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Despite Damon Bruce's declaration yesterday on KNBR that the Giants are finally having a youth movement, just because of the Durham trade, the Giants clearly started their youth movement in earnest with the trade of Matt Morris to the Pirates, which cleared salary and opened up a rotation spot for Correia. After that, the Giants also played Frandsen and Ortmeier extensively, as well, and ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Eugenio Velez
The Giants have traded Ray Durham to the Brew Crew for two minorly hyped prospects, 22 year old Class A outfielder Darren Ford (speedster, 48 stolen bases - second best in minors - in 59 attempts but not a hitter, .230 and already 88 strikeouts) and 26 year old AAA lefty starting pitcher Steve Hammond (Vallejo native; did well in AA then struggled in AAA, 0-4 record, 7.41 ERA). Accounts from ...
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MLB
Ray Durham
San Francisco Giants
Of course, I would never root for the Giants to lose. But when you are mired in a rebuilding, excuse me, "transitional" year, losing is the tonic for what ails you, as that will result in a good draft pick the next season, giving you another player who may lead you back to the promise land - the playoffs. So while I'm not rooting for the team to lose, as we lose veterans in trades for ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Rickie Weeks
Jack Taschner
Ray Durham
Today I was listening to the game and then I heard a little kid talking about his Dad, JT Snow, scooping up Darren Baker before scoring a run, when suddenly I hear the Wells Fargo lady talk about how each Giants run scored would result in $100 going to schools. But this is (was) Randy Winn's gig and his ads were running earlier in the season, right up to the All-Star Break, as far as I can ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Randy Winn
J.T. Snow
OK, Posey is not officially a Giants prospect yet, but his langauge certainly sounds like he will be. He was just announced as the latest Golden Spikes Award winner, winning the 2008 award . It is the award that Lincecum won in 2006, giving the Giants two Golden Spike winners in three years. With a very poor record thus far in 2008, they could be in place to possibly select the 2009 winner as ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Baseball America doesn't always make available free content, but this time they did on the Giants signing of Rafael Rodriguez . As one can see from the handy list of the top bonuses paid, there is no guarantee that a big bonus is going to result in a good starting player. Failures include Wily Mo Pena, Joel Guzman, Byung-Hyun Kim, and Chin-Hui Tsao. The good news is further confirmation of the ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
As noted previously, you need a dominating starting rotation led by two aces and a dominating closer to shut things down. When you think of these dominating aces and closers, what do you notice about them? They dominate by striking out a lot of batters. But it is not enough that they are dominating, the entire staff should be dominating as a whole, as was shown in the BP study I had referred ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
The Giants today announced that they signed Rafael Rodriguez , the highly touted right-fielder from the Dominican. I didn't want to mention his name before in case it fell through - I was being superstitious and didn't want to jinx it in any way - though I did refer to him a few times. They had to wait until he turned 16 on Sunday. The Giants, as usual, did not release the bonus figure, but ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Rafael Furcal
As was shown in my last post, a good bullpen is a key ingredient of any team today that hopes to make the playoffs, do well in the playoffs, and ultimately win the World Series, and obviously a closer is a key ingredient of any good bullpen. As we'll see next, the closer is very clearly an important cog for maximizing your team's success in the playoffs. BP Study on Playoff Success As I have ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Billy Beane
One of the biggest change in the history of baseball, besides digging the long ball, and particularly over the past 20 or 30 years, is the change in how the bullpen is used. When baseball first started, men were men, and men threw complete games. For the most part. Just in case he was tired (or just had too much to drink the night before), there would be a reliever sitting around who would ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Perhaps it is in the newspaper columnist credo or handbook to be negative. Or perhaps they are just biased against the Giants, as the Merc's columnists have appeared to be since the A's announced their move down south (nothing like public commercial butt kissing). Or maybe it is just the media's inclination towards the negative. But it is not like being a fan means that you are not realistic ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Barry Zito
(Note: Sorry for the goofup with the order; I will post-date this after the next post) Most teams want good fielding defense. This is easily understood. Nobody wants to give up unearned runs. It's bad enough to give up a run but to give up one unnecessarily? Madness! As commonsense as this is, it has been shown in a study that good team defense in the regular season is related to playoff ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
As I went over in my last post, you need a great starting rotation to have a competitive advantage over the other team. However, how does a team achieve that? By having at least two Aces in their rotation, if not more. True (and Only) Dominance in Baseball A pitcher on his game will have his way with the opposing team. That happens regularly with good pitchers, but even average (or sometimes ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
This post has the Giants Pure Quality Start scores for the month of June 2008, PQS as defined in Ron Shandler's Baseball Forecaster annual book and they published the details here . I wrote on this first in 2006 and have compiled their stats on a regular basis, so I'm continuing it this season for continuity and historical comparison (there is the "PQS" label that you can click to see the old ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
The international signing season started and while a number of teams have busted out their piggy banks and made some big signings - A's making the biggest with $4.25M for highly touted pitcher Michael Inoa - the Giants did not make the big signing but at least did get someone, Luis Angel Mateo. Mateo signed with the Giants on Wednesday, the first day international prospects are eligible to ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Luis Castillo
As shown in my last post, preventing runs are very important and who has the biggest influence on that? The starting pitchers. That is another pillar in the strategy of creating the best team for success in the playoffs, and ultimately in the World Series. That is the magic sauce that fans have been missing in baseball, the starting pitchers. In other sports, you can have a player dominate the ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
A key component to the strategy is preventing runs from scoring, both via pitching and fielding. Baseball is tough enough to win without giving away runs via errors or unforced leadoff walks that eventually score. The Hardball Times showed in a past article that each run given up results in an exponential rise in the number of runs scored to maintain the same winning percentage.
For ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
Since the Giants will be changing managing partners this season, I thought I would take the opportunity to make my pitch to Neukom on what to do with the Giants and present my business plan. However, this plan will take forever to enter in, so for once I'm spliting it into parts.
Mission Statement
Lead the San Francisco Giants to win their first World Series championship during William ...
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MLB
San Francisco Giants
There are some who believe that you never boo your own players. I am not one of them. I will boo if I think the player was deserving in some way. But, ultimately, I try to think about what is best for my team, my Giants, and where the player fits within the team and his criticalness to the Giants success. Yeah, I will let a player get away with things if I think he is crucial to the team's ...
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