Tell It Goodbye…For Real

Posted on December 26, 2013 by paulier55

dastick “Candlestick (Park) was built on the water. It should have been built under it.”  -Roger Maris

The first time I ever set foot in Candlestick Park was in 1989, to see the Giants face off against the Chicago Cubs in what was the first baseball game that I ever attended. Rick “Big Daddy” Reuschel started for the Giants, and I vividly remember him clubbing a single at one point, to the delight of the fans around me. With our section chanting “Big Daddy! Big Daddy!”, Reuschel then inexplicably got thrown out trying to steal (!) on (I think) an errant pitch in the dirt. Yeah. The Giants lost the game 3-2.

The last time I ever set foot in Candlestick Park was in 1999, to see the Giants face the Diamondbacks in the season’s final month. The Diamondbacks had obliterated the Giants the night before to clinch the National League West, rendering this particular game meaningless. The Giants still lost, 7-3. As I death-marched out of the stadium with the rest of the beleaguered fans, all I could think of was that the opening of the new downtown ballpark the following season couldn’t come fast enough.

In 1991, I went to go see the Giants face the Dodgers at the ‘Stick, and we had seats in the right field family section, right above my favoritist player of all time, one Darryl Strawberry. I wasn’t rooting for the Dodgers, exactly (I’d never sink that low), but I was certainly rooting for Strawman to hit a home run or something. He went 0-3 and got replaced in the seventh inning by Mitch Webster. The Giants won the game, however. They wouldn’t win another game with my little self in attendance until 1997.

On the way back home from that game, my Dad and I were driving Eastbound on the lower portion of the Bay Bridge heading back to Sacramento when some asshole (apparently trying to get away from the cops) rear-ended our van, slammed into another car next to us, flipped over and skidded on the hood of his car across the entire lower level. Traffic on the Bridge was halted due to the accident and we had to stick around for two hours waiting for the cops. For whatever reason, in my eight-year-old brain, I blamed Mitch Webster.

Another time, I was at a game at Candlestick in 1998. It was an Interleague game between the Giants and A’s, and the Giants were in the process of losing this exceedingly dull contest, 5-1. Around the seventh inning, with surly Giants fans already grinding their teeth at the reality of a loss to their cross-bay rivals, the Candlestick winds started working their magic. We were sitting in the bleachers, and gusts of wind started blowing the dirt up from the warning track and into our eyes. You literally couldn’t see a damn thing that was going on. This lasted for at least two innings. Some loud A’s fan in the first row started jumping around, yelling, “You see! This never happens at the Coliseum!” Fair enough, jackass.

One night a few years ago, I drove down to a late-September game at AT&T Park and, like an idiot, forgot to bring a jacket. Figuring it was either dish out cash or freeze my balls off, I ended up purchasing a Giants sweatshirt at the Dugout Store for a cool $50. It was the cheapest sweatshirt or jacket in the store, but it probably saved me from dying of pneumonia in the upper deck. The Giants proceeded to lose to the Dodgers in the ninth inning on a wild pitch. This was still better than sitting through a game at Candlestick Park.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, my memories of Candlestick, officially deceased this past Monday (barring an unlikely 49er home playoff game), aren’t particularly rosy. It was cold, boring, generally unpleasant, and, if I remember right, kind of a bitch to get to. It didn’t help that, right when I was morphing into an irredeemable baseball fanatic in 1995 and 1996, the Giants were terrible. In retrospect, charging fans actual money to watch that ’96 team in that park should have been some sort of crime.

I’m sure there are plenty of people who have fond memories of Candlestick. My dad recalls the famous Mike Ivie grand slam game in ’78 as one of the greatest games he’s ever been to. The Dave Dravecky game in 1989 was one of the greatest moments in baseball history, to be sure. I’m sure those who were at the Brian Johnson game in 1997, or anybody who went to the pennant-clincher against the Cubs in 1989, get a little misty-eyed at the thought of the ‘Stick getting the dynamite. I imagine I would too, if I had attended those games.

There were great memories. Mike Krukow’s win in the 1987 NLCS. The exploits of Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, and Juan Marichal, to name a few great Giants players. I’ll never forget Barry Bonds hitting a titanic home run off of Chan Ho Park and then doing a pirouette out of the batters box (suck it, Dodgers).

I went to a game there in 1998 and saw Bonds hit two home runs off of Curt Schilling. I was at one of the three games in 1995 where Mike Benjamin suddenly became possessed with the ghost of Joe Dimaggio. So not all my memories there are of sad, sucky losses (though the Giants did lose both of those aforementioned games).

Here’s the bottom line, though. In my life (i.e. beginning the year Blade Runner came out), during the Candlestick era, the Giants won one pennant and really only made one playoff series when I was actually paying attention to things (in 1997). Since the team left, and started playing games at China Basin, they’ve won three pennants, two World Championships, and they’ve made the playoffs five times.

That might not be fair to the Candlestick years, but I’m hardly the only person who couldn’t care less if the park went up in flames tomorrow. Rob Neyer, in his book of baseball blunders, essentially blamed Candlestick for the franchise nearly relocating three times after the start of the 1970’s. Every player who played any kind of extended time there hated the stadium. The broadcasters and journalists weren’t too far behind. Art Spander once called the park baseball’s answer to cryogenics.

Perhaps 49er fans feel more whimsy towards the park because the team won five Super Bowls (and came damn close to a sixth last year) during its tenure there. Fair enough. I never went to see a 49er game at the ‘Stick, so maybe I’m not the one to talk. However, as a Giants fan, during the semi-love-in surrounding the park’s final game on Monday, I was all too happy to extend the middle finger and turn on my 2010 World Series Bluray.

Goodbye, Candlestick Park. See you in a cold, windy pocket of Hell.

Posted in San Francisco Giants | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Obligatory Hilarious Headline Involving Term “Morse Code”

Posted on December 13, 2013 by paulier55

morse

Michael Morse originally came up and was drafted as a shortstop. In his rookie season, in 2005, he started 50 games for the Mariners at the position. Think about that. At a listed 6’5″ and 245 lbs, Morse hardly fits the profile of a lithe, graceful shortstop. For anyone who has watched him clomp around left field and fight losing battles to fly balls in the gap, it seems unfathomable that he was once considered a reasonable option at one of the hardest positions on the baseball diamond.

Another fun fact: Morse was one of the three prospects, along with Jeremy Reed and Miguel Olivo, that Seattle netted from the White Sox for Freddy Garcia back at the 2004 trade deadline. Reed, somewhat famously, ended up as an utter flameout who couldn’t come close to matching the gaudy batting averages he put up in the minors. Olivo has had his uses as a power-hitting catcher on bad teams, but he’s been more famous as a running joke in saber-circles for his knack for ending up with more home runs than walks in entire seasons.

Morse, on the other hand, would go on to big success, namely hitting 31 home runs in 2011. None of this would happen with Seattle, though. Morse’s early career sputtered and stopped, and the Mariners essentially gave up on him. The Nationals decided to take a gamble on him for the low, low price of Ryan Langerhans, and it paid off. From 2010-2012 with Washington, Morse slashed .296/.345/.516 and bashed 64 home runs in 346 games.

Another fun fact: Morse was a steroid guy, a fact that baseball scribes these days seem to like to gloss over. In 2005, Morse received a 10-game suspension for testing positive for performance-enhancers. He hasn’t failed a test since and is clean as a whistle until he demonstrates otherwise, but his example demonstrates why the sports media can be damned ridiculous at times. When Jose Bautista had his power spike in 2009, baseball writers couldn’t hang him on the cross fast enough, despite Bautista never having a positive test. When Morse was raking through his 31-homer season at age 29, I don’t really remember anybody pointing a finger at him calling him a cheat. If that seems like a goofy double-standard, it’s probably because it is. I’m not saying Morse was (or is) back on the juice (I don’t think he is and I frankly don’t care); I’m saying that the steroid “debate” that continues to roll on in baseball is mostly just asinine.

What was the point of all this? Oh yeah, the Giants signed Michael Morse yesterday. They inked him to a one-year deal worth $6 million, ostensibly to be their starting left fielder. Brian Sabean stated after the season that the team was looking to add power to left field (the team received a collective .337 slugging percentage from their left fielders in 2013), and the Giants apparently got their man for the price they were looking for.

The Giants were able to get Morse so cheaply because he was awful last year. Traded to the Mariners before the season, Morse hit a brutal .226/.283/.410 with Seattle, and added the worst strikeout rate of his career. The Mariners shipped him off to Baltimore for a song at the playoff roster deadline, and Morse’s line in 30 plate appearances with the Orioles is made of nightmares.

So he’s a bit of a reclamation project. Luckily for the Giants, there’s evidence that Morse’s struggles were the product of injuries. Morse spent over a month in the summer on the DL, and dealt with a bum wrist for the last half of the season. After the Orioles got knocked out of playoff contention, Morse had surgery on the wrist and figures to be all better by Spring.

As you would expect, Morse’s pre-injury numbers were more or less in line with his career norms. In April, he slashed .245/.288/.510; in May, he finished at .267/.360/.413. Not great numbers, per se, but not a disaster, and the power was still there. Once the injury bug bit him, his numbers started to slide and ended up in the gutter. After missing most of July, Morse was basically useless in the season’s final two months, slashing .143/.182/.238. So there is ample evidence that Morse lost his ability to hit because he was hurt. Guys don’t just develop this kind of inability to make contact unless something is very wrong (or in case their name is B.J Upton).

I give this signing a favorable review. On a one-year deal, Morse is low-risk with a potentially very high upside. If his wrist is healthy and he can launch 20-some-odd home runs, the Giants have themselves the makings of quite a lineup. Rumors were in full force all week that a Morse signing was impending, and I was terrified (and almost resigned to the fact) that the Giants were going to go nuclear on teams like the Astros and blow Morse away with a three-year offer.

However, they were able to get Morse to agree to one year, perhaps with the promise of playing for a contender, and as such this is a terrific gamble. Even if Morse isn’t productive, well, the next one-year contract that completely shackles a team will be the first. If he is healthy and hitting, he’s a power-hitting asset, and AT&T Park’s home run-squelching ways are much more forgiving toward right-handed hitters.

The signing also has the ripple effect of putting Gregor Blanco in a role much more accomodating of his talents, that of the fourth outfielder. Blanco is a terrific player who gets on base and plays good defense at all three outfield spots, but he’s no one’s idea of a player who should be getting 550 plate appearances.

Since Morse apparently is to left field defense what Carrie Underwood is to a Julie Andrews role, Blanco (and Juan Perez, for that matter) figures to get a lot of play as a late-inning defensive replacement. For those worried about Morse’s allergy to catching fly balls, just remember that the Giants had Pat Burrell standing out there for six innings a game in 2010 and they did just fine.

Morse comes with ample warning signs, obviously. There is the poor defense, the injury-proneness, and the fact that he’s 31 and has never been one to exhibit much patience at the plate. Players with these traits don’t last too long past their 30’s.

At the price, though, the Giants would have been idiots to pass on Morse. It beats trading a pitching prospect or two for Brett Gardner. It beats shelling out too much money and too many years for Shin-Soo Choo. It beats holding our noses through 200 shitty at-bats from Roger Kieschnick. While other teams are handing out highly questionable multi-year deals to free agents this offseason (coughmarinerstwinscough), the Giants are improving the team with low-risk signings like Morse and Tim Hudson. The moves may not turn them into World Champions again, but they sure as hell beat having an albatross hung over the team, Zito-style, for half a dozen years.

Posted in San Francisco Giants | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Let’s All Extend a Hearty Bay Area Welcome Back to Tim Hudson

Posted on November 20, 2013 by paulier55

huddyMy first reaction to the Giants’ signing of Tim Hudson to a two-year, $23 million deal was that this move is just so, I don’t know…so Giants. The team needed, badly, to fill out and fix what had been a truly crummy starting rotation last year, and they did it by outbidding everybody for a pitcher in his late-30’s coming off of a brutal injury. Even with two championships under his belt and far removed from the Dave Roberts/Rich Aurilia free agent frenzy of yore, GM Brian Sabean just can’t shake that reputation for having a weird veteran fetish.

That isn’t to say that this is a bad signing. Not at all. I freaking love Tim Hudson. I’ll always remember his call-up midway through the 1999 season as the ominous first warning shot to the AL West that the new, improved Billy Beane-era A’s would soon be a force to be reckoned with. Sure enough, Hudson went 92-39 for those A’s from ’99 to 2004 as the team turned into a powerhouse, winning over 100 games in both 2001 and 2002.

Nine years after being traded away by Oakland (for Dan Meyer, et al, in one of Beane’s worst trades), Huddy is back in the Bay Area, this time wearing the Orange and Black. Hudson isn’t quite the same animal as the pitcher the A’s had in the early-aughts, but he’s nonetheless remained one of the National League’s better starters since his first season in Atlanta in 2005. His ability to avoid giving up home runs and free passes has remained uncannily consistent throughout the past decade, and that has enabled Hudson to pitch at an All-Star level (or close to it) for a long time despite strikeout rates that aren’t exactly eye-popping.

Hudson doesn’t come without some concerns, though. When we last saw him, he was helping us work out or gag reflexes after suffering one of the nastiest injuries you’ll see on a baseball field. Hudson was having a typical quality season until July 24, when he went down with a gruesome ankle injury when he was stepped on by a runner while trying to cover first base. He went on the DL for the rest of the season and some even questioned whether he’d ever be able to return, but by all reports he’s fine and dandy for spring training.

The injury is what screwed down Hudson’s price this offseason, but the Giants decided to blow everybody out of the water anyway. It’s doubtful that any other team was offering close to $23 million, but the front office probably figured they would eliminate the competition for a pitcher with extremely high upside by throwing a high dollar amount at him. They went all-in and everybody else pulled their 6-3 straight draws off the table.

This should be a good signing for a variety of reasons. First, Hudson is a good pitcher. Case closed. Wow, Rice, when you put it like that. I know, simplicity.

But seriously, the Giants had major issues with their starting rotation and this goes a long way toward curing what ailed it. Hudson hasn’t posted an ERA over 4.00 since 2006, and that was an aberration caused by a freakishly high (for him) walk rate. Since coming back from Tommy John surgery in late 2009, Hudson is 59-34 with a 3.35 ERA. Simply put, he’s one of the most consistently good starters in the NL. The two years of the contract aren’t onerous, so even in the unlikely event that Hudson totally flames out, he won’t be some kind of long-term albatross like Barry Zito was.

It’s fair to question whether Hudson will have lingering effects from the injury, but it’s doubtful the Giants would have signed him without making sure he had a clean bill of health. His age is also a question mark, but he was effective last season at age 37 and his peripheral numbers have held more or less steady for nearly a decade.

If you’re a skeptic about this signing, look at it this way. The Giants were going to go after a free agent pitcher who didn’t have a qualifying offer extended to him by his former team, and it was going to be a pitcher that they wouldn’t have to guarantee a lot of years to. Figuring that guys like Matt Garza, A.J. Burnett, and Ricky Nolasco are going to command three-year deals at the minimum, you’re left with a whole lot of Dan Haren, Bronson Arroyo, and Jason Hammel. Would you rather have one of those guys over Hudson? I sure as hell wouldn’t (though the Giants are still allegedly in on the Arroyo sweepstakes).

Hudson probably can’t be counted on to toss 200 innings, as with any pitcher approaching 40, but if he reaches 170-180 innings and matches his Braves-era numbers (his ERA in nine seasons with the Braves was 3.56), then he’ll do just fine. He gives the Giants a rock solid front three to go along with Matt Cain and Madison Bumgarner, and if Tim Lincecum has a good year, the Giants’ rotation will once again start looking like one of the best in the league.

I love the signing, love Tim Hudson, and love the idea of a former Bay Area fave returning to close out his career with the Giants. Come to think of it, the Giants still have a fifth starter opening after this signing. What’s Mark Mulder up to these days?

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

The $35 Million Thank You

Posted on October 23, 2013 by paulier55

timboI think my favorite memory of Tim Lincecum (and this probably goes for a lot of Giants fans, I’m sure) is from Game Five of the 2010 World Series. The Giants held a three-games-to-one lead in the series, and a win in Game Five would, obviously, clinch their first World Championship since the team moved to the West Coast. Lincecum had started Game One and was far from his typical dominant self, but the Giants had won the game anyway by shelling the Rangers’ Cliff Lee. Now it was a rematch between the Game One starters and it pretty much stood to reason that Lee wouldn’t be knocked out of the box quite so easily this time.

Both pitchers were on their game this time. Lincecum and Lee traded zeros until the seventh inning, when Edgar Renteria hit his now legendary (in Giants circles) three-run home run to, in essence, clinch the Championship. Lincecum, meanwhile, was untouchable. He threw eight innings, giving up just three hits and striking out ten. The Rangers mustered just one run on a Nelson Cruz homer. It was vintage Lincecum, the guy who had won Cy Youngs in 2008 and 2009, with his changeup diving out of the strike zone like a pitch crafted by Hell’s most diabolical demons. The Rangers didn’t stand a chance, and once Lee gave up the Renteria home run, they knew it. You could see it in their faces.

The joy of that game wasn’t just watching the Giants win their first World Series in my lifetime. It was watching them do it on the back of a pitcher who had become the iconic face of a team that had dragged itself out of the murky hell that was the post-Bonds era. Lincecum was the star of the new, hip Giants, the collection of pitching stars and ragtag batsmen that had revitalized the franchise after the Bonds steroid mess and all the losing had cast a dark cloud over AT&T Park.

Anyone who remembers (and probably wants to forget) the 2005-2008 years remembers a time riddled with crappy free agent veteran signings surrounded by an aging, bitchy star who had to sit out every third game. It all bottomed out in a truly miserable 2007 season, where the team lost 91 games and were essentially the most unwatchable squad I can ever remember the Giants fielding.

Except from that post-Bonds wreckage there shone a glimmer of light, a potential Face of the Future, one Tim Lincecum, a short, spindly pitcher with bizarre mechanics and a devastating pitching repertoire who provided a tiny speck of hope for a fan base that had grown unaccustomed to losing in the wake of the 1997-2002 Bonds/Kent era.

The rest is history, of course. Lincecum immediately (and I mean, immediately) established himself as one of the most dominant pitchers in baseball. He won the National League Cy Young in 2008 and 2009, and led the league in strikeouts from 2008 to 2010. From 2008 to 2011, Lincecum went 62-36 with a 2.81 ERA (good for a 143 ERA+, kids) and 977 strikeouts in 881.2 innings. His name was being mentioned in the same sentence with Juan Marichal in terms of great Giants pitchers. We adored our diminuitive, long-maned star.

After the 2011 season, the Giants offered Lincecum a five-year deal worth, apparently, $100 million. Lincecum turned that offer down, and that’s where the story gets dark. Lincecum settled for a two-year deal for $40.5 million deal, and then inexplicably lost his fastball. In the two years of that deal, 2012 and 2013, Lincecum went 20-29 with a 4.76 ERA, which was good for a hideous 72 ERA+. Most concerning was the dip in strikeouts, as Lincecum’s K rate went from 10.0 strikeouts per nine innings in the 08-11 glory years to 9.0 in the bad years.

No one really gave a crap about Lincecum’s rough 2012 in the end because the Giants won the World Series, but in 2013, fans went from asking “What’s wrong with Lincecum?” to “How much longer do the Giants have to keep paying Lincecum?” Despite moments of brilliance like his July no-hitter, Lincecum suffered through another sub-par year and fans were basically wondering if the team was even going to bother bringing him back.

They got their answer yesterday, as the Giants re-signed Lincecum to a two-year, $35 million contract. Lincecum expressed his desire to stay in San Francisco rather than test the open market, and the Giants obliged with a shorter deal with a much higher per annum dollar amount. It’s incredibly doubtful, after his recent performance, that Lincecum would have netted $17 or $18 million per year from any team but the Giants.

I’m sort of torn by this re-signing…but not really. I basically assumed he’d be gone, and I still think it would have been in the Giants’ best interest to cut ties. I like that Lincecum the icon is still around, but I’m not thrilled that Lincecum the pitcher is going to be back on the mound for that amount of money. The deal is tantamount to a thank you basket of fruit. Thanks for all the good times, and since parting is such sweet sorrow, here’s a shit load of money to stick around.

Let’s not mince words: Lincecum has been horrible in the past two seasons. You know it. I know it. I hate to say it. We all hate to acknowledge it. I understand the emotional component at play here, but that kind of thing is exactly what got us two years of post-championship stink from Aubrey Huff. Lincecum can still miss some bats, but his ability to do so has dwindled rapidly, and his fastball command has been off-and-on and mostly off since the start of 2012. Maybe he’s got some mechanical issues to iron out, although if it were that easy, we wouldn’t be here talking about Lincecum’s poor 2013. Perhaps the Giants are secretly intent on naming him as their closer, which I think would be awesome, but probably just a silly, subversive dream.

The Lincecum deal is short and the Giants aren’t exactly smarting financially, so this contract won’t hurt the team to any great extent, even if Lincecum completely falls apart. It’s just that, taking in his past two years, it seems as though the Giants may have voluntarily thrown $35 million at a fifth starter because of weepy-eyed nostalgia.

That’s not a bad thing, necessarily, and I think it’s generally good that the franchise treats its popular players and Good Giants very well (see J.T. Snow, Rich Aurilia). I just think Lincecum’s history blinded the team and prevented them from seeing the pitcher he truly is now. It reeks of ownership intervention and, all emotion considered, it was probably best for everybody to just part ways.

Posted in San Francisco Giants | Tagged | 1 Comment

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Posted on April 30, 2013 by paulier55

Some changes have occurred recently in my writing “career”, and instead of trying to sum them up awkwardly in 140 characters or less on Twitter, I figured I’d just do a quick rundown on my lovely, little-utilized blog. Now, excuse me while I wipe off the dust and mouse shit from this thing.

As a lot of you were aware, I had been contributing to Fake Teams, which is part of Sports Blog Nation, for the past year-and-a-half. I had been posting about two articles a week there, discussing fantasy baseball matters and generally pretending that my fantasy teams weren’t annually ending up in the shitter. I ended my tenure there last week, though my work will still be archived here, for those interested. I do want to thank Ray Guilfoyle, the site manager, for bringing me on the staff there when I had very little background in fantasy baseball analysis. I also want to thank all the incredibly talented writers who I worked with on the site, those who continue to make Fake Teams one of the top places to go for fantasy baseball insight.

So on to the new. I’m excited to report that, as of last Monday, I’ve joined the talented staff of Bay Sports Net.com, a web site that provides daily coverage of every Bay Area sports team. Since Bay Area teams currently rule the sports landscape, I’m especially happy to be a part of this. I’ll be posting content on the Giants and A’s, and I’ll also be doing a lot of coverage of my home town Sacramento River Cats.

I’ve already had two posts published in the last week. The first was a write-up on Brandon Crawford, which went up last Monday morning. The second was a profile of Dan Straily, who just got called up to make a start for the A’s tonight and got knocked around. I appeared to be a genius for predicting that Straily would be brought up soon, but then looked like an ass when predicting he’d pitch, uh, well. I should have another article going up on Tuesday morning.

I’ll be linking to all my work on Twitter, so check it out! If you aren’t following me on Twitter, for some silly reason, go to @paulierice and click that awesome little “follow” button. Thanks again to all who have read and supported my work, and hopefully we’ll continue to have a lot of fun on the new site.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment