I don't like to overuse my favorite Giants-related adjective, so I save it for special occasions like this: For the first eight innings of the game, the Giants' offense was feckless. Completely feckless. Without feck. Devoid of anything that could be mistaken for feck. Boring, limp, and lifeless. And now Pablo Sandoval is hurt. I'm sure things will get better now that Conor Gillaspie has taken his place on the roster.
I don't really believe in fate, superstition, curses, or omens. I like to pretend I do because I'm a baseball fan, but it's all hokum. There's nothing about the Marlins' uniforms, aura, or joie de poisson that makes the Giants a) come up with broken superstars and b) get swept. All it is is really, really, really annoying. And depressing. The tired sleepwalk the Giants did today was the same one after Posey was hurt. Day game. Anibal Sanchez. Miserable offense. Hurt-star hangover. The parallels didn't have to be that exact, dammit.
Lifeless. And there isn't an answer. Quite a few of us clamored for Belt to start. He's helping, but I'd like to see more of the hard contact that he had in the ninth inning. That was the last idea. We're all out of bullets. Gregor Blanco starts. There. That's my idea. He was three-for-three with a walk or some crap, so he starts for the next month. Couldn't hurt. Not sure where he'd play. Screw it, third. Start him at third. Short. Start him at short. Or catcher. Put Posey at short. He played there in college you know …
One of these years, the pendulum will swing back, and we'll be watching a team like the 2001 team -- all-hit, little-pitch -- and someone will think back to this time with low-grade nostalgia. Please link to this post to remind them of how horrible it is watch a team that can't hit. Take me with you, future person. Take me with you.
Brandon Crawford needs to be magic on defense to have any utility. Sparkling. Absolutely magic. He cannot be good. You can stick with the good defense for a while, hoping it can transform into magic, but good isn't good enough.
Clanky, wretched defense? Nah. I'll put up with that for exactly two games. Which it's been. The Brandon Crawford bandwagon was already a broken Power Wheels Jeep being pulled by a burro. Now the burro is dead. An opossum is chewing on the dead burro and actually pulling it backwards. You don't have to get off, but I hope you don't have any appointments. It'll be a while
You can see how seductive small-samples are. Joaquin Arias has a .305 OBP in 1751 AAA at-bats. He's 27. He isn't the answer. But he hit like heck in the Venezuelan Leagues, spring training, and Fresno. That's just enough sample-size nonsense to make you think when the alternative is more Crawford.
Today's game could have been worse. The other good hitter on the team could have been kidnapped by falcons or something. But in a baseball sense, it could have been much worse. Ryan Vogelsong had a very Zitonian start to the game, and he was over 50 pitches by the end of the second inning. The bullpen was already wrecked from the real Zito. It could have been another, "Welp. Go get 'em, Guillermo" game, which would have screwed them up tomorrow night.
Instead, Vogelsong continues to pitch like he did last year. The results aren't as good -- they've only won one of his starts -- but it's encouraging to watch him do moderately well every time out. We're getting farther and farther away from fluke territory, which I wasn't too concerned about, but still had in the back of my mind.
Nate Schierholtz came up in the bottom of the seventh with runners on second and third with one out. MLB Advanced Media will not allow me to post a screen capture of the pitch he popped out on, so I'll have to make do with my best replication:
One pitch. Right down the middle. Foul pop. Worst at-bat of the year? Not sure about that. Brett Pill and Brandon Belt both had ugly strikeouts last night in crucial spots, and there's something to be said for taking three crappy swings instead of one. But all Schierholtz needed to do was ground to short. Fly out to right. Chop it to second. He did none of the above.
It's not fair to blame one player for a team-wide failure. But that if that wasn't the worst at-bat of the year, it was certainly the most deflating.
Bruce Bochy sits at a desk. Ryan Theriot sits across from him, smiling and tapping his foot nervously. Bochy thumbs through a personnel file, occasionally looking up and scowling at Theriot.Bochy: …
Theriot: …
Bochy: …
Theriot: …
Bochy: …
Theriot: …
Bochy: So, what is it exactly that you do here?
Kruk and Kuip mentioned that Pablo Sandoval knew Ozzie Guillen because they filmed a commercial together in Venezuela. Here it is. Miss u Pablo. Or, you can get the most important part of the commercial right here:
