Baseball Prospectus has posted a fun interview with Omar Vizquel in which he says he wants to be a big-league manager. What better place for a free-thinking, painting-and-sculpting, Spanish-speaking shortstop/dancer to manage a team than in San Francisco? Can you think of any other Giant who had such a relatively short tenure with the team and became so beloved?
The interview is subscription-only, and yes, you should subscribe, but I’ll excerpt a wee bit:
DL: You've obviously won a lot of Gold Gloves. What is your opinion on how they are awarded?
OV: I think the criterion is kind of weird. The guy who makes the least amount of errors... that doesn't necessarily mean that he deserves a Gold Glove, because it doesn't show the types of plays he makes in the field…
DL: What are your thoughts on the recent advances in defensive metrics?
OV: I was reading something about that last year, about chances that you get around your position—your range and how many balls you can get to. It was really interesting for me to see, because it also shows you the location of the player. So, if you locate yourself a little better than others, you have a better chance to get to other balls.
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OV: Art, to me, is like an escape from all the pressure that happens in baseball. Maybe I reflect a lot of sadness and a dark side of me when I do art, because sometimes you can be a little frustrated or you are not having a good time when you paint. That's a comment I get from a lot of people who have seen my art. But, to me, I like the figurative kind of work. I like a lot of bodies. I like the contour of the shapes, the round shapes, and maybe I try to express something about the particular body that I'm painting… sometimes you find yourself creating stuff that you don't even think about while you're doing it. But when you actually finish the piece, you can sit back and kind of have a conversation with your painting about the things that you did.
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A couple other Monday thoughts:
* Jake Peavy’s bum ankle takes him off the trade market. So if you can’t have Peavy, and guys like Pedro Martinez and Paul Byrd don’t float your boat, and the Mariners don’t want to trade Erik Bedard, how much more valuable has Jonathan Sanchez become? Perhaps not so much. Sanchez’s recent efforts won’t inspire a contending team to grab him as a key contributor to a pennant run. But for a team that’s having trouble filling the back of the rotation now and wants a possible top starter for the next few years, Sanchez should be high on the list.
* Nate Schierholtz: I’m glad Bruce Bochy has all but promised him more playing time. I’m glad Nate’s gotten a chance to show off his power, speed, and arm. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves with the Nate > Fred talk. Lewis has hit a bad patch recently, that’s for sure, but a few short months ago everyone was talking up his ability to be a middle-of-the-order guy. Nate has shown no ability to take a walk in his big-league career, which might be significant, might not. How long until we starting bitching and moaning about his hacktastic tendencies? (Two walks in more than 80 PAs so far this year.) Give him some playing time, by all means. But let’s not forget that the guy he’s bumping from the lineup has some valuable skills, too.
The odd thing about the current OF situation is how lefty-heavy the Giants are. Lewis and Schierholtz are pure lefties, and Winn is mired in a horrible (and uncharacteristic) slump from the right side. Schierholtz has hit lefties incredibly well in his brief big-league work, but the .478 BABIP (batting average on balls he puts in play) reveals an insanely lucky streak. Still, why not ride the streak while it lasts? Against lefties the next week or two, Bochy should put Torres in left, Rowand in center, and Schierholtz in right. (Even when the luck wears off, Schierholtz might prove at least competitive; his career minor-league splits against lefties are .283 / .339 / .479.) Against righties, Boch can play Winn, Rowand, Schierholtz, or give Rowand a day off and let FreddieLoo! out of the doghouse.
