Spring Training Game Wrap 3/27/2014: A's 4 Giants 0

The fans did not get their money's worth at AT&T Park for the opener of the Bay Bridge Series as the Giants sleepwalked through the game while everybody else just went to sleep.  Key Lines:

Hunter Pence- 2 for 4, 2B.  BA= .371.  You might figure that Pence was the only guy who looked like he wanted to be out there.  Well, maybe Pablo Sandoval too, but he was too busy diving for screamers down the 3B line.  More on that later.

Michael Morse- 1 for 3, BB.  BA= .303.  Giants fans got an eyeful of the dark side of having Morse's bat in the lineup as he misplayed a ball in the corner, dropped a short flyball and whiffed on a sinking liner.  I suppose I should cut him some slack like everybody else seems to be doing because of his lack of experience playing LF in AT&T, but man, that was brutal!  In the end, he probably only gave the A's 1 extra run and 1 run was not the difference in this game, but it could have been more and if you give up 1 extra run every night, it's going to put a dent in the W-L.

Tim Hudson- 6 IP, 6 H, 4 R, 1 BB, 6 K.  ERA= 4.26.  Not all BABIP's are created equal.  When Huddy tried to hit the inside corner against RH batters, they were waiting for it, dropped the bat head and sent one screamer after another down the 3B line.  Poor Pablo must have felt like a shooting range target out there!  Huddy's a veteran and a competitor so he was able to limit the damage until Reddick got all of one with a runner on base and hit it off the top of a flagpole that sits up on the arcade.  Still a big improvement over what we got from Zito last year.

David Huff, JC Gutierrez, Erik Cordier- 1 IP, 0 R each.  Huff almost certainly has the team made.  I'm picking JC over Law, but the Giants seem to really want Law to make the team, so who knows? Cordier's FB is truly impressive!  Kind of barely hung on to his command of it, though.  He could be back later in the season if he can get his command ironed out a bit more in Fresno.

Scott Kazmir(A's)- 5.1 IP, 2 H, 0 R, 3 BB, 4 K's.  ERA= 1.62.  Kazmir spent the night pitching backwards off a very good changeup.  He typically started the hitters off with 2-3 off speed pitches then zip in a 92-93 MPH FB which would either freeze them or induce a late swing.  The only guy who had success against him, Pence, sat off speed early in the counts.

Around the League:

Miguel Cabrera gets an enormous extension from the Detroit Tigers which, combined with his current deal gives him the largest 10 year payout in MLB history.  Miggy turns 31 early this season so that takes him to age 41.  I fully understand just how great a player Miggy is, but man, it sure seems to me that MLB teams are almost desperately trying to give away their money right now, and enormous amounts of it!

Speaking of, everybody thought the Fielder and Fister trades were salary dumps so the Tigers could re-sign Max Scherzer, but this kind of makes a mockery of that theory.  At any rate, after a terrible spring training, Fister will start the season on the DL for the Nationals with a strained oblique.