Monday, September 29, 2008
Daylight
I finally snapped my personal Dodger losing streak at Mays Field yesterday, as the Giants beat L.A. 3-1 to give Tim Lincecum his 18th win in a very fun game. It was about as thrilling as any game could be when it's the last game of the season and everything is decided. Knowing that the Cy Young was at stake, everybody was hanging on Nate Scherholtz's at-bat in the seventh inning, praying he'd knock in the run and give Timmy the chance for the win. Fortunately for us all, Nate came through and Lincecum ended up earning the victory. Lincecum solidified his Cy case by absolutely dominating for seven innings. The first nine outs he got were all on strikeouts, the first time that's happened since 1986 (when Sid Fernandez did it for the most awesome team of all time that year).
I am also happy to announce that I am the proud owner of a Tim Lincecum Giants shirt. Walking around Mays Field yesterday, I was just overwhelmed by how pumped up everybody was about Lincecum and the season he was having. In a 90-loss season, it was great to see Giants fans revved up about something. When they could have just stayed home and watched the, ugh, Raiders, they turned out en masse to watch and root on the most exciting Giants pitcher in a long time. With the Lincecum love so infectious, I decided I just couldn't leave the stadium without dropping 25 bucks on a Timmy shirt. Needless to say, there won't be any disparaging photos involving the Lincecum jersey on this site any time soon.
The 2008 season ends on a high note, and honestly, how many of us would have ever thought that coming out of Spring Training? If you're a Giants fan and, at the beginning of the season, you told me that you'd be excited about the team on this day, September 29, I've have called you either a liar or assumed you were perpetually high on pain killers. I think most of us just assumed that by this time Lou Seal would have hanged himself from the Coke slide and we would have all developed writer's cramp from the endless hate mail we were sending Brian Sabean.
No such misery, though. As opposed to last year, when the roster was stocked with a bunch of boring veterans with seeming death grips on starting jobs in 2008, now we have a group of young players who might actually be good major league players. Pablo Sandoval can rake, Fred Lewis is fun, Sergio Romo looks freaking awesome, Emmanuel Burriss is an interesting find, and Eugenio Velez is...well, a pretty bad player. OK, I guess all the young guys can't be good, but there's suddenly a lot of promise in the Giants organization, especially with Tim Alderson, Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, and Conor Gillaspie not too far away from the bigs. I can't believe I'm saying it, but I think I'm almost excited to be a Giants fan again.
Leaving the ball park yesterday, it became clear that I'm not alone. On the way back home, I was listening to Michael Urban's show on KNBR, and caller after caller chimed in raving about the team and the positive direction it was going. Most of the comments were typical mindless sports talk blather, with the usual ridiculous trade scenarios thrown in for good measure (someone proposed an asinine trade involving Aaron Rowand for Brandon Phillips, illustrating why I just refuse to listen to sports talk anymore), but whatever. It was just cool to hear such enthusiasm from so many people about the team, a far cry from the days when listening to KNBR post-game shows would only get you Larry Kruger making racially insensitive comments about the team's collection of bad hitters. One caller basically professed his undying man-love for Urban on the air, so things got a little, uh, carried away, but the fun never stopped.
Urban did drop one little nugget of insanity during the proceedings, though. Perhaps he was still high from the Lincecum 13-K performance and scintillating win, but at one point in all the post-game revelry, Urban said that he expected the Giants to improve by 15 games next season. Whoa, there, buddy. I'm excited about the Giants in '09 too, but let's not start waxing each other's bikini zones just yet. 15 games? I'm not sure Urban realizes how drastic an improvement that is. That essentially means that the Giants would be strong playoff contenders next season and, brother, I don't see it.
The Giants aren't the Tampa Bay Rays, a team overloaded with talent that just needs a tweak here or there before they become a title contender. There are still a lot of problems here. Even when the youth movement gained steam in August, the team offense still wasn't very good. The team OPS was just .720 in September and was only four points higher in the second half of the season than it was before the Break.
There are still a ton of lineup questions to be answered. I'm not convinced Travis Ishikawa is the answer at first at all, Sandoval seems like a stretch playing third base every day, no one knows if Burriss's plate patience is for real, and the team is kidding itself if it thinks Velez is an everyday player. They need to find some room for Nate Scherholtz, but that would involve trading Randy Winn and how easy is that going to be? Will Aaron Rowand find the bat that he lost in May?
Behind Lincecum and Cain, there are just as many worries with the pitching staff. Is Zito going to put it together? Is Jonathan Sanchez anything but an injury-addled tease? Kevin Correia was a mess this year and the fifth starter spot is wide open with no appetizing in-house options. The bullpen is basically a Magic Eye poster; look real hard and maybe something is there, but it certainly just looks like a big jumble of crap at first glance.
Expectations should be tempered a little, is all I'm saying. The Giants made it clear in the second half that they're committed to building the next winner through their system and not with crappy short-term fixer-uppers, and that's all we really asked for in 2008. If the Giants can improve to 80 wins next year I'd say that's a reasonable goal. With a little luck, they might outwit ol' Pythagoras and sneak into the playoffs in a poor NL West.
What I don't want to see are misguided moves to acquire veteran stopgaps, led on by the idea that the Giants are a hairsbreadth away from being a contender. This only sets the franchise back, but it seems that the front office has finally learned from its mistakes and won't go that route. If the Giants stay good on their commitment to developing the young guys and don't make any dumb free agents signings this offseason, then it's clear that 2009 will be the most anticipated Giants season since 2004.
--Omar Vizquel was brought out of the sixth inning yesterday and received a huge ovation. I have to admit, he wasn't my favorite Giant. In the last two of the four years he was here, he was flat out awful, and in 2005 he didn't exactly set the world on fire either. You can make a great argument that signing him wasn't nearly the priority that the Giants made it out to be.
All in all, though, he was a Good Giant. His defense was still good and his acrobatics were fun to watch, and it's always neat to have a guy finish up a terrific career with your favorite team. He was loved by fans and teammates alike, and it's easy to root for a player like that. I certainly stood up and joined in the thunder.
I am also happy to announce that I am the proud owner of a Tim Lincecum Giants shirt. Walking around Mays Field yesterday, I was just overwhelmed by how pumped up everybody was about Lincecum and the season he was having. In a 90-loss season, it was great to see Giants fans revved up about something. When they could have just stayed home and watched the, ugh, Raiders, they turned out en masse to watch and root on the most exciting Giants pitcher in a long time. With the Lincecum love so infectious, I decided I just couldn't leave the stadium without dropping 25 bucks on a Timmy shirt. Needless to say, there won't be any disparaging photos involving the Lincecum jersey on this site any time soon.
The 2008 season ends on a high note, and honestly, how many of us would have ever thought that coming out of Spring Training? If you're a Giants fan and, at the beginning of the season, you told me that you'd be excited about the team on this day, September 29, I've have called you either a liar or assumed you were perpetually high on pain killers. I think most of us just assumed that by this time Lou Seal would have hanged himself from the Coke slide and we would have all developed writer's cramp from the endless hate mail we were sending Brian Sabean.
No such misery, though. As opposed to last year, when the roster was stocked with a bunch of boring veterans with seeming death grips on starting jobs in 2008, now we have a group of young players who might actually be good major league players. Pablo Sandoval can rake, Fred Lewis is fun, Sergio Romo looks freaking awesome, Emmanuel Burriss is an interesting find, and Eugenio Velez is...well, a pretty bad player. OK, I guess all the young guys can't be good, but there's suddenly a lot of promise in the Giants organization, especially with Tim Alderson, Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, and Conor Gillaspie not too far away from the bigs. I can't believe I'm saying it, but I think I'm almost excited to be a Giants fan again.
Leaving the ball park yesterday, it became clear that I'm not alone. On the way back home, I was listening to Michael Urban's show on KNBR, and caller after caller chimed in raving about the team and the positive direction it was going. Most of the comments were typical mindless sports talk blather, with the usual ridiculous trade scenarios thrown in for good measure (someone proposed an asinine trade involving Aaron Rowand for Brandon Phillips, illustrating why I just refuse to listen to sports talk anymore), but whatever. It was just cool to hear such enthusiasm from so many people about the team, a far cry from the days when listening to KNBR post-game shows would only get you Larry Kruger making racially insensitive comments about the team's collection of bad hitters. One caller basically professed his undying man-love for Urban on the air, so things got a little, uh, carried away, but the fun never stopped.
Urban did drop one little nugget of insanity during the proceedings, though. Perhaps he was still high from the Lincecum 13-K performance and scintillating win, but at one point in all the post-game revelry, Urban said that he expected the Giants to improve by 15 games next season. Whoa, there, buddy. I'm excited about the Giants in '09 too, but let's not start waxing each other's bikini zones just yet. 15 games? I'm not sure Urban realizes how drastic an improvement that is. That essentially means that the Giants would be strong playoff contenders next season and, brother, I don't see it.
The Giants aren't the Tampa Bay Rays, a team overloaded with talent that just needs a tweak here or there before they become a title contender. There are still a lot of problems here. Even when the youth movement gained steam in August, the team offense still wasn't very good. The team OPS was just .720 in September and was only four points higher in the second half of the season than it was before the Break.
There are still a ton of lineup questions to be answered. I'm not convinced Travis Ishikawa is the answer at first at all, Sandoval seems like a stretch playing third base every day, no one knows if Burriss's plate patience is for real, and the team is kidding itself if it thinks Velez is an everyday player. They need to find some room for Nate Scherholtz, but that would involve trading Randy Winn and how easy is that going to be? Will Aaron Rowand find the bat that he lost in May?
Behind Lincecum and Cain, there are just as many worries with the pitching staff. Is Zito going to put it together? Is Jonathan Sanchez anything but an injury-addled tease? Kevin Correia was a mess this year and the fifth starter spot is wide open with no appetizing in-house options. The bullpen is basically a Magic Eye poster; look real hard and maybe something is there, but it certainly just looks like a big jumble of crap at first glance.
Expectations should be tempered a little, is all I'm saying. The Giants made it clear in the second half that they're committed to building the next winner through their system and not with crappy short-term fixer-uppers, and that's all we really asked for in 2008. If the Giants can improve to 80 wins next year I'd say that's a reasonable goal. With a little luck, they might outwit ol' Pythagoras and sneak into the playoffs in a poor NL West.
What I don't want to see are misguided moves to acquire veteran stopgaps, led on by the idea that the Giants are a hairsbreadth away from being a contender. This only sets the franchise back, but it seems that the front office has finally learned from its mistakes and won't go that route. If the Giants stay good on their commitment to developing the young guys and don't make any dumb free agents signings this offseason, then it's clear that 2009 will be the most anticipated Giants season since 2004.
--Omar Vizquel was brought out of the sixth inning yesterday and received a huge ovation. I have to admit, he wasn't my favorite Giant. In the last two of the four years he was here, he was flat out awful, and in 2005 he didn't exactly set the world on fire either. You can make a great argument that signing him wasn't nearly the priority that the Giants made it out to be.
All in all, though, he was a Good Giant. His defense was still good and his acrobatics were fun to watch, and it's always neat to have a guy finish up a terrific career with your favorite team. He was loved by fans and teammates alike, and it's easy to root for a player like that. I certainly stood up and joined in the thunder.
Labels: dodger hating weekend, finding solace in a bad season, season postmortem, Tim Lincecum
Friday, September 26, 2008
Dodger-Hating Weekend Redux
So much for spoiler weekend. The Diamondbacks completely choked away the NL West this season, and their ill-fated pennant run came to a disgraceful end yesterday when they got blown off the field 12-3 to end a three-game sweep at the hands of the Cardinals. This, of course, means that the Dodgers mosey on into the playoffs and that there will be no drama this weekend at Mays Field. Oh, well, we can still hate the Dodgers and pretend something is at stake, I guess.
I'll be at Mays Field on Sunday trying to snap my own personal losing streak to the Dodgers. I haven't attended a Giants-Dodgers matchup that ended in a Giant victory since this game in 1991, when I was eight years old and only cared about Darryl Strawberry playing in right field. Since then, I've gone to games in 1998, 2004, and 2006 that all ended in a Giant defeat at the hands of the evil ones in blue. The 1998 game was especially painful because they got shut out by Carlos Perez, the same guy who in the next year would go berzerk and go ten rounds with a couple of water coolers with a baseball bat after getting pulled from a game. If the Giants had beat Perez, they would have ended up winning the Wild Card that year. Just tragic.
Tomorrow I may or may not be live-blogging the Giants game. I had planned to do this for a while, and wanted to do a Giants-Dodgers matchup, but the combination of the Dodgers clinching and possible lack of access to a laptop means that I'll probably be putting it off until the World Series. My plan is to sit there with some friends and live blog the game inning by inning with a gigantic supply of beer on hand and see if it ends up even remotely coherent. If the conversation deviates from the game to a drunken dissertation on the recurring motifs in The Dark Knight, well, at least it'll be entertaining.
So keep an eye out for that maybe tomorrow, as well as some stuff on Bugs and Cranks, and have a great weekend!
--TGIF vid. This is absolutely one of the most awesome videos I've ever seen in my life. As a person who has done this hike, I gotta wonder, how the hell did he lug those bagpipes up there????
I'll be at Mays Field on Sunday trying to snap my own personal losing streak to the Dodgers. I haven't attended a Giants-Dodgers matchup that ended in a Giant victory since this game in 1991, when I was eight years old and only cared about Darryl Strawberry playing in right field. Since then, I've gone to games in 1998, 2004, and 2006 that all ended in a Giant defeat at the hands of the evil ones in blue. The 1998 game was especially painful because they got shut out by Carlos Perez, the same guy who in the next year would go berzerk and go ten rounds with a couple of water coolers with a baseball bat after getting pulled from a game. If the Giants had beat Perez, they would have ended up winning the Wild Card that year. Just tragic.
Tomorrow I may or may not be live-blogging the Giants game. I had planned to do this for a while, and wanted to do a Giants-Dodgers matchup, but the combination of the Dodgers clinching and possible lack of access to a laptop means that I'll probably be putting it off until the World Series. My plan is to sit there with some friends and live blog the game inning by inning with a gigantic supply of beer on hand and see if it ends up even remotely coherent. If the conversation deviates from the game to a drunken dissertation on the recurring motifs in The Dark Knight, well, at least it'll be entertaining.
So keep an eye out for that maybe tomorrow, as well as some stuff on Bugs and Cranks, and have a great weekend!
--TGIF vid. This is absolutely one of the most awesome videos I've ever seen in my life. As a person who has done this hike, I gotta wonder, how the hell did he lug those bagpipes up there????
Labels: dodger hating weekend
Monday, September 22, 2008
Double the Stankeye
The difference between rooting a good team on in an extremely intense baseball game like yesterday's grind-a-thon and rooting on a bad team like this year's Giants is that with a bad team you have no confidence whatsoever that your guys are going to come through. I gotta be honest, I fully expected Rich Aurilia to pop out or something in the 11th inning and then me having to go to the emergency room after breaking my fist punching the wall. If we're talking the 2001 version of the Goateed One, then it's a no-brainer; he comes through. The past-his-prime Aurilia? Like I said, my fist was drawn back and rarin' to go through some brick.
Luckily, Aurilia lined a single and the Giants won. My fist shot up instead of forward and I yelled triumphantly in maybe the most exciting game the Giants have played in four years. It's fun to be able to watch games that mean something again, even if that consists of taking joy in pulling your team's mortal enemy down into the pit of baseball despair that we Giants fans have become so well-acquainted with the past few years.
Dodger-hating weekend #1 was a success. Now we wait for Round Two this coming Friday at Mays Field. I have my tickets for Sunday's game, and boy oh boy do I hope the Dodgers have the playoffs on the line for that game. Can you imagine the Giants spoiling LA's playoff hopes, then watching Manny Ramirez sulk off the field and Ned Colletti slump back defeated in his booth? I can see Colletti's mustache making it's own little frowny face as the Dodgers' season goes down the tubes. It's a joy I can only dream of.
To see more of my mini-take on the Giants and the big matchup this weekend, go here and read. That's right, I've taken on an assignment as the new Giants writer at Bugs and Cranks. That means I'll be pulling double duty, writing both here and at B&C. So if you're a regular and like reading here at the Stankeye don't hesitate to follow me on over there. It's double the dosage of Paulie and should be a lot of work but a lot of fun.
Luckily, Aurilia lined a single and the Giants won. My fist shot up instead of forward and I yelled triumphantly in maybe the most exciting game the Giants have played in four years. It's fun to be able to watch games that mean something again, even if that consists of taking joy in pulling your team's mortal enemy down into the pit of baseball despair that we Giants fans have become so well-acquainted with the past few years.
Dodger-hating weekend #1 was a success. Now we wait for Round Two this coming Friday at Mays Field. I have my tickets for Sunday's game, and boy oh boy do I hope the Dodgers have the playoffs on the line for that game. Can you imagine the Giants spoiling LA's playoff hopes, then watching Manny Ramirez sulk off the field and Ned Colletti slump back defeated in his booth? I can see Colletti's mustache making it's own little frowny face as the Dodgers' season goes down the tubes. It's a joy I can only dream of.
To see more of my mini-take on the Giants and the big matchup this weekend, go here and read. That's right, I've taken on an assignment as the new Giants writer at Bugs and Cranks. That means I'll be pulling double duty, writing both here and at B&C. So if you're a regular and like reading here at the Stankeye don't hesitate to follow me on over there. It's double the dosage of Paulie and should be a lot of work but a lot of fun.
Labels: dodger hating weekend, the goateed one
Friday, September 19, 2008
Let Dodger-Hating Weekend Commence
When I was in Little League I was probably the worst outfielder imaginable. Back in those days the coaches would hide their worst fielders in right field because there were so few left-handed hitters, but I could probably do more damage to my team fumbling what little fly balls came to me out there than I could by playing some infield position. I mean, I was atrocious. I was always reasonably quick and athletic, but I just couldn't read fly balls to save my life and had a habit of simply falling down when chasing balls hit over my head. My specialty was turning routine singles into inside-the-park home runs for the other team because I wouldn't get in front of the ball when it was hit to me. Yeah, I was just miserable.
Anyway, one of the first things a coach will hammer into you when you're an outfielder is to never, ever, break in on a fly ball hit in your direction. Always take your first step back, because if the ball is hit over your head, your momentum is taking you back already, and if the ball is hit in front of you, you still have time to recover and go in for the catch. If you step in and the ball is hit over your head, you're fucked because you have less time to recover and by the time you've reversed directions the ball is already rolling to the warning track. Needless to say, I never did put that advice into practice when I was playing.
Unfortunately, neither did Eugenio Velez last night. His mishandling of Juston Upton's liner to left field last night allowed two runs to score and prevented Tim Lincecum from getting his 18th win. Maybe Velez has a future as a utility player or something but I think it's probably safe to say that the Eugenio Experiment can be brought to a close. When a major league player's fielding ability resembles me stumbling around in the field when I was ten, it's probably best to cut bait and look elsewhere.
The silver lining to the whole series loss in Arizona is that the Diamondbacks didn't lose any ground in their (most likely fruitless) pursuit of the Dodgers for the NL West. Now the Giants enter a stretch where they'll play the Dodgers six more times in the next week, and damned if they won't play the spoilers. They were in this situation in 2006 and completely fell on their faces. This time, though, the ghosts of '82 will be set free, and hopefully we won't have to sit through an October of Dodger Blue.
--TGIF vid. This video has been circulating this past week, and is repulsive yet absolutely hysterical. The best part is the sheer enthusiasm with which he tells his story.
Anyway, one of the first things a coach will hammer into you when you're an outfielder is to never, ever, break in on a fly ball hit in your direction. Always take your first step back, because if the ball is hit over your head, your momentum is taking you back already, and if the ball is hit in front of you, you still have time to recover and go in for the catch. If you step in and the ball is hit over your head, you're fucked because you have less time to recover and by the time you've reversed directions the ball is already rolling to the warning track. Needless to say, I never did put that advice into practice when I was playing.
Unfortunately, neither did Eugenio Velez last night. His mishandling of Juston Upton's liner to left field last night allowed two runs to score and prevented Tim Lincecum from getting his 18th win. Maybe Velez has a future as a utility player or something but I think it's probably safe to say that the Eugenio Experiment can be brought to a close. When a major league player's fielding ability resembles me stumbling around in the field when I was ten, it's probably best to cut bait and look elsewhere.
The silver lining to the whole series loss in Arizona is that the Diamondbacks didn't lose any ground in their (most likely fruitless) pursuit of the Dodgers for the NL West. Now the Giants enter a stretch where they'll play the Dodgers six more times in the next week, and damned if they won't play the spoilers. They were in this situation in 2006 and completely fell on their faces. This time, though, the ghosts of '82 will be set free, and hopefully we won't have to sit through an October of Dodger Blue.
--TGIF vid. This video has been circulating this past week, and is repulsive yet absolutely hysterical. The best part is the sheer enthusiasm with which he tells his story.
Labels: dodger hating weekend, eugenio velez, george brett's issues with incontinence
