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

09.12.2008
Autumn Sweaters

I was all set to run a post on the Giants’ run of good health this year. It hasn’t been a spotless record — Correia’s oblique, Rowand’s broken ribs (but no DL time), Vizquel’s knee and the lost years for Frandsen and Lowry all shook things up a bit — but there were no devastating injuries. 

I’m talking about the grand scheme of things, and I don’t mean to be callous — I wouldn’t want to tell Kevin Frandsen that his Achilles’ blowout wasn’t devastating. But imagine one of the young starting pitchers or Brian Wilson going down for the count. Or Molina not in the lineup nearly every day.

Of course, just as I was about to post this, Emmanuel Burriss strained his oblique, and Fred Lewis decided (or the team decided for him) to get his bunion funyun’ed. Burriss should be OK in a month and get some time playing winter ball.

Lewis is another thing entirely. The team says he should be good to go by spring training. But read this and tell me you’re convinced he’ll be the same old FreddieLoo! post-op. If a big part of a guy’s game is speed, and he’s having a chunk of bone and soft tissue removed from the joint of his big toe right where he pushes off, and it’s happening just as he’s hitting his peak years as an athlete, then uh-oh.

I love Freddie and hope he recovers. He’s traveled a long road to get here, with a nasty bunion on his foot, no less. Let’s hope this setback doesn’t close his window of opportunity, which is narrow for any professional athlete but more so for a guy who isn’t blue-chip. (Grant does a great job here to break down Fred’s statistical strengths and weaknesses.)

This Lewisian uncertainty means the Giants would not only be hesitant to trade Randy Winn this winter — as Baggs notes this morning — they’d be irresponsible to do so. That might be a bit strong, but if Winn is gone, Lewis is ineffective and Schierholtz flops, what’s the backup plan? Brian Horwitz? Eugenio Velez? With Lewis’s foot, Rowand’s recklessness, and Schierholtz’s left-handedness, Winn could be the busiest and most valuable fourth outfielder in the game. The arguments for keeping him are starting to tilt the scales for me, too.

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SMALL PRINT UPDATE: Better late than never, I’ve added Extra Baggs and the Chron’s more intermittent Splash Blog to the blog roll at right. Mea culpa. I’m also now listening to Yo La Tengo’s I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, which despite my nearly two decades of Tengophilia, I somehow missed for years. I recently found it in Mrs. Malo’s collection, hidden deep inside a Case Logic. And woo, what I’ve been missing. It doesn’t have a killer single, but it’s got the same sweetness and exuberance among the walls of noise that make May I Sing With Me an all-time fave. (Best noise-pop single ever: How about “Detouring America With Horns”?) What can I say: I’m a sucker for the husband guitarist/wife drummer vocal combos.

Bonus: How Yo La Tengo got its name.  
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[September 12, 2008 9:00 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Johnny Disaster said

Thanks for linking to the Yo La Tengo spot... my Nana was a huge Mets fan. Well, she was normal sized, but really liked the Mets.
I think the 6 month figure (6 weeks to 6 months in the linked article) is why they are doing it now - even if it takes the full 6 months, it'll still be spring training.
It's the potential one year to complete recovery that is most worrying, but even so, I'm optimistic. Especially so since they (Freddy and the team) shouldn't feel rushed to get him back on the field - he can do a rational recovery program instead of one based on desperation to get him in the lineup. Of course, if the recovery stalls, the desperation may set in...

[September 12, 2008 9:19 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Dan from NM said

You forgot Poland. I mean, Dave Roberts.

[September 13, 2008 3:21 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Ben said

The way I see the Freddy surgery is that he has already demonstrated that he is willing to withstand the pain, and not only withstand it, but still still excel. If the Giants organization had any inclination to think it would be detrimental to his career I think they would not make the decision to have him undergo the surgery. As far as Randy Winn, I think the Giants would only keep him is he is going to start, he is too good to be a 4th outfielder. Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe Dave Roberts has one more year on his contract, and I feel that he is much better suited for that 4th outfielder role. In the scenario that Lewis doesn't recover and Schierholtz flops we would be in bad shape, but hey Pablo Sandoval could probably catch a fly ball right? :)

[September 13, 2008 11:19 PM]  |  link  |  reply
Dignan said

sugarcube totally gives me chills.

[September 14, 2008 11:35 PM]  |  link  |  reply
obsessivegiantscompulsive said

I think it would be fiscally irresponsible and, besides which, insulting to Randy Winn, to keep him around as a 4th OF, "just in case".

He deserves more respect than that.

We have a number of player who are possibles in the OF should Lewis and Schierholtz does the "Prospect Tango" off the stage.

As noted: I was beaten to the punch, but Dave Roberts, though he recently made a meek public note that he wants to start, is probably the 4th OF in 2009, and would be Lewis's insurance should he not recover in time. That would allow the Giants time to see how either Horwitz or Ortmeier against LHP.

In RF, should Schierholtz falters for some reason, we have Bowker waiting in the wings, hoping to rediscover the great short stroke that Carney Lansford said he had but lost in his struggles (not to diss Carney, as I prefer him around than previous hitting coaches, but isn't that what a batting coach is suppose to notice and help a player regain when he falls off the path? Shouldn't he be saying, "I know what he needs to do, but he needs to listen to me now" or something like that?).

In addition, a bit of a long shot at the moment, but Roger Kieschnick can play RF and has the potential, according to Bobby Evans on today's "Down the Pipeline" (or something like that) Sunday pre-game show, to be a typical corner OF. He's going to the Hawaiian Winter League which has at least AA-level pitching (again according to Evans today), so if he can do well there, he could be in AAA in 2009 and just a nice hot streak on his part and cold streak on other's part away from the big show.

And not that I don't want him at C, but Buster Posey is also slated for the Hawaiian Winter League as well, so he could be up under the same circumstances as well, they could throw him into RF (or anywhere around the diamond for that matter) just to get him regular ABs in the MLB, before making him the starter for 2010, for example. Of course, not for certain, but a possibility.

Velez has also seen significant play in the OF as well, I wouldn't feel comfortable starting him, but having him share an OF spot with another prospect would be fine with me.

In addition, Ben Copeland has been doing well enough in the minors to consider him a 4th OF type who could spot start and share an OF position with someone else while the regular is either recovering and/or back in AAA regaining his stroke.

Two guys who are probably due to make the 40 man roster are Matt Downs and Mike Mooney, both has seen OF play this season in AAA plus Downs can play IF positions as well, so he could be battling Velez for the all-utility spot for 2009.

Plus, there's always Justin Leone, though I would have to assume by now that if they thought he had anything, they would have brought him up by now, he was in his physical prime years but is now entering the decline period.

Plus, there's always McClain, who knows, he could come away with backing up the corner IF and OF positions in spring training, the way they are playing him right now.

So we have a lot of candidates available to play in the OF should the worse happens and we, say, lose all three expected starting OF - Lewis, Rowand, Schierholtz - for whatever reason.

The only reason we have for keeping Randy Winn is if the Giants management thinks we have a legitimate chance to win the division with him. I think we have a chance, but only if Ishikawa, Sandoval, Burriss, and Velez/Frandsen (2B) can produce like they have shown in small samples, plus the young pitchers continue to produce like their arc suggests.

Those are too many question marks, we should trade Randy Winn as part of the "transition" that Sabean has been talking about since letting go of Bonds and let Schierholtz transition into RF, and roll our dices with our young guys. I think there is a good chance that this group of young players, led by Rowand and Molina, could win the division, but not a great chance. Again, see above, all those guys have to do as well as they have in the past month or so.

But we don't know that they won't, Sandoval and Ishikawa appear to have had the breakout year that prospect watchers had given up on (neither was on any top Giants prospect list for 2008 but was previously), Burriss is doing everything necessary that prospect watchers said that he needs to do, plus Lansford seems to know exactly what he needs to do (unlike Bowker), and Velez has been on since returning.

Like the 1991 Reds, you never know when the perfect storm of no-name players producing team-wide and coming away with the World Series will happen. Not likely, but that's why, as they like to say it, they play the games, as you never know.