Saturday, July 31, 2004

 

Trading Deadline Passes, Giants Quiet

As of 2:19 pm, almost 80 minutes after the trade deadline, there are no reports of the Giants making any further trades. This is for the best, all things considered. The Giants have kept Cain, Valdez, and their other pitching prospects, have trimmed over $3 million in salary commitments for next year, and haven't fooled themselves (like the Mets) that this year is worth blowing up the future for.

If they had been able to get Randy Johnson, that would have been worth it. But with that not a possibility, Sabean did the right thing in standing pat.

More thoughts later after things have finished shaking out.

Jefferson 2:19 PM

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Friday, July 30, 2004

 

Rodriguez Traded For Ledee, Prospect

Okay, at this early moment I don't really get it. We just traded one of our two "best" relief pitchers for another outfielder. Is Ledee any better than Grissom, Tucker, or Mohr? Quick peek at 2004 OPS:

Player AB OPS
Grissom 376 762
Tucker 300 812
Mohr 162 763
Ledee 123 905

Before you get too excited, you should know that Ledee's career OPS is 751, and 123 at-bats is not a large number. On the other hand, Ledee is a lefty, something the Giants think they lack at the moment. I think they lack pitching far more, though.

So I don't get it yet. In isolation, it's an odd move. Either the Giants will have to go with a smaller pitching staff, or they will have to make another move. They could send down a reserve position player (Ransom?) to bring up another reliever (Aardsma?). Or they could make another trade.

The salary implications are interesting. Felix makes a touch over $3 million a year, Ledee a touch over $1 million. Over the rest of this season, the G-Men will save about $700,000. But next year, Felix has a player option for over $3 million again. So this clears a bit of cash for next season too. Could this be a preliminary trade to make room for a Big Unit contract? I'd love to think so.

Felix will be missed.

Jefferson 7:17 PM

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Giants Still in Big Unit Hunt?

Twenny twenny twenny nine hours to go...
I wanna be sedated

Apparently the Giants are still in the hunt for Randy Johnson. That is the only trade that will really help the team in a major way. And now my hopes are up. Dammit.

Jefferson 7:55 AM

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Thursday, July 29, 2004

 

Too Many Leaks

Thirty-eight hours to go until the trade deadline.

I wanna be sedated.

Thanks to a bad week in San Diego, the Giants are 4 1/2 games back of the division leader on July 29, and 2 games back off the Wild Card. History tells us that a 3-game deficit at the end of July is the reasonable threshhold of "in contention."

This team just has Not Meant To Be written all over them, and they have far too many weaknesses for a trade or two to fix.? We?ve seen them all in this series:? not enough starting pitching, no relief pitching to speak of, indifferent to horrible defense, and an unbelievable penchant for hitting into double plays.

I mean, where would you start? If Sabean doesn't make a move, I won't blame him.

Jefferson 9:56 PM

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First Impressions:
Pirates of the Spanish Main

Yesterday Dawn and I went to Maximum Monkey in Hayward and picked up 10 packs of the new WizKids game, Pirates of the Spanish Main. It may be a stretch to call it a miniatures wargame, but there's a lot of miniatures gaming sensibility here. We set up and played a game last night. Here are my early impressions.

The first thing miniatures fans want to know about is always "how are the models?" In this case the models are actually styrene cards that you assemble into 3-D ships. The biggest is no more than 3 inches long, 3 inches high, and no more than an inch wide. The ship pieces punch out easily from the playing-card sized backing.

Assembly is pretty easy, but not trivial. It took me about 15 minutes to figure out how to assemble the larger ships at first. The pieces fit together using tabs and slots, which all fit snugly and firmly. You do have to bend the side of the hull to match the curve of the deck, but the styrene is able to take it. On the other hand, you should be careful putting in the masts. It's quite possible to break the masts at the narrow spots between the sails. You will be removing and reinserting these masts frequently during play. (Should you break one--as we did--you can superglue it back together. I would recommend using a bit of toothpick as a splint, though.)

When fully assembled, the ships are pretty cool. They're obviously card models, but they are attractively illustrated and nicely proportioned. During play I found them to be pretty light. Don't get too uptight about exact positioning--they won't sit perfectly still while you're taking off masts, etc.

The game is packaged like a collectible card game. For $4.00 you get a package with (I think) 8 thick cards. You will get two ships per pack; each ship requires 1-3 cards worth of pieces. The other cards will have islands, crew counters, and treasure counters. All of those are 2-D. Each player can theoretically play with only one pack, but I would recommend a minimum to two packs per player. Each pack also contains the rulebook (which at this point only has rules for two-player games; multiplayer rules are forthcoming) and a tiny d6.

The object of the game is to sail from your home island to "wild islands" where treasure is buried. You get the treasure and bring it back to your home island. Whoever brings back the most treasure, wins. Of course, being pirates, your ships are armed, and there are rules for attacking your enemy's ships.

Gameplay moves fast. Each turn each ship can do one thing, and one thing only. It can either move, shoot, explore an island, or repair itself. This keeps the game simple, but my wargaming sensibilities cry out for more complexity. Movement and distance are handled by using "long" and "short" card edges. A ship's movement might be described as "L." This means it can move as far as the long edge of one of the cardbacks you punched your pieces out of. This is a nice and elegant way of handling it. Turning, on the other hand, is unrealistically liberal--any ship can turn almost any angle during a move.

Combat is fast and deadly. A ship's combat power is measured in masts. Each mast represents one cannon and one "hit point." Every time a ship takes a hit, it loses a mast (and therefore a cannon). The smallest ships have one mast; the largest has four. Ships with no masts are derelicts, and are helpless. You can ram, send boarding parties, and capture enemy ships. All the mechanics are resolved with simple d6 rolls.

Many ships have a special ability. For instance, one small ship cannot be targeted by "L" range cannons. Ships can be further customized by adding special crew counters. For example, an Oarsman allows for a derelict ship to move a little. There are many others. Each ship and crew is keyed to a flag--English, Spanish or Pirate. You can't generally put crew from one faction on a ship belonging to another.

Our game took about 90 minutes to finish--not bad considering we didn't know what we were doing. It effectively ended when one side lost all its ships. I imagine this will be a common way to end the game.

WizKids prides itself on including everything you need to play in the package. I wasn't sure how they would do it with a little $4 package. I shouldn't have feared, though--one of the designers is James Earnest, also known as "that Cheapass Games guy." You won't need anything else to play, not even paper and pen. (You might want bigger dice, though.) As a small-scale minis game, it plays easily on a small dining room table. You won't need a dedicated 4x4' table for this one.

Overall, I'm fairly impressed. It's definitely a beer & pretzels game, but wargamers who desire more complexity should be able to add it without much trouble. Put on the Pirates of the Caribbean DVD in the background, and you'll have a perfectly fun time. WizKids has once again scored with a game that's fun from the moment you open the package until the game's end.

Jefferson 8:10 AM

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Wednesday, July 28, 2004

 

Event Horizon

Seventy-two hours to go until the trade deadline.

I wanna be sedated.

Don't expect anything major or even significant to come out of the trade deadline, folks. The sad truth is that deadline deals rarely make up for a 3-game deficit in a playoff race. The Giants need not just a tweak to their bullpen. They need a major infusion of talent. As it stands, you simply cannot trust the bullpen to protect any lead. Can you imagine the Giants in the playoffs? Alou would probably pitch Schmidt every inning, every game until his arm fell off.

There just aren't any real impact players available to the Giants via trade. The one guy who could make a huge difference is Randy Johnson, and he has his sights set on one team--the damn Yankees. I think the best we could hope for is adding one or two relievers who are better than the crap we currently have.

The Giants still have a great chance to make the postseason. The Dodgers are going to cool off, no question. They're not going to play .900 ball the rest of the way. The Giants need to break out their .500 month and have a nice little run of .600 ball. They don't need another 10-game winning streak, but they have to escape from 10 games over .500.

One last note--didn't you just know that Aurilia would kick the Giants' collective asses?

Jefferson 8:02 AM

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Tuesday, July 20, 2004

 

Aurilia Goes To Padres, Bullpen To Pieces

Rich Aurilia has been traded to the San Diego Padres, dashing my hopes of seeing him return to the Giants this year. I wish him the best of luck down there. I hope he revives his career now that he's back in the National League.

Meanwhile, the bullpen has had some unspeakably bad outings recently. Worst of all has been our supposed closer, Matt Herges. No doubt that Herges is a nice guy, classy and a gamer. But he sucks as a closer, and the Giants need to make a change. Unfortunately, the powers that be are sticking with him. They do have better choices for the role, though no really great ones. Either Felix Rodriguez or Scott Eyre would be better choices. Best choice of all would be an acquisition like Eddie Guardado or maybe (if all else fails) Urgeth Urbina.

I just can't see this team making the playoffs without the bullpen getting a little help. If the season ended now, the Giants would be the wild card, and they'd be swept by the Cardinals in the opening round.

For myself, I'm just hoping my work schedule settles down so I can watch more games. Between the flurry of 2 a.m. calls, Sunday shifts and what not, I don't know what day it is half the time.

Jefferson 10:07 AM

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Monday, July 12, 2004

 

The Midseason (Don't Fear The Reaper)

Okay, everyone, listen up. Quick show of hands out there in blogland.

Everyone who thought, before the season started, that the Giants starting shortstop would be batting over .300 at the break, raise your hand.

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Okay, who thought the Giants would be very near the top of the league in runs scored?

Bueller?

Okay, who thought before the season that at this point, only two teams in all of baseball would have more wins than the San Francisco Giants?

Uh-huh. No, I didn't raise my hand either.

And really, in your wildest dreams, did you think that Barry Bonds would have the best OPS (1422) of his entire career? At age 40?

Before the season, there was a lot of concern about the Giants offense. Quite a lot. In April, the offense couldn't score worth a damn. Since then, the team made two significant tweaks. First, they let Neifi Perez play himself out of a starting job. That cleared the way for the "average is SO much better than crap" Deivi Cruz. Second, they released Jeffrey Hammonds just in time for Michael Tucker to get hot.

Additionally, the Giants didn't panic on either Edgardo Alfonzo or A.J. Pierzynski. They reckoned both would rebound from their horrible Aprils, and both have. End result: the Giants offense is third in the NL in runs scored and fourth in OPS. Consider that Colorado is one of the teams ahead of them, and you can see the Giants offense is doing just fine.

The real problem has been the pitching. There just hasn't been a surprise amongst the newcomers; no Deivi Cruz-like godsend. The Giants have the best starting pitcher in the league, Jason Schmidt. Then they have four mediocre to poor guys to fill out the rotation. (Although Jerome Williams gets extra credit for his youth, and his signs of great promise.) Since the rotation can't pitch deep into games, the bullpen is getting worked to death. Even worse, the bullpen isn't all that solid to begin with, outside of maybe Scott Eyre and (yes) Felix Rodriguez.

Bottom line, you have a pitching staff with a 4.41 ERA, "good" for 11th in the National League. This is the area that needs the most attention. Without substantial improvement, pitching is what will keep the Giants from making the postseason, or going deep into October. Ideally, the Giants need a solid #2 pitcher and a solid closer. Word is, the Giants will be looking for help from Fresno, in the form of Kevin Correia in the bullpen and Noah Lowry in the rotation. Those moves could very well help, but will they be enough? Sabean certainly won't bet the house on it. The Giants will continue to look for pitching via a trade.

Finally, the defense has been disappointing. I really thought that the D would be the team's strong suit. Right field has suffered greatly from the loss of Jose Cruz Jr. Ray Durham has looked terrible recently, and Barry Bonds is a shadow of his former Gold Glove-winning self in left field. There's not much the team can do on this front, I think, except ask for more strikeouts from the pitching staff.

So, where are the Giants exactly? At the nexus of all possibilities. This team could end up in last place if the demons of April return. If a trade solidifies the pitching, and the hitting keeps up its recent pace, the World Series is entirely possible. Seriously.

What do I expect to happen? A modest trade or two in the next couple of weeks, followed by a rather harrowing, down-to-the-wire race with the Dodgers and Padres. I think this team squeaks into the postseason, gets people's hopes up, only to be crushed by the Cardinals in the opening round.

But then again, what do I know? I thought this team was done in April.

Jefferson 8:08 AM

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Aurilia Willing To Come Home

Just an update to yesterday's news about Rich Aurillia. In the Chronicle today, Aurilia says he'd love to come back. However, Deivi Cruz is playing so well that the Giants may not have any immediate interest.

Here's hoping the Giants find a way to bring Richie home.

Jefferson 7:51 AM

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Sunday, July 11, 2004

 

Aurilia Designated for Assignment

Today the Seattle Mariners designated former Giants shortstop Rich Aurilia for assignment. In the next 10 days, Richie will either be traded, released, or he will accept a demotion to the minor leagues. If he is released, Seattle is responsible for the remainder of his 2004 salary.

I will note that the man's stats (.241/.304/.337) have been awful this year. But he's still better than Neifi Perez (.236/.279/.301). Aurilia is playing well below expectations. Perez is playing to expectations. Perez has already lost his starting job...

So, Brian Sabean, what the heck. Pull the trigger. Make it a straight up challenge trade, Neifi for Richie, or see if Richie clears waivers and is released. In any case, bring the man back and give him a chance to redeem himself. Rich Aurilia deserves it, and more importantly, I think he can improve this team just by showing up.

I'm Jefferson Krogh, and I approved this message.

Jefferson 11:05 PM

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Thursday, July 08, 2004

 

Why Parity Sucks (if you're Sabean)

Bud Selig is probably a happy man today. We're a few short days until the All-Star break, and hardly anyone is out of contention yet. Check this out: in the American League, 8 teams (out of 14) are within 5 games of a playoff spot. In the NL, it's an incredible 12 out of 16 teams. So at this moment, 20 teams are in contention. Two-thirds of all MLB teams.

That's great!

Unless your name is Brian Sabean.

Here's the problem with this wonderful parity. That's 20 teams who think (with good reason) that they have a chance to win it all this year. That's 20 teams who will be looking to add talent, not trade it away. That's 20 teams who will all be asking for the same guys from the 10 other teams.

Even worse, there might only be about six teams looking to sell. Baltimore, Seattle, Kansas City, Colorado, Arizona and Montreal are all more than 10 games back of the wild card. Their seasons are done. Likely Baltimore will live in denial and not shop any of their overpriced stars. Toronto is fourth in the AL East, and Ricciardi is smart enough to sell off talent if he gets a good deal. Detroit is having too much fun to want to tear down their roster. Cleveland and Pittsburgh might think they're just close enough to give it a shot. So in all probability, you'll have 20-24 teams chasing for the pickings from only six ballclubs.

It's a seller's market, which will make Sabean's job a lot tougher. He'll have to give up a lot more than usual if we wants to pick someone up. So as much as I'd love to see him pull off that Big Unit trade I mentioned last week, don't expect it. If anything, expect smaller deals that make you scratch your head, like the Schmidt/Vander Wal deal from a few years ago.

Remember, the man has a pretty solid record in making trades. Odds are he'll do well again.

Jefferson 2:52 PM

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Wednesday, July 07, 2004

 

Closer

That was simply brutal.

If you don't know what "that" I'm referring to, you're evidently not a Giants fan. I am referring to the ritual sacrifice of a Giants victory by that crew of Cthulhu cultists we usually call the "bullpen." It was bloody, messy and horrific to watch. (Or listen to, in my case, since the TV broadcast was on the nonexistent Fox Sports Net Plus.)

There's been a lot of kvetching locally about Felix Rodriguez being the root of all blown saves. I disagree. If you want to see the real weakness in this bullpen, you have to look closer. You have to look AT the closer.

Matt Herges, step forward and be judged.

Let's play a little Rob Neyer style game. I'm going to give you some naked pitching stats, and you tell me who you think should be the closer.

IP    H   ER   HR   BB   K   ERA   WHIP  K/9

52.2  56  23    4   18   35  3.93  1.41  5.98

41.1  55  23    5   13   25  5.01  1.65  5.44

38.1  36  14    5   13   26  3.29  1.28  6.10

22.1  11  8     5   14   19  3.22  1.12  7.66

There's no classic Robb Nens in this bunch, but they're not all terrible either. They all give up the longball a bit too much, but ERAs in the 3's are nothing to sneeze at. The last guy in particular has a pretty good line for a closer--great strikeout rate, not a ton of innings pitched, outstanding WHIP. He walks too many, but makes up for that by being very stingy with the hits. Too bad half the hits he gives up are homers, though. But that's Scott Eyre, who is not your closer.

The next to last guy is almost as good. His walk rate is much better, though his strikeouts are fewer per inning. His numbers this year are not great closer stuff, but he's the second best in this bunch. Oh yeah, he's the much-maligned Felix Rodriguez.

The guy with at the top is your mediocre setup guy Jim Brower. But he's still better than the remaining line, who is your Giants closer, Matt Herges.

A closer usually throws one inning, with a 1, 2 or 3-run lead. Converting Herges' stats into per-inning, we get:

1.33 H, 0.56 ER, 0.12 HR, 0.31 BB, 0.60 K

In a "typical" Herges save opportunity, he'll give up one hit, half a run, a third of a walk, and get half a strikeout. Except you can't have half a run. So every other inning, Herges will give up a run. Yes, that means that half the time, Herges will blow a one-run lead. Half the time! And nearly every time, he's going to put pressure on his own defense because he isn't going to strike out batters. Given the frailties shown by the Giants defense recently, this is not a good thing.

How about a real good closer, like Robb Nen in his last year? Even injured towards the end of the year, here's a typical Nen inning, vintage 2002:

0.87 H, 0.24 ER, 0.02 HR, 0.27 BB, 1.10 K

That's right. Herges is about half the closer that Nen was, even when Nen wasn't at his best.

Bottom line? Herges is not capable of being a major league closer. Any of the three other gentlemen--Rodriguez, Eyre or Brower--would do a better job, which admittedly isn't saying much in some cases.

It's time for a change.

Jefferson 7:51 AM

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Thursday, July 01, 2004

 

Let's Talk Trades

First off, how about Brett Tomko last night? Wow. That might have been the best outing by a starter not named Jason Schmidt since, well, uh, Noah Lowry the night before! I'm trying not to get too psyched about Lowry. He's got a nice 2.04 ERA for June. On the other hand, this year in Fresno his ERA is 4.58 in 59 innings. He's only 24, and should continue to get better. Really, though, it's too much to ask for him to be consistently good.

Tomko has had two good outings since his return from the DL. I would love for him to suddenly transform into a dominant starter, but let's face it, that isn't going to happen. What's more telling, the 1.26 ERA in 14 1/3 IP since he came back from the DL, or the 4.68 ERA in 1100+ IP for his career? Right. So don't count on him to keep this up either.

This brings us to the topic of trades. As in, the Giants should be looking to bolster their starting rotation via a trade. Brian Sabean knows this, and he's working on it, I'm sure. I'm glad he's the one in charge, and not me. But that doesn't stop me from coming up with wild trades in my head and putting them out there for public consumption.

Here are my assumptions:

* The Giants don't care about next season. Their philosophy has always been "we'll burn that bridge when we come to it." No reason to think that's different now, since they're in first place.

* As usual, the owners will be willing to open their wallets a little for the right opportunity.

* Joe Garagiola Jr. is indeed completely insane.

Here is my proposed trade:

Matt Cain, Merkin Valdez and Yorvit Torrealba for Randy Johnson and cash.

Why the Diamondbacks would go for it:

* Their season is already over. Time to rebuild.
* They need a catcher. Hammock isn't doing the job.
* They need more young pitching to go along with Webb, for the days when The Big Unit is gone. Cain and Valdez are great prospects.
* They need to cut expenses, and they could save $5-6 million this year even if they pay the Giants $2-3 million as part of the trade.

Why the Diamondbacks wouldn't go for it:

* They don't want to strengthen a division rival.
* They don't want the fans to storm the Bob with pitchforks and torches.

Why the Giants would go for it:

* Your starting rotation is now Johnson, Schmidt, Williams, Rueter and Hermanson. Duh.
* Create huge buzz among the fans. Not that the Giants need to sell more tickets, but you'd sell out whatever was left, and guarantee postseason revenue.
* In the postseason, you have two aces.
* A chance for Sabean to make a Fucking-A Trade that would put anything Billy Beane did to shame.

Why the Giants wouldn't go for it:

* They love Matt Cain and Merkin Valdez.

Chances of a trade like this happening:

Yeah, pretty much zero. It's just too good to be true. But it makes sense for both sides, doesn't it?

EDIT: Son of a gun. Not five minutes after I posted this, I see in Steve Shelby's blog that Carl Steward wrote an article in the Trib advocating this very trade!

I hereby declare this a bandwagon.

Jefferson 1:26 PM

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