Stop me if you've heard this before......
There's a Giants way to play baseball. Strong pitching, strong defense, timely hitting. It's not so much hitting with power as it is hitting when it counts. We don't have big bats but we have professional hitters, and that's what it takes to contend.
That's what we're being told by Giants management.
That type of team was on full display during the San Diego series. Unfortunately, it sat in the opposing dugout. The Padres pitched better, they played better defense, and they produced the timely hits. In return, the Giants botched play after play, the pitchers walked the equivalent of a small Central American nation (and their pets), and the bats were as limp as a 90-year-old man who has long exausted his allotment of Cialis.
I bring this up because way back when, in the rant that launched this site, I made mention of how the 2009 Colorado Rockies had become the team the Giants had professed to be. In 2010, we see it transpire once again -- this time on the border.
This is the modus operandi of the Giants organization -- talking the talk while someone else walks the walk. And man is it getting old.
Twelve walks in the opener and no offense to speak of doomed Barry Zito (who issued seven of the walks himself) to his first loss of the year. And that was the bright spot of the series. Cain came back the next night with the same inability to throw strikes, and the offense managed to leave more people stranded than that volcano in Iceland grounded in British airports. As for defense, by the time Sandoval managed to lose a friggin' ground ball in the lights, my head was ready to explode.
Think Michael Ironside in "Scanners".
Then came game three. This is one of those seminal moments when you just know the world is changing (or going to Hell) around you. One hit. One lousy hit, and it's an infield single by a guy who has no business in the big leagues. Of course, that can be said for about half this roster. What gives, did the Halloween section at Party City have Giants uniforms on clearance?
I really don't know whether to laugh or cry in regard to Jonathan Sanchez. In two games against the Padres this year he pitched 15 innings: four hits, four walks, two runs, 15 strikeouts. He lost both games by a combioned score of 2-0. The only reason I don't totally feel sorry for him is that he's also had games where he stunk the joint up and had to be bailed out. That's kharma for you.
Wanna feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for Giants fans who once again have to watch a team that management screwed up. Dr. Frankenstein did a better job of assembly. Did anyone really think they were a contender? Was Molina gonna hit .330 all year. Was Renteria? Were Huff and DeRosa suddenly supposed to become the next Barry or Thrill?
This team had no offense last year. It has none this year. A few hot streaks will show up from time to time, but they are what they are. If it walks, walks and sounds like a duck, it's a duck (and what I think of them rhymes with duck).
Geez, the best pitches a I saw during that series came from the Padres, followed closely by the one I made firing a coaster at the TV. The Giants' efforts finished a weak third.
May has become the killer month for the Giants. It's when teams find out who they are. I have vivid recollections of a mid-May streak just a few short years ago in which a Giants team throught to be a contender dropped 15 of 18 and never came back -- and that team had some hitters.
This group is built to be frustrating. They hope the pitchers hold the opposition to under four runs, pray the defense doesn't implode, and figure that if they luck into a sac fly or booted ground ball at the right time they just might win a game. When the stars align, they earn a 3-2 victory. When they don't, well, we just saw it versus San Diego. You get something so unsettling that Eli Roth couldn't watch it.
All you need to know about the Giants' offensive "improvement" is that Bengie Molina, a man who generates his own gravity, is back in the cleanup spot after not one but two seasons where he was an abject failure in that same role. Friday night, Bruce Botch-y found his team (and his own enormous brain pan) so challenged that, once again, Eli Whiteside was allowed to head to the plate representing the final out, and act of futility tantamont to trusting Roman Polanski to babysit your teenage daughter.
The Giants don't get it. It's a bad team: badly contructed and badly managed. They can't win like this.
The Astros (who are really the Giants without Tim Lincecum) come in tonight with Todd Wellemeyer on the hill. Can an ERA reach infinity? Samuel Clemens had Wellemeyer in mind when he said: "He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages."
I spend each spring anxiously waiting for baseball season to start. Six weeks in and it's a big far serving of "Bleh!" Not sure if I'll even watch tonight: it's $200 a year for the MLB package and I get more entertainment value out of Spongebob. Maybe the garage needs cleaning. I've been putting off that root canal for awhile, perhaps this is a good time. It couldn't be any more painful that watching this dreck.
There's a Giants way to play baseball. Strong pitching, strong defense, timely hitting. It's not so much hitting with power as it is hitting when it counts. We don't have big bats but we have professional hitters, and that's what it takes to contend.
That's what we're being told by Giants management.
That type of team was on full display during the San Diego series. Unfortunately, it sat in the opposing dugout. The Padres pitched better, they played better defense, and they produced the timely hits. In return, the Giants botched play after play, the pitchers walked the equivalent of a small Central American nation (and their pets), and the bats were as limp as a 90-year-old man who has long exausted his allotment of Cialis.
I bring this up because way back when, in the rant that launched this site, I made mention of how the 2009 Colorado Rockies had become the team the Giants had professed to be. In 2010, we see it transpire once again -- this time on the border.
This is the modus operandi of the Giants organization -- talking the talk while someone else walks the walk. And man is it getting old.
Twelve walks in the opener and no offense to speak of doomed Barry Zito (who issued seven of the walks himself) to his first loss of the year. And that was the bright spot of the series. Cain came back the next night with the same inability to throw strikes, and the offense managed to leave more people stranded than that volcano in Iceland grounded in British airports. As for defense, by the time Sandoval managed to lose a friggin' ground ball in the lights, my head was ready to explode.
Think Michael Ironside in "Scanners".
Then came game three. This is one of those seminal moments when you just know the world is changing (or going to Hell) around you. One hit. One lousy hit, and it's an infield single by a guy who has no business in the big leagues. Of course, that can be said for about half this roster. What gives, did the Halloween section at Party City have Giants uniforms on clearance?
I really don't know whether to laugh or cry in regard to Jonathan Sanchez. In two games against the Padres this year he pitched 15 innings: four hits, four walks, two runs, 15 strikeouts. He lost both games by a combioned score of 2-0. The only reason I don't totally feel sorry for him is that he's also had games where he stunk the joint up and had to be bailed out. That's kharma for you.
Wanna feel sorry for someone, feel sorry for Giants fans who once again have to watch a team that management screwed up. Dr. Frankenstein did a better job of assembly. Did anyone really think they were a contender? Was Molina gonna hit .330 all year. Was Renteria? Were Huff and DeRosa suddenly supposed to become the next Barry or Thrill?
This team had no offense last year. It has none this year. A few hot streaks will show up from time to time, but they are what they are. If it walks, walks and sounds like a duck, it's a duck (and what I think of them rhymes with duck).
Geez, the best pitches a I saw during that series came from the Padres, followed closely by the one I made firing a coaster at the TV. The Giants' efforts finished a weak third.
May has become the killer month for the Giants. It's when teams find out who they are. I have vivid recollections of a mid-May streak just a few short years ago in which a Giants team throught to be a contender dropped 15 of 18 and never came back -- and that team had some hitters.
This group is built to be frustrating. They hope the pitchers hold the opposition to under four runs, pray the defense doesn't implode, and figure that if they luck into a sac fly or booted ground ball at the right time they just might win a game. When the stars align, they earn a 3-2 victory. When they don't, well, we just saw it versus San Diego. You get something so unsettling that Eli Roth couldn't watch it.
All you need to know about the Giants' offensive "improvement" is that Bengie Molina, a man who generates his own gravity, is back in the cleanup spot after not one but two seasons where he was an abject failure in that same role. Friday night, Bruce Botch-y found his team (and his own enormous brain pan) so challenged that, once again, Eli Whiteside was allowed to head to the plate representing the final out, and act of futility tantamont to trusting Roman Polanski to babysit your teenage daughter.
The Giants don't get it. It's a bad team: badly contructed and badly managed. They can't win like this.
The Astros (who are really the Giants without Tim Lincecum) come in tonight with Todd Wellemeyer on the hill. Can an ERA reach infinity? Samuel Clemens had Wellemeyer in mind when he said: "He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it, inspiring the cabbages."
I spend each spring anxiously waiting for baseball season to start. Six weeks in and it's a big far serving of "Bleh!" Not sure if I'll even watch tonight: it's $200 a year for the MLB package and I get more entertainment value out of Spongebob. Maybe the garage needs cleaning. I've been putting off that root canal for awhile, perhaps this is a good time. It couldn't be any more painful that watching this dreck.
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