of course he’s for real

TI’s theme song

oh yeah, I like TI as a viable platoon guy

I don’t have any blind optimism spent on the niners this season, so I have plenty to throw at this dude. GO TI! I beLIEve!

There should be a third option: “I want to believe, but I’ve been hurt so many times before.”

It really is an abusive relationship.

Ishikawa has always been a guy that the scouts of have liked and he has always shown promise. I sincerely hope that his improvement this year can continue on into next year. The Giants (and Sabean) just may get lucky and end up filling the hole at 1B (at least against RHP) for 2009. Having 1B covered will make the offseason a little easier for the FO.

But, I do agree with others, that we need to see what he can do the rest of the season before handing him the 2009 1B job (although, nothing might stop Sabean from giving it to him anyway).

I am rooting for TI to have a strong rest of the season.

I am so drinking this kool-aid.

I believe in John Bowker Travis Ishikawa.

Too early to tell.

I’m willing to say that for the rest of the season, he’s the starting first baseman, though I’d give Sandoval some ab’s there as well.

If the decision is the platoon him, I’d hope that they gradually increase his number of ab’s against lefties to increase his confidence and exposure. You don’t spend all that time and money on a guy just to platoon him. In any event, I’d rather see TI against a LHP than Richie against anyone.

4/4 lifetime against Nolasco.

Clearly, you’re writing to reach us, with respect to why it always rains on us, something something driftwood.

no matter what he hits. If he does well, give him the job next year. If he doesn’t, back to AAA for one last shot

Dodd Stadium did completely account for the decline: "The move to AA killed him. Dodd Stadium is an extreme pitcher’s park, but that couldn’t completely account for the decline. "

Ishikawa’s stats in 2005 and 2006 splits shows his batting line in 2005 is very similar to 2006-Away:

2005-total: .282/.387/.531/.918, .355 BABIP, 49% FB, 38% GB, 30% K, 0.54 BB/K, 249 ISO, 20 AB/HR
2006-Away: .244/.332/.470/.802, .324 BABIP, 46 FB, 39% GB, 34% K, 0.40 BB/K, 236 ISO, 23 AB/HR
2006-Home: .212/.289/.314/.603, .265 BABIP, 40 FB, 43% GB, 26% K%, 0.36 BB/K, 102 ISO, 46 AB/HR

The main difference between 2005 and 2006-Away is that his BABIP went down, accounting for the majority of the drop in OPS (drop in BB/K also contributed).

But 2006-home saw a huge drop in BABIP, FB%, ISO, resulting in the horrible batting line there, reduction in BA, OBP, SLG in particular, OPS. In addition, the HR ratio halved, resulting in a doubling of his AB/HR.

On top of that, Jonathan Mayo did some research and found that there is something at Municipal Park that screws up a hitter’s view, resulting in an inordinate amount of strikeouts there, one of the worse in all of the minors, let alone California League, making it a pitcher’s park in a hitter’s league. They even interviewed Bowker as a part of that series of articles on problem parks (Dodd also got mention as well) and he talked about the difficulties hitting there.

But I totally agree with FairweatherFan and would invoke the name of another slugging 1Bman, Lance Niekro, who had initial success and ultimately failed.

Though I will note that Ishikawa has actually been in 17 games, 41 AB thus far in his MLB career, as he played a little and nicely in 2006. His overall BABIP is .414 because he strikes out so many times (27% K%), contributing to his very nice batting line of .317/.364/.561/.925, 136 OPS+. His BABIP should drop by a lot which will kill his batting average, OBP, and SLG; the question is what is his true level of BABIP, it could be high, it could be low, but nobody knows. He’s actually hit well in his limited exposure to LHP in 2006 but totally small samples; he has been horrible against LHP in the minors. (Hence the platoon talks)

Just let him platoon with Sandoval next season (assuming they win that and not just handed it) with Sandoval also backing up C and getting at least one start per week there. That would be about 3 starts per week, about 300-350 AB in a season, more if Molina is traded mid-season. Heck, if they made it two starts per week catching, that would push it to 400-500, which is pretty much a full season, close enough that he has a chance to show what he can do.

I’ve been rooting for the Giants to get an impact Asian player for so long, I was posting under “Travis Ishikawa” a few years ago. Since then I’ve been forced to go “Kurt Suzuki” but I would love it if TI were to stick.

Does anyone have the comprehensive list of guys Sabean intentionally lost first round picks for? Tucker I remember, but I forget who else.

The Giants did a lot of draft and follows, picking up Marcus Sanders, among others who got large bonuses in later rounds, and they did pick up some signability players, like Jeremiah Luster, the only thing was Travis was the only one with any real long-term success.

And it was not like the Giants selected players over the years who agreed to lower bonuses for that pick, a study I did of draft bonuses paid by the Giants showed that 2003 was the only year that a number of picks ended up below the prevailing bonus for that round and region of overall draft pick order, and there was Linden but he ended up with a low bonus because his agent stupidly held out for a long time before Linden fired him and accepted a lower bonus just to get his pro career started, since he had already lost most of that season already due to holding out.

The Giants have been known to pick players like Nate Schierholtz who nobody rated that highly (my study of that showed that to be true, most picks during the 2000’s were ranked by Baseball America to be at least a full round (30 picks) after where they selected the player; thus if they selected him 27th, he was ranked the 57th best draft prospect or worse). But that is not the same as drafting for signability because their bonuses were all in range of what other teams were paying for that overall draft pick range (+/- 5 picks). In other words, if they selected players just to sign them to a lower bonus, they failed miserably at it except for in 2003.

The Giants have not been cheap with their draft picks except when they purposefully avoided a draft pick by signing a player before the deadline. And those were a calculated business risk that can be done on occasion without severely hurting your development plans or your future. It was basically the same as throwing away an expensive lottery ticket that paid off about 10% of the time.

In one case, it got us Ray Durham, in the other case, it got us one year’s worth of Michael Tucker, who delivered a 97 OPS+ season for $1.5M. How much have we gotten out of David Aardsma, Roger/Craig Whitaker, EME, Todd Linden, Kurt Ainsworth, Jerome Williams, Tony Torcato, Nate Bump, Arturo McDowell, all getting a significant chunk of change in bonuses from the Giants. I would guess that the third one was from 2005, which was for Benitez, which obviously didn’t work.

Giant minor league hitter comes up to the show. Nobody in the prospect maven punditry is too high on said player – minor league numbers are promising but nowhere near dominant. Player tears it up big time for a while. Giants fans get excited. Player gets more at bats. League adjusts to prospect. Player starts to struggle – ugly overmatched strikeouts that are painful to watch become regular. Giants coaches unable to Player loses playing time, gradually disappears.

Calvin Murray, Damon Minor, Niekro Please, Dan Ortimer, and John Bowker.

This is why Freddie’s .922 OPS this August is so exciting to me – he’s gotten past the “league adjustment” phase.

And, so, I’ll be excited if Travis is still OPSing over .800 when he’s gotten past 400 MLB PAs, and past the point where the other teams have scouting briefings on him available before the games …

Ishikawa has earned his promotion with a fine AA and AAA season. Ishikawa has been presented this opportunity and lets sit back and watch him. It sure would be nice if the Giants could produce an inhouse 1b with the power and glove of Ishikawa.