struck out Todd Zeile then got an excuse-me double play ball out of Eddie Murray to escape the inning. The highlights you always see of that game show Baker pumping his fist at the crowd; I've always thought half of that was excitement, the other half some in-your-face. Beck pitched two more scoreless innings before Johnson ended it in the 12th. Pure Shooter.
The win streak is at one, but the way the Giants reacted you would have thought they had just won the World Series. Players mobbed Nate Schierholtz after he singled in the winning run in the 13th, with some guys leaving their feet to hit the dogpile.
They just got back from an 0-6 road trip that saw the Giants take the lead twice. Game 1 in Boston, the Giants scored two in the top of the 1st, but gave up two in the bottom to tie. Game 4, the opener in Milwaukee, the Giants scored one in the 1st, but gave up two in the bottom of the inning. Obviously it feels good to end an eight-game losing streak, but June is still awful at 6-15, the season 31-42.
That the Giants were even in the game late was something of a miracle. Matt Morris got cuffed around pretty good, but the Yankees never could cash in big, despite all the hits.
Alex Rodgriguez's homer in the 9th did not get the crowd reaction it deserved. Giants fans were disappointed, sure. Yankees fans celebrated. But had Rodriguez yanked that toward the seats rather than straightaway center, the crowd would have been buzzing right through the 13th. The man slaughtered that ball. (The NYT reported 458 feet. HitTracker should have it up soon.)
You can't tell from television or even just looking while at the ballpark, but beyond the centerfield fence is a building that houses a strip of concession stands. This is the eighth season of baseball at McCovey Cove. During that time, I've seen Barry Bonds hit the roof of the thing a few times and once saw Mark McGwire hit it during batting practice. My memory tells me I've seen at least one other opposing player launch one that far, but I'm having trouble finding it. Rodriguez cleared that building. I've been to roughly half the Giants home games since 2000, and that was the farthest I've seen a ball hit to center. (If someone else saw something bigger, let me know.)
Because it's so hard to really gauge how far someone hits it to center here, I think the crowd reaction was centered on how the homer affected the game and very few noticed much just how far it went. When Galarraga hit his monster shot in 2001, it was early in the game and he hit it over the bleachers and near the landmark bottle. Even if you'd never seen a homer to left in that ballpark, you knew that ball went a long way. (The freakish sound of the bat on the ball would have clued you in as well.)
Even forgetting the home run, Rodriguez has been a monster this series, with eight hits. Everything he hits is scalded. It's like Bonds circa 2001. Friday night I joked that I just hoped he didn't hit it back through the box and kill Matt Cain. I was partly joking, partly making a sincere wish. He's hitting it that hard.
The Giants, on the other hand, aren't. As the game went along in extras with Bonds in the clubhouse, you had to start creating more and more fanciful ways to imagine the Giants scoring a run. Walk, SB, balk, balk. HBP, grounder hits the bag, throwing error. That sort of thing. The reality was close. Single, sac bunt, useless Feliz AB, scratch single (following two tantalizing fouls down the third-base line), dying quail to center by the rookie.
We'll take it. I'm no fan of interleague play, but if it must happen, I'm going to try to wring some sort of value from it. My current fantasy is that the Yankees somehow come up just one game short of catching Boston for the NL East title (wild card has long since been ceded to the West). They'll scan the schedule and see that Boston won three from the Giants while the Yankees only managed two (or one). Ouch.
Two other random things:
1- Watching Clemens warm up -- sorta -- in the 13th was interesting. The Yanks had run out of pitchers, save Rivera. How beautiful would that have been, to have, say, Molina hit a walk-off homer against Clemens?
2- Steve Kline has become the Giants' symbolic white flag. Kline in? Game's over. Good for him Saturday. He got himself into a mess, but pitched his way out of it.
With the Giants in Milwaukee, there's been a lot of Aaron nostalgia during the games. I was 11 when Aaron hit 715. I was at my friend Jim's house, playing ball out back, like we always did. Jim's father popped his head out to tell us to come watch the TV when Aaron came up. After the homer, we went back outside. Kids.
I can remember only one time where I actually saw Aaron play live. I probably remember more because it was on my dad's birthday than from anything that happened on the field. It was May 17, 1974, at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers proclaimed it as Hank Aaron Day, and posters were handed out. Alas, I don't have the poster, but I do have an oversized Hank Aaron photo badge.
Looking at the box score doesn't bring back any memories of the game. Could have been because we were in the upper deck, down the third-base line. Could have been that I wasn't a Dodgers fan. (I was brought up an Angels fan.) Looks like an interesting game. Al Downing pitched. The teams rapped out 26 hits. Eleven innings. But hey, I was there. I saw Aaron.
Every season it gets worse. I mean my desire to watch interleague baseball. Do you really give a rat's behind about the Marlins-White Sox? A's-Reds? Pirates-Mariners? OK, that last one is kinda funny.
Watching the Giants in Fenway was interesting, at least until the games actually started. The Giants looked like they shouldn't even have been on the same field as the Sox. Aside from Matt Cain's habitual 1-0 loss, there was nothing positive to take from the series. I take that back. The Giants are now 30-40, but it could be worse. They could be in the American League and closer to 20-50.
The Giants crawled into Milwaukee and the beatings have continued. Morale has not improved. Tuesday night in the 1st, the Brewers scored three runs on one hit. They walked a lot, and cashed in with two sacrifice flies. "What a concept," said a bitter Mike Krukow.
Item: Barry Bonds could be traded.
If the Giants can get any value for him, it will happen. Somebody could use a bat. Only it won't be done until Bonds hits 756. There is no way in hell that Magowan & Co. won't cash in on that after all the years of putting up with the circus around Barry. Realistically, this team is going nowhere in 2007, so if any of the vets can be dealt for even a hope of value, they should be gone. Morris, Feliz, Durham, Winn, Roberts, Molina, Vizquel, or whoever. Plan on a good team in 2009 and put Cain, Lowry, Lincecum, and Sanchez on the untouchables list. (Just four? Ouch.)
I don't necessarily want to see Bonds traded, but once he is off the team, maybe, just maybe, the Giants can try to piece together a roster that isn't warped by his presence, offensively or financially.
Item: Rich Aurilia placed on DL.
The team has been reluctant to use the DL, even though guys like Aurilia, Klesko and Durham have been spending a lot of time being useless on the bench. Looking at the 40-man roster, you can see why. When Aurilia finally was disabled, the Giants replaced him with Luis Figueroa, a fresh-faced 33-year-old from Triple-A. Yeah, 33.
Item: Matt Cain gives up one run, loses. Again.
Same old garbage. Offense sucks. (Giants are 15th in runs scored in the NL, ahead of the Nationals.) Can't even get a bat on the ball with a runner on third. The front office keeps making noises about how these proven veterans will hit, eventually. OK. It's June 20. It's not early in the season any more. Durham at least looks to be maybe waking up a little bit, but I'm not falling for that one just yet.
Item: Tim Lincecum out of control.
It's tough to watch the kid struggle like this, but he is just a pup when it comes to baseball. Four straight shellackings now. He's got some things to learn still. It's looking like the Giants will skip his next turn in the rotation, but not ship him out. As long as Lincecum can handle the mental stress of losing for the first time in his life, I'm OK with it. Plus I can watch his games in the bigs, as opposed to the black hole that is Triple-A.
How messed up is the Giants roster? Tuesday night Bochy left Correia in to hit in the 8th inning of a one-run game, then had Hennessey pitch the 9th. Today Noah Lowry was tapped as a pinch hitter with Aurilia unavailable, Klesko out due to an injury I'm guessing, Sweeney burnt earlier as a pinch hitter, and Molina riding the bench so that Feliz wouldn't have to go behind the plate should Rodriguez get bowled over. It's a joke, really. Please, use the DL for one of these guys. Get somebody on the roster who can at least take the field.
Until Feliz doubled in the 8th, the best-hit ball was by Jonathan Sanchez, a relief pitcher. Sanchez negated his 6th-inning double a bit by getting himself thrown out at third to end the inning when the Giants were down by five runs.
The Giants on the basepaths are painful and mysterious. In the 9th, Schierholtz got on then stole second because the Jays were playing behind him and really didn't care. Fine. Now he's on second, two out, Bonds up. The entire Jays infield swings around to the right side. The Toronto player closest to third is the pitcher. Does Schierholtz take third? No. I can't fathom this unless Schierholtz is giving Bonds location, and even that seems absurd. Take the base. Why not? If Bonds walks, you've taken away the force at third. It's the Giants, so I wouldn't have been surprised if Bonds tried to poke one to the left side, only to have it bounce off Schierholtz to end the game when he should have been running from third to home.
Lincecum, for the third straight start, looked like the green rook that he is. He couldn't find the plate, and it didn't seem that Rodriguez helped him much, dropping an awful lot of balls. (Is it my imagination that whenever the Z Team gets thrown out there, Lincecum is the pitcher stuck with them?)
Ray Durham is digging a bigger and bigger hole out there. He's not hitting at all, and he's dubious in the field. I'd suggest benching him for a few days, but it seems the Giants don't have enough bodies to put out there without him.
If all it takes to get Barry Bonds going is a few writers saying he's through, I'm all for it. Here, I'll do some more: Bonds looks like he's through. He's toast. Bonds is done. I hope that's enough for a few more homers.
And hey, Barry wasn't the only offense Monday. Klesko managed to get a runner home from third after yet another Giants batter failed to do so, earning cheers from the home fans. The announcers thought that was a nice touch, but you and I both know that there was a lot of sarcasm attached to those cheers. Klesko earned them, nonetheless. Later on, Bochy apparently had seen enough of Vizquel flailing and called a squeeze, which Omar executed.
The first run was all Dave Roberts. Bloop single, stolen base, advance on an error, score on a ground ball. Given the Giants struggles at the plate, having just one guy who can do that is huge. He then proceeded to give me a scare in the 9th when he plowed into the wall while making a running catch. It looked like he smashed his shoulder hard, but luckily he didn't get hurt. So far.
And how about Matt Morris? Give up three to start the game (a couple thanks to some confusion by Barry Bonds) then eight innings of nada.
At the start of the weekend, a few people had noted that the Giants led the NL West in runs scored. The offense underwent what Wall Street would call a "correction" and now rests last in the NL West, 12th in the National League.
Following the disaster in the 9th Friday night, the Giants haven't scored a run or even managed an extra-base hit. Having to face Danny Haren Saturday was no picnic, for sure, but it goes beyond that. A few players have looked absolutely terrible at the plate. Sunday Lenny DiNardo put the cuffs on.
The futility is wearing on the team's brain. Sunday Rich Aurilia refused to go to second on a wild pitch in the 9th for fear that the A's would then walk Bonds. After the game Aurilia called it "living in the past." The Giants announcers tried to cover for him, guessing that he couldn't pick up the ball. Their intention was good, but it was patently obvious that Aurilia purposely didn't take the base. Even if he didn't pick up the ball, it's pretty damn hard to miss the catcher turning his back to you and running 30 feet away from the plate. Aurilia was thinking, you have to give him credit for that. I don't think it was the right play, but at least he was thinking. The A's aren't going to walk Bonds to bring up the winning run, especially when the big guy hasn't come close to hitting one out it a while. And even if Bonds does, it's just a tie game. Now if this were 2001, you might be on to something.
Bochy held a meeting before the game that apparently was meant to tell players to not talk about the approaches of teammates. In public, at least, I'm assuming. Later in that Schulman story, there's this:
On Sunday, the Giants could not [do something about the poor play], and with exactly 100 games to go, it is fair to ask if they ever will. Privately, some in the organization are nervous. This offense is built around Bonds, and he looks done.
Who is nervous? About what? So mysterious. So ... unenlightening. I would be nervous if no one in the organization were nervous. And what is the upshot of this nervousness? Will there be mass transactions? Resignations? We don't know. As for Barry, Bonds looked done last season, too. He didn't look done in April. He's not homering, but he is hitting the ball harder than most of the rest of the Giants. Obviously, at some point he will be done, and the folks saying he is done will be right. I just don't know if it's now.
I sat in the cold San Francisco night and watched the Giants lose to the A's, all 10 innings of it. I'm just tired of this stuff.
Of sitting in the stands listening to loud and obnoxious A's fans and having nothing to fire back with. (Yeah, he's old. Yeah, he sucks. Et cetera.) Of watching runners die at third base. Of watching a pitcher -- Noah Lowry -- put on an at-bat better than most of the hitters managed. Of players, old and young, get dinged up. (Lewis hurt his side, Molina took a ball in the arm, Alfonzo got crushed at home, Klesko was ouchie after diving for a ball. I'm sure there are more.)
It was a game the Giants should have won. Bases loaded in the 9th, one out, No. 5 hitter up, 3-0 count, a runner on third who could actually score on a fly ball. Popped up. Nice.
The A's didn't exactly play a sparkling game, either. Their bonehead highlight was Dan Johnson not scoring from third on a wild pitch in the 8th. But they won, so that will be forgotten, sort of.
The 10th went eerily similar to the 8th. The A's 8th went Johnson double, Crosby grounds out, Johnson to third, Kotsay grounds to first with Klesko holding Johnson, Kendall flies out. The 10th went the same except that Murphy pinch ran after Johnson's double, and he broke for home when Kotsay grounded to first. Klesko threw Murphy out at home, but it wasn't without incident. Alfonzo, who was subbing for the banged-up Molina, got his leg mangled and had to come out of the game.
And here is where this painful game became interesting. The Giants were out of position players, so some shuffling had to be done. Feliz moved behind the plate, Winn came in to play third, Ortmeier moved to center, and Lowry took over right field. Eventually the A's scored two to take the lead, but the game was essentially over after Durham's AB in the 9th.
Feliz was impressive behind the plate, even making a nifty snag of a ball in the dirt. Winn caught a foul pop to end the inning, and Lowry never had to make a play.
Lincecum started this bizarre game. Unfortunately, he could never really find the plate. The worst was walking the pitcher, Gaudin, when he was attempting to lay down a sac bunt. Gaudin returned the favor later, doing the exact same thing when Lincecum was called on to bunt. Lincecum is green green green, so I expect to see a few outings like this. I don't like seeing it, but it's no surprise or a shock.
Brandon Webb is good, sure. The Giants didn't capitalize on the chance they did manage to get off him, which is the same old story. Same old, same old from Matt Morris -- a fantastic complete game loss.
Ryan Klesko got thrown out at third base in the 6th on a sacrifice attempt by Sweeney. The TV guys were all over Klesko for his late break, and the director cut to shots of him in the dugout at least twice during the rest of the inning. OK, we get it, he didn't run the bases well. What about Sweeney? He made a terrible bunt right back to Webb, who then had an easy force at third. (Compare his bunt to Matt Morris's in the next inning. Morris kicked his ass.) Kruk and Kuip didn't say anything about it, although Krukow was quite complimentary about Morris's bunt.
Feliz almost bailed everyone out with a single to left, but Durham got thrown out at the plate. Yes, the extra base is a myth when it comes to the Giants.
Anyhow, I've always hated the sacrifice, but I don't know what the Giants should do there. Let Sweeney hit and likely ground into a double play? Bah, who knows? How many teams have to seriously consider asking the No. 5 man to bunt?
So then Alfonzo leads off the 7th with a double, Morris coming up. OK, bunt with the pitcher, even though Morris can handle the bat. But Winn follows with a weak grounder and Lewis gets out, so the Giants come up empty.
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