I’m sure there’s someone cheap, who gets along with the players, and who has some basic idea about stats and how to handle young pitchers. Manny Acta can’t be the only one who fits this.

Harold would be a great pick!

Brenly loves to bunt with position players. Pass.

I like Valentine, but I think he enjoys being in Japan.

Sorry, man. No to Valentine, who is a Grade A asshat. Maybe he’s had some zenlike personal growth in Japan, but I would doubt his tired act would work in North America again.

Reynolds is a tool. I have seen no evidence that he “knows the game,” and the circumstances under which he left ESPN would make him untouchable in the politically correct environs of SF. Plus, really, ‘knows the game’???

Brenly, nope. I don’t think he is a great manager at all, despite the WS. (Which, by the way, you or I could have managed the D’backs w/Randy J and Curt S that year, and take our chances against the Yankees. It wasn’t Brenly who beat the Yankees.) He’s the tool who got all pissed off in a post-game press conference when some catcher tried to bunt in the 8th inning of a 1-0 no-hitter Schilling was throwing, calling the bunt attempt a bush league violation of “the rules.” Um, yeah, it’s a CLOSE GAME and NOTHING WAS WORKING AGAINST YOUR PITCHER THAT NIGHT. Days later, he acknowledged the total appropriateness of the bunt attempt insofar as it was a close game, nothing else was working, blah blah. A smarter man would have known it at the moment it was happening.

I am TOTALLY WITH YOU about Righetti. Is there any indication whatsoever that he is any better than not having a pitching coach? The team can send any uniformed personnel out there to talk to a pitcher in the middle of an inning—how about another pitcher? How cool would that be. Like when teammates on a curling squad discuss the shot before shooting the rock. (I much prefer winter Olympics.)

i thought he should have replaced dusty. i think he was broadcasting then.

Even more than Rush.

Even ignoring the high pitch count, Cain didn’t look so hot in the 7th.

Except this isn’t something new we’re complaining about. It’s been a common complaint for a while now.

we’ve been complaining about his usage of Cain and Lincecum all year, n00b.

We ended up winning the damn game. Nevermind the fact that we won it due to our youth…

Also, hardly. Castillo, Burris, and Velez all hit balls that would have ended the inning and lost the game 99/100 times. The game ended in a really absurd, and remarkably unlikely way. We ended up winning the game because the dodgers fucked it up so hard that we couldn’t help but win the game.

I think the ‘pitch count obsession’ quote, minus Matt Cain reference, belongs to Nolan Ryan.

FWIW, I take comments like that from former HOF players with a grain of salt, because I think the fact that Nolan Ryan is a freak of nature probably plays into his impression of what other pitchers can and can’t do. I wonder if he’s remembering all the pitchers he played with over the years who blew out their arms who might have been helped with a few pitch counts. It’s not like we read quotes on pitch counts from guys who won ten, twenty games and then blew out their arms in the newspapers. ‘In my day’ and ‘from my personal experience’ are not always the best sign points for future success.

my god, is velez fast though…

I’d rather save Cain for the seasons that matter, you know, like when we’re in a pennant race. that won’t be next year either, so might as well let him progress at a regular rate, which is increasing his innings by 30 or so per season and not letting him get unbelievable high pitch counts.

Today, once he got past 100 pitches, they were all high stress pitches and he wasn’t getting guys out. You can just tell by watching sometimes when a pitcher is losing it and it was obvious today. Given the fact that the two guys who kill Cain, Kemp and Ethier were coming up, it would have been a good idea to go to the pen. So, strategically, it was a bad move, too.

granted, keeping him out there today isn’t the worst thing in the world, but if he does it on a regular basis, which Bochy does, then it could be problematic further down the line when it matters.

Well, I think he started Roberts because Lewis needed a day off. I’m all for playing the kids, but it’s perfectly fine with me to give them a day off every once in awhile (as long as it really is once in awhile)

Lewis has an injury issue. I have no problem with resting him for that reason. Of course, Lewis will see Roberts get all those hits and praise and he’ll be back out there in no time…

I think the issue for me isn’t and never has been letting these guys pitch to help groom them to be able to go late into games. I was happy when he left Matt in to finish the complate game, and I don’t see that as contradictory to being mad that he didn’t take him out in this case.

There is nothing wrong with giving the guy an opportunity to learn at the risk of that guy taking a few knocks in the process.

My complaint comes from a different place. In my view, which is one that has obviously been contested and perhaps rightfully so, Cain looked like he was tiring in the seventh. More than that, though. He looked like he was tiring when he started the seventh, and he looked even more tired as the inning went on. I suppose there is a large element of this evaluation that is purely subjective, but by my view Cain’s control was declining and his movement was declining (which is to say that he was hanging pitches).

And what I don’t believe in, and never will believe in, is pitching a guy through fatigue. Learning how to pitch late in games, to me, does absolutely NOT mean learning to pitch through a physical brick wall. When a guy gets fatigued, two things happen: 1) He becomes physically less capable of doing the things he was doing before fatigue set in, and 2) His risk of injury increases exponentially.

And being physically less capable of doing the things he was doing before isn’t something that he can “mental” himselt through. it’s not something that he can “experience” or “learn” his way through. It’s just a brick wall, after which he is going to be visibly less effective no matter how many times you put him through it, expecting him to figure out the magic formula.

No, to me learning to pitch late into games means 1) learning to how to effectively limit your output so that you don’t get fatigued by the late innings (whether that means throwing fewer total pitches, throwing fewer high stress pitches, throwing fewer high stress innings, doing arm circles between innings, or whatever), and 2) learning how to execute effectively when you do get to the late innings without fatigue.

Pitching once you’re already tired isn’t going to help you accomplish either one of those two things and only serves to (numbering theme here) 1) leave you more prone to blowing a game, and 2) leave you more prone to getting hurt. Neither of which are desirable outcomes.

I mean, do you see where I’m coming from? I’m not going to pretend that I might not be wrong about Cain having been tired today, though to my eye it sure as hell looked like it, but even if you don’t see that to be the case, simply accepting that it is what I do believe to be the case, can you see why this outing makes me mad whereas something like the complate game that he threw doesn’t make me mad? And does it make sense how that isn’t hypocritical. How it’s not a catch-22 for Bochy. How that does leave a correct way to do things that I wouldn’t complain about if he did them that way?

Does it make any sense?

The distinction must be made between pitching and offense. Giants fans have never had reason to complain about young pitchers getting opportunities. Estes, Nathan, Foppert, Williams, Ainsworth, etc. They all got plenty of chances at early ages.

It’s Giants position players that have always gotten the short end of the stick. At least for me, and I suspect most other fans who complain about playing the kids, it’s about the position players. It’s about Vizquel and Durham and Aurilia and Roberts playing when there is less than zero good reasons for them to be playing over Frandsen, Schierholtz, Lewis, etc. It’s about not trading Randy Winn/signing him to a long and rich contract. It’s about Jose Castillo at second base.

In addition, pitching is a different animal than hitting. It is possible for a pitcher, particularly a young pitcher, to have too much time on the field. Too much time on the field is rarely a detriment to a young position player. However, it can be to a young pitcher.

This is why criticizing Bochy about leaving in young pitchers too long is not hypocritical.