SB Nation User Blog: da5id

Watch the San Jose Giants playoff game tonight for free!

da5id — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 23:49:29 -0000

Watch the San Jose Giants playoff game tonight for free!

Click on the link. Click on the link to the PDF. Print out the PDF & take it to the SJ Muni Box Office. Two free tickets to the game that cost you nothing. No purchase necessary.

Things to love about minor league baseball

da5id — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:48:20 -0000

Game log from the top of the second inning, Connecticut @ Reading:

With Tyler LaTorre batting, Bobby Felmy steals (9) home. Sharlon Schoop steals (2) 2nd base. Sharlon Schoop advances to 3rd. Throwing error by catcher Tuffy Gosewisch.
Tyler LaTorre walks.
With Tim Alderson batting, Sharlon Schoop steals (3) home. Tyler LaTorre steals (1) 2nd base. Tyler LaTorre advances to 3rd. Throwing error by second baseman Carlos Leon.

Two steals of home in the same inning. Never seen that one before.

Cheap San Jose Giants tickets

da5id — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:20:23 -0000

I put up a post recently @ SF.funcheap.com about the half-price tickets promotion the Little Giants are doing for every Friday night home game. It's here:

http://sf.funcheap.com/2009/04/28/kfox-family-fridays-two-for-one-ticket-nights-for-sj-giants-game-san-jose-municipal-stadium/

You need to go to the link in the listing, download & print the PDF, and bring it to the box office to redeem it for each game. They also have a "family four-pack" (explained below) PDF at the same link listed on Funcheap. If you should drop by & do that, please help me out by giving the post as many stars as you think it merits at the bottom of the map. My employer is impressed by that sort of thing.

BTW, the 5/22 game is now a fireworks night. Ooo, sparkly things in the sky!

I also found out about some other cheap ticket promotions they're doing.

For selected Thursday games, you can get a "family four-pack," which is four tickets, four hot dogs, and four sodas for $33 here: http://krty.gotdns.com/krty/docs/2009FourPack.pdf. I haven't had the hot dogs, but the barbecue kicks ass. You can get 2-for-1 tickets (minus the food) to those same games here: http://krty.gotdns.com/krty/docs/2009BOGO.pdf. Again, download, print, and present the PDF at the box office.

They also have ways you can get free tickets. If you go here: http://www.osh.com/Cultures/en-US/EventsPromotions/2009SJGiantsMerchantNight.htm, there's a list of games that you can get free tickets for if you drop by one of the listed Orchard Supply Stores. Kind of a pain, but if you're spending the day in San Jose, it might be doable.

State Farm Insurance (whom I have a soft spot for, if only because they sponsored my first Little League team—Manassas, Virginia 1967, since you asked) also has a free ticket promotion. Yeah, you have to show up at their offices and graciously accept any brochures they want to give you (please recycle) and nod politely to pick up the tickets, but a ballgame for free is a free ballgame. The available games & the list of agent's offices is here: http://www.sjgiants.com/subcontent.aspx?SecID=182

I've also been told Trader Joe's is doing some sort of promotion with them, but haven't been able to track it down. If anybody knows about that one, please let me know.

Sorry this is a totally promotional listing, but I'm also doing this because I'm a Giants Fan & I went to see a game in San Jose a few weeks back and enjoyed myself tremendously. And I want to get them to advertise with Funcheap, at some point. Disclosure: yeah, I'd get a commission for that.

Went to the SJ 4/21 Giants game. Some comments.

da5id — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:04:34 -0000

Alderson was pretty amazing. He changed speeds, went inside & outside. He seemed to have total command of the strike zone. His release point was off a bit in the fourth inning, so he gave up the home run on an aimed 89 mph fastball with nothing on it & the hard hit single, but for the rest of his innings, he was dominant. I don't know how he'll do above AA, because the fastball doesn't have much movement. He's going to have to grow to remain a starting pitcher. But hey, he's nineteen & gave up one run in six innings. And he seems to have a clue out there.

Angel Villalona is the real deal. Oh for three with two walks doesn't tell you much. Three ground outs doesn't tell you much. His ground out to the pitcher in the first, I'd describe as hard-hit, and was certainly the hardest hit ball of that inning. But that was his softest hit ball of the night. His other two ground outs were *smashes* that had the disadvantage of being hit right at people. One of the walks was intentional, one more due to pitcher wildness than plate discipline, so that didn't tell me much. But after seeing some of the scouting reports about his lack of plate discipline, I'm starting to question that. I didn't see him swing at any bad pitches tonight, and he seemed to learn from his at bats. He seemed to go into his at bats with a clue about what he wanted to do. I was impressed by that.The results were hard-hit balls for outs, but he is clearly a thinking player.

I was also mightily impressed by Villalona's defense. He has good instincts to get a jump on the ball, made a nice dive play and a nice charge play, and had a couple good flips to the pitcher for the out, one of which avoided a disaster (due to a terrible angle that Alderson took to the base). He has soft hands and despite the fact that he looks like he could audition for Fat Albert! The Musical, has adept body control. Another thing that he has on defense is panache. Something Nick Noonan doesn't have.

I know, one game doesn't tell you anything. But as a hitter, Nick Noonan looked overmatched, at least against left-handed pitching. It's a mystery to me why Skeels would have him batting third. He swung at a lot of pitches, but I don't know if he swung at a strike all night. Breaking balls were a mystery to him. On defense, he has pretty good range, but he doesn't seem to me to have the soft hands that an infielder needs. I'm hoping he just had a bad night.

Thomas Neal & Roger Kieshnick hit mistakes. I don't know if they'll ever do any more than that. They didn't hit the ball hard, they got lucky. I think these guys will end up organizational soldiers, unless they significantly up their games. They had bad at bats but got good results.

Darren Ford's 2 for 4 was an illusion. Two softly-hit ground balls that would have been outs in a non-minor league world. But *Jeebus* can this guy play center field. Nice arm, too, except for that time he threw to the wrong base.

I won't make individual comments on the bullpen guys as they melted down, but none of them had any control tonight, other than Lively, so they got in bad counts and walked guys and gave up hits. It was almost like watching the mlb team!

I will poot forth on how Andy Skeels manages a game. I love it. Let your pitchers get into jams, then find out if they can get out of them. This is what the minor leagues should be about. So what if you lose the game. Now you know something about those guys and they know something about themselves.

Promo for SJ Giants

da5id — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:12:48 -0000

Promo for SJ Giants

Just put up a post for the SJ Giants home series earlier today. You all know about this, but if you come to SFFuncheap & give me some stars, my employer likes it.

Too cheap to tango?

da5id — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 12:48:12 -0000

Here's what baseball prospectus says about the Giants' 2008 draft. You need to be a member to see all of it. I hope this doesn't alert the fair-use police.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7823

A Giant Mess?

San Francisco's draft received nearly universal praise in June, but their top four picks remain unsigned, and there is little positive to report on where the negotiations are concerned. Catcher Buster Posey, the fifth overall pick and recent Golden Spikes award winner, has had few discussions with the Giants, and there's no reason to believe that he's backed off from pre-draft talk that had him looking for a big-league deal worth over $10 million. The problems don't end there. Supplemental first-round pick Conor Gillaspie slipped a bit in the draft when he told teams how much money he'd need, which one team categorized as "delusional." In addition, third-round pick Roger Kieschnick and fourth-rounder Brandon Crawford remain well apart from the team in negotiations.

Depodesta on prospects

da5id — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 09:40:06 -0000

Here's the link:

http://itmightbedangerous.blogspot.com/2008/06/calling-up-headley.html

The money quotes?

"My only answer is that in a perfect world (which rarely, if ever, occurs), I prefer bringing guys up when you have the reasonable hope that they'll never go back down to the minors. That is strictly my opinion, not anyone else's. This was the case with guys like Khalil and Jake. All too often, though, you see guys come up, struggle, then go back down. That roundtrip ticket can do a lot of damage to a player's confidence, and that confidence is a key ingredient to success at the highest levels. Along those lines, think about what it did for Kouz last year when Buddy stuck with him and kept putting him out there. We all expected Kouz would hit, but I'm confident that the decision to keep him in the big leagues throughout his struggles was an element in his eventual success, even if just a sliver.

There are examples at nearly every level. During spring training of 2003, Nick Swisher was having a monster camp. After being drafted in 2002 he had finished the season in High-A ball, and the plan all winter was to start him back there. Due to his great spring, some people starting pushing for Nick to go to AA even though he didn't even have a year's worth of minor league at-bats yet (I'm sure I was one of them). I specifically remember Keith Lieppman, the Farm Director of the A's, saying, "If he goes to AA and struggles to the point where we have to send him back to A ball, I won't even know where to begin to pick up the pieces." Nick Swisher was not a guy who lacked for confidence, by the way. So, Nick started back in A ball, killed it, moved to AA, and so on."

Villalona, from tonight's Greenjackets broadcast

da5id — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:55:34 -0000

After Angel Villalona made a diving catch of a line drive in tonight's game, Greenjackets play-by-play announcer Nick Barrale made a comment about how AV's defense is pretty amazing, and said that when the team takes infield practice, Villalona regularly plays third base, and "picks it clean out there." I don't know how much of this is just home announcer bias, but I found it of interest that the Giants haven't totally given up on him playing at third, even though *many* scouting reports say he can't stick there.

Also, Barrale explicitly welcomed listeners from the Bay Area tonight. I wonder if he gets any listeners from Georgia.

Anybody else on the McCoven listening to this guy? I think he's pretty good. Not Dave Flemming good, but since it's only a matter of time before some team steals Dave Flemming from us, I like Barrale as a back-up.

But hey, I only listen for the commercials. Life happens one dream at a time.

Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus on Tim the Enchanter

da5id — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:49:55 -0000

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=7429

April 26, 2008

Prospectus Today

Lincecum and Lefty

by Joe Sheehan

Remember the 1972 Phillies? I don’t, either. I was a year old, and unlike Rany Jazayerli, I was not already in third grade at that age. The '72 Phils, however, get talked about quite a bit because of one very special pitcher. Left-hander Steve Carlton joined the team near the end of February, traded away from the Cardinals to resolve a contract dispute. The tall southpaw had been a good, but not great pitcher in his career to date, making three All-Star teams and winning 20 games in 1971, but struggling enough with his command—207 walks in two seasons—to keep his ERAs in '70 and '71 relatively high.

(Sheehan ties this all in to Tim Lincecum here.)

Bowker at 1B!

da5id — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 02:02:54 -0000

JT is breaking him in:

http://www.mercurynews.com/giantsheadlines/ci_8929302

Special instructor J.T. Snow is excited to see John Bowker in the major leagues, and not just because the 24-year-old outfielder hit home runs in the first two games of his career.

Snow's commute got a whole lot shorter, too.

Giants General Manager Brian Sabean had asked Snow to make a trip to Triple-A Fresno this week, to help teach Bowker the finer points of playing first base. They began that process in earnest Monday, with Snow standing watch as Bowker took groundballs.

Snow liked Bowker's hands, his footwork and the way he snapped short throws to second base. "You can usually tell after a few groundballs if a guy has some athletic ability," Snow said.

And?

"He didn't let any go between his legs," Snow said.

Daniel Ortmeier might have gotten an entire spring to practice at first base, but Bowker is taking the crash course. The Giants are desperate for a left-handed bat at the position now that Ortmeier has abandoned switch-hitting to focus on the right side.

Bowker said he played first base at Rio Americano High School in Sacramento and has taken groundballs in instructional league play. He doesn't have any game experience as a pro, unless you count a half-dozen minor league scrimmages at the end of camp this spring.

"I don't know if it's natural for me, but I can handle it," he said.

• Injured shortstop Omar Vizquel took groundballs and tried jogging on his sore left knee, but pulled the plug after

a few minutes. He was scheduled to be re-examined by a doctor Monday night.

When he returns, Vizquel acknowledged that he probably will not have the same range.

"It will be hard to be the same as I was last year, for sure," the 11-time Gold Glove winner said. "With that brace, I don't think you can move the same way. You'll probably be limited or restrained."

Trainer Dave Groeschner said Vizquel might be overly pessimistic. "Clearly he's frustrated by this, and I can't blame him," Groeschner said. "But I think he'll work out of this. I think you will see the same guy. It's hard for him to envision that, the way he's feeling right now."

Some scouts believe Vizquel lost a step last season, especially to his right, but that Pedro Feliz's exceptional defense at third base helped to obscure the issue.

Vizquel was clear on one matter: shortstop is his only position. "I don't have any business at second base."

• With his banner game Sunday, Bowker became the first Giants player to drive in at least four runs in a game before his 25th birthday since Jay Canizaro on Aug. 21. 1996, according to the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat. The Giants had seven RBIs by players younger than 25 Sunday, the most in a game since Will Clark drove in seven runs all by himself on June 22, 1988.