Thursday Link Grab Bag

Bear with me, it’s another sloooooow Thursday afternoon. Thankfully, we’re just 16 days away from pitchers and catchers reporting to Spring Training. Mid-to-late January is probably the worst time of the year for baseball, the offseason is still trudging along, but you can almost see baseball in the distance. Just a few more weeks and we’ll be even closer.

Despite the slowness, there’s a few interesting bits of information in regards to the Giants. Let’s examine.

~ Baseball America released it’s Top 10 Prospect list today for the San Francisco Giants. A couple of surprises in the Top 10, both Ehire Adrianza and Scott Barnes make the grade. I would have probably ranked them outside of the Top 10 — replacing them with Henry Sosa and maybe Wendell Fairley — but BA has done a pretty good job with the first half of the list. I don’t want to spoil the entire ranking here, go check it out.

~ This should please a lot of people, Will Clark is back in the Giants organization. Needless to say, this is really cool. I was raised on Will Clark, Matt Williams, and Robby Thompson like a lot of people were from my generation. He’s always been my favorite Giant and one of my favorite all-around baseball players. Baggs has a nice little writeup on Clark promoting the ‘Giants Way’ that Bill Nuekom is trying to instill in the organization. I’m thinking mandatory eye-black.

~ Joe Crede apparently “looked good” in a workout on Wednesday. The Giants are still rumored to have some interest in Crede and a strong showing might tilt them a little closer to acquiring Crede. Also, Crede is apparently seeking a 1-year deal around $5.1M with incentives. Even with Scott Boras, I don’t think he’s going to be pulling down $5M per season in this market.

~ Bullpen scraps: Per Ken Rosenthal, the Giants, Rockies, and A’s recently watched LHP Andy Sisco workout. Sisco is recovering from TJ and probably won’t be available until the 2nd half of 2009, but he’s your typical ‘live arm’ that teams like to roll the dice on. If the Giants could stash him away in AAA for awhile, it could be a nice find. According to FanGraphs, Sisco throws a fastball around 92mph to go along with a low-80′s slider. He owns a career K% of 20.7% but his BB% of 13.6% has been a major problem for him. His best season came in 2005 with the Royals when he posted a 142 ERA+ in 75.3 innings to go along with 76 Ks and 48 B2s.