If you're gonna put Benard in left field, couldn't you put Feliz at SS? I mean, for the 25 games or so he played there, he was better than Clayton, right?

I'm really cranky about this as I've said about two or three other times. The hell with this, the hell with the crappy collusive umpiring, the hell with blowing leads in the 8th and forget all of it. They'll walk Barry till he's 54 to avoid giving him the HR record, the Red Sox players will never STFU about a player they only have to see twice this year and never the rest, and the media will wonder why Barry hates them as they rip him a new one snidely every weekly column (I say this as an erstwhile member of the media). Linden was too good to get cut like that after a stupid play, whatever Bochy says about that not being the reason. Jon Miller sounds depressed at the end of the game and I can't even listen to one more postgame show where the summation is "The Giants failed to capitalize." Because of OPP (Other People's Precipitation) the Giants will lose twice in Philly or Pitt or whatever the hell Smoke Belt city they were going to play in -- the travel schedule assed us out big time there. We can't even beat the Rockies. Stupid fangirls are up in Tim Lincecum's business already and the kid is like 14 (any company reading this is excluded of course). I don't get to go to Giants Photo Day even though I have tickets because I'll be in Denver (hopefully working on a soccer game from the TV truck. Wait, that doesn't belong in a cranky thread).

Well and Omar may be finished offensively, Roberts is out of commission and we may have seen the last of Joel Zumaya's 103. I still miss Tomko. The Rockies are dominant, Arizona is scary and we can't get it to work with either the kids or the ancient ones or a mix of both. Randy Winn cannot steal a base. Matty Mo is going to come back to earth sometime. Russ Ortiz is on the DL with a fake injury. Correiassey is awfully inconsistent as are Sanchez, Capt. Jack and even Mando when he doesn't get the right calls from the umpires.

HAVE I MENTIONED THE UMPIRES?

I'm trying to think of reasons to listen to the Giants now instead of putting on some Goo Goo Dolls every night and moping around in an offseasoneque haze of ennui. What's the point, we're just going to lose in the late innings. Barry will get walked. My Notgardo can't pick off a runner to save his precious life, and I'm afraid he's next on the chopping block while Bochy decides to give someone else a chance. Klesko and Sweeney are underwhelming me. I'm afraid Frandsy is just going to be another NiekroLindenWhateverWhoever. Accardo's closing in Toronto and Chulk seems to have lost whatever he had last year. I'd rather have Gil Meche than Barry Zito. I can't name a single Brewer and yet they're tearing up the entire MLB so the hell with that.

To quote the Baron, vaya con dios, Magellan. End rant.

Didn't the Giants trade for Aurilia when he was in like single-A?  Can't that count as developed?

The team drafted JD Drew in the 20th round of the 1994 draft, but he didn't sign. I know that doesn't count, but damn.

I'm going to take this as a general grumpy thread, because I'm grumpy that I have to turn in anything after my graduation on MOTHER'S DAY, much less almost 40 pages worth of stuff.

Grrr.

"They might as well draft six pitchers and try and trade them for talent from other teams."

Now you're getting the idea!  I've been writing this for a few years now, but pitching is the way to go.  11-13 positions on every team is made up of pitchers.   Everyone needs pitching or would love an upgrade on pitching.  Middle rotation starters (historically - Lilly and Meche pitching great this season) like Vicente Padilla, Gil Meche, and Ted Lilly got $10-11M per year in the last off-season, horribly expensive for middle of rotation.  

The Giants need to fill their cup first and they are nearly done, their pitching staff is almost all homegrown and I like them as a group, particularly the starting rotation.  Once the cup is full, then for each better guy we develop and promote, we now have a pitcher pushed out that we can trade to another team.  

Look at how San Diego traded pitching to get A-Gon.  Toronto traded pitching to get Overbay, nothing great, but better than anything we've had at 1B recently.  The Nationals got Kearns AND Lopez for a couple of good relievers.  Tampa Bay has position players coming out of their pores but they need pitching.  

We just need to be patient with the pitching staff that we have, make do with what we have in the starting lineup, and real soon, we will have a surplus in pitching that can be traded for young position players.  

Hopefully some more pitchers continue to develop this season - like Misch, Sadler, Wilson, Begg, Anderson, Pereira, Griffin, Matos, McKae, Oseguera,  Cowart, Synder, Pucetas - and we can trade off either people on the major league roster that these prospects can replace or these prospects specifically, to get better position prospects, particularly corner infielders right now, which is a weak (relatively; they are all weak in any case) position for us right now in the farm system looking forward (and Villalona is at least 3-4 years away from making the majors, if not 6-8, he's only 16 after all.

And I'm still pissed at Pietrus for missing those two free throws after Biedrins nutted up and made both of his.

I still hate the Rockies.

Circular argument:

Hitting prospects never develop into anything good, so only way to get hitters is FA vets so why bother developing hitting prospects.

I don't disagree with the concept, but there's been pretty crappy execution of this strategy by the Giants. In fact, I don't think that's been their strategy at all, and when it's been tried, it has not been terribly successful. When's the last time we got some good position players for young pitching?

Here is a list of major league position players that Sabean has traded young pitching for since 1997 (by transaction dates):

2006
Hillenbrand

2005
Winn

2004
Ricky Ledee

2003
Dustan Mohr
AJ
Eric Young

2002
Bill Mueller (from Cubs)
Kenny Lofton

2001
Shinjo (and Relaford for Estes)
Desi Relaford (later traded for David Bell)
John Vander Wal
Andres Galarraga

1999
Bobby Estalella (in exchange for Chris Brock, not a homegrown talent)

1996
J.T. Snow
Ramon Martinez

As you can see, most of the transactions were for rent-a-bats. Very few lasted more than a season with us. Most of Sabean's successful transactions have been trading young pitching for established pitching (Livan, Nen, a bunch of relievers).

Obviously, the biggest trade of the Sabean era was the Matt Williams trade, which wasn't trading away young pitching for bats. Also, getting Burks for Darryl Hamilton was huge, but it wasn't getting a bat for young pitching.

If anything, we've spent our time trying get bats thru free agency, which we've been moderately successful at until the last few years, when the pickings have been very slim. Relying on that practice puts us at the mercy of the marketplace and we may not fill our needs with good players. A lot of team are locking up their position players before they hit the market.

If our plan has been to trade young pitching for bats, we've done a horrible job at implementing it.

I guess the bottom line is that there are many good position players in the majors. They must have come from somehwere. I'm guessing that nearly all of them were drafted by a major league team. We should try to draft some ourselves instead of relying on other teams to figure that out for us and hoping that one day down the road, other teams have fire sales or let those guys walk as free agents. that means drafting corner infielders and outfielders that have a lot of power potential, not just speedy middle infielders and outfielders that can steal bases but can't hit a double.

As the great Ray Bradbury once said, "You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you."

Except replace "writing" with "booze", and "reality" with "the Giants".

I'm lobbying for a more upbeat outlook from Giants Fans from here on out.  We need some faith in our nation.  We're loyal, but not faithful.

Didn't we trade Armando Rios for Jason Schmidt? I think that should qualify Rios as our best home grown prospect in the past 20 years. Especially since he broke his leg less than a week later.

I love that the Padres traded Doug Mirabelli to the red sox for a stud relief pitcher. That makes me feel better about my life.

I've decided to be an optimist about the draft and hope the team just takes the best player available. If the Giants draft hitters, then great, we could definitely use some hitting prospects. If the Giants draft pitchers, that's great, too, because the team has shown it can identify and develop young pitchers.

But this brings up an interesting question: Are the Giants just terrible at identifying good, young hitters, or do they pick the right guys in the draft but screw them up in the development process? Or, perhaps, both.