*From 1901-2010 I’m in love with the new Baseball-Reference WAR data. WAR, or Wins Above Replacement, is the uber-stat that attempts to encompass the total value of what makes a player, erm, valuable. With the development of FanGraphs and other saber-slanted websites, WAR has become a pretty well known statistic. If you’re new to the game, check out the glossary… Read more →
Taking a week long break from baseball can leave you feeling refreshed. We all love the game — living and dieing most nights by the final score — but sometimes, over the long grind of a season, it’s nice to take a step back and unwind a little. It helps to put things in the proper perspective. Of course, coming… Read more →
Dear readers, I’ll be away from BCB for the next week or so because of vacation. I’ll be, as they say, going off-the-grid at least until next Friday. Looking forward to catching up on my summer reading (Catch-22 by Joseph Keller and a short story collection of sci-fi legend Philip K. Dick). In the meantime, feel free to watch all… Read more →
Another ‘who saw this one coming’ move from the Giants. MLBTR: The San Francisco Giants’ official Twitter feed reports that the club signed left-hander Dontrelle Willis to a minor-league contract with Triple-A Fresno on Wednesday. The Giants are Willis’ third team this season, after he was designated for assignment by both the Tigers and Diamondbacks within the last two months. … Read more →
While we wait for the Giants to start the 2nd half of the season tonight against the Mets, let’s check out some links from around the Giants blogscape. * Triples Alley has an excellent piece up on AT&T Park and it’s affect on hitters. Go read it, now. It dispels some of the myths of AT&T being purely a pitcher’s… Read more →
Click for mega-size In 2009, Pablo Sandoval emerged as an offensive force for the Giants. For a team that sorely lacked any kind of hitter that you could qualify as ‘good’ or ‘non-terrible’ Sandoval’s wOBA in ’09 of .396 was one of the best things about the year. He hit for power, walked at a league average rate (for a… Read more →
Hi Blog, I just got back watching a couple of Giants games in the District. We were in D.C. for the Saturday and Sunday games and it marked the first time that I’ve seen baseball in D.C. — and in the new Nats’ stadium. A few quick observations from my vantage point and a few pictures to round out the… Read more →
After watching the team drop it’s 7th straight game tonight, I got to thinking: How well do the Giants have to play from here on out to win 85 games in the NL West? Generally, most tend to peg the NL West Champion at 85 wins. Well, here we go. Team W L Total Remain C-W% 85W% 90W% Padres 46… Read more →
The Giants have acquired RHP Michael Main as the PTBNL in the Molina-to-Texas deal. Quite frankly, this trade just went from pretty good to really good. Main was the Rangers 1st round pick (24th overall) in the 2007 draft. In John Sickels’ 2010 prospect ranking for the Rangers, he placed Main as the #6 overall prospect in a pretty deep… Read more →