Sometimes baseball moves are made that make me shrug my shoulders and go “meh.” This, unfortunately, is probably one of those moves. It was reported today that the Giants have released Mike Fontenot, tiny man and member of the 2010 World Series squad. The Giants will save themselves approximately $750K by giving Fontenot his walking papers — Fontenot originally avoided… Read more →
Spring training is happily coming to an end, and the Giants apparently contemplating making some decisions based on spring training performances. “Making decisions influenced by spring training performances” is one of those phrases that summons up a feeling of dread. Like decisions under the influence of NyQuil and Triple Sec, you know that the decision won’t be a good one,… Read more →
Things aren’t so peachy for Freddy Sanchez’s various bits and parts these days. Sanchez, as we all know, is still in the process of working his way back from a season ending injury in 2011. Bruce Bochy has said that Sanchez looks “tentative” in the field, and another problem is the fact that Sanchez has been limited to DH’ing duties… Read more →
Recently, the 2012 ZiPS projections went live on FanGraphs. What that means is that you can now browse the projections at length, and FanGraphs has also conveniently included a wOBA calculation along with the projections. Really cool stuff. But, after looking through pages of these projections, I always eventually come back to the same feeling: Why in the world didn’t… Read more →
At the moment, the Giants’ farm system is in a bit of a lull. Most prospect analysts currently rank the system around the #25 mark, some worse, and some a little better. The system is in a downswing for a couple of reasons, maybe one of the biggest is that the Giants have graduated a few players to the majors… Read more →
Here’s the deal: I really have enjoyed watching Freddy Sanchez play as a Giant. That might sound a tad bit weird, but it’s true. Freddy Sanchez has been, for the most part, what I like to term a “Good Giant”. He seems like a likeable guy, he’s been a decent player for the Giants, and he was on the field… Read more →
Giants keep Fontenot, non-tender Keppinger and Whiteside. This his hardly news, but it’s December and real, actual, baseball news is few and far between. On this subject, the Giants made the right call: Keppinger offers zero positional flexibility and it became clear that while he hits singles, he doesn’t do much else. He also runs like his lower-half has been… Read more →
“Cabrera, sure, he’s made some errors,” Bochy said. “But you’ve got an experienced guy out there. I know he’s dropped a couple of popups. I think he’s as shocked as anybody he didn’t catch the ball, and he made some nice plays today coming in.” Bruce Bochy, quoted in Hank Schulman’s recap: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/09/07/SP4G1L1FOD.DTL#ixzz1XKvKDrir Let me start by saying that I am… Read more →
Freddy Sanchez has been missed. It’s sometimes said of a player, “You have to see him every day to appreciate him.” I think this is generally true of well-rounded players such as Sanchez. He’s not the best hitting second baseman. He’s not the best fielding second baseman. But watching him for nine innings at a time is watching a player… Read more →
The Giants grabbed slappy slapper Jeff Keppinger from the Houston Astros for minor league right-handed pitchers Henry Sosa and Jason Stoffel. First, let’s discuss what they gave up. —- We’ve begun working on a mid-season top-15 prospect list here at Bay City Ball, and neither Stoffel or Sosa landed in my top 15. Stoffel is a 22-year-old reliever that has… Read more →