SB Nation User Blog: kennv

Who is the whipping boy now?

kennv — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 13:17:42 -0000

Baggs' post game wrap was basically a post road trip wrap, where Sabean took stock and laid blame. And his vet love oozes all over the page and then he names the primary culprits for the struggling Giants offense: the young players, all crudely lumped into a single mass of fail:

"It's not the at-bats vs. what they look like, and that teams have been successful getting him out," Sabean said of Frandsen, who hit .128 in 39 at-bats. "And we've seen the same thing from (Travis) Ishikawa and (Fred) Lewis and Schierholtz and (John) Bowker, who hasn't been nearly as comfortable as we thought he'd be. None of that has helped the situation."

Bowkermania never flowed through my veins, but his struggles are still a surprise. Yet it's a pretty small sample and is he really the problem? Are the young guys at fault?

The team batting average for the road trip was .218. How bad did the kids do? Ishikawa is my guy, so I'll pick him from the bunch to defend. He entered the road trip with a .269 average, and left the road trip with a .269 average (OBP and SLG did go down over the road trip, and AVG is a pretty hollow stat, but I have it available for me from the article). Similarly, Schierholtz maintained .295 average and hovered around OBP/SLG of 325/425 over the road trip. Not great numbers for either of them, but NOT THE PROBLEM (if the problem is a .218 AVG).

Of the vets, Winn stayed consitently classy but punchless (.711 OPS) and Fred Lewis should demand a trade to Colorado after his little revival there.

Who does Sabes want back? Rowand went 1 for 17 (Must of the suck coming before the bruise). Renteria just managed to maintain an AVG above 250, OBP above 300 and OPS over 620, flirting with lower numbers throughout the road trip. Molina ... well he still is making tons of outs.

Bowker, Downsie, Molina and Uribe can take a big part of the blame in my book for the dismal offense this road trip. Too many outs. Who do you blame (aside from that stupid purple dino or the other teams' talent)? Who is the whipping boy now? Who is the object of your scorn? Look back on the road trip and fill in the blank "Ah, sh**, ____ is up again. Guess I'll hit the can and grab a beer/nachos/soda/pop." Who is your blank? Who do you dump?

(One of) Ten things you should know about Sotomayor

kennv — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:02:01 -0000

(One of) Ten things you should know about Sotomayor

Let's not mix politics and baseball too much, but I want to point out that Obama's first pick for Supreme Court "saved" baseball in 1995 by ruling against the owners and ending the strike.

From 5/15 NYTs and reprinted at the Huffington Post:
After play resumed, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that by saving the season, Judge Sotomayor joined forever the ranks of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams. The Chicago Sun-Times said she "delivered a wicked fastball" to baseball owners and emerged as one of the most inspiring figures in the history of the sport.

For Obama's next trick can he get rid of Bud?

Fangraphs Article on Tim's release point

kennv — Wed, 13 May 2009 14:59:29 -0000

Fangraphs Article on Tim's release point

Author speculates on how awesome the Enchanter is.

also an article about how Perdomo is being used by San Diego.

WHO?

kennv — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 05:51:03 -0000

WHO?

Baggs talks Nate. Discuss.

OT: R - Statistics Software Environment

kennv — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:37:20 -0000

OT: R - Statistics Software Environment

Have any of you geeks used R? I am thinking about delving into it for some basic descriptive statistics and regression analysis (for social science applications), and maybe some pretty graphs. Is R worth it? Is R "easy" to use/learn? I've used SPSS and STATA.

If you haven't heard of R, maybe you'll want to check it out too. It is a freeware-GNU software environment for playing with (large amounts of) numbers and graphs.

Monday's cuts

kennv — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:27:02 -0000

Monday's cuts

Per Schulman: In other news, the Giants made six cuts today, with no surprises. Pitchers Jesse English and Henry Sosa, and infielder Conor Gillaspie, were optioned. Catcher Eli Whiteside and infielders Matt Downs and Jake Wald were reassigned to the minor-league camp.

Personally, I'm a little surprised to see English go down after 3 innings pitched. I guess despite his spot on the 40 man roster, the Giants never considered him for a spot out coming out of spring training. I still think we might see some English in the season after someone in the bullpen wears out their welcome (I'm looking at you, Special Agent).

Baggs on Uribe

kennv — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 14:49:06 -0000

Baggs on Uribe

"Juan Uribe has impressed me thus far. He really seems to have a plan in batting practice, going to right field and then working his way to pulling the ball. Seems to control his bat very well. He hit an impressive double, but was thrown out trying for a triple."

This sounds disturbingly similar to Jose Castillo news from last year. "have a plan" "going to right field" "impressive double" "thrown out".

Brian Wilson will make his first Cactus League appearance Friday, pitching sometime after Randy...

kennv — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:14:02 -0000

Brian Wilson will make his first Cactus League appearance Friday, pitching sometime after Randy Johnson. Among Wilson's goals this season is to save Johnson's 300th career victory.

"I'm already growing out my mullet," Wilson said. "It's going to be awesome."

per Baggs

Top Giants Prospects, nonGroupthink edition expanded and revised

kennv — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 03:56:15 -0000

Way back in December of 2008, I put up this fanpost so that we, the McCoven, could express our individual views of the top 10 Giants Prospects in comparison with the our McCovey Chronicles Community Pospect List. As the Community Prospect List winds down it seems like a good time to revisit the idea.

Before the top-10 lists that were posted showed the main points of disagreement were minor order squibbles between the top-4 guys and then the 4-8 guys and then deciding who made the cut for the top ten. Pucetas or Barnes? Kieschnick or Ishikawa? I think this time we will see some new trends develop. (that is if anyone participates....) Do relievers belong in a the top 20? How do you seperate out the group of starters that began the season in San Jose? Age and Level? Potential versus Proximity? I think we'll see some patterns emerge that resulted from voting system where under 25% of the vote could win the spot. And of course, with more spots available than when we posted top-10s, we should see more widely varied results.

And, maybe you've changed your mind since voting in the polls. Have the discussions here swayed you? Perdomo who? What's a Jesus "Raptor" Guzman? Did John Sickels sway you with his top 20?

So post your list of top prospects and go as high as you would like. Maybe explain your ranking decisions, or maybe let us guess at your ranking criteria and philosophy. This is also the time for those 15 people that have been voting for McBryde for 20 rounds to put him where he BELONGS! A chance for EME to be ranked either 10th or off the list entirely. What sort of idiot would rank Snyder 19 spots below Pucetas!!!!1! Remember voting for that one guy in poll after poll until the rest of us finally got there? Well now put him in your list where you want and move on. Simple.

Let it all out. Be an individual! Respect to the group, but let's see what YOU think.

Giant's Top Ten Prospects, nonGROUPThink Groupthink edition

kennv — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 14:53:40 -0000

At this point I think it might be cool to see how people's individual top tens are reflected in the community top ten. I was going to post this in a comment in the #11 poll, but didn't want to steal the thunder of the Pucetas-bashing, Ishikawa-pumping comments there.

Here's the Community Top Ten:

1. SP Madison Bumgarner
2. "C" Buster Posey
3. SP Tim Alderson
4. 1B Angel Villalona
5. 2B Nick Noonan
6. 3B Conor Gillaspie
7. SP Henry Sosa
8. OF Rafael Rodriguez
9. OF Roger Kieschnick
10. SP Kevin Pucetas

How does your list differ from that? I'll post mine in a comment.

We also might compare our top ten list this year with top ten from last year. Find your top ten from last year and compare it with yours from this year. Some of us attempted to predict BAs top ten in this thread. By the way BA's top ten was:

1. Angel Villalona
2. Tim Alderson
3. Madison Bumgarner
4. Nate Schierhotz
5. Henry Sosa
6. Nick Noonan
7. Eugenio Velez
8. Wendell Fairley
9. John Bowker
10. Emmanuel Burriss