Unfortunately, Tom "Mr. T" Tolbert was gone all week, as he usually deflates Ralph down from his high horse - which is why they make good partners, Tom somehow can do that and still be Ralph's friend - Ralph initially had daggars in his voice when Tom was first added to the show, that the friendship and respect I hear today is 180 degrees from those initial days. None of the guest hosts, I guess, felt like they could take Ralph on or something (I think one was Ted Robinson) and risk not getting a future gig taking over for Tolbert.
Jon Miller to the Rescue
Then came Jon Miller to save Flem's honor, and he did it in typical Jon Miller fashion, with humor. Ralph had a pre-game talk with Miller on Friday where he decided to hit Jon up to join his cause. Jon was a little flummoxed at first, wondering how to go with the flow, kind of agreeing or at least acknowledging Ralph, basically straddling the fence, when he hit upon genius.
He started agreeing with Ralph wholeheartedly, saying (and I'm paraphrasing from memory, I don't remember every exact word said): "yeah, what's wrong with pitchers today! I remember Billy O'Dell, Alvin Dark had him throw 170 pitches, those were the days when men were men, plus Juan Marichial threw many a complete game," and stuff like that, and Ralph was just eatting it up, agreeing with Jon and everything, "yeah, Marichial had more complete games than wins..." as Ralph had found a kindred spirit, huzzah!
Then Jon threw the zinger in: "of course, Billy's career ended early. So did Juan Marichial, they all ended in their early 30's. Jim Palmer too. In fact, he was used so much his first season, they had to shut him down for two years from a shoulder injury - a shoulder injury! - and somehow he recovered from that to have a Hall of Fame career. I guess teams learned that they should protect their pitchers better in order to extend their careers..." (again, not verbatim, but approximate).
So Jon acts with hyperbole in "agreement" but then skewer's Ralph's position by showing how it led to pitcher's short careers, which, of course, implies Ralph is looking to shorten Lincecum's career by taking that stand. Genius.
Now my memory gets a bit foggier, I think Ralph was a little too blown away by Jon that he did not realize what had just happened and was just laughing and agreeing and glad to find someone who agreed with him (oh yeah, I think I had to run out and get something at that point, I was delaying to hear the main gist of what was being said...). That, to me, is further genius, Ralph didn't really know what had just happened, he still seemed happy to find someone who agrees with him.
Media Shows What Our Founding Fathers Feared
Still, good story I think, showing the dangers in the media when they get on a high horse and use their soapbox to detrimentally influence the general public, with no dissenting voice to be heard, which is why our government was built with the three areas of power - executive, congress, judicial - so that one alone could not autocratically control everything. Much like how I view Tim Kawakami of the Merc lately, he really thinks that the off-season of 2006 was the downfall of the Giants today (he inserted that jab in a column this week after his column a week or two ago that I wrote about recently) when it is clear to most fans out here that there were a few major reasons for this down period in Giants history:
1. Owner's (and probably Barry's) determination to win with Bonds
This led to all the acquisitions of veterans in recent years because once you made this determination, you had to go all in and roll the dice by signing up the best free agent veteran you could because every team was asking for Matt Cain whenever we came a-calling with trade ideas. Fans seem to think other teams are smart, but, to me, many CYA their trades by simplying demanding the other team's best prospects, regardless of whether they think they are any good or not. Sabean has all his scouts and coaches rate each prospect as a keeper or not, and the players on the not are the ones who get traded. I think Sabean's overall record shows that this system usually works and works well.
But that doesn't work with free agency, if there are rotting vegetable and fruits for sale on the free agent market today, you either buy them or you go hungry - and the Giants ownership was determined not to go hungry (i.e. guarantee losing). That's what a lot of fans don't realize, if you spend $20M on a Barry Bonds, to not go all in with the rest of your budget and buy the best available free agent's out there, that would be like buying a fancy sportscar and then living in a cardboard box. Unfortunately, the players available on the market were not the best around lately.
2. Owner's (and probably Sabean's) decision to not have so many high priced stars
This came out of the Matt Williams-Barry Bonds salary taking up so much of the payroll, that Williams was traded. The problem was not Williams salary, but rather it was the combination of his salary and much reduced production due to numerous injuries, and the disastrous contract given Robby Thompson after the 1993 season, which ate up another big chunk of the payroll with lousy production.
What fans forget is that this affected the Giants from 2003-present day, as first Robb Nen took a huge chunk and we got nothing, then add in Alfonzo, then Benitez, and currently Zito. That's why the D-gers were crap for a number of years when they had to eat Dreifort's contract, Colorado during the years they had to pay both Hampton and that other guy who was caught with a prostitute or something. Most teams cannot afford a big mistake like that, only the Yankees and probably now the Red Sox, but no other team can afford that.
3. No Bonds successor/No Owner's money
This is actually a result of the second point, but is also a function of the fact that the ownership didn't put up more money, so I think it is a major reason that should stand alone. The Giants should have signed Bonds successor in the 2003-2005 time period, whether Vlad, Ordonez, Beltran, whoever else was out there. The owners just didn't pony up the money when, in fact, they had the money - the money they offered Greg Maddux (who used them) - but chose not to use it.
That's why I've been pushing for new ownership who could bring in more money - like the Angel's and their billionaire sugar daddy - whether their own or others. Hopefully Neukom's Silicon Valley connections will pay off over the next decade or so, because we will need that to overcome the spending on Zito as long as he continues to flounder and not pitch the way he used to (I still believe he can, one of the few as far as I can tell, just a gut feeling that someone smart enough to have as few physical gifts as a pitcher as Zito does and still craft a pretty good career at an early baseball age, just need to find himself to do it again for us).
Giants Still In Good Shape Though
Despite these strategic and tactical mistakes, the Giants are in great shape for a team that is in re-building mode. Their pitching staff is pretty much re-built, though the loss of Valdez set back the bullpen a bit, people seem to forget that he was a huge part of the early success we had, we probably would be in good shape now if he were healthy and contributing like he was. Still, both Hinshaw and Romo is helping to mitigate that loss and if we can either get Valdez back and/or Sadler figures out how to use his amazing stuff up here, our bullpen will be awesome for the coming years.
Fans, got to love them, but to many of them, if any position player is average or below, he stinks. That is not right. Every team is made of many average and below average players, it is the good players who elevates the team above the rest. Now, if there is not enough good players (Giants lately) then that is a problem, but that makes one of the below good players replaceable, it does not make all of them bad for the team.
And as I was trying to show with my "Hey Series" posts (will continue soon...), if your pitching is the best in the league, you can get away with sub-par offense. Given that our pitchers should move up the learning curve again next season, we probably only need 1-2 more good hitters to put us back into division title contention, particularly if the other NL West teams are down again like this season.
Kissing Up to A's
And Kawakami the other day wrote about how Daric Barton is the most important player to the A's future, talking about how Chavez has faded from the scene and don't have impact hitters, but has "picked a bad time for a season-long slump." That's what happens with even "sure-thing" prospects, they will struggle and sometimes they will never figure it out.
Funny how he doesn't bring the hammer down on Beane, his hitting prospects are not doing so well, his pitching doesn't look that great either, with the youngsters melting down now, yet somehow he avoids giving the skewer to the A's like he has the Giants. When the A's has faced the same thing that the Giants has over the past few years and his drafts were so bad that he was forced to trade away good players like Haren (I wouldn't have traded him, he's someone I would have centered my team on) in order to rebuild his farm system. Meanwhile, the youngsters who were suppose to contribute this year haven't been doing much.
So why don't bring the screws on Beane as much as he has with Sabean? At least Sabean has a stellar pitching staff that's going to be great for years, Beane has nothing right now than magic beans he got for his cows at the market. Hopefully they turn out, but the Giants are in way better shape than the A's in terms of rebuilding and Kawakami loves taking pot shots at them.
If they deserve the pot shots, I would throw them at the Giants too (like during the 70's and 80's) but I don't think so right now.
