On August 15, 2009, at Citi Field in Queens, I walked up to within five feet of Juan Uribe as he stood in the Giants’ visiting dugout. 

He wasn't in the lineup, even though it was just a few days after he did this: http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN200908120.shtml.

Holding a thumbs up, I told him: "Hey Juan, really great hit the other day, great timing, thank you." He smiled and said “Thanks, man,” and he nodded his head several times before turning his attention to the game.

No single fan can really make a difference, of course. But on a night like tonight, after seeing the past two games, I’m going to delude myself into thinking I bolstered Uribe's clutchiness.

I mean, that stuff doesn't just happen naturally.

Dear Timmy,

I love you, man. Always will. But a word of advice: don't give ball-grip advice to non-regular-season teammates, even if it hurts the Dodgers in the short term. Adam Wainwright might be a nice guy, but he's not your friend. It's not like he needs any more help shutting down Giants batters, should he be lucky enough to face them later this year.

Thanks, Tim, and keep up the great work.

Bred on Albany Hill.

Like all of you, I am overjoyed by the Giants' offense and pitching over the past few days. Hip-hip-hooray for the Giants, and even for Velez. I never thought in a million years that I would use the word "Velez" next to "hooray," unless it meant the Giants traded him for something more valuable.

That being said, I was intrigued by a mini-story in today's WSJ, which made the point that being good against good teams doesn't mean a team is prepared for the post-season. Just ask the Angels teams of recent years. Also, last year the Phillies went 43-46 against teams with a record above .500 and the Phils turned out ok in the end.

Link to the story: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124926109904100493.html

Like Grant, as a Giants fan I have a tendency to throw sludge water on anything good that happens. Still, I'll reserve my glee for the moments when we beat down on weak teams while playing on the road. Houston will be a good test.

    (Disclaimer: My Giants-game viewing this season has, with a couple of exceptions, been limited to watching 11 of their 13 losses. My perspective might be a bit jaded.)

    Yesterday's news made us feel tingly inside. The first comment below the WSJ.com story about Manny was, "Let's go Giants!"

    I watched a good part of last night's Satan-Nats game to see how our foes would respond to the shock. The first inning scared me--six runs for Satan. Surely the game was over, I thought, and I left to do something else for the night. The Nats, I told myself, would start hacking away and think about tomorrow. After all, that's what our Giants would do.

   How wrong I was. Not only did the Nats' pitcher calm down and play well, but the Nats managed to come back. When I checked the score in the 8th inning, Satan's lead was two runs. The Nats' announcers talked about how the Nats "never give up" and applauded their hitting coach Rick Eckstein.

    The Nats took pitches. They. Took. Pitches. The first two batters in the 8th were 7 and 8 in the batting order. It's not like they were looking for walks, either. The Nats got behind in the count and came back, again and again. I was ecstatic. Satan's home win streak over.

    Then I was sad. Could the bottom of the Giants' batting order do that? Of course not. I realize Grant has discussed this at length. But to see a 7-18 team come back from six runs down to the Great Satan deflated me. (Even after blowing a huge lead, Satan almost came back from four down to make a game of it--also something the Giants can't do.)

  Why don't Kruk and Kuip ever talk about the Giants' hitting coach Lansford? We see Righetti every game, but I don't recall ever seeing the camera pan to Lansford. I don't need to remind anyone of this, but the Giants' on-base percentage is .305 -- only the D'Backs are worse in the majors. I'm not saying Lansford needs to go, but can someone important please start criticizing him a lot?

    One person who does need to go, and pronto: Ishikawa (.246 OBP, 0-for-13 in the past week). Convert Schierholtz to 1st base, I don’t care

    I hope I'm wrong about the Giants. Maybe I just need to stop watching their games and Bengie will always hit two homers a game and they'll keep winning. Or maybe we can hire this guy.

The blog post also links to the McCoven: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/05/20/the-new-savior-of-the-san-francisco-giants-bill-neukom/?mod=WSJBlog

Major League Baseball’s San Francisco Giants have a lot of problems. Among them: a 17-29 win/loss record; a lackluster lineup (Eugenio Velez anyone?); and one overpaid left-hander who appears to have lost the ability to pitch.

But help is on the way, in the person of (wait for it, wait for it) Bill Neukom! That’s right. The former Microsoft general counsel, current ABA president and current K&L Gates partner was recently named the team’s managing general partner. We’re not sure what a managing general partner does, necessarily (and neither do some Giants die-hards, according to this fan blog), but according to this nice piece from Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, it sounds like he’ll likely have a big desk and be making some big decisions for the team.

So how does a guy who a decade ago was doing battle with the trust-busters of the U.S. government become a muckety-muck with the San Francisco Giants? It helps to be, well, wealthy. Neukom, who stepped down from Microsoft in 2001, shortly thereafter took some of his $107 million chunk in Microsoft and invested it in the Giants, which made him a part-owner. (Neukom, who grew up in San Mateo, Calif., has been a fan of the team since childhood.)

“He’s very passionate about baseball and his hometown Giants,” said Chuck Armstrong, the president of the Seattle Mariners, to the Chron. “This will be good for the Giants and the Bay Area. He’s an outgoing, friendly guy, a quick study and a good listener.”

SFFaninNYC has organized a viewing of Gints v Pads at 4 p.m. on Sunday at the Hairy Monk (25th and 3rd Ave.). All are welcome.

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I saw something this weekend. I didn't know that I needed it before. But now that I've seen it, I have to have it.

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http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/news/article.jsp?ymd=20060603&content_id=1485722&vkey=news_sf& amp;fext=.jsp&c_id=sf

The giants have played the second-fewest one-run games in the majors (8).

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From today's Wall Street Journal.

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The NL West: good or bad?

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Grant: why you gotta be a Wright hater?

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Yes, Schmidt was great last night.

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Nice post, WalrusMan.

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It's time someone started talking about the home plate umpires the Giants have been facing so that we can put Giants pitchers' outings in perspective.

In his last two starts, Jamey Wright got a pitcher's wet dream: Larry Young's crew (8.7 runs/game in 2005) against Arizona and Doug Eddings' crew (also 8.7 runs/game) against the Dodgers. In short, Mr. Wright got some of the game's most pitcher-friendly umps, whose strike zones are bigger than average and, thus, allow fewer runs to be scored (though not necessarily more strikeouts). (Last year all MLB umps averaged 9.1 runs/game, according to one tally.)

Tonight should also bode well for Mr. Wright with the Gerry Davis-led crew (8.9 runs/game), though Mr. Davis himself averages 9.6 and Eric Cooper, last night's ump, comes in at 9.5--which makes Cain's gem all the more impressive. Let's hope tonight he gets Bill Miller or Brian Gorman (8.1 and 8.4, respectively).

On the other hand, Jason Schmidt, who's been blasted on this blog several times today for his ERA, walks and whip, hasn't had the same luck as Mr. Wright. He got ump Mike Reilly (9.8) in his first outing against the Padres, though he got Paul Nauert (8.8) versus the Braves yet still gave up 5 runs in 7 innings. Then he got Derryl Cousins (9.2), who had the highest walks/9 innings ratio in baseball (4.1 versus the league average of 3.2) against the Rockies, plus it was Coors. So let's not be too harsh on the guy. His control and heat aren't there, but he hasn't had the most favorable strike zones, either.

You might ask, does this really matter? Of course, the umps aren't everything. But they can make a big difference. As one sportswriter noted, take a look at last year's Boston Red Sox versus Chicago White Sox series--the No.1 offensive team in baseball versus the No.1 pitching team in ERA. The umps: John Hirschbeck (7.3), Bill Miller (8.1) and Mark Wegner (8.7). The Red Sox scored just nine runs that series.