Bay City Ball

Not much going on in Giants news today and I’m between a couple of things — look for the Affeldt PITCHf/x profile as soon as tonight — but one interesting news item from yesterday materialized; the Orioles have signed Brad Hennessey to a Minor League contract.
From MLB.com:
Hennessey, generally viewed as a middle reliever and spot [...]

Tom Tango has just released his yearly projections via his projection system Marcel. You can find them on FanGraphs — individual player pages or sortable leaderboards — or you can download the entire .zip file on Tango’s own website. Marcel is a very basic projection system that uses 3 years worth of data, with the [...]

Extra Baggs is reporting that the Giants have signed LHP Jeremy Affeldt to a 2-year deal. Terms of the deal have no yet been disclosed but Affeldt made $3M with the Cincinnati Reds last year.  Affeldt had a break out year with the Reds in 2008 when he compiled a pitching line of: 78.1 IP, [...]

Here’s the facts:

In 2008, the Giants had the worst team production for the shortstop position in the National League. The collective of Giants’ shortstops combined for an OPS of .576.  That made them the only team in the NL that failed to surpass the .600 OPS mark for team shortstop production.

Omar Vizquel, Ivan Ochoa, Brian [...]

During the press conference yesterday, when Tim Lincecum was asked what he said when he learned of his newly acquired CYA, Lincecum said he dropped a few “Woo-hoos!” and that was that. You’ve got to enjoy this guy. At the presser he was dressed in a army-styled jacket with a beanie. He looked like a [...]

Today the BBWAA named Tim Lincecum the 2008 National League CY Young Award Winner.
From MLB.com:
Lincecum became only the second Giant to capture the Cy Young, joining 1967 winner Mike McCormick, and the first second-year player to earn the distinction since right-handers Dwight Gooden of the Mets and Bret Saberhagen of Kansas City secured the 1985 [...]

The Hot Stove League is a time during baseball when everyone and their little brother can create terrible, awful, truly terrible (did I say terrible?) rumors involving the San Francisco Giants professional baseball club team. It’s actually really easy to get the wheels of trade speculation moving. The Giants need a third basemen? Hank Blalock [...]

The Giants have signed 1B Josh Phelps to a minor league deal with an invitation to Spring Training.
From SFGiants.com:
Adding potential depth Monday, the Giants signed first baseman Josh Phelps to a Minor League contract with an invitation to big league Spring Training.
Phelps, 30, owns a .273 batting average with 64 home runs and 244 RBIs [...]

Earlier last week I wrote about a few things that I thought the Giants should be doing for next year’s team. Among them were fixing the bullpen and finding free — or very cheap — talent to plug in to the team. Over the weekend the Giants made an early signing that could satisfy both [...]

I raised this question once before, but, is the “Trade Matt Cain” meme the worst thing ever?
Select quotes from an article published yesterday on SFGiants.com:
The discussion over whether the Giants should trade Matt Cain already is a lively one, conducted on radio talk shows and Internet fan sites and by baseball reporters nationwide.
Does lively mean [...]