Jesse Foppert was released, presumably to make room for the bevvy of draftee arms.

"AFW" was the buzzword for the era of Giant pitching dominance back when I first started on the sfgiants.com board. Ainsworth, Foppert, Williams. Man, how stupid that all seems now, since obviously the future was CLBA.

Oh well. There were, in the end, probably worse prospects to, say, name a blog after.

(scroll down to Giants)

I'm sorry, it looks like you said Kevin Frandsen was released. That's not a nice joke to make.

Hedrick, 26, doesn’t throw hard and never seemed to impress the Giants despite his performance. He was 4-6, 2.14 with 72 strikeouts in 71 innings at Double-A Connecticut in 2007, so naturally the Giants sent him back to the Eastern League; he was 2-3, 1.37 last year there with nine saves and a 74-21 K-BB ratio in 66 innings. His career line—10-15, 2.38, 28 saves, 317.1 IP, 219 H, 379 K, 120 BB and a 2.38 career ERA.

Fortunately, I have some extremely trenchant analysis as to why this happened, and am not simply screwing up my face and saying, "Whaaat?"

Wait, that's a lie.

Whaaat?

Ben Badler at BA is still trying to make the argument that Sandoval, far from being a flawed receiver, is actually an above-average one.

2/3 of the way down the page: "Pablo Sandoval: You’re going to have to forgive me. Last time I wrote that I’d go more in-depth about Sandoval here, but I’m going to save Sandoval for his own blog post early next week. Between his outstanding regular season—both offensively and defensively—and his monster winter ball campaign, there’s just too much to cram into this post. But as you can see, even though the Giants appear to be moving him from catcher to a corner infield position, not only was he serviceable and preventing passed balls, he was above-average in that department. "

Oh yeah, and some more evidence that my boy Jackson is a complete waste. Trying to decide what to do with him now--Outward Bound? French Foreign Legion? Human sacrifice?

...according to Baseball America.

Oh Jackson Williams. I knew I adopted you to do something other than occasionally clean out the storm gutter. Which you need to do, by, the way, if you expect me to take the padlock off the pantry.

But more importantly, with regards to Sandoval, that reignites the question, are we sure we want to permanently move him to a corner and give up on him behind the plate? I know there's no way he's supplanting Money this year, but this is the second year in a row he's been in the top echelon of gunners according to BA; it could potentially be a waste if we don't give him some chances to keep polishing his defense.

(from Baseball America)

An RBI force from Kieschnick and a 3-run shot from Posey cap off the Hawaiian Baseball league season, especially since the Waikiki BeachBoys looked just gawdawful before Buster came along.

While I'm aware that the HWBL means only marginally more than pick-up kickball, it's good to see top picks adjusting well. But most importantly, according to BA, "For winning, members of the winning team each received a watch that read "2008 HWB Champions" and a HWB duffel bag. Losing team members just got the duffel bag. "

Dude. No one wants to be the fool with just a duffel bag.