The San Francisco Giants begin their World Series title defense tomorrow!
I just love writing that!
Brandon Belt made the roster pushing Travis Ishikawa to the waiver wire, and Aubrey Huff to right field. Ishi can still be traded, but I doubt that any team is gonna give up too much for him when they could get him for nothing when he clears waivers. The Giants could send him to Fresno and he could refuse that to become a free agent. His future is in limbo right now.
Huff in right gives the Giants a projected starting lineup of Torres, Sanchez, Huff, Posey, Burrell, Belt, Sandoval, and Tejada. It seems to be a slightly more potent lineup than last season and they have a very deep bench with Fontenot, Schierholtz, Mark Derosa, and Eli Whiteside. Any one of those guys could start on the right team. That's saying something since this team was searching for depth, particularly at shortstop, this offseason.
Oh yeah, I forgot Aaron Rowand is on the bench too. Hopefully he is the one who gets the ax when Ross comes off the DL, but there is a very real possibility that Nate goes. Not because it is the best move for the Giants, but because it really appears that the Giants are gonna let Rowand clog up a roster spot for the duration of his albatross of a contract. I think that Nate is more valuable to the club but what are you gonna do?
It's so great to be done with Spring training! Lincecum Vs. Kershaw tomorrow at 5pm!
I know, I know, I've made a point that it's only spring training before. But you've gotta admit. It's great to see this loser get roughed up even if it doesn't count.
It's a big deal that the Giants hit this guy well. He absolutely owned the Giants last season until his final 2 starts. Hell, he beat poor Jonathan Sanchez 1-0 TWICE! The Giants, and Sanchez, did get their revenge by defeating Mat (who stole my other T) Latos on the last day of the season. 3-0 to send the Padres home for the 2010 offseason so they could trade away their biggest and possibly only offensive threat.
I'm sure you are all familiar with the story about Latos signing a baseball for charity autograph auction and writing "I hate SF on it." Maybe you heard about his comments about how all the Giants from last year were all "Just a bunch of guys grabbed from other teams". If the way he pitched against the Giants and his antics didn't make you dislike the guy then maybe the fact that he plays for the Padres will help you not like him.
Although you may have to just pity him though. He is stuck on the San Diego Padres. Who, as they showed once again this past offseason, aren't really all that concerned with winning. Maybe if his team cared about that, then they would have made some more moves to improve his team at the deadline last offseason.
Enjoy battling it out with the D-backs for last place Mat!
This offseason I have been kinda lazy in my posting about The Giants. But now that we have some baseball related stuff actually happening, I am ready to get back in to the swing of things!
As I'm sure you already know, the pitchers and catchers reported to spring training yesterday and the first actual spring training game is in 10 days!
As for the team itself, nothing much to report. A quick view of the front page of Sfgiants.com reveals that Buster Posey is glad to get back to work, Tim Lincecum is driven by his stumbles last season, and the Giants are excited to begin their title defense. Pretty informative stuff!
The biggest surprise is that Pablo Sandoval is one of the few position players in camp already. There was no word of his weight so I hope that is good news since I would expect there to be plenty of articles about how he failed to get in shape if he didn't. We also found out that the ball from the last out of the World Series is in Brian Wilson's possession and it is safe inside of an unused candy jar.
That's pretty much it for now. I am counting down the days until the season starts and by the time I get this posted there will only be 9 more days until the first spring training game!
After the last few tumultuous years the San Francisco Giants had been through, I don't think any body would have ever expected that headline.
But there it is.
Just the fact that he brought a World Championship to San Francisco qualifies him for this title, but if you look a little closer at his overall run and see how successful he has been, you can see he was deserving of the title already.
His first trade as the Giants GM was the infamous Matt Williams and Trent Hubbatrd to the Indians for Jeff Kent, Julian Tavarez, Joe Roa, and Jose Vizcaino. This trade probably made a lot of people view Sabean as a terrible GM from day one, but Jeff Kent had a Hall of Fame career with the Giants and most of the players in the trade not only contributed to the Giants 1997 playoff run but also to the 2002 World Series appearance.
Speaking of World Series and playoff appearances, Sabean's five playoff and 2 World Series appearances are tops in San Francisco Giants history as well. The last time the Giants had appeared in the playoffs more than once in a five year stretch was when they made it to the NLDS Vs. the Cardinals in 1987 and in 1989 when they played the A's in the Bay Bridge series. I think we all know how that one turned out.
Sabean's detractors grew in numbers with the disastrous Joe Nathan trade. I refuse to type the name of the guy the Giants got in return( partly because it's a pain in the ass to spell) that's how bad this trade was. This trade looked a little worse for the Giants when Francisco Liriano, a guy who was considered a throw-in at the time of the deal, turned in to one of the top pitching prospects in the game.
Sabean's credibility took another hit when the Giants struggled to four consecutive losing seasons. He was crucified when Big-money signings for Barry Zito, Aaron Rowand, and Edger Renteria turned out to be busts. (although Renteria would redeem Sabean somewhat with his 2010 World Series MVP award.)
But for every poor move Sabean has made, Marvin Benard's big contract, Edgardo Alfonso, and Dave Roberts there are a bunch of guys he has pulled off the scrap heap and got what he needed out of them such as Benito Santiago, Bengie Molina, Reggie Sanders, Pat Burrell, and Andres Torres.
These deals don't even compare to the steal he made in the deal for Jason Schmidt. The Giants got Jason Schmidt and Jon Vander Wal from the Pirates for Armando Rios and Ryan Vogelsong. Rios and Vogelsong never amounted to much for the Pirates. Schmidt, on the other hand, went 78-37, struck out 1065, and had an ERA of 3.36 in six seasons for the Giants. He finished 2nd in the CY Young award voting in 2003 and 4th in 2004. He also made 3 All-Star game appearances for the Giants along the way.
The Giants W-L record since Sabean took over as GM is 1212-1054. Not too many teams can claim a +.500 record for 15 seasons.
All in all, the Brian Sabean ERA in San Francisco has been the most successful and exiting in San Francisco Giants history.
I didn't even mention the white flag trade in 1997 that led to the Giants improbable NL West crown in 1997!
So I went to the parade on Wednesday! All I can say is what a blast! Getting there and back was quite an odyssey too! 1.5 million Giants fans all squeezed into downtown San Francisco was quite a sight to behold. The atmosphere was fun and the scene was amazing!
The whole idea to attend the parade was my cousin Rob's. He sent me a text message before the start of the World Series that said: "You gonna be able to go to the parade when we win the World Series?" I told him I would figure out a way. I was a little worried since I only had one day of PTO left but I figured the Giants would win in a way that would be all I needed!
When the Giants won on Monday night and the parade was set for Wednesday it guaranteed that I would be able to get to the parade and get back down to Palm Desert in time for work at 6 AM on Thursday morning. We would just have to leave Tuesday night, drive up to Sacramento to pick up my uncle Paul, go to the parade in S.F., drive back to Sacramento to drop off my uncle, and then drive back to Palm Desert. My cousin, who lives in San Diego, would still have another 2 hour drive to get home after dropping me off.
Rob got off work at quarter to 5 and shot up to my house from San Diego. He got to my place just after 7 PM. I was ready to go. But my 3 year old wasn't ready for me to go. He had been sick all day but now he had been crying for the last hour and complaining that his stomach hurt. We weren't quite sure, but there may have been a trip to the emergency room in his immediate future. His mom was freaked out enough as it was, but the thought of her having to take my son, who just would not stop crying and our 4 year old daughter to the ER by herself for untold hours were really frazzling her. I decided I would take our daughter with us and drop her off at my grandmother's before the parade since I really didn't think that lugging a 4 year old around San Fran with hundreds of thousands of people around would be the best idea in the world.
We got to Sacramento around 3:30 AM. Enough time to get some sleep before we got on the road at 6:30. My cousin wanted to drive into the city but my vote was that we should take BART. The deciding factor was when Rob talked to his brother and heard that all of the parking garages in the city were closed already at 7:30 AM. We decided to take the BART train at the Del Norte station.
I used to live in San Pablo and had a class in San Francisco that I had to attend for a week, I rode into SF on the BART from the Del Norte station so the fact that the parking lot was full at the station wasn't that strange to me. We had to park up the hill from the station a little bit and walk. As we were heading to the station we got our first idea of how long this day was going to be. A lady, who was walking back up the hill, asked us if we had our BART tickets already. We told her no and she said: "It's an hour and a half wait." We thought "Bullshit" and decided that even if it was there was no stopping us from getting to the city
Well the scene at the BART station was one I had never seen before and I rode the BART train during times when the Bay Bridge was closed! There had to be at least 2000 people in line at the station. We got in line and waited for about a half an hour before the BART officials announced that we would be allowed to ride the train for free. Even though the officer said to stay where we were and we would all get on the train there was still a mad dash to the gates. We stayed back because we figured we would get there and it wasn't worth potentially getting trampled. This was also the first of many times that I was glad I left my four year old in Sacramento with her great grandmother.
The train ride into the city was uneventful. We got off at the Civic Center BART station because we got into the city after the parade started. We decided we would go straight to Civic Center and watch the speeches at the end of the parade.
Once we got out of the BART tunnel it was a scene you never would have expected. I had a little bit of an idea because I had been checking my phone and seeing pictures that people were posting on Twitter from all of the office buildings along the parade route. But Market street was wall to wall people. they had the road blocked off and people just walked down the middle of the street. We walked down to UN Plaza and they had the farmer's market going on and there were thousands of people swarming the Plaza. They weren't bums either!
We found a good spot on the grass at Civic Center and stayed there for the rest of the festivities. It was an unreal scene. people were climbing on top of the elevator housing for the Civic Center parking garage (I really thought we might see that thing collapse), there was so much pot smoking going on you would have thought you were at a reggae concert or that prop 19 actually passed (take that Josh Hamilton), above all everyone was excited and happy to be there. From the chants of UUUU-Ribe, to the Boos for Arnold Schwarzenegger, to the chants of MVP, MVP, for Edgar Renteria. It was awesome.
The trip home wasn't quite as arduous. There were still crowds everywhere and the BART train was just as crowded. We left the city at 2:00 and if you throw in the normal Commute traffic we didn't get back to Sacramento until 6:00 PM. We picked up my daughter and headed for Southern California. I got home just in time to get ready for work!
So out of 57 hours from the time I got p on Tuesday until the time I went to bed after work, my cousin and I were awake for 54 of them,we traveled over 1200 miles (my cousin put in more like 1500), we got mentioned in the Sacramento Bee, and we witnessed one of the coolest things we have ever seen. 1.5 million Giants fans celebrating the WORLD CHAMPION SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS!
Here are a few pictures and videos from all the fun:
GIANTS 3 - RANGERS 1
Edgar Renteria is the World Series MVP for the San Francisco Giants.
Wow.
Somehow the fact that a guy who was castoff and considered one of Brian Sabean's worst signings being voted as the World Series MVP makes sense, Aaron Rowand being in the starting Lineup for the deciding game 5 was just right, and Tim Lincecum being on the mound was perfect.
All of this, all the beards, the waiver wire claims, the pitching, the clutch hitting, and did I mention the pitching? All of this adds up to the first World Series in San Francsico history.
Tim "The Franchise" Lincecum struck out 10 Texas Rangers, the team with the highest batting average in baseball during the regular season, and held them to one run while outdueling Mr. Postseason Cliff Lee. Edgar Renteria hit a three run homerun in the 7th inning to break a 0-0 tie and account for all of the Giants runs. It was a typical Giants victory.
That's the way the season should end.
I'll have more for you guys as the week goes on. Right now I want to just sit back and soak in the atmosphere. Tomorrow night I'm gonna head up to the bay with my cousin so we can watch the parade in San Fran so it's gonna be a long week since I'm gonna have to work on Thursday!
Celebrate San Francisco fans! Your Giants are World Series Champions!
