And while I think context counts for something, there is simply nothing that I’ve ever heard or seen to suggest that any of the Giants management, other than Carney Lansford, who stands to be axed, gives a flipping hoot about OBP, a stat representative of the single-most important offensive ability, namely, to not make outs. It amazes me how much they can talk about bunts and not getting marginally better with the players they have, how much they can admire Benjie, etc, and never, ever talk about OBP.

Totally agree. it seems the context in which Bochy is speaking (at least, I hope) is to be more aggressive in attacking good pitches during hitter’s counts.

Unfortunately, because they so often seem to be guessing up there they let good pitches go on 2-0 and 3-1. It’s a lack of thinking out there that dooms most of these guys (especially a guy like Rowand).

Of course, so often their slop hacking put them down in the count, and also, let’s face it, even if they swing at fat fastballs down the gut, they’re just not good enough hitters to do much with it, so they foul it off or are late or get jammed instead of driving the ball.

Bochy is totally right that the hitters were late on way too many fastballs when they were (or should have been) looking for fastballs. But the hitters really needed to work more counts to get to that point, and they never did that.

With zero context, he’s not fundamentally wrong here. Good at-bats are more about having an approach…what Bochy doesn’t seem to realize is that the Giants hitters are so seldom in the situation he describes BECAUSE of this lack of approach.

Sabean was just as bad. Tom Tolbert starts his interview with him with a question like, “Hey Brian, it’s painfully obvious what’s wrong with this offense, right?”, to which Sabean started spewing the shit about getting marginally better and “executing” blah blah blah, without mentioning that they were THE WORST TEAM IN THE LEAGUE AT TAKING PITCHES AND WALKS BY FAR. Now I admit, I turned it off pretty quick, after hearing snippets of the same crapola in the presser earlier, so maybe he did address it at some point, but man, Tom gave him such an opening, and he reverted to the company line. So depressing.