Today the Giants traded third baseman Conor Gillaspie to the White Sox for pitching prospect Jeff Soptic. Giants traded Conor Gillaspie to White Sox for minor league pitcher Jeff Soptic. — Andrew Baggarly (@CSNBaggs) February 22, 2013 I always looked at Gillaspie’s career numbers in the minors with a sense of intrigue. He clearly wasn’t a great hitter, but he… Read more →
I’m conflicted about spring training. On one hand, baseball is back and that’s just fantastic. On the other, reading about Gregor Blanco hitting ropes during batting practice might just be the lowest form of baseball news out there. On the evolutionary scale, in which an important news item is a fully evolved life form, reports on Gregor Blanco’s hitting —… Read more →
Hank Schulman: Romo earned $1.575 million last year. He submitted an arbitration request of $4.5 million for this year, while the team offered $2.675. That’s a fairly big divide in these sorts of cases. I’d guess his salary for this year will be somewhere at the midpoint, maybe $3.5 million, with a $5 million-plus salary in 2014. I imagine he’ll… Read more →
I think it was around 2005, or so, when I started to get back into Giants baseball. As a younger person growing up, I always loved baseball. I especially loved the statistics, the numbers, the never ending columns of data that baseball seemed to create. I can recall spending countless wasted hours on games like Sierra’s Front Page Sports Baseball… Read more →
The good news — when Casilla is pitching well, he looks like a dominant reliever, throwing mid-90 MPH heat with filthy breaking stuff. GIF example of said filthy breaking stuff. That’s from April 26th this past season when Casilla struck out the side in a game against the Cincinnati Reds. In this particular game, Casilla was burying 95-MPH two-seam fastballs… Read more →
This was the game that the Giants were supposed to lose. This was the game that Justin Verlander — Really Good Pitcher(tm) — was supposed to dominate. Neither of those things happened. And it was freaking awesome. Baseball is a really bizarre game sometimes. Even more so in the postseason, where you take the unpredictability of everyday baseball, punch in… Read more →
Tonight, the Giants capped off an amazing comeback run in the NLCS by defeating the Cardinals 9-0. The Cardinals, who’ve got to be kicking themselves right now after failing to capitalize on a 3-1 lead in the series, never were really in tonight’s game. The Giants tacked on runs in the 1st and 2nd innings before exploding for five runs… Read more →
I’ve been watching the Giants for almost 20 years now and I can’t remember a Giants pitcher that pitched off his fastball more than Ryan Vogelsong over his last two NLCS starts. Maybe Jason Schmidt, when he was dominating the National League, but it’s pretty damned special what Ryan Vogelsong is doing right now with his fastball. Velocity. Movement. Location…. Read more →
A quick-fire post before I settle down this Sunday and get ready for tonight’s game. — (1) Will Vogelsong be able to (again) successfully pitch inside to Cardinal right-handed batters? Vogelsong’s Game Two start was magnificent. As I noted at the time, Vogelsong really hammered right-handed batters inside with his fastball. The result was this: And this: The first image… Read more →
I know I did it. You probably did it too. You probably make some jerk comment about how Barry Zito — vastly overpaid, not all that great pitcher — was starting in the playoffs for the Giants in a must-win, do-or-die, NLCS Game Give. You did it, just like I did it, because it was the easy thing to do…. Read more →