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

03.13.2008
Panic in the Streets of Scottsdale

The Giants are headed to their worst spring record in nearly a quarter-century, and in addition to the putrid hitting statistics I cited a couple days ago, they also have the worst ERA and most errors in the majors this spring.

The natives are getting restless. Native #1 is Bruce Bochy: “It’s time for some of these guys to start getting locked in,” the Merc quotes him as saying. “We made way, way, way, way too many mistakes.”

Four “ways.” Count ‘em. No doubt the fan base is getting disgruntled, too. “Wait a sec,” I suspect they’re saying in an imaginary collective voice, “We thought these guys were gamers! Gamers don’t let ground balls go through their legs or leave 85–MPH fastballs at the belt.” 

Before we all hold our breath and turn blue, let’s shift the perspective. First, and we can never emphasize this enough, it’s spring training. Stats don’t correlate to regular-season performance (except, um, when they do).

Still, we all know the Giants are not going to be good this year. You know it, I know it, Bruce Bochy knows it, but I don’t blame him for barking at his players. That’s his job. The bigger problem is that the Giants are flubbing the skill sets the team’s architects tout as the new foundation: pitching and defense. Hence, this early evaluation: That’s one shaky foundation, Mr. Architect. 

But hey, no one said the pitching and defense would be solid by March 13. Unlike a team with a set roster of capable players, the Giants are still holding tryouts on the infield: Kevin Frandsen at short. (Boink!) Eugenio Velez at third. (Clank!) At least we know the outfield defense will be better this year.

On the mound, the main culprits contributing to the sky-high ERA are Barry Zito, who’s tinkering with his windup, and Noah Lowry, who had an arm injury. But Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez, Hennessey, Valdez and several others have ERAs over 6. No one seems too upset about them. As Lincecum noted in the papers this morning, he’s made a grand total of three appearances.

The larger point is, we know the Giants are going to stink this year. Get over it. We know Barry Zito is never going to justify his ridiculous contract. Get over that, too. At least he’s trying to fix what ails him, cutting out extraneous movement in the hope he’ll improve his command. That’s what spring training is for.

So I say all this hand-wringing (my own included) is silly: it’s GOOD that Eugenio Velez can boot grounders galore and not get benched. The Giants need to know his limitations, Velez needs the experience, and the journalists need something to write about.

Other tidbits:

– BP’s Rany Jazayerli has a look at Dave Roberts’ extraordinary base-stealing skills. It’s nice to read something about Roberts that doesn’t include rabies-flecked mouth foam, vitriol and trade requests.

– The Red Sox have released Doug Mirabelli, which has yet to be noted here.

– The link above to spring stats that matter, if you didn’t click through, refers to a study that shows hitters who significantly slug better in the spring (a .200 improvement over career) go on to have a better than normal season. The only Giant even close is Randy Winn (this spring: .667 / career: .424). I have no idea if the study is true, but I’m calling it now: Winn will hit 35 home runs and drive in 125.

Skatalites– SMALL PRINT UPDATE: Now listening to the Skatalites’ “Guns of Navarone” collection. Old, original stuff in all its wobbly propulsive glory. I even like the occasional unintentional horn squawk left in the mix, no doubt, because they couldn’t afford to do another take. As noted in the comments a few days ago, the Skatalites are a sure way to lift the cloud of a double-digit spring training blowout loss.

A little extra:



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[March 13, 2008 6:14 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Frank said

Isn't this exactly what, at a minimun, the AAA guy is for - a week here and there, but not necessarily any month long call ups. And AOchoa, at age 27 plus or minus a year, is ideally suited for this for several more years