- It appears that Ishikawa wants the 1B job badly: he is 3 for 3 in the spring training opener, homered twice, and drove in 4 runs, 3 on homers. OK power for you DProfessor? :^)Sure, just first game of spring training, but good for a start.
- Schierholtz also homered and had two RBI.
- Sandoval had a walk! And a hit.
- Lincecum went one inning, one strikeout, one hit, no runs/ER.
- Yabu and Pichardo knocked around for 3 runs each
- Luis Perdomo, our Rule 5 Draft pick, went one inning, one walk, one strikeout. He's going to have to do really well to make the team, not that many spots open, basically 4 are taken - Wilson, Affeldt, Howry, Romo - and Hinshaw and Taschner have a strong hold on two other spots, leaving one spot among Perdomo, Yabu, Sadler, Matos, Pichardo to fight over, unless Taschner and/or Hinshaw falters and give up their spots.
- BTW: Giants win spring training opener, 10-7
- Fun factoid: Velez catches last out of the game in deep left-centerfield. No, he wasn't playing 2B. :^)
These are just my opinions. I cannot promise that I will be perfect, but I can promise that I will seek to understand and illuminate whatever moves that the Giants make (my obsession and compulsion). I will share my love of baseball and my passion for the Giants. And I will try to teach, best that I can. Often, I tackle the prevailing mood among Giants fans and see if that is a correct stance, good or bad.
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Wednesday, February 25, 2009
2009 Cactus League Opener: Giants vs. Indians
Interesting notes from the game:
Don't take the discussion personally, Martin.
ReplyDeleteHopefully TI does well, but it is the first game of ST, in a minor league stadium to boot. Same goes for Nate, who has a higher upside than TI.
All of these boys---Pablo, Nate, and TI have to bring it---and sustain it.
Baseball is, after all, entertainment.
FYI, people don't seem to get it so I'll to put it in plain words:
ReplyDelete:^) connotes joking around in my posts
So I'm not the one taking it personally...
Also, I did note "Sure, just first game of spring training...". I assume most people know that spring training performance is no proof of anything, particularly the very first game of spring training. I think people who lived through Randy Elliott and other spring training phenoms know that.
Still, better than an O-fer-4 with 3 strikeouts. And he did it against LHP, which is another area of worry for him.
I'm not sure what entertainment has to do with our prospects bringing it and sustaining it.
Entertaining is winning and playing exciting baseball. Watching Jose Castillo and Eugenio Velez implode last year---not entertaining at all. Castillo should have been released much earlier and replaced by on the roster---how about TI? Instead we wasted AB's and got rotten defense to boot (no pun).
ReplyDeleteMy point is the Giants should try new players, but not keep throwing them out there if they can't hack it unless they're something special like MadBum or Posey.
I guess we are different then.
ReplyDeleteI acknowledge that teams are not going to win all the time and I can enjoy well-played elements of the game, like all the games Lincecum started in 2008, Wilson for the most part, and seeing the young players get a chance knowing that not all of them will succeed. I enjoy blowouts and games with little scoring, I guess I'm just odd in that way.
TI could not replace Castillo, he doesn't play 3B. That is why Castillo was kept all season, we had no viable 3B prospect ready to bring up for much of the season, until Sandoval did so well in AA, then Rohlinger.
That's where Frandsen's injury hurt so bad, he was going to be our 3B for 2008, it was pretty much clear that if Durham was OK, 3B was going to be his starting position, but then he hurt himself and we had no 3B and it was too late to pick up any free agent at the end of spring training.
And at that time, Ishikawa gave no inkling that 2008 was going to be so different from 2007. And you don't want to reward luck either so he had to prove it both at AA and AAA, before getting the call to the majors.