*THE 2010, 2012, and 2014 WORLD SERIES CHAMPION SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS*

Given to...

Just stopped in for an update and your take on the subject. Agree.

Carry on.

PJ_ROCKS

Given to... said:

Just stopped in for an update and your take on the subject. Agree.



Carry on.

X_X

Given to...

Looks like The Padres have been sitting back watching the Dodgers' Merry-Go-Round Roster-Fall-Apart Plan, enjoying the Giants' Fear of Commitment/Cold Feet Plan, Arizona's Sneak Attack-No One But La Russa Gives a Shit Plan... Oh, and those Loveable 'Rockies Is a Great Place to See the Other Division Teams' Plan.

Wobbie

^^^^^^kemp and upton should make for a poisonous clubhouse.

we got good ol' boy peavy back. Hope he's got 2 years left in the tank.

Amongst the Ani

Peavy should finish his career with Bochey. I don't know why but Coach does wonders for him.

I will be sad for SD in the next off-season when Upton signs with the Yankees for 7 years 180 million and they realize they gave up Fried for 1 season of Upton and an 84-78 3rd place finish. Not!

Wobbie

Our new power threat at 3B homered once every 172 plate appearances last year. @-)

Amongst the Ani

At least it didnt cost us squat and he is a FA in a season. All these cheaper deals make me think a big Shields signing is coming and then maybe another trade for an outfielder to platoon in LF with Blanco. Either that or a trade for someone like Desmond from the Nats so Blanco can be a 4th OF. Blanco would be better suited for that role since he can play all 3 OF spots.

The starting pitchers would actually look pretty good with Shields when you look at it.

1. Bumgarner
2. Shields
2. Cain
4. Hudson
5. Peavy

Not bad at all. Peavy or Hudson as our 5 would crush other teams 5th options. It does screw Timmy at a shot at starting. With Petit being the long reliever Timmy should become a late inning guy. I think he could be really good as the 7th inning guy which would free Afeldt to go back to his super reliever role he is so good at.

Amongst the Ani

Will miss you Scutaro. You and the Giants finding each other was a match made from Heaven when it happened. You will always be a part of Giants lore and have secured your place in baseball history. Your career numbers are not your legacy. Those that saw you play know what kind of a player you were.

And if you can't tell I have about zero belief a 39 year old baseball player is going to come back from however many surgeries he has had now.

Wobbie

Strangest But Truest Champions Of The Year

The team that won the World Series, those apparently unstoppable San Francisco Giants, just had another one of those strange-but-true magic-carpet rides they've become so world-famous for. Let's try to comprehend their fascinating ride to the parade floats:

• Over their final 99 regular-season games, they had a worse record (46-53 -- seven games under .500) -- than the Mets, Cubs or Padres. For some reason, those teams won 12 fewer postseason games than the Giants did.

• The Giants then got one quality start out of starting pitchers not named Madison Bumgarner during the entire postseason. And that was by Tim Hudson, in a game they would have lost if baseball games were 26 outs long instead of 27.

• But wait. This gets even stranger. Giants starting pitchers never made it through the second inning in either Game 6 or Game 7 of the World Series. Naturally, they won the World Series anyway. That was one more start of five outs or shorter, incidentally, than we'd seen in potential clinching games in the previous 52 World Series put together.

• So obviously, the Giants won the World Series because of their lineup, right? Oh, wait. Have I mentioned that in postseason games Bumgarner started, seven of the eight position players in that lineup had a lower slugging percentage than the pitcher?

• Oh, and have I also mentioned that the face of the Giants' franchise, their very best offensive player, Buster Posey, had as many extra-base hits in this postseason as Joe Buck? Right. That would be none.

• And have I mentioned that their soon-to-be-legendary-October-hero left fielder, Travis Ishikawa, had never started a single major league game in left field until Game 160 of the regular season?

• And have I mentioned that their leadoff hitter in every game of this postseason, Gregor Blanco, hit .153 in October and .143 in the World Series?

• And has it come up yet that, on the way to winning the World Series, the Giants went 12 days and 242 postseason plate appearances without hitting a single home run? True story. And in those 12 days (and eight games) in which they were hitting zero homers, they gave up EIGHT of them -- and still went 6-2 in those eight games.

• But who needs home runs when you lead the league in a pivotal new metric catchily described by their third-base coach, Tim Flannery, as RTIs (runs thrown in)? This team scored 20 runs -- yeah, 20 -- in this postseason on various phenomena that would not fall under a category known as "hits."

• Hold on. We're not done with this portion of our program. Speaking of RTIs, the Giants somehow went through a six-game stretch in the NLDS and NLCS in which they AVERAGED two runs a game on non-hits. Over those six games, they magically scored more runs on non-hits (12) than actual hits (10). Ladies and gentlemen, this is not possible. That is all.

• Oh yeah. One more thing about this: In Game 3 of the NLCS -- a game that went 10 innings, by the way -- the Giants got exactly two hits after the first inning. One was by a pitcher who was 2 for 53 this year (Tim Hudson). The other was by a .170 hitter (Juan Perez) who was swinging away only because he'd just fouled off two bunts. And this was in a game they won. In extra innings. Hey, of course they did.

• I should probably also mention that Giants starters other than Madison Bumgarner got a total of 49 outs in the entire World Series ... and their closer (Santiago Casilla) faced a total of two hitters in the entire World Series (neither of them in a save situation, naturally) ... and this was on a team that (gulp) won the World Series?

• Travis Ishikawa has been hanging around the big leagues since 2006. He has never hit a walk-off home run in a regular-season game. So guess who hit the first walk-off by a Giant to send his team to a World Series since Bobby Thomson? That would be Travis Ishikawa. Who else?

• The Nationals and Giants played a fun little 18-inning game in the NLDS. It was the second 18-inning postseason game in the history of baseball. (The other: Braves-Astros in 2005.) So what were the odds that Tim Hudson was the starting pitcher in both of them?

• And finally, in an era when your average left-handed reliever thinks he's overworked when he's forced to pitch to two hitters in the same game, here's what the Giants' Jeremy Affeldt did in this postseason in 11 appearances: He entered games in seven different innings. And that meant he pitched in the second inning. And in the third inning. And in the fourth inning. He also showed up in the fifth, the sixth and the seventh. And he did his thing in the eighth. And the ninth. And the 10th. So if you're adding along at home, you know he pitched in nine different innings. Every inning from the second through the 10th. And how many pitchers in postseason history ever did that over that many appearances? Not a one. Of course.

Wobbie

Huh? What? Really? How? How was that possible, you ask? Well it might, theoretically, have had just a little something to do with the ...
Strangest But Truest October Dominator Of The Year

Isn't it amazing how much more we know about Madison Bumgarner now than we knew three months ago? That he comes from a little town in North Carolina where it seems as if everyone is named Bumgarner? That he once dated a girl named Madison Bumgarner? And, especially, that he just put on one of the greatest, Michael Jordan-esque postseason shows of any professional athlete who ever lived? It went kinda like this:

• The Giants won 12 games in this postseason. Six of them were games in which Madison Bumgarner pitched. All their other pitchers combined were responsible for winning the other six. Their other starters won exactly once -- and never after Game 1 of the NLDS. So ... good thing MadBum stopped by.

• Did this man really pitch 52⅔ innings in a single postseason? Sandy Koufax only pitched 57 postseason innings in his whole career. Warren Spahn pitched 56. Juan Marichal and Rube Marquard pitched just 50⅔ postseason innings in their careers as Giants combined. And Madison Bumgarner just went 52⅔ innings in ONE postseason. He was scored on in precisely four of those innings by the way.

• Bumgarner threw two shutouts in this postseason. No other starter on the other nine playoff teams pitched any shutouts -- or any complete games of any size or shape, come to think of it.

• In four different starts in this postseason, for that matter, this man was still out there when the eighth inning rolled around. Know how many times all the other starting pitchers on all those other teams combined to make it into the eighth during the entire month of October? That would be five.

• Then there was just the World Series portion of Bumgarner's festivities. The ace made two starts in that World Series and got 16 innings' worth of outs. The rest of his rotation made five starts in that same World Series -- and got 16⅓ innings' worth of outs.

• If it felt as if the Royals had no shot to score against this guy, here's why: Bumgarner faced 74 hitters in the World Series. Exactly one of them drove in a run. That was Salvador Perez, on a solo home run. In a game his team trailed by seven runs.

• And that brings us to our man's grand finale. In the seventh game of the World Series, Bumgarner pitched five shutout innings. In relief. On two days' rest. And got a save out of it. You know how many five-inning saves there had been in all the other World Series in history? Right you are. None. You know how many four-inning saves there had been? Also none.

• And you know how many other five-inning saves have been recorded by anybody else in any kind of game, regular season or postseason, over the last two decades? That would be one.

• And when Bumgarner was finished with all that, his ERA over this particular postseason stood at 1.01. His career World Series ERA was down to 0.25. And he'd won at least one game in three different World Series, all of which his team won, all before the age of 26. And you know how many pitchers who ever lived could say that? None, of course. Amazing.

there's even more, here:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12092111/mlb-strange-true-postseason-feats

Amongst the Ani

Loved the Giants articles.

I'm starting to think the team is mostly set for 2015. Despite the holidays slowing things down if the Giants were willing to meet the 5 year 110 million on Shields it probably would have happened by now. I'm hoping they don't pull that trigger. Schoenfield had a great article a week or so ago comparing the last 20 to 30 pitchers who were similar to Shields in pitching type and work load and only a couple ended up staying at or near the same pace as before. Those couple were also 1st ballot HOF'ers when players were taking steroids/HGH/what ever else they were taking back then. All those innings will catch up with him at some point as it did with most of the players on that list. The post season if an example of what a gassed Shields looks like scares me on a monster 5 year deal. We already are dealing with an ace in Cain who looks to have all his innings caught up to already. It starts with a strain one season and bad numbers, then a tear the next followed by Tommy John surgery and finally can they come back to be their old self stories. No Thank you.

I like the idea of getting Zobrist but not for Susaac. Not for a 1 year rental on any player. Susaac gives them insurance if Posey has another injury and needs to move from behind the plate. I think Sabean and Evans are too smart to do that.

So in the end I can see another small trade for a platoon partner in LF but that is about it. Too much starting pitching available next off season to over spend on long term over priced pitching left over this off season.

Wobbie

If the stars align, our rotation MIGHT be OK. But, as it is, it could also be one big question mark...

Bummy - will his arm be OK after pitching more postseason innings than anyone in history?
Cain - will he ever be an "ace" again? Or is he damaged goods with a Zito-like contact?
Timmy - who the hell knows? I have hope, but...
Hudson - pushing 40 and just had ankle surgery (thanks for waiting....God forbid you do it in November)
Peavy - let's hope he can pick up where he left off (no, I don't mean Game 6)

Wobbie

Amongst the Ani

Bye bye Scutaro. I assumed this would happen at some point. You will be missed.

I really like the Aoki signing much like I did the Morse signing the season before. Aoki brings to the table a much different set of skills but one that should mesh well with what the Giants are doing. We still could really use that masher type for the middle of the lineup but Posey/Pence should both get a ton of RBI chances. To me the Giants are pushing what may be model most teams start running soon. With there being so few guys that can really belt a ton of homers now why not try something different. Much like the Warriors are doing in the NBA with their whole defensive plans with 4 guys that can pretty much guard every position but Center. It allows them to do a hell of a lot more switching and advanced defensive plays that other teams couldn't dream about running.

Wobbie

Shields to the puds......looks like everyone in the division (except the rockies) has gotten better over the winter.

Amongst the Ani

I love this Moncada kid. I'm not holding my breathe we get him though. Tax on him would be 100% and I can't see the Giants pissing away 40 to 50 million on a tax. Might be Puig without being a headcase that will be a top 5 prospect in all of baseball the moment he signs. If they were ever going to do it this is the time. The Dodgers and Yankees are all over him.

cutz

cdysinge said:

I love this Moncada kid. I'm not holding my breathe we get him though. Tax on him would be 100% and I can't see the Giants pissing away 40 to 50 million on a tax. Might be Puig without being a headcase that will be a top 5 prospect in all of baseball the moment he signs. If they were ever going to do it this is the time. The Dodgers and Yankees are all over him.

Moncada should be made to go in this year's June Draft.

I'm waiting for the day when some lawyers here file some kind of lawsuit: how come the North American's HAVE to go in the draft but a player like Moncada can be a free agent and get TOP dollar?

Like you said: one of the BIG spenders will end up with Moncada...................as USUAL.

Wobbie

cutz said:

cdysinge said:

I love this Moncada kid. I'm not holding my breathe we get him though. Tax on him would be 100% and I can't see the Giants pissing away 40 to 50 million on a tax. Might be Puig without being a headcase that will be a top 5 prospect in all of baseball the moment he signs. If they were ever going to do it this is the time. The Dodgers and Yankees are all over him.

Moncada should be made to go in this year's June Draft.

I'm waiting for the day when some lawyers here file some kind of lawsuit: how come the North American's HAVE to go in the draft but a player like Moncada can be a free agent and get TOP dollar?

Like you said: one of the BIG spenders will end up with Moncada...................as USUAL.

I had never thought of that....what say you, chad?

Amongst the Ani

Rob, I Completely agree on Moncada with the draft, Tomas and all these other players coming from South America should have to go into it. I had read a while ago MLB was trying to push for it but a lot of teams fought it hard. All the teams each have these baseball factories in South America where they start taking kids as early as 13. After all that work of building these kids up they don't want other teams to poach their work once they are ready to come to America for the minors. While Moncada and Tomas didn't come from a baseball factory area there is one policy on international players in each region of the world. If you make Cuban players go through the draft you also have to make Dominican players where these factories exist. In a way they are exploiting these kids because only a small handful actually progress to make it to the US. They are sent away from their families to come to these factories.

On another note, how is the Giants man cave doing. Any new cool stuff?

Wobbie

cdysinge said:

On another note, how is the Giants man cave doing. Any new cool stuff?

well.....I think this is kinda cool: