Giants Midnight Replay

Bummed-garner

How many more games will we lose like this? That is the real question. But the bigger question is, are the Giants playing with any kind of heart? Cause it doesn’t really seem like it. Are they playing with a fire on their asses? No. And for some reason, I feel like Tejada does not help…. I don’t know why I relate the signing of Tejada to a weird sense of complacency among the players during the game. He seems like a professional player. He seems like he is well respected. But to be honest I sensed an edge among the players last year. A “fuck you” attitude that they don’t seem to have now. 

It’s just what I am seeing, what I’m feeling. I want the “fuck you” attitude back. 

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The Omar Award goes to:

Buster Posey, followed up a strikeout with a gun to third to get the base stealer and complete a double play. 

The Velez Award goes to:

Madison Bumgarner for throwing the ball behind his back in what would have ended the 3rd inning but instead gave up a run. 

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The Garfield Award (Hero) goes to: 

 Strangely I am giving this to Mota… He came in and effectively saved our bullpen. I thought I would never ever give him any kind of award….. But here it is. Also he took an AB, which was kinda sad. 

The Odie Award (Goat) goes to:

I’m going with the umpire, who consistently called a strike on the outside part of the plate for Harang but not for Bumgarner. This also could have gotten us out of the third inning. 

This is the one that was called on Buster, which killed our rally. 

This is the one they didn’t call for Bumgarner.

And here’s one final bad call for Buster Posey even when Hundley drops the ball he calls a ludicrous strike three.

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I took the liberty of making a schedule for the Giants tomorrow. 

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Bonus Crap:

Pablo flashing some leather. 

The seats I wish that I had. 

J. Sanchez and Timmy were working some voodoo on their hats during today’s game. 

I don’t know, but it looks like Pablo got the tag down. 

Blooped to death in SD

The best part of our lineup right now. 

Tejada actually got to this one. He spun and made a terrific throw to get the runner. I have to give credit where credit is deserved. 

I want to see more of this from Pablo, patience at the plate!

Can’t really believe this play, Pablo walks, then he tries to steal 2nd and was out by….. 5 to 6 feet

ohhh, and Brandon Belt is not hitting that well….. just saying. 

See You Latos

Giants win 6 to 4….. BUT I don’t care what happened the rest of the game. We got Latos for four runs in the first. And that makes me happy. 

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Last year while working at my old place of employment I had a running dialog with one of my co-workers Sinclair, who just happened to be a Boston Red Sox fan. It was around this time last year and the Giants were killing it in spring training. I was listening to all the games since it had been a long off season. Every day I would trudge through the snow on my way to serve skinny lattes to god-awful Carroll Gardens dwellers. But every day I had one more victory to goad about when I got to work. Finally when spring training was almost over I was once again rubbing the Giants spring training record in Sinclair’s face…. I remember him saying… ” You know they don’t hand out rings for winning the Cactus League” ……”Don’t they……” I said “Don’t they”… At that point….sure…. I was full of shit. But I did add…”we’ll see”. 

I quit that job, it was a nightmare. My boss was am overbearing lady with no real experience with running a coffee shop. I left for greener pastures, my friend Sinclair stayed there and eventually became manager. I came back to visit him after the Giants won the world series, naturally and reminded Sinclair of our conversation. 

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The Tony Soprano Award goes to: LBR OK OK, I know that I debated a nickname for Fontenot last week, but man he CRUSHED that ball tonight. So I will call him Little Babe Ruth….. just for today
 
The Mikey Palmice Award goes to: Mat Latos because Palmice acted like a whiney bitch and so does Latos sometimes. 

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    The Omar Vizquel Award goes to: Pablo Sandoval

I know he was charged with two errors but he was PICKIN it tonight!

    The Eugenio Velez Award goes to:

Burriss….. Sorry Burriss, I know the ground is hard and the hops in spring training are weird, but you gotta make one of those two plays. 

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A couple of players broke out of their slumps tonight. Good for you cabbage patch kid!

Rowand: “Yeah… I think this strange appendage hanging out of my right shoulder is what is wrong with my swing”

Bochy: “uuuuuhh……. I think that’s your arm”

Rowand: “ya that thing”

dude…. look how short Fontenot is compared to the ump…. thats crazy!

They Finnerty’s in NYC where my girlfriend and I watched the game, I thought it would be cool to snap a screenshot when they showed it on TV. Turns out that both of us are in it. I’m wearing the Giants hat on the lower left corner with the beard, and my girl is in front of me in the beanie. Yay, that about 1:30 of my 15 minutes already used up.

Bobbles:

Pablo get eaten up at the hot corner

Daigle is killing me, he always comes in late and blows meaningless games, which I don’t really care about, but it makes the game drag on and on! “Dude… You forgot the ball”

Raj “So you got a hit….. That’s good”

Rowand ………………………..(crickets)……………………

Brandon Belt, snaps out of his “slump” with this hit. 

Kevin Frandsen is a cute puppy who wants to snuggle in your armpit. 

Here’s to you skinny Pablo

Yeah… Little Babe Ruth…… just for today. 

After hitting a ball to the fence in dead center Brandon Crawford tries to bolster his chances at the coveted KFGPA (Kevin Frandsen Memorial Golden Puppy Award)

The Mat Latos Thing

There’s nothing like watching a young baseball player develop into a sincere red-ass before your very eyes. The first signs are always dismissed by the media as a player being green or immature. The second time something happens it might get talked about, but again the “he’s just an immature kid” thing comes up, but some media and older players start getting tired of it. In this step there is usually a rebuttal from the offended party. But, when you go and throw the whole…. “I hate team X” in…. now you’re going to get noticed.

And to be honest, I applaud young Latos for doing what he did. It was pure ass-headedness. But these are the things that I root for in the offseason. Any kind of team flaming, trash talking, over-hyping or ass making. It’s like someone is pouring a load of delicious Valintina’s hot sauce over my favorite dish. It spices everything up. When actual games are played they will taste better, they’ll be funner to watch, the tension will be higher. So hats off to you Mr. Latos, we can’t wait to see you get a nice close shave next time you take an at bat in San Francisco.

Oh and I took some time to personalize a baseball just for you.

This doesn’t mean that I won’t pick him as the second or third ace on my fantasy team this year…… ya he’s good…. he’s just and ass.

Andres The Giant

Giants shake the curse beating the Padres 7 to 6

Screenshot of the game

The Kuiper placed picture of Kirk Rueter in the dugout. 

Did the picture win the game for the Giants?…… maybe it was Renteria taking out the lineup before the game? …. possibly it was the lineup card taped to the roof of the dugout?….. Nope…. it was the group of scrubs that are currently dominating the Giants lineup. With contributions from Rowand and Uribe, the fantastic four of the evening were Torres, Downs, Whiteside, and Velez. That’s not even mentioning that Uber-scrub Ryan Rohlinger got the 2 out rally started in the 12th and that Schierholtz had the first RBI of the game. 

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4 out of 5 Neukoms

- only 1 walk

- a nice outfield assist from Torres at 2nd base

- no GIDP

- 5 for 13 with RISP

- a misplayed ball by Uribe in the 12th inning scared me. 

- but a magnificent play by Whiteside behind the dish going over a mini-retainer-wall-o-death to get the 2nd to last out. 

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The David Award (hero) goes to Andres Torres who went 2 for 5 with a clutch HR and an outfield assist. 

The (ironic) Goliath Award (villain) goes to David Eckstien……. why… because it will ALWAYS go to him when we play the Padres until he retires. HATE that guy!

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Other pics:
not much going on here, It was a REALLY late game for me. 4HR means that I am up until 2am over here in Brooklyn. After midnight I stopped taking screenshots and started dozing off. 

I kinda like Andres Torres’s new batting stance twitch…. where he windmills the bat around towards the pitcher.

Eli Whitesides shows the Padres what he thinks of their team/park/fans

I was going to dedicate a whole post to Velez’s “scrappy-doo” style but now that Kruk and Kuip have mentioned it on the air, I kinda feel like I would be biting. Maybe I will… but for now here is visual evidence of his wacky untucked style

Full pocket untucked steez!

“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”

Bonus Downsy pic! “don’t make me run back around 2nd base to get to the dugout!!!”

Giants Baseball ………. Torture!

Giants Broadcaster and overall interesting human that I generally agree with, Duane Kuiper, pretty much summed up how I feel about Giants baseball. I mean really….. can you think of the last game where we either won comfortably or lost by a large margin? I guess May, 1 against the Rockies was what we Giants fans would consider a “comfortable” lead. But that was……. 9 games ago. 

Giants Baseball is truely….TORTURE, and tonight we all suffered for 3 hours and 25 mins. 

Giants die a slooooooow death to the Padres tonight 2 to 3

Screenshot of the game. 

1 out of 5 Neukoms

How do you walk 12 batters and hope to win a game?

When you leave 11 on base and go 2 for 11 with RISP………how can you hope to win a game. ……uuuuuuuuugh

Add that to some rather strange miss-plays. 

Pablo loses the ball in the lights.

The Andy Kaufman Award (annoying villan) goes to David Eckstein who for all intensive purposes is the absolute BANE of my existence and the BANE of the Giants existence and THE most annoying baseball player in the world to boot. 

The Jerry Lawler Award (normal villan) goes to The Padres, for playing the blandest brand of baseball I have ever seen. Sadly it is the kind of baseball that the Giants are built for also…..

Extra notes/pics….

Pablo is looking for hits………. everywhere.

David Eckstein is the biggest SOB in baseball, here is him being annoying to EVERYONE by throwing his bat on what he thinks is a BALL, ……. it was a strike.

Ishi gets a hit down the 3rd base line, and breaks his bat.

Also….. when your bitching about your team’s pitchers who give up only three runs, it is time to look for something else to complain about. 

Yes they gave up loads of walks, but in the end they only gave up 3 runs. 

The 5 Stages of Loss and Grief

Giants get swept by the Padres 2 to 5

Screenshot of the day

Adrian Gonzales goes yard on the struggling Wellemeyer

The 5 Stages of Loss and Grief played out on our road trip…….

#1. Denial and Isolation ……… Game 1 of the Dodgers series ..”Wellemeyer CAN’T be THIS bad”…

#2. Anger………………………….. Game 3 of Dodgers series … “Fuck Manny, Fuck the Dodgers”…

#3. Bargaining……………………. Game 1 of Padres series … “Well at least we can beat the lowly Padres,…. Right?” ..

#4. Depression…………………… Game 2 of Padres series … “They got 1 hit and still beat us, life SUCKS!”

#5. Acceptance…………………… Game 3 of Padres series … “Wellemeyer IS this bad!, and so are the Giants” …

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The Seinfield award (hero) goes to Pablo…… who is 1 for 3 with a walk and a HR. 

The Newman award (villan) goes to the 1st place padres team. for kicking our asses soo hard, and showing us how to play fundamental baseball and win. 

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This series was terrible, terrible defense, terrible hitting, terrible luck… and three blown calls by the umps in three games. (I’m definitely not blaming them, but they sure didn’t help what little offense that we did have)

The tag that didn’t get called an out….. didn’t result in a run but definitely could have.

The HR that was 15 feet short of the wall……. result: they eventually got it right

Bowker’s base hit that was called foul from 4 feet away….. result: run was taken away

I’ll leave you with some scenic shots of men, dressed in tight clothes, bumbling baseballs. 

I know…. this one is pixely, It is Velez running into schierholtz and then throwing it into Uribe like there was 2 outs………….. facepalm.

It Was All a Dream…..

Giants lose to the Padres 0 to 1

Padres beat the Giants with 1 hit……..

Screenshot of the day

1 out of 5 Neukoms

1 Walk for the Giants

Terrible Fundamental inning in the 3rd. (and all game)

1. Eli gets a bad break on a ground rule double that would have been a triple. 

2. Sanchez gets into a 2 strike count and bunts it straight to the pitcher who throws out Eli at 3rd.

3. Velez gets an opo hit through the 5.5 gap

4. Renteria grounds into his second Double Play. 

There are soo many ways that you could have scored a run in that inning, both by luck and by fundamentals. ….. A better bunt, a softer bounce on the DR double, Not grounding into a DP. It’s just a microcosm of what has been going on the last couple of days, we have gotten some bad breaks and we have not been executing the fundamentals. 

Another one in the 7th

1. Aubrey Huff Pops out on the first pitch

2. Uribe looks at a few pitches before he grounds out to shortstop

3. Then bowker looks at 2 pitches before he flys out to left.

total pitches seen, under 10

As the game went on we saw the oppsite of that in the 4th inning with the Padres. 

1. Chase Headley singles. Then steals second base

2. Blanks fouls out but Chase advances to 3rd.

3. Sac fly hit by Hairston…… And that’s a run.

The Jimmy McNulty award (hero) goes to Johnathan Sanchez for King 10 and only giving up 1 hit over 7 inning, and just fully hanging a big L around his neck

The Avon Barksdale award (villan) goes to the sad collection of Giants bats. What can I say…. We got all our wins in spring training. This lineup is what we thought it was, and when it they don’t execute the fundamentals they fail in the saddest ways.

Other thoughts:

Eli Whiteside and Bengie Molina’s ABs in the 8th. Schierholtz standing on 3rd base and no outs, Eli grounds to the left side, and Bengie has an infield pop-up. 

My man Juan Uribe’s AB in the 9th. Torres on 3rd 1 out Uribe hits it waaaay to shallow to get a sac fly. 

Bottom line…. if you can’t play fundamental baseball, you won’t win games.