Give 'em Some Stankeye!

This post is just going to be a series of observations and some rantings about the Giants' season so far, but I'm going to start off with a plea to Bruce Bochy, Brian Sabean and co. Please, please, continue to play the young guys. This weekend, with a Giants lineup filled with Fred Lewis, John Bowker, Eugenio Velez and, yes, even Bocock!, I got to listen to actual exciting Giants baseball on the radio for the first time since, like, 2004. Do you know how good that felt? All because I didn't have to listen to another inning of washed up veterans going down meekly against a fringe Cardinal pitcher.

If the Giants give these guys regular playing time, the team may not be good, but they'll be like ten times more interesting, and that's really all I ask for. I don't need another 200 Rich Aurilia at-bats to realize he's got a fork sticking out of his back. What I do need is an answer to whether or not Bowker is more Will Clark than J.R. Phillips. I want to know if Velez can handle major league pitching consistently and make use of his blinding speed. It's fun to find out, and I'm not sure Giants ownership understands that.

So please, oh wise (ahem) makers of the lineup card, continue to pencil in these unproven players every day, for the sake of us fans who are tired of watching the usual sad Ray Durham trek back to the dugout.

--This is going to sound awful, but the Dave Roberts injury is probably the best thing that could have happened to the Giants. Fred Lewis is now finally getting a shot to play every day and if he keeps hitting (like he always has throughout the minors and briefly in the majors), there will be no excuse to bench him when Roberts comes back. Lewis is a patient hitter with doubles pop, some speed, and in a good year he'll probably smack 15 homers. He's no franchise-turner, but he is a lot of fun, and I'll be savoring his playing time while it's here.

On the radio this weekend, Dave Flemming was saying something about how Giants management is just now realizing that, hey, Lewis just might be a decent option at the leadoff spot after all. Gee, ya think? If Bochy, et al are now just figuring this out, that's indefensible. Lewis should have been made a starter and leadoff man last year, and the team shouldn't have signed Roberts at all.

Speaking of which, Lewis's hitting is making the Roberts contract look more ridiculous by the day. You've heard me say it before, but I hated the signing then, and I hate it even more now, because the Giants are now stuck with way too many outfielders than they know what to do with. When Roberts does come back, he'll likely just take over for Lewis in left field, because it doesn't look good to have a player making $6 million sitting on the bench. Just ask the Dodgers.

Nothing against Roberts. Really, I hope he recovers fully and, who knows, if he does come back and play regularly, and play well, maybe he can build up some trade value. It's just a damn shame that his shitty contract is going to give him all the burn at the expense of a guy who deserves it way more.

--Jose Castillo isn't good, but if he can continue this freaky doubles thing and get his OBP over .300, at least we'll be able to give Sabean some credit for picking up a decent (and cheap) stopgap on the fly. Castillo is basically Pedro Feliz without the power, defense, or, most importantly, the $5 million being burned to a crisp. After the team was on the brink of a Joe Crede-for-something-living disaster, I'll take it.

--It's hip these days to rip on Barry Zito after his 0-4 start and the sad sight of his velocity sinking into Little League World Series territory. I like to see the lighter side of it, though. With Zito's ability to stay healthy, and the Giants' inability to score many runs and, well, win games, what are the chances that Zito loses 20 this year? Not that it's really anything to root for, but how many 20-game losers do you see these days? Like, none. Mike Maroth did it in 2003, but before him it hadn't happened in 23 years. This is Zito's chance to be unique.

If he does lose 20, he may unwittingly be doing a public service. He can be the perfect cautionary tale for those still-backwards GMs on the dangers of handing pitchers big money contracts. I can hear the Ned Collettis and Wayne Krivskys now: "Hey, look at Zito! He was given $126 million, and he lost 20 games in the second year of the deal! We had better not be doing anything like that!" It's doubly precautionary because Zito is a Boras client, and Boras always seems to con absurd contracts for his players (well, most of them). So the Giants could be doing the baseball world a favor. See, the Zito situation isn't all bad.

--I loved the whole Bocock! drawing walks thing in the first week of the season, but sadly the free passes have dried up since NL pitchers have realized that he can't hit the ball out of the infield. Omar Vizquel's rehab is going ever so slowly, so it looks like Bocock! will continue to flail away for a few more weeks.

I mean, I don't want to rip on the guy. Bocock! has been put into a situation where he is way over his head (kinda like me going on a date with Minka) and he is just overmatched, striking out a ton and going off too early when he gets to first base (yup, just like me on a date with Minka). As Lefty recounted today, if given a full season's worth of at-bats, he'd likely be the worst hitter to play regularly in history. But at least he'd be our historically awful hitter.

Labels: bad zito, brian bocock, jose castillo, let the young guys play dammit, prayer for an intelligent sabean decision

There's a smoking hot trade rumor rolling around that involves the Giants, and it's not particularly good. The team is apparently seriously considering a Tim Lincecum-for-Alex Rios trade, which currently has the lunatic fringe in quite the uproar. Apparently the deal is "sitting on Brian Sabean's desk" right now, and I saw one horrifying rumor that Sabean was ready to pull the trigger, only to be thankfully talked out of it by his cohorts in the front office.

My reaction to the Timmy-for-Rios babble can be summed up simply with this. The reasons not to make this trade are so obvious that I just can't believe that the Giants didn't pooh-pooh it at first mention. Has Sabean really lost his mind? Is his mission the next two seasons going to be to make as many stupid moves as possible just to spite those of us who wanted him fired? I can picture him now at a press conference, announcing the Lincecum/Rios trade, waving his two-year contract extension around and cackling with glee while flipping us all the bird.

Grant at McCovey Chronicles brilliantly sums why this move would be miserable here and here (and apparently Tim Kawakami didn't take too well to that second one). Rios is a very good player and might even improve into a 30-homer guy, but he's not going to turn a franchise around. Not even close. He might, might, have another two or three All-Star seasons in him, but he's definitely not a guy you build your team around. If he's the third-best hitter on your team, then you're on to something.

Lincecum meanwhile, with the way he blew away hitters in the minors and showed signs of dominance this past season, has the ability to be the best pitcher in the National League in the next few years, and that has way more value, obviously, than a 26-year-old corner outfielder who hits free agency in two years. There are players who I would trade Lincecum straight-up for (Jay Bruce of the Reds being one, but I can't see that happening), but Rios is definitely not one of them.

Here's what I think is going on. In Moneyball, Billy Beane famously referred to Brian Sabean as the "master of the dry hump", and hopefully that's the case here. Sabean might just be feigning interest in the hopes that, if he leads them on enough, the Blue Jays will keep going further and further until they offer something crazy and Sabes makes off like a bandit. At least, I pray that's the case. I think the fact that the whispers of this trade turned so quickly into shouts means that the dry humping has given way to full fledged Mile High Club status, as lurid a mental picture as that analogy will give you.

What I do know is that if this trade does happen, and the guy who so many dubbed "The Savior" is wearing blue and speaking French next season, prepare to see Mays Field burned to the ground, with me at the front lines, kerosene in hand.

--I'll go into this more on Monday, but...we're free. Is this really real? If I pinch myself, will I wake up to a cold reality of clueless hacking and sub-.290 OBPs?

--Didn't get the time for the usual TGIF video yesterday, so we'll put one up for TGIS, I suppose. If you grew up on Nintendo games and you haven't been enlightened to the AVGN, you're missing out.

Labels: prayer for an intelligent sabean decision, Tim Lincecum

With the winter meetings kicking into gear next week, it'll be interesting to see what moves, if any, Brian Sabean makes. With the Angels and Dodgers looking like clear favorites to land Miguel Cabrera, and the Devil Rays already making their long-awaited young-hitting-for-young-pitching trade, it seems likely that the Giants will need to look elsewhere to upgrade the offense. At least, we can only hope Sabean is going into these meetings hell-bent on picking up hitters, because if not, the Giants are stuck trying to turn dogshit into diamonds with a bunch of C-level prospects.

Catcher Bengie Molina seems to be the Giant most likely (or at least most-rumored) to be peddled, most likely to a contender looking for a decent bat from behind the plate. The Mets were the sexy pick to land Molina, and even though they picked up Johnny Estrada from the Brewers, they still might non-tender him and go looking for somebody better. The Mets have a number of solid prospects (Keith Law nearly blew a gasket in a chat today while defending the Mets' farm system), and might be willing to send one the Giants' way in order to get a catcher with possible 20-homer pop.

In my mind, Sabean should be trying to trade Molina like crazy, but sadly Bengie's value is probably being overhyped by a lot of fellow Giants fans. Molina had a fine year in '07, and should continue to hit for decent power, but he never walks, which means his offensive value tends to be very batting average-dependent. If he loses an ounce of bat speed, his OBP will plummet to even more unacceptable levels and he'll just be another abysmal Giants hitter. Also, he just logged a career high in games played, never a good sign for a 32-year-old catcher, and it's fair to question how much those knees have left in them. Enough to keep him productive throughout the remainder of his deal? The Giants can only hope.

Of course, you don't need me to tell you any of this. You already know that hitters with zero plate discipline tend to fall apart in a hurry, and that catchers often don't last too far into their 30's, at least not without a position change. Herein lies the problem: just about every other GM in the major leagues knows this too. The bad part about living in the post-Moneyball information age is that everybody is getting smarter in regards to how they value players. Sure, there will always be the Krivdas and Littlefields of the world, but the number of patsies who will overpay for veteran know-how is dwindling by the second.

The "win-now" mindset might still have enough pull to persuade some contender to give up a juicy bit of talent for Molina, but I have my doubts. Maybe I'm underrating Bengie's value, but if I'm a rival owner and my GM trades a player with any kind of potential for a player of Molina's caliber, I'd be livid.

This shouldn't take away from the larger point, though. If there's a good offer for Molina, do it. An Elizier Alfonzo/Guillermo Rodriguez offense/defense platoon wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and it would free up money to use to upgrade other positions. Plus, the odds on Bengie's bat going into the tank, as I discussed above, are all too high. The Bengie rumors seem to have died down a bit, but keep a close watch next week as the meetings go on.

Labels: bengie molina, prayer for an intelligent sabean decision, trade stuff