The Giants dropped a pair on a split-squad day, but at least there were some encouraging performances in the process. Key Lines:
Scottsdale Game: Rangers 7 Giants 6
Rene Rivera C- 2 for 2, 2 2B. BA= .400. Backup catcher job is Rivera's to lose. So far, he's not losing it.
Joey Bart C- 2 for 3. BA= .462. I can't get enough of Joey Bart! He is making a convincing case for being the Giants Catcher of the Future. Hope he's not so good the Giants assign him to AA instead of SJ. I want to see him play in the minors.
Joe Panik 2B- 2 for 3. BA= .500. Panik continues to swing a hot bat in his bid for a bounceback season.
Jalen Miller PR/2B- 1 for 2. BA= .750. Jalen Miller continues to impress when he gets the chance.
Mike Gerber PR/DH- 1 for 2, 3B. BA= .429. Remember when everybody was so excited when Gerber was one of Farhan's first acquisitions? He's kind of the forgotten guy now, but has hit well in a SSS.
Jeff Samardzija RHP- 3.2 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 1.04. 2 of the 3 hits Shark allowed were off the bat of Hunter Pence including a dinger in his second AB. Pence got a standing O from the Scottsdale crowd and Shark was all over it. You don't suppose......
Pat Venditte RHP/LHP- 1 IP, 4 H, 4 R, 1 BB, 0 K. ERA= 12.60. The switch-pitcher stranded a runner he inherited from Shark, but got shelled in the 5'th inning.
Sam Coonrod RHP- 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 0.00. I guess I should have ranked him somewhere in my Top 50 Prospects.
Ramos Bros OF's- This was the first game in which Henry and Heliot Ramos played together in the same OF as pros. That's pretty great!
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Away Game: A's 5 Giants 4
Cameron Maybin CF- 1 for 3, BB. BA= .222. After a slow start, Maybin has been making a case to stick on the roster since his DUI arrest.
Aramis Garcia C- 2 for 4, HR(2). BA= .222. It was a pretty good day for Giants catchers. Aramis Garcia showed the toonder in his bat with a loud dinger off the scoreboard up on the berm behind LF. His other hit was a vicious line drive to LF.
Anthony Garcia DH- 2 for 4, 3B. BA= .200. The other A Garcia in camp had a nice day at the plate too.
Dylan Davis RF- 1 for 1, 2B. BA= .500. Is this the season Dylan Davis finally finds some traction?
Travis Bergen LHP- 1.2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 1 K. ERA= 0.00. If Bergen doesn't make the team, you have to wonder why they bothered participating in the Rule 5 draft at all.
Steven Okert LHP- 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 2 K's. ERA= 5.40. Steven Okert says, "hey, don't forget about me!"
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Chris Stratton gets a chance to turn his spring around tomorrow afternoon against the Dodgers at Camelback Ranch.
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The Giants optioned RHP's Melvin Adon and Jose Lopez trimming the spring training roster to 53.
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Posey, (either Rivera or Vogt), Belt, Panik, Longoria, Crawford, Solarte (or the 2nd best D SS),(Sandoval or Hanson), Williamson, Duggar, Ferguson,(in order: Myers or Gerber or Maybin or Parra), and, if 13 position players, one of the not selected OFers.
ReplyDeleteBumgarner, Samardzija, Holland, Pomeranz, Smith, Watson, Dyson, Moronta, Bergen, (Melancon or Law), (Black or Gott), (Suarez or Blach or Venditte) and (Rodriguez or Stratton after 6 games).
Trade one or two of the "or" players (not including Rodriquez) for Myers, or Rodriguez for Myers 1:1 with $20M salary relief.
Adam Jones just signed for something like $3 million with some incentives. Not at all saying he would make the Giants a playoff team but he would help make this team watchable. Right now this team is unwatchable and i see nothing that is going to peak my interest enough to buy a ticket or watch maybe more than 50% of the games on TV. Is this a concept that Farhan just doesn’t comprehend? Only explanation is he is tanking for a high draft pick that he thinks he can turn into gold. Meanwhile the stadium is going to be a ghost town.
ReplyDelete...or Farhan put all his eggs in the Harper basket, passed on other opportunities and when he lost out on Harper, the backup opportunities were no longer there. In other words, he blew the offseason.
DeleteFor for now, I am hanging onto the California Dreaming scenario. Once the core is playing every day we'll see some sustained hitting. Mac will finally get hot. Duggar will be what we hoped for and one of the Motley Crew will emerge as a viable RF. Meanwhile I think we can agree the pitching is mostly encouraging.
I'll agree with both..one, that there are some bad signs of an upcoming nightmare season and, two, that FARHAN may have whiffed in his first off season.....but..I hope that is wrong on both counts......I just cant give up on the season yet..As DOC mentioned, the pitching is kinda encouraging and I am really looking forward to the bullpen..But, of course, it's the offense and hitting that really matters..Right now I am really interested in seeing if POSEY, BELT, PANIK, CRAW and LONGO can all do it one last time..These are guys I can root for..ANd I am really interested in seeing if MAC and DUGGAR can break through..But, hey, that's what pre-season is for..hopes! maybe it all evaporates come MAY, June or July...There will be plenty of time to be disintereseted and apathtic towards the MLB team.. but until then...
DeleteSteveVA
Would Adam Jones really be the difference between watchable and unwatchable? I am disappointed by failure fo acquire a solid OF, but I am happy to see the Giants avoiding reactive moves that promote false hope. Zaidi already gave hints when he said after Harper, Plan B was over 12 years. Right now I will go with the California Dreaming plan, until somebody gives me another option. We cannot complain about Big Mac and the youngsters not being giving chances and not signing more veterans at the same time.
DeleteAdam Jones at 3 million is a deal. Marwin Gonzalez at 2 years 20 mil is reasonable and either guy would have given the lineup a little more cred. The problem with letting Mac and the other kids play is that they arent good enough. If they play they may get better true but the likelihood that they develop into core pieces is so low its like winning the lotto.
DeleteI think the plan all along has been to do a fly-under-the-radar rebuild and the hope was that it wouldn’t take more than a few years and the fans would keep coming to the ballpark none the wiser. I don’t think that is at all a sound strategy for many reasons but most of all because they have pieces they can trade right now to get players that potentially will contribute in 2-3 years. The problem is that if you dont tear it down to build it back up you are left with what we have now. A bad mix of crappy vets and young players with very low ceilings and several decent trade chips that are being held on to simply to give the illusion that the Giants are “trying”.
Everyone seems to understand that if you arent good it is better to be bad if you are rebuilding. Better to be bad than average or slightly below average because there is a clear message to the fans and a clear focus for management. What is going on here is deceitful and not very affective IMO.
Jones might be good for 1 win (over replacement), but the guy he pushes off the roster might be a 2!
DeleteThe Giants may as well dump anyone for 3 wins (Posey led the team with 2.9 bWAR last year), but anyone in a major league uniform can, with a little luck, get a 1.
Per fangraphs:
Adam Jones ... "there’s no question Jones is fading. His extremely aggressive approach at the plate is show(ing) cracks. For one, employers are concerned with his below average .318 on base percentage. In the past, he made up for the low OBP with power. Last year, he dropped a mere 15 home runs. Teams might overlook the offensive decline if he showed any aptitude in the field. He’s struggled in center field for two consecutive seasons, and it’s not a guarantee that a move to the corner outfield will salvage his defense. All told, Jones looks something like a one-win player on the wrong side of the age curve."
Wow! Doom and gloom! September washed out 5/6's of last season!
ReplyDeleteWithout Bumgarner (21 starts), Cueto (9 starts), & Samardzija (10 starts) for much the year, Posey hurting bad, everyone spending too much time with nagging aches and pains, bad luck at every turn (Williamson and Duggar for fewer than 70 games TOTAL), yet discovering DROD, Moronta, Holland, Suarez, Smith the closer they were 68-68 .500 at the end of August.
Who is gone from that team? McCutchen with his 2.0 bWAR and negative D.
With average years on the average by their Core, and better pitching than 2018 all year, they can be >.500 with new faces blending with resurgent vets.
And odds on, Longoria will hit more HRs than a Giant has hit since Crawford's 2015, and SF will have 5 guys with 20 or more HRs.
It will be a good year and maybe some magic in July to put them over the top.
California Dreamin'!
One thing in Zaidi's favor: he did nothing stupid!
ReplyDeleteThat's a good start!
Now it's up to Boch and the players!
and maybe he will have been lucky / astute in his dumpster diving ...
DeleteI see this as a transition year for Zaidi and the Giants since he was hired from outside the org. Maybe its been harder for Zaidi to make trades when opposing GMs ask about a minor leaguer he might not even be familiar with yet? I also remember an article that Pavs wrote a few months back saying not to expect a lot of trades since the Giants have a lot of big contracts with either full or partial no trade clauses. However they seem to have a lot of relief pitching that they could still trade to fill other holes. We'll see.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Zaidi just hasn't learned how to manage the expectations game, but he was the one who created the expectation that he had a trade or two up his sleeve once the FA market played out. Maybe it can still happen but like I've said before, it's getting very late.
DeleteFinishing .500 this year would do more harm than good IMO. Likely it would mean they don't trade any big pieces at the deadline so no new prospects coming in and with that record they get a mid round draft pick. It is better to be bad than average if you are truly committed to the rebuild!!
ReplyDeleteSince Larry came out a few months ago proclaiming the Giants will never be a rebuilding team, we are left with hoping they can repeat what they did in the mid 2000's when they were very fortunate to draft Cain, Lincecum, Posey, and MadBum where Posey was the only top 5 pick. They were awful those years with Bengie Molina batting cleanup. It also took them 6 years to turn it around so call me impatient but I would rather not have to wait that long. Watching this team is going to be painful no matter what so if trading MadBum, Posey, Smith, and Lopez helps speed up the rebuild then do it.
One more detail regarding the failed Harper pursuit. If Zaidi and the Giants didn't realize that Bryce was smart enough to know that California has higher taxes and they would need to offer 25-30 million more than Philly to get him than they really are stupid. They have teased us with these supposed efforts to acquire high caliber players and used excuses like the ballpark in the past. Now they have a new excuse and I'm guessing this isn't the last time we hear it.
I guess Harper is not different than a lot of people but if taxes were the dealbreaker, I feel happy to wish him the best in Philly.
DeleteI doesn't seem like taxes were the big deal. It seems like record breaking $330 million was the big deal.
DeleteI've wondered if Zaidi is making himself too accessible to the press. I agree, he shouldn't say too much to raise fans expectations. I'd like to see him finish filling out his staff. That assistant GM for the A' s Billy Owens sounds like a good candidate for their GM opening. I've read that he's supposed to be a good talent evaluator, which is good to have in the front office.
ReplyDelete