A teaser:

I can’t … It’s just … that is so beautiful and hilarious. Again, that’s batting-average against from the catcher’s perspective, so picture a lefty-swinging Sandoval with his back to you over on the right side of your screen. The place you go in the strike zone is in on his hands but, for goodness sake, don’t go too far in! If you miss outside the zone and come close to hitting him, he kind of rakes those pitches. Which doesn’t make sense. But, hey, neither does Sandoval. ...Read More...

Is this really true?

Baseball teams change at a glacial pace. I’m not talking about how a team does in a given season…that can change quite dramatically…I’m talking about what a team is: the broad scope of a team’s talents, their strengths and weaknesses. A team that’s good at converting a double play generally stays good at turning the double-play, just as a team with a terrible bullpen can’t make that bullpen a strength, at least not quickly. A team that gets lots of production ...

That brings us to Coors Field on Friday night. For a few seconds it seemed like we may have been headed towards that inevitable flare up. It happened in the third inning with Troy Tulowitzki running on first base, D.J. LeMahieu at the plate, and Madison Bumgarner pitching. As it’s being reported, Tulowitzki asked first base umpire Tim McClelland to check the baseball. McClelland complied, stopping play to give it a once over before tossing it out of play.

Bumgarner had the outward reaction ...

Ever since Michael Lewis’s Moneyball came out in 2003, there’s been this conception that baseball managers’ hunches and instincts don’t matter that much. But it seems to me that in your managing during last year’s postseason, you were definitely following a few hunches, weren’t you?

Sure. [Laughs] All the information you can get, it’s critical to your decision making. We have great advance scouts and an operations staff who really do a tremendous job of helping me. But at the ...

The pitching motion isn’t what’s going to cause Tim Lincecum to break down as the scouts once feared. It’s age that’s going to cause the pitching motion to break down and that’s going to lead to Terrible Tim Lincecum. In the meantime, maybe in the death throws of his youth, we’ll see glimpses of The Freak we all remember.

Wow, this sounds like a eulogy when it couldn’t be further from the truth. Tim Lincecum remains a good pitcher. He was a great pitcher tonight. The Giants won the game in ...

Baseball legend Willie Mays and the San Francisco Giants announced that Mae Louise Allen Mays, Willie’s wife of 41 years, passed away peacefully in her sleep Friday morning in the couple’s Bay Area home after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She was 74-years-old.

Mae and Willie were married in November, 1971. Late in life, Mae waged a 16-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease. She remained in their family home with Willie until her death.

“Mae died peacefully and without pain,” ...

SAN JOSE—Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has brushed back San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s formal request last week for a personal meeting to resolve issues holding up the Oakland A’s desired move to his city.

And Selig in his April 4 response added that Reed’s reference in an April 2 letter to “additional litigation” over the proposed A’s move “is neither productive nor consistent with process that the Athletics have initiated under our rules.”

Selig wrote that the ...

Now sponsored by Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index!

- Joe is a character in the new MLB: The Show video game.  (So is Aaron Gleeman, BTW.)  Since Joe isn’t a video game player, he doesn’t really know the details, but he’s happy.

- Playoff predictions:
Rany: TOR, DET, LAA, TB (wild card), TEX (wild card), WAS, CIN, ARI, ATL (wild card), STL (wild card); play-ins: TB d. TEX, ATL d. STL; World Series: WAS d. TOR
Joe: TB, DET, TEX, TOR (wild card), LAA (wild card), WAS, CIN, SD, SF (wild ...

Before anything…they should secure the goofy Techball rights from Scirra Arcade.

The Giants are more circumspect about their use on tech on the baseball side, where teams are fiercely secretive to gain a competitive edge. Assistant General Manager Bobby Evansoffers that the team contracts more than 10 firms — among them, Inside Edge and Sportvision — for the best available data, video and technology. The team was the first to use FieldF/X, a system within ballparks that captures defensive ...

Buster Posey and Justin Verlander could team up to buy the Royals!

At 26 years old, Buster Posey already is a two-time World Series champion and the National League’s Most Valuable Player. Now he could be a Giant for life.

Posey and the Giants agreed to a nine-year contract on Friday, one that covers his three remaining arbitration years and buys out his first five years of free agency. The deal includes an option for 2022.
Posey had previously signed a one-year, $8 million deal to avoid ...

I like food, food tastes good!
I like food, food tastes good!
Juicy burgers, greasy fries,
Turkey legs and mom’s arepas

Sandoval recognizes and acknowledges all of these things as truth, and it’s why as he nurses another injury – this an irritated ulnar nerve threatening to keep him out opening day after back-to-back seasons in which he missed at least 45 games – he knows he must adapt.

Just not yet.

“I’ve got this year and next year to change all the things,” Sandoval said. “It’s going ...

Level

It would have put to rest so many questions if Tim Lincecum had just come out and had a strong spring. Not even a dominating spring or a return-to-Cy-Young-form spring.

Just a promising one. Just good enough that the San Francisco Giants could say, “OK, there’s some of the old Tim Lincecum we used to know. That’s one thing we don’t have to worry about right now.”

That hasn’t happened this spring and it definitely didn’t happen Saturday, as Lincecum struggled in three innings against ...

Not a kid anymore: Edgar’s winter.

Longtime major-league shortstop Edgar Renteria officially announced his retirement from baseball on Thursday, he told RCN Television in his native Colombia.

  “I’m definitely retired from baseball and it will soon be announced in the majors,” Renteria said, according to a rough translation of his comments at CBS Sports. “I decided to retire from baseball and try to spend all my time with my family.

  “I always wanted Colombia to know before ...

But the push to bring baseball to all corners of the globe comes as one of the sport’s key demographics continues to vanish right here at home.

For the first time in memory, the Giants, reigning champions, have no African American players in camp this spring. It’s a stunning development on a team whose history is molded by Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, Frank Robinson and Dusty Baker [...]

MLB’s Urban Youth Academy is designed to support those who want to go further in the sport, ...

“No, if anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving. I am NOT drinking any ####### Merlot!”

Here’s how it all started. Oh, I’ll let Davis tell it:

“I always drank like white wines, chardonnay. When I look back, Mike Krukow was the guy who initially got me interested in red wine. I’d gone to his home for dinner. He and his wife cooked a nice meal and had a bottle, I think it was either a Grgich or J. Lohr cab. I remember saying, ‘Krukie, I’m not a red wine drinker. You got any white wine?’ ...Read More...

The right-hander is a recovering alcoholic who said he has been sober for four years and sees his career and life on an upswing. In two Cactus League games for the Giants he has faced eight batters and allowed no hits, with one walk.

The popular narrative of Proctor’s downfall as a pitcher held that his arm blew out because Yankees manager Joe Torre overused him in 2006 and 2007. He pitched in 83 games both year, including 31 for the Dodgers after a midseason trade in 2007.

Proctor tells a ...

No Melky ring today, my love has gone away!

I am a fan of the team and will cheer for anyone on the roster.  For the past three seasons, management has put on the field a team that brought the first two World Series Championships in the San Francisco Giants era.

But as of today, I am mad at the San Francisco Giants.

...I’m mad at the Giants for not taking a stand against giving Cabrera a ring.  If he did not get a ring, what’s Melky going to do?  Complain?  If he complains, the ...

Wait….I had something for this.

Cubs outfielder Alfonso Soriano told reporters on Monday that he’d accept a trade to “six or seven” other teams (ESPN Chicago).

As Paul Sullivan of the Chicago Tribune reminds us, Soriano last year had the chance to approve a trade to the Giants, eventual winners of belt and title, but opted not to do so. This time around, Soriano adds that he’d give the go-ahead for a team in the “east or center,” so perhaps nothing’s changed when it comes to his willingness ...

Damn. Now I have to take a break from a Whorish Boorish fest to find all these Minor League levels that Brandon Crawford says he hit at.

Of all the compliments Brandon Crawford heard last year, this one struck the sweetest chord.

“I’m prepared to say with confidence that Brandon Crawford is the best defensive shortstop in baseball. His combination of instincts, hands and arm strength separates him from the rest.”

Any Giant could have said it, but none did.

It was a Dodger, catcher A.J. ...

Whoa! This belt buckle is bigger than the one worn by faux hippie Scott Muni when he paunchingly visited our HS!

Oh, it’s on now.

OK, maybe the rivalry between the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers goes back a little further, like to when they all played in New York City. Regardless, Giants slugger Brandon Belt pumped it up a little by saying what’s been on a lot of people’s minds as new Dodgers ownership has added salary this offseason. L.A. is looking at a 123 percent-plus ...

LEAST INTERESTING POSSIBLE CONSTELLATION

A face appeared in the heavens. “BEHOLD!” it said. The people of the world stared and trembled. “I AM PETE HARNISCH!” it bellowed. The people of the world said, “oh,” and went back to whatever they were doing.

A young philosophy professor? A high-tech hipster nerd?

Elvis Costello? Mr. Peabody’s friend Sherman?

That was Friday’s fun question: Who did Tim Lincecum look like with his new short hair and faux glasses?

Villalona had been charged with the September 2009 murder of 25-year-old Mario Felix de Jesus Velete in the Dominican Republic at a bar in La Romana, where Villalona is from. Villalona eventually settled with de Jesus Velete’s family, reportedly for around $139,000. A prosecutor was planning to move forward with the case, but the charges were dropped.

And what better day for it than the Babe’s birthday, pt. 2…

At the time Babe Ruth allegedly corked his bat, was that against the rules?

Yes.  And he didn’t “allegedly” cork his bat; he was caught using a bat glued together from three pieces of wood.  Sisler and Kenny Williams were caught with funny bats at about the same time.

Are NFL offensive linemen the only subgroup of players in the big 4 sports for which POSITIVE statistics aren’t kept? Or is there some statistic of measurement used ...

On page fourteen of the linked newspaper, Milwaukee Journal, January 31, 1913:

There was much lifting of eyebrows and quiet speculation today as to just how the Giants will look when they step on to the Polo grounds wearing violet uniforms.

Frequenters of Broadway concluded Johnny McGraw’s crew would be about the sweetest looking bunch of men on any diamond. The manager of the Giants asked what were the colors of New York university, and when a friend told him violet, he said:

“That sounds ...