Aurilia would taste delicious with some jam on him. Maybe some peanut butter?

C'mon, Giants. Let's make this game less embarassing.

Go Giants! Screw this up, and I'll cut you.

According to Brian Murphy on KNBR, the fans at last night's Giants/Mariners game were a little boisterous. The empty seats meant that every voice could be heard, and the less-supportive fans were vocal with their displeasure in how the roster was constructed. Rich Aurilia snapped back at a few of them.

It's still March. It's still spring training. Ye gods.

I'm not sure if this is the Ghost of Seasons Future or the Ghost of Season Present. One exhibition game against the Mariners shouldn't be representative of how the season will go...but it seems pretty danged close to the way it will be. Seagulls. No offense. Boos. I really thought the uprising would have been a gradual thing.

So today's topic is booing, and I'll just open the conversation with my quick and dirty philosophy on booing: 95% of the time, the booing received by a particular player is really reserved for the general manager and/or manager. As in, hey, quit signing/trading for/playing these gimps, Person in Charge. That's why Marvin Benard or Jeff Brantley got the high hat from the fans -- it wasn't anything they did on a personal level, but they were constantly put in a position to fail by the folks at the top.

That written, I'm not a big fan of booing. Opposing players, especially Dodgers: That's a booin'. A Giants player who publicly proclaims his disgust with Giants fans: That's a booin'. Armando Benitez: You'd better believe that's a booin'. But it always seemed distasteful to boo Pedro Feliz for being Pedro Feliz. Maybe I'm just a big marshmallow, but I can't get into it.

Today's comment starter: Booing. Fer it, or aginn it?

Poll

Booing: Fer it, or aginn it?

• Fer it.
• Aginn it.

  548 votes | Results

Thanks to wilriv for staying on top of the spring training games.

The Giants hold a 2-0 lead in the 1st.

Ed. note: The new format that's coming will allow me (Grant) to put these damn things up well in advance and have them appear at a scheduled time. Then I can get rid of Goofus, kenshin, and Natto. I'll keep Josh From Hollywood around in case he ever gets all famous and junk, but the rest of these goons will be expendable.

It's taken a few months more than expected, but the Brandon Inge rumors have started to percolate. Lessee...good defender...terrible on-base percentage...enough power to fool a GM who doesn't care enough about on-base percentage...I'm going to guess that "Inge" means "happy" in some Scandinavian language. If the Giants weren't willing to go for a three-year deal on Feliz, why would they commit to Inge for three?

All things being equal, they shouldn't. But if the Giants could give away Dave Roberts in a deal, it starts to make a teeny bit of sense. That would be two years of a completely redundant player for three years of a player who plays a position of need and who wouldn't block a prospect. If a trade for Inge gives more at bats to Fred Lewis, Rajai Davis, and Nate Schierholtz, it might be a sound move in the short term. In the long term, there's just no way to sugarcoat Brandon Inge's presence in the organizational blueprint for 2010, but that short-term payoff is pretty attractive.

Inge did have nine stolen bases last season, which increased his Scrappiness Quotient by a factor of 1.12. Or, to put it in layman's terms, a Google search for "Brandon Inge" and "gamer" brings back 222,000 results. A similiar query for Pedro Feliz only brings back 196,000 results. In the worst-case scenario, Kevin Frandsen only gets 47,800 results. That would be an affront to all that is scrappy.

Sarcasm aside, I would not have re-signed Pedro Feliz because it would have cost the Giants an extra draft pick with few advantages in the short term. I would not trade for Joe Crede because the White Sox actually want some sort of value back for a player coming back from back surgery with a single year left on his contract. If I could foist Dave Roberts and another contract on the Tigers, though, I think I would acquire Inge. Realistically, the only cons to a straight flotsam-for-jetsam exchange between the Tigers and Giants would be if a) Eugenio Velez really is best suited for third base or b) someone from the farm (Travis Denker, etc...) establishes himself as a viable candidate between now and 2010. Neither is likely enough to alter potential roster jiggering in 2008.

It's not that I dislike Dave Roberts; I just hate how he fits on this particular roster. If Inge's acquisition can carve out some more playing time for one or two of the three interesting young hitters the Giants have, I'd plug my nose, hope that he returns to the .260/.330/.419 hitter of a few years ago, and offer Dave Roberts and Steve Kline.

Note: The site will be down for a couple of hours this afternoon at 4:00 p.m. or so. When the site returns, your life will be noticeably better. The smell should be gone too, but I promise nothing

Things will change around here...tomorrow. The site will be taken offline for a few hours sometime tomorrow evening.

For now, though, it's time to Lincecum on and feel the noize. If I were to write a rap song about him, it would include a passage like this:

"Blowing heat up in the spot, just 23 years old
Fighting through groin pains like he was Tracey Gold."

That's if I were to write a rap song about him. I still have to finish my two-disc rock opera about him first.

The Gigantes are playing some team or another in a some spring training game.

For those who do not wish to watch the game, I will summarize.  A Giants pitcher not named Cain or Lincecum surrendered 15 runs while walking 6.

Go Gamers!

This year's round of community projections will be limited to a few select players. This is because I don't care about Rich Aurilia's projection. You don't care about Rich Aurilia's projection. I checked last year's post, and no one from Aurilia's own family made a prediction, which indicates that Rich Aurilia's family doesn't care about Rich Aurilia's projection. So let's start with....

Barry Zito

Why not just dive into this one while the potential for hilarious predictions is at its highest? Here are Zito's spring stats thus far:

IP: 7.1
ER: 14
K: 0
BB: 6

...which lends itself pretty well to this projection:

IP: 200
ER: 400
K: 0
BB: 180

I can't put my finger on why, but I was optimistic about Zito heading into this season. Maybe his second-half turnaround last season didn't mean anything; maybe it meant a whole bunch. He started striking people out, after all. He didn't strike out hitters at the rate of a vintage Randy Johnson, but he at least struck out hitters at the rate of a present-day Randy Johnson with a catheter still attached after just getting out of back surgery. If that isn't worth $120M, I'm not sure what is. Last year's splits:

Pre-All-Star

IP: 104.2
ERA: 4.90
BB: 52
K: 66

Post-All-Star

IP: 92
ERA: 4.11
BB: 31
K: 65

That post-All-Star performance still includes a few starts of Wretched Zito. Apparently, his strikeout rate didn't jump as high as I remembered; the increased success was due to better control. After the horrific spring start, it might make sense to jump off the Zito bandwagon, do a barrel roll, and just keep running until the gunshots can't be heard anymore. Nuts to that, I say. Second-half Zito shows up for the whole season and pitches well enough to tempt teams into swallowing the rest of his contract. They won't, mind you, but they'll be a little tempted.

Barry Zito

IP: 208
ERA: 3.87
K: 121
BB: 73
HRA*: 15
SB*: 3

Baseball Prospectus projection (subscribers only).
ZiPS projection.
Last year's McCovey Chronicles community projection.

Comment starter: Your Zito projection

* HRA = Home Runs Allowed
* SB = Starlets Bedded

There's a "gamer" commercial aired every 10 minutes on KNBR. There's probably one on right now. If you live outside the Bay Area, you might not know what the "gamer" ad campaign is. It goes something like this:

That's the Giants' marketing campaign. A "gamer" bus followed me to work today. It had a picture of Omar Vizquel, and it read something like, "OMAR VIZQUEL: GAMER!" It frightened me.

Now, I understand that the marketing department had a tough task. The team ain't no good. It's tough to build excitement with "ain't no good." But this is the most irritating ad campaign in the history of history.

It does give us a perfect opportunity to create a lengthy list of "Gamer Facts", though. My brain still isn't working after the flu, so I'll just kick it off with one Gamer Fact:

A gamer bunts every chance he gets. Unless he's playing pepper. Because that's when he starts swinging for the fences.

What is a gamer, o denizens of McCovey Chronicles? I feel that the ads aren't telling us everything....