Saturday, April 07, 2007

 

Report From The Cheap Seats

Dawn and I watched last night's game from Section 302, up in the misty reaches of the upper deck. It was one of the coldest, dampest nights I've ever experienced at the new park, but we stuck it out through all nine innings. Here's a few scrambled thoughts on what we saw:

* In general, I approve of Bochy's tactic of stealing more bases. The Giants have enough guys with enough speed to make this happen. However, Durham and Vizquel didn't get good jumps last night, and Martin's throws were strong and accurate.

* I didn't mind Flannery sending Feliz on that double. Gonzalez has a weak arm, and it took an excellent relay throw to get Feliz. Feliz didn't do anything with his slide to help his chances, though. He slid straight into Martin, instead of diving around him or running him over.

* Feliz committed a bad mental error in the field, triple-clutching on an easy throw to home. I have no idea what he was thinking, if anything. Unfortunately, Feliz has proved over his whole career that you can't count on him to play smart baseball. If he continues to field poorly, and doesn't improve at the plate, he needs to be benched, and quick.

* It's so nice to have Rich Aurilia back. He brings a spark to the ballpark when he's playing.

* Noah Lowry pitched so well that it took a whole inning of wildness to downgrade his start from "amazing" to "very good." Sadly, his throwing error and wild pitch, followed by Feliz's brain fart, combined with the bad baserunning, cost the Giants the game.

* We were very disappointed by the seats we had. The location was fine; I'd rather be on the first-base side than the third-base side. The ushers, though, completely failed to perform any sort of traffic control in the aisles. All night, people walked up and down the aisles, blocking our view for easily 25% of the pitches. We saw two different ushers carrying the "please wait until after the at-bat to walk up the aisles" signs. We saw no one actually using them. If this had been my first time at AT&T Park, I wouldn't be too interested in buying more tickets. The Giants can do much better than this.

Jefferson 11:20 AM

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