Apparently Giants CF and all-around red-ass Aaron Rowand isn’t happy about the Giants’ efforts in New York. I can’t blame him, and neither can Bruce Bochy, who held a pre-game meeting yesterday to tell his squad they’d better not mail it in just because the All-Star break is nigh.
Schulman in the Chron noted that Rowand promised the lackadaisical play “will be taken care of in-house” and that he gave a post-game stink-eye to players who, in Schulman’s words, “seemed to be having a good time” after the Giants’ fourth straight loss.
To keep the bad vibes from spreading, it’s time to kneel at the Roger Craig shrine and dust off a time-honored dauber-picker-upper, courtesy of reader BigO. If you don’t know what a dauber is and why it’s bad to have it down, it’s time for a little history lesson.
SMALL PRINT UPDATE:
Fresno SS Ivan Ochoa, who seemed a more logical candidate than Bocock to fill in for Vizquel at the start of the year, will finally come on up to the house. He’s having a nice year in AAA (.318 / .399 / .445), and he’s also new to the 40–man roster, which had a vacancy after Chulk was cut. (By the way, did you notice that no team claimed Chulk off waivers? He’s now pitching in Fresno.)
To make room on the 25–man roster, Travis Denker is going all the way down to single-A San Jose, probably because Fresno is entering their All-Star break. Denker should jump back to AAA in a week; if he doesn’t, we’ll wonder what the hell’s going on.
Or we could wonder that now. Denker wasn’t getting regular at-bats, so no problem sending him down. But will Ochoa gather similar dust? I hope not; it’s time to find out if he’s a candidate for the job in 2009. To hope Burriss is ready next year is like hoping you can smoke three packs a day and live ‘til you’re 90. There’s always a chance, but you’d better have a Plan B.
If Ochoa can be an average ML SS, he’ll be a vast improvement over this year. As BP’s Jay Jaffe notes, Giant shortstops have the second worst combined OPS (.516) of any position on any ML team this year. He’ll also give Burriss time to play every day in the minors.
