When the Giants Come to Town, It's Bye-Bye Baby

06.28.2007
A Wee Dram of Pick-Me-Up

When days grow dark and ground balls go through legs, we still have Kruk and Kuip.  

***

P.M. UPDATE

A few random thoughts:

* If the White Sox sign Mark Buerhle to a contract extension instead of trade him, it will boost the value of starting veteran pitchers before the deadline. Hellooo, Matt Morris. Sure enough, here’s ESPN’s Jayson Stark: “As the Giants spin in circles, they've put a very interesting name on the market -- Matt Morris. ‘He's pitched real well. He's got a lot of experience. He's a great guy. And he's a tremendous competitor,’ said an executive of one team. ‘I bet they get a lot of hits on him.’”

* Watching the video replay of yesterday’s game, I think the bad pitch to Cruz might have been a change-up, not a fastball. If so, it’s better pitch selection, as the count was 2–1 to a dead fastball hitter, but it was still bad location. This brings up something I’ve heard Krukow say often — that you can miss location with a straight change as long as the arm action is good. I disagree. A hanging change-up is just as liable to get hit as a hanging slider or curveball. Jason Schmidt’s change-up was great in his heyday not only because of the speed differential, but because it had great movement like a split-finger.  

* For those of you who defend Joe Morgan, read this and tell me if you still think he’s competent, let alone deserving to be the #1 baseball analyst on the #1 baseball broadcast in the #1 baseball country in the world.



Also on the Network:



[June 28, 2007 2:34 PM]  |  link  |  reply
ian said

was that video sped up, or were those bobbleheads demonstrated in a helium-rich atmosphere?

[June 28, 2007 3:02 PM]  |  link  |  reply
ELM said

Neither. The voices of the bobblehead operators in the background are at normal pitch. The bobblehead engineering is flawed, though I like the "South Park" effect.

[June 28, 2007 5:08 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Frank said

Thanks for the info. How humiliating. Now I've proven to the world I cannot multi-task (watch MLB-TV and follow game day on McC Chrons.
Johnson comes off the DL today. We face Livan tomorrow, but who from Davis, Gonzales, Owings for games 2 and 3? I assume they send down Owings or move him to the bull pen, despite his 3.84 ERA being the lowest of the 3.
Should be an interesting series (much like the recently completed one), both SF and AZ are having a hard time scoring runs (24 in last 6 games for each team), hard time getting on base, altho they are outslugging us by a ton, part of which is stadium factor. We could win 0, 1, 2, or 3. The betting line is right over here...

[June 28, 2007 5:21 PM]  |  link  |  reply
ELM said
[June 28, 2007 6:07 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Roger said

While Buerle being off the market does make Morris a much bigger fish, it's really disconcerting to hear whispers from the Chicago front office that they haven't been able to get a single major league ready prospect even thrown into a conversation while dangling Buerle out there. If he's not going to get a decent return, what exactly are Wild Bunch likely to fetch?

[June 28, 2007 6:49 PM]  |  link  |  reply
the gene hackman said

Yes, Morgan has lost it.

But shouldn't we direct our collective broadcaster ire at Rick Suckcliffe and Tim McCarver?

At least Morgan gets paired with the Kahuna.

[June 28, 2007 10:13 PM]  |  link  |  reply
ELM said

If that's true about the return for Buehrle, and it may not be, it's partially because he's a two-month rental with almost no chance of re-signing him, as everyone says he wants to go to St Louis. Morris is signed at a reasonable price thru '08, with an $9 M+ club option for '09 -- again, reasonable if he keeps pitching the way he's done this year.