Friday, May 09, 2008
Post-Sweep Plank-Walking
Time to take a break from obsessive activities that threaten to destroy my ability to function in civilized society to jabber a little about the Giants and their hiccup by the Alleghany this week.
I guess it's not as bad as being taken over by the Crimson Permanent Insurance, but getting swept by this band of Pirates is humiliating enough. I thought that the Giants could go into Pittsburgh, square off against maybe the worst-run franchise of the last decade (to be fair, they've gone through an ownership change for the better, but the wreckage is still there), and get out of town that much closer to .500 on their way to a shockingly successful season. As J.T. Snow said on the radio last weekend, the best way to get over the .500 mark is to make it a goal to win every series, and what better team to do that against than the freaking Bucs? The Giants should have been Donatello.
Obviously, it didn't go that way, and now the Giants have lost five of six and are starting to really resemble that boring team that everybody predicted would crash and burn into 100-loss land. I'm still holding on to that glimmer of hope that this team can will its way to like 80 wins, but these last three games were quite a downer. All that, and Stankeye fave Doug Mientkiewicz didn't even get into any of the games. Ah well.
Some encouraging things...
--Barry Zito's start wasn't horrendous, which is a backhanded compliment if I've ever heard one. The five strikeouts were the most positive sign, but he still needed 99 pitches to get through five innings, and one diving stop by Rich Aurilia kept Zito from further disasters. He was still throwing in the low-80's, so maybe he's adjusted somehow, or maybe it was a fluke and he's going to get tattooed again in his next start.
--Dan Ortmeier has been a beast ever since switching solely to right-handed hitting, and he's 3 for 10 against right-handed pitching. With the power potential he flashed from the right side last season, it'd be interesting to see him get full time work against all types of pitchers, not just lefties, with Aurilia or Jose Castillo moving to a reserve role.
--Aaron Rowand just keeps ripping, and he's at .336/.390/.523 for the year, with sparkling defense and at least one great catch per week. No, I still don't like the contract, but Rowand is small sample sizing my words right back down my throat right now.
--The return of Billy Sadler. He blew away the red-hot Nate McClouth in the 8th inning yesterday with a runner on base. The 24 strikeouts in 16 AAA innings is stunning, but the 12 walks ain't. With Brad Hennessey down trying to get himself back on track, this is a great opportunity for Sadler to establish himself. Hopefully he can be more Brad Lidge than Scott Ruffcorn in the majors.
The Phils come into town tonight. Has anybody noticed what a miserable year Ryan Howard is having? .165/.285/.331 with 51 strikeouts in 127 at-bats! If he keeps that pace up, that's 221 K's over a full season. Somewhere Jack Cust is smiling.
--To paraphrase a line from a Simpsons character, for no reason here's U2...with a buffalo, for some reason.
Ok, back to GTA.
I guess it's not as bad as being taken over by the Crimson Permanent Insurance, but getting swept by this band of Pirates is humiliating enough. I thought that the Giants could go into Pittsburgh, square off against maybe the worst-run franchise of the last decade (to be fair, they've gone through an ownership change for the better, but the wreckage is still there), and get out of town that much closer to .500 on their way to a shockingly successful season. As J.T. Snow said on the radio last weekend, the best way to get over the .500 mark is to make it a goal to win every series, and what better team to do that against than the freaking Bucs? The Giants should have been Donatello.
Obviously, it didn't go that way, and now the Giants have lost five of six and are starting to really resemble that boring team that everybody predicted would crash and burn into 100-loss land. I'm still holding on to that glimmer of hope that this team can will its way to like 80 wins, but these last three games were quite a downer. All that, and Stankeye fave Doug Mientkiewicz didn't even get into any of the games. Ah well.
Some encouraging things...
--Barry Zito's start wasn't horrendous, which is a backhanded compliment if I've ever heard one. The five strikeouts were the most positive sign, but he still needed 99 pitches to get through five innings, and one diving stop by Rich Aurilia kept Zito from further disasters. He was still throwing in the low-80's, so maybe he's adjusted somehow, or maybe it was a fluke and he's going to get tattooed again in his next start.
--Dan Ortmeier has been a beast ever since switching solely to right-handed hitting, and he's 3 for 10 against right-handed pitching. With the power potential he flashed from the right side last season, it'd be interesting to see him get full time work against all types of pitchers, not just lefties, with Aurilia or Jose Castillo moving to a reserve role.
--Aaron Rowand just keeps ripping, and he's at .336/.390/.523 for the year, with sparkling defense and at least one great catch per week. No, I still don't like the contract, but Rowand is small sample sizing my words right back down my throat right now.
--The return of Billy Sadler. He blew away the red-hot Nate McClouth in the 8th inning yesterday with a runner on base. The 24 strikeouts in 16 AAA innings is stunning, but the 12 walks ain't. With Brad Hennessey down trying to get himself back on track, this is a great opportunity for Sadler to establish himself. Hopefully he can be more Brad Lidge than Scott Ruffcorn in the majors.
The Phils come into town tonight. Has anybody noticed what a miserable year Ryan Howard is having? .165/.285/.331 with 51 strikeouts in 127 at-bats! If he keeps that pace up, that's 221 K's over a full season. Somewhere Jack Cust is smiling.
--To paraphrase a line from a Simpsons character, for no reason here's U2...with a buffalo, for some reason.
Ok, back to GTA.
Labels: aaron rowand, billy sadler, good zito, pirates are a horrible franchise, pointless terry gilliam sketch reference
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Channeling the '03 Dodgers
I thought I'd take a quick look at how the newest Giant, Aaron Rowand fits in to the lineup. Here's the 2008 Giants lineup, as I see it, if there are no more moves made to change it between now and the start of the season:
LF Roberts/Davis
3B Frandsen
RF Winn
CF Rowand
C Molina
2B Durham
1B Ortmeier
SS Vizquel
To quote Mr. Creosote, better get a bucket. What's the over/under on runs scored here? 550? Obviously, there's still a lot of time left and I'm sure moves will be made to improve ths squad, but man, it'll still take some sort of miracle to make this offense even respectable.
Personally, I'm excited at Frandsen's prospects; not so much at Ortmeier's. Frandsen's minor league totals indicate that he could at least be a kind of Bill Mueller-type, which would be doubly valuable if the Giants could acquire another third baseman and Frandsen could slide to second in 2009. If there's one thing I really hope that the Giants don't screw up this winter, it's acquiring some veteran chaff to play third base and then have Frandsen rot on the bench some more. One of the few things I'm looking forward to this season is finding out what this guy can do.
As for Ortmeier, the opposite field shots and the Dodger-killing homer were exciting, but a .775 career OPS in the minors doesn't scream success, certainly not at first base. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have the Giants give Ort a chance than dick around with more washed-up zombies like Tony Clark. However, it also doesn't make much sense to just settle on Ortmeier when Dallas McPherson, who has a career .959 minor league OPS (and who I've not-so-realistically thought about trying to get before) is available and can probably be signed for relatively cheap.
As for Rowand's place in this lineup, he's sort of like Bengie Molina in the sense that if he's your number six hitter or something, you're doing pretty well. But your main source of power? Forget it. The biggest problem here is that the Giants have ostensibly replaced a five-win caliber offensive player in Bonds with probably a two-win one in Rowand, and that seems to be a best-case scenario. If the Giants had one of the league's worst offenses with Bonds, how bad is it going to be now, especially with the old guys getting a year older? Matt Cain shudders.
--TGIF video. I have to wait six more months for this? But I want it now!
LF Roberts/Davis
3B Frandsen
RF Winn
CF Rowand
C Molina
2B Durham
1B Ortmeier
SS Vizquel
To quote Mr. Creosote, better get a bucket. What's the over/under on runs scored here? 550? Obviously, there's still a lot of time left and I'm sure moves will be made to improve ths squad, but man, it'll still take some sort of miracle to make this offense even respectable.
Personally, I'm excited at Frandsen's prospects; not so much at Ortmeier's. Frandsen's minor league totals indicate that he could at least be a kind of Bill Mueller-type, which would be doubly valuable if the Giants could acquire another third baseman and Frandsen could slide to second in 2009. If there's one thing I really hope that the Giants don't screw up this winter, it's acquiring some veteran chaff to play third base and then have Frandsen rot on the bench some more. One of the few things I'm looking forward to this season is finding out what this guy can do.
As for Ortmeier, the opposite field shots and the Dodger-killing homer were exciting, but a .775 career OPS in the minors doesn't scream success, certainly not at first base. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have the Giants give Ort a chance than dick around with more washed-up zombies like Tony Clark. However, it also doesn't make much sense to just settle on Ortmeier when Dallas McPherson, who has a career .959 minor league OPS (and who I've not-so-realistically thought about trying to get before) is available and can probably be signed for relatively cheap.
As for Rowand's place in this lineup, he's sort of like Bengie Molina in the sense that if he's your number six hitter or something, you're doing pretty well. But your main source of power? Forget it. The biggest problem here is that the Giants have ostensibly replaced a five-win caliber offensive player in Bonds with probably a two-win one in Rowand, and that seems to be a best-case scenario. If the Giants had one of the league's worst offenses with Bonds, how bad is it going to be now, especially with the old guys getting a year older? Matt Cain shudders.
--TGIF video. I have to wait six more months for this? But I want it now!
Labels: aaron rowand, offensive anemia
Monday, December 17, 2007
Clueless Giants Free Agent Signing V. 2008
Let's flash back to the winter of 2006. The Giants are coming off of a crappy season. The team's fans (lovingly dubbed the Lunatic Fringe by their fearless leader) are begging for some sort of youth movement or, hell, any kind of demonstration from the front office that proves the Giants' scouting department isn't stuck in the 1920's. The team has multiple holes, the largest being arguably the gaping lack of power at key offensive positions such as first and third base.
So what do the Giants do? They decide that they need to "get speedier" and sign Dave Roberts to a three year deal, despite the fact that they already have an overpaid, mediocre center fielder whose contract they're kicking themselves over in Randy Winn. Not surprisingly, Roberts has a miserable year, the Giants suck, those holes that went unaddressed continue to kill the team, and the Giants immediately regret Roberts's contract. Seriously, like two months into the season.
Now flash forward to the present. It's the winter of 2007. The Giants are coming off an even worse season, those same holes at the corner positions remain unfilled, they've been trying desperately to unload the Winn and Roberts contracts, and their best hitter is gone in a sea of legal troubles and embarrassing Peter Magowan shenanigans, which means that they have even more work to do to make the offense respectable. So naturally, Brian Sabean's first move is to go out and sign yet another center fielder to a five-year deal.
What. The. Fuck.
I'm sorry, but the signing of Aaron Rowand to a five-year, $60 million deal is so stupid, so pointless, and in such obvious contrast to what the Giants actually need, that I'm beginning to think that Sabean isn't so much incompetent as he is just flat out insane. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and thinking it'll work at some point, right? Isn't this just Sabean repeating the same "defense wins ballgames" crap over and over again? When it inevitably fails and the team sucks again, will Sabean just yell at Giants fans to get off his back like he always does?
The Giants have way more issues that should be taking precedent, like the fact that this team still has no power at positions where power isn't too hard to find, and yet Sabean has gone and signed a guy who plays a position of relatively low urgency. Meanwhile, the team is still stuck pondering the pros and cons of Dan Ortmeier at first base. What is going on here?
If the Giants were on the cusp of contention, this signing still wouldn't be good, but at least it'd be defensible. Five years and $60 million for Rowand is preferable to five years and $90 mil for Torii Hunter, and Rowand is a nice player who could put a team over the edge if they needed center field help. The Giants aren't on the brink of being a contender, though. Not even freaking close, and locking up a non-impact for five years is just the last thing they need to be doing. I absolutely, positively guarantee that in two years, in the winter of 2009, the Giants will be desperately trying to dump Rowand's contract.
Rowand is coming off of a fabulous year, no doubt, but it's also a year that just reeks of a contract-year surge, and it came while Rowand was playing in an extreme home run park. He hit 25 home runs total in the two years before and now that he's moving into a park that is very stingy on power numbers, he could easily regress back to those middling 2005-06 numbers, which certainly wouldn't make him the "middle of the order threat" that Sabean touted him as. His plate patience is nothing special either, as his career high in walks is 47, but this should really be of no surprise coming from a franchise that still doesn't understand the value of batters not making outs.
As for his defense, Rowand is considered a great fielder and won a Gold Glove last year, but as we all know, GG's are meaningless and I think a lot of his defensive rep comes from the time he broke his nose crashing into a fence while making a spectacular catch in Philadelphia. A lot of the more advanced defensive metrics I've seen rate him as sort of above average, not super-stupendous.
Does this signing make the Giants immediately better? I guess, but that just means it turns them from a 105-loss team into a 103-loss team. Hooray! Rowand may help the ERAs of the Giants' young pitchers with his glove, and he may defy the odds and average 25 homers over the entirety of his contract, and I'll sit here and eat my crow and enjoy it, dammit. More likely, though, his defense makes a barely marginal impact and he regresses to the .700 OPS threat of his career norms, while I sit and stew and stick my middle finger at Sabean's photo on sfgiants.com.
I hate to be such a gloomy-gus on this, but the Rowand deal strikes me as yet another ill-advised, wrong-headed, and poorly-researched free agent signing, the kind that we Giants fans have been suffering over for far too long now. You can stretch for positives and find some, but you could have done the same for the Matt Morris, Armando Benitez, and Mike Matheny signings, and those all proved to be absolute dead fish. I'm not ready to come out and fully agree with the topic of this discussion, but I'm getting there.
So what do the Giants do? They decide that they need to "get speedier" and sign Dave Roberts to a three year deal, despite the fact that they already have an overpaid, mediocre center fielder whose contract they're kicking themselves over in Randy Winn. Not surprisingly, Roberts has a miserable year, the Giants suck, those holes that went unaddressed continue to kill the team, and the Giants immediately regret Roberts's contract. Seriously, like two months into the season.
Now flash forward to the present. It's the winter of 2007. The Giants are coming off an even worse season, those same holes at the corner positions remain unfilled, they've been trying desperately to unload the Winn and Roberts contracts, and their best hitter is gone in a sea of legal troubles and embarrassing Peter Magowan shenanigans, which means that they have even more work to do to make the offense respectable. So naturally, Brian Sabean's first move is to go out and sign yet another center fielder to a five-year deal.
What. The. Fuck.
I'm sorry, but the signing of Aaron Rowand to a five-year, $60 million deal is so stupid, so pointless, and in such obvious contrast to what the Giants actually need, that I'm beginning to think that Sabean isn't so much incompetent as he is just flat out insane. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and thinking it'll work at some point, right? Isn't this just Sabean repeating the same "defense wins ballgames" crap over and over again? When it inevitably fails and the team sucks again, will Sabean just yell at Giants fans to get off his back like he always does?
The Giants have way more issues that should be taking precedent, like the fact that this team still has no power at positions where power isn't too hard to find, and yet Sabean has gone and signed a guy who plays a position of relatively low urgency. Meanwhile, the team is still stuck pondering the pros and cons of Dan Ortmeier at first base. What is going on here?
If the Giants were on the cusp of contention, this signing still wouldn't be good, but at least it'd be defensible. Five years and $60 million for Rowand is preferable to five years and $90 mil for Torii Hunter, and Rowand is a nice player who could put a team over the edge if they needed center field help. The Giants aren't on the brink of being a contender, though. Not even freaking close, and locking up a non-impact for five years is just the last thing they need to be doing. I absolutely, positively guarantee that in two years, in the winter of 2009, the Giants will be desperately trying to dump Rowand's contract.
Rowand is coming off of a fabulous year, no doubt, but it's also a year that just reeks of a contract-year surge, and it came while Rowand was playing in an extreme home run park. He hit 25 home runs total in the two years before and now that he's moving into a park that is very stingy on power numbers, he could easily regress back to those middling 2005-06 numbers, which certainly wouldn't make him the "middle of the order threat" that Sabean touted him as. His plate patience is nothing special either, as his career high in walks is 47, but this should really be of no surprise coming from a franchise that still doesn't understand the value of batters not making outs.
As for his defense, Rowand is considered a great fielder and won a Gold Glove last year, but as we all know, GG's are meaningless and I think a lot of his defensive rep comes from the time he broke his nose crashing into a fence while making a spectacular catch in Philadelphia. A lot of the more advanced defensive metrics I've seen rate him as sort of above average, not super-stupendous.
Does this signing make the Giants immediately better? I guess, but that just means it turns them from a 105-loss team into a 103-loss team. Hooray! Rowand may help the ERAs of the Giants' young pitchers with his glove, and he may defy the odds and average 25 homers over the entirety of his contract, and I'll sit here and eat my crow and enjoy it, dammit. More likely, though, his defense makes a barely marginal impact and he regresses to the .700 OPS threat of his career norms, while I sit and stew and stick my middle finger at Sabean's photo on sfgiants.com.
I hate to be such a gloomy-gus on this, but the Rowand deal strikes me as yet another ill-advised, wrong-headed, and poorly-researched free agent signing, the kind that we Giants fans have been suffering over for far too long now. You can stretch for positives and find some, but you could have done the same for the Matt Morris, Armando Benitez, and Mike Matheny signings, and those all proved to be absolute dead fish. I'm not ready to come out and fully agree with the topic of this discussion, but I'm getting there.
Labels: aaron rowand, insane free agent signings
