San Francisco Giants Link Dump, 6/2

Can you believe that baseball's draft is Thursday? Man, I am not looking forward to the relentless media hype, and the crushing weight of expectations. Maybe the Giants should consider doing a draft-and-trade. I saw it was a possibility in Trouble With the Curve, so I feel pretty good about that option.

Ted Williams bunts to beat the shift
This is a GIF of Ted Williams bunting against the shift, and it comes all the way from the year 1946. Can  you believe they already had giffing technology back then? Why was CIA hiding it for so long?

Walks and attendance and looking for reasons
Joe Posnanski looks at two trends in baseball and looks for the reasons behind them. Why are walks going down? He has no idea. And why do NL teams consistently outdraw AL teams? For that, he dismissed the NL fan argument of "The DH Suxxxxorz" and instead focuses on the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry being so overemphasized that it forces fans of other AL teams into a kind of helpless apathy, where they feel that their team doesn't matter. I think he's overlooking the suckiness of the DH, because if you go to a game and there is no possibility of seeing a reliever hit, it's like, man, what's even the point?

How Sandy Koufax’s Motel Helped Lead to Baseball’s Big-Money Era
Back in the day when major leaguers had to take offseason jobs or, for the big stars, put their names on motels with high-quality rooms for the whole family (Look for Groug's Motor Inn, opening this summer. Working motto: You Will Get Stared At), Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale decided to hold out for more money so that maybe they wouldn't have to do so much of that. Then-Dodgers GM Buzzie Bavasi remarked that these kinds of holdouts would "never happen again," so if you're wondering where all the Wrong that comprises Bill Bavasi comes from, there's a hint.

Astros see six as likely candidates for top pick
If you were curious about how teams strategize for the draft, here's an article about the Astros' thought process as they prepare for Thursday. Though Houston's front office is obviously doing a lot of obfuscation here trying to keep people from knowing how they think, if you read between the lines it seems like they might be evaluating players in order to project which one will have the best major league career. I dunno, could be wrong. I'm not an expert.

Painting the Black: Rebuilding a Right Way
For years, the A's have been known as a team that traded veterans for prospects, developed the propects, played the prospects in the majors for a few years until they became veterans, and then traded those veterans for more prospects. It was a can't miss system that happened to miss for a few years straight, so Billy Beane did something else: He started trading prospects for veterans, just like the Giants had done in almost every season since the late '90s. It's like we've been saying here for years: Brian Sabean is a baseball genius who's always ahead of the curve.

List of animals with fraudulent diplomas
This is the most important article you will ever read. I KNEW that Zoe D. Katze wasn't a licensed hypnotherapist!