After a busy week, I’ve been catching up on news. To me the most interesting development of the early spring was this bit from Baggs: Bruce Bochy said the word “competition” definitely applies in left field, even though in this case, it’s established vets like Mark DeRosa and Pat Burrell who are pitted against each other. It’ll be deep into… Read more →
It’s time for the tried and true mystery player comparison. This style of looking at two players has been done to death, but I never claimed to be breaking new ground and, I think, it’s an interesting comparison. We’ll be taking two players, A and B, and examining a few of their numbers. Let’s take a look. The successful early… Read more →
Spring training is a good time to put away the statbook and pick up the camera. Azgiants.com always has great pictures this time of year. Mat Latos hates SF . . . and with good reason. Baggs covers Brain Wilson’s latest piece of performance art. Did Wilson luck out when he got drafted by San Francisco or what? He’s a good… Read more →
It’s become common spring baseball jargon to say that Player X is ‘in the best shape of his life’, but how often does it turn out to be true? And how often does it really improve that player’s performance in the upcoming season? I thought it would be a fun and interesting exercise to track all of the Giants’ players… Read more →
Okay, guys. That’s enough depth now. Quick reaction: wait, Brian Lawrence is only 34? And he still plays baseball? Lawrence is etched in my brain as the example of a successful low velocity sinker-baller. I also remember him as being one of those guys who didn’t seem very good but also managed to shut down the Giants. That memory, it… Read more →
‘Pitchers and Catchers Report’ is a phrase that will never get old. This is one of the best times of the year. I hope it’s no coincidence that, in my area, the forecast for the next week has several sunny days in the 60s. The sun is coming back, it’s no longer dark at 5:00 PM, and Giants’ pitchers and… Read more →
A catch-all post for a couple of signings and moves that happened over the past week. * Giants sign RHP Elmer Dessens to a minor league contract. It’s almost hard to believe that Dessens will be 40-years-old next year. At this point in his career, Dessens has traded starting for relieving with mixed-to-blah results. As a reliever he owns a… Read more →
If there’s one dialog that’s defined the offseason of the Giants, it’s the dialog about luck. The rest of baseball chatters on about how lucky the Giants got, and then Giants fans get hacked off because that implies the team wasn’t good. Frankly, some of the talk hacks me off too. As we’ve already covered, I don’t think Matt Cain… Read more →
February is a pretty useless month, sports-wise. One of its few highlights is the annual release of PECOTA , Baseball Prospectus’s projection system. A lot of projection systems just tell you that a player’s future will look like his past, with some age adjustment and regression toward league average thrown in there. While PECOTA has plenty of that thrown in… Read more →
To the average fan, Matt Cain must seem like about the least controversial player on the Giants. He mostly keeps quiet to the press, doesn’t get arrested for having pot in his car. If he has any friends that look like participants in the Folsom Street Fair, we don’t see them on national television. But in the world of nerds arguing over… Read more →