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Good morning! The Giants game has ALREADY STARTED. Well, no, not quite this early. Unless you're reading this after 9:30, in which case this thread is already dead. Dang.
Joe Panik named PCL Player of the Week
Way to go, Joe! I'm driving the "Ignore his Burrissian slugging percentage in Fresno" train, and since I had already written the first part of this sentence before Adrianza's seven-car pileup of a game last night, you can tell I'm serious. Well, maybe not "serious" so much as "desperate" and "overly reactionary."
Ranking baseball's most exciting plate appearances
Over at Sports on Earth, Will Leitch ranks the possible results of every at bat, from most to least exciting. Most exciting: An inside-the-park homer, rounding the bases on a dinosaur with a jetpack attached while the opposing team, consisting of Terminators, krakens, and Darth Vader, desperately tries to chase him down.
The least exciting is anything involving Josh Beckett pitching.
Episode 33 – Inside the San Jose Giants
Joe Ritzo and Ben Taylor do a podcast on the Baby Giants, and in this episode they go over the season so far, which is not going well. The culprit is the pitching, which has been notably terrible, despite coming off success last year in Augusta. The poor showings from guys who were previously at the very least interesting prospects really drives home just how hard it is to make it to the majors and the uncertainty in evaluating guys in the minors, or at least it would if I didn't have blind faith in John Barr. WOOOOOO JOHNNIE I KNOW THEY'LL ALL BE GREAT!
What would a Mad Men office softball team look like?
Maybe you can quibble with a couple rankings here, but the important thing is that Stan is the left fielder, and since three minutes ago I formulated a Grand Unified Theory of Stan Being Michael Morse, this fits in perfectly. And because the article didn't fill in the rest of the rotation, allow me:
Jim Cutler is the ace of the staff. He's getting up there in years, and some scouts are wondering how he's doing it, but he just gets results.
Dawn is the third starter. She should be in the number two spot, but they can't just disrespect a veteran like Sterling.
Harry Crane always seems to get a lot of wins, but the sabermetric community is convinced he's headed for a fall. Still, he's a solid performer, even with his exorbitant contract demands.
Lou Avery was a big free agent signing, and he's been a total bust, but the manager likes the way he competes. No one actually on the team can stand him.
The bullpen has been drastically improved since they cut Paul Kinsey.
MLB Power Rankings - Top 30 MLB Baseball Teams
I'm not superstitious at all, but I legitimately feel much better about the Giants when they're being ignored by the national press. Take this article as an example. They were ranked number one, and immediately lost in Pittsburgh. Since correlation equals causation, my superstition has been totally justified.
Also, I miss Grant's power rankings on Baseball Nation. They were great.