The Giants in the offseason had hired someone senior and experienced to help them out administratively (I wrote on it but don't remember his name right now) because Bobby Evans or whoever it was made all sorts of mistakes that caused the contracts to not be signed by any of the players until that language was cleared up. After the hire, there was no more mention of this problem and it was apparently resolved quickly.
However, there was a blurb in the Chron today that the Giants had "misstated the rule regarding Todd Linden's future. If he is not traded within a 10-day period that began Thursday, he must clear waivers before the Giants can outright him to Triple-A Fresno." I think the original statement had stated that he would be put on waivers during that period too, which would allow the Giants to outright him to AAA after 10 days, not this corrected 10 days plus waiver period (3 days?).
Shouldn't that have been something relatively easy to know and handle? It isn't the first time a player has been DFAed, in fact, Niekro was DFAed just recently. Should this be boilerplated somewhere?
Just a thought about their administrative problems, I hope it's not a sign of an underlying problem, that can screw things up quickly if we are losing prospects due to technicalities.
Maybe I'm mistaken, but I read that blurb as meaning the Chron had made the error, not the Giants.
ReplyDeleteAnd in any case- is it even reasonable to call Linden a prospect anymore? He pretty clearly won't ever be more than a stopgap fourth or fifth outfielder unless he drastically changes his approach at the plate.
ReplyDeleteOh, I see what you mean, perhaps it was the Chron that made the mistake and not the Giants. In which case, my bad...
ReplyDeleteI was not refering to Linden as a prospect when I noted "losing prospects," I just meant prospects in general in the future. I forgot who the team was, but once a few years ago, a team put a player on waivers to put him in the minors but forgot some rule about how to handle that and ended up releasing him and some other team picked him up from them.
Plus, I have seen some Giants fans say that the Giants screwed up when we lost Burres via waivers, that he should not have been lost had they just did things in another way instead of placing him on the 40 man in the first place. Maybe Coutlangus too.
I regretted losing them but to make a big stink about it seemed to be overboard to me, they seemed like they would be middle relievers at best, situational in Coutlangus' place - in other words, would bring no value in a trade.
In any case, I wish them all the best, Burres is up with the Orioles and Coutlangus with the Reds, and I think both had been doing reasonably well, though not Liriano well.
Martin, I took your well founded challenge and looked back at the games. Your suggestions were very good, BTW.
ReplyDeleteThe examination of the games show that the preliminary conclusions were correct. In otherwords, there really aren't any situations in which the starter leaves with runners on, the pen allows them to score and the starter gets the loss. In Lincecum's first start, even tho he gives up 5 runs, the giants come back to tie the game; then the pen gives up 3 runs for the loss, which Chulk gets.
So what you see is that, of the 18 losses, only 5 are attributed to the pen and actually are a result of the pen either blowing a win or losing a tie game. They don't lose any games for the starters. What is more interesting, is that the losses really are, in large part, attributed to the offense (LA, 1-2, 1-4; SD 0-1, 0-4; Az 2-3; NY 1-4; Colo 2-6). WE were pretty awful those first 3 series, scoring 12 runs in the 8 games we lost. We were only blown out twice in that stretch (0-7 vs SD and 4-10 vs LA).
Then, after our winning streak we went to Az and scored 8 runs in 3 games, losing 2-3, 4-5, and 4-5. One was kind of a heart breaker where Zito gave up 3 runs, the pen held but we only scored 2. Taschner and Chulk blew Cain's start in the 4-5 loss. The one game that comes the closest is the series final which Morris lost. Perhaps he shouldn't have gone out for the 7th. Game tied, 3-3 Morris gave up 2 in the 7th and we score one in the 8th; Morris gets the loss, pen gives up no runs. One of the bull pen losses is the infamous Mets game where Linden made the non catch, leading to the loss that Benitez got.
I don't know what the splits are, SP vs RP for ERA, but, while not lights out, we have what I would say is a top 1/3 pen that probably preserves 3 wins for every game they lose. In looking at the pen's 5 loses, the first, the SD 3-5 loss, we were tied when MOrris left the game; Hennessey and Taschner each gave up a run in an inning pitched. Colo came from behind against Sanchez and Correia (the famous drive by Torrealba that clanked off of Linden's glove). Taschner and Chulk gave it up in the 4-5 loss to Az. After we tied it in Lincecum's first start, the pen gave up 3 runs to lose. And then the Mets loss, 3-5, where we are leading only to allow 3 runs in the 8th and 9th innings, highlighted by Linden's misplay. So, two of those losses have huge contributions from defensive lapses.
Since the first 3 series, the offense has only been held down (in losses) 5 times, scoring 2, 1, 3, 3, and 2 runs. On the other side of it, when we lose (including the entire season) we allow scores of: (7, 5, 2, 4, 10, 1, 4, 5 first three series), 3, 5, 5, 9, 9, 8, 4, 5, 5, 6.
So, it looks like a little bit of everything, O, D, SP, RP. All have been good, all have had game costing lapses.