Bochy’s got our best hitter and best player batting sixth? The one significant offensive addition to last year’s last-place club, on a team with no offense whatsoever, and Bruce Bochy has him batting sixth.
UPDATE: Wow. Zito, again, brings nothing to the game, or should I say, brings exactly what he has, which is nothing. More errors, more double plays….. wow.
And, to add insult to injury, Bochy has the audacity to dress down the rookie, Bocock, after he gets picked off in a 5-0 ninth inning. Ummmm…. Boch? Your shortstop there was promoted from Single A to start on Opening Day, because you have no suitable replacement in your entire organization for your injured, 43-year old starting shortstop. So, sure, the kid’s overmatched. It’s not his fault. It’s your general managers fault. Yelling at Bocock isn’t gonna help, it’s gonna hurt. And, more importantly, it’s disgraceful.
You wanna yell at somebody, yell at Sabean, for giving you this shamefully inadequate roster.
[...] of commenting on it, I thought I??d share it with everyone: John: I rarely if ever cross post. Buthttp://www.onlybaseballmatters.com/archives/2008/03/31/sixth/Exeter/Hampton area community calendar Hampton Union Exetern NAM LE, 2007 GEORGE BENNETT FELLOW, [...]
And so it begins… Cain goes 5 2/3 innings without allowing a run and of course gets no support. Taschner did a great job of bailing him out, so perhaps the bullpen will be good enough for the Giants to lose more 1 run games than any other team in history. I sincerely hope two straight seasons of this doesn’t mess with Cain’s head too much… it could turn him into a nibler.
Durham may be a complete statue in the field, as he showed again in the 9th inning last night, but he is the only hitter in that damn line-up that seems to have a plan or a clue on how to work a count.
But yeah, this is going to be Tiger’s 43-119 bad. Save us Timmy!
This was on the BP subscription site.
Couldn’t agree more with Joe.
Prospectus Today
A Cruel, Cruel Summer
by Joe Sheehan
Yesterday, the Giants played their first game without owning the rights to Barry Bonds since 1992. If it was any indication of the next 161, it’s going to be a very long summer for their remaining fans. Take a peek at their Opening Day lineup—the day for putting your best foot forward into the new season—against the Dodgers’ Brad Penny:
Dave Roberts, LF
Rich Aurilia, 1B
Randy Winn, RF
Bengie Molina, C
Ray Durham, 2B
Aaron Rowand, CF
Jose Castillo, 3B
Brian Bocock, SS
Barry Zito, P
That’s a lineup that just screams, “StubHub!” Or a weekend in Napa. Or sailing on the Bay. Anything—anything—but watching this team hit.
Let’s see…Dave Roberts is probably the best news here, actually. He gets on base against righties (.347 career, .342 in 2007) and is an excellent basestealer by both quantity (238 career, 31 last year) and percentage (80 percent career, 86 percent last year). Rich Aurilia is miscast as a #2 hitter, as a first baseman, and as a starter against right-handers; other than that he’s not a bad player. Randy Winn hit .332 OBP/.404 SLG and .341/.404 against righties the last two years, which is slightly below par for an MLB #3 hitter. Bengie Molina’s last three SLGs against righties: .431, .389, .361. You might figure that he’s probably suboptimal as a cleanup man.
Ray Durham was hideous last year in the first year of a two-year contract awarded following his stone fluke 2006 season. He’s actually likely to bounce back and be acceptable at the plate; unfortunately, his range at second has dwindled to the point that he’s a detriment afield. Aaron Rowand is a nice little player; on the other hand, if your big $60 million free agent signing bats sixth, isn’t that an indictment of the contract? He’s not an impact hitter, anyway. Jose Castillo was on waivers about a week ago, released by one of the five worst teams in baseball after losing his job to a guy, Jorge Cantu, who isn’t really a third baseman and who spent almost all of 2007 in the minors. Brian Bocock…I’ve beaten up Brian Bocock plenty. It’s not his fault. Barry Zito is a league-average or so starter who happened to hit the market when everyone had money to spend. It’s really not his fault, either.
The problem isn’t that this is a bad team. It’s that it’s a bad and boring team, with veterans who weren’t good enough to win when they had Bonds as a teammate, and now form a lineup that calls to mind the waning days of the Rachel Phelps Era.
In a legitimate rebuilding, the Giants would eat the contracts of Roberts, Aurilia, Winn, and Durham. (Molina is miscast as a cleanup hitter, but he’s not a bad player, and he’s not blocking anyone of note.) They would play Fred Lewis, Nate Schierholtz, Rajai Davis, and Eugenio Velez. It’s not like those players are anything special, either, but there’s at least some chance of upside, and you can sell inexperienced players under the guise of a youth movement. (Although of that group only Velez is actually young.) The Giants don’t have the stomach for this, however, so they have this desiccated group of role players starting.
This isn’t an effort at rebuilding. Frankly, I have no idea what it is, and I suspect the Giants front office doesn’t, either. The 2008 roster, the 2008 season, seems to be more about pretending that the 1993-2007 seasons didn’t happen than anything else, which is a ridiculous way to put together a baseball team. Do this instead:
Fred Lewis, LF
Eugenio Velez, 2B
Aaron Rowand, CF
Dan Ortmeier, 1B
Rajai Davis, RF
Bengie Molina, C
Jose Castillo, 3B
Brian Bocock, SS
I’m not going to tell you that that’s a better lineup than the one Bruce Bochy started yesterday.
Quite frankly, I’m astounded that a professional baseball organization could be so ill-prepared for injuries that upon losing one shortstop and one third baseman, it was left with waiver bait and a guy who was overmatched in A-ball as its best options.
With that said, this lineup is a more watchable one, and it’s a better idea than pretending that people are coming to AT&T Park to watch Rich Aurilia.
Richie hit 37 home runs from the 2-spot in 2001, you can look it up.
5 games before the Giants get their first extra base hit?
so the only real offense and excitement comes from the kids tonite
but lo and behold, come tomorrow and bochy will pencil back in the vets and will still put rowan back in the 6 spot….cuz that lefty righty thing is working so well
and even in his prime, ritchie never batted in the 2 spot
And I’m watching Cain pitch and the A’s in between. Cain looks damn good.
and bochy puts the exact same pos lineup out there tonite
fuck him
this team is gonna lose 100 games no matter what
let the grizzlies play
And don’t forget the younger and faster theme…which somehow skipped Aurillia and led to two double plays. Bochy, who made out the line-up card again? 2-1 odds in favor of at least one more shut-out this week.
Good news to those of you worrying about getting older… apparently in San Francisco 35 is the new 23.
I think Bochy is Chief Inspector Dreyfus to Brian Bocock’s Inspector Clouseau.
The only good thing about this season (other than Cain and Lincecum) is at least we got rid of the double play machine, Pedro Feliz.
And to think, Manny Acta was right there for the taking. Those against his hiring were against it because he didn’t have enough experience. Like this Giants team needs and experienced manager.
i said it before, bochy was the worst pick if you are gonna rebuild
sure, he is great with pitchers….so make him a pitching coach
but there is no way that the kids are gonna get adequate playing time, or support as long as he is the manager
and when the fuck is sabean gonna be fired???
I thought Bocock did well – imagine the pressure he felt, it must be something else, national TV, 50,000 people in the stands. I saw him get on base, show off a great arm…acquitted himself well. Bochy is an idiot, yes, Phillies, hitters park, but uh – Bengie Molina over Rowand?
I did, despite being prepared for it, have a coronary over Zito’s performance – I don’t know if that was his official best fastball, but the best I saw was 84 mph too.
What a lousy game – you know, at the least, as a manager you squeeze an out here, an out there from fundamentals…sloppy game on defense too, Roberts getting thrown out stealing – and our best choices for the future? Castillo and Aurilia!
Bad bad bad… I want to see the next couple of games, see Cain and Lincecum, and I enjoyed (despite the Keystone cops inning) seeing prodigal son Merkin, but I just wonder how many quality starts become losses this year. Who knows, maybe one of those guys has a shot to lead the league in ERA and losses both!
Jay T.
unless another team is willing to part with a ton of prospects….enought to field an aaa squad, and with at least 2 who are mlb ready….you dont trade cain or lincecum
sabean coulda traded lowry but he balked
FIRE SABEAN
How many times can a pitcher like Matt Cain lose 1-0 or 2-1 and not have that mess with his head so bad it makes him worse? A few years of this and both of their heads will explode or they’ll be checked into a mental institution. We might as well try to get a bunch of prospects from a team desperate for good pitchers midway through the season. It’s not like these guys are going to have any run support before 2010, and that’s if we’re really lucky.
My thoughts exactly… and you’ll notice Rowand had 2 of the team’s whopping total of 5 hits. An opening day shutout seems all too predictable… this could be historically ugly. Maybe that will be enough to force the firing of Sabean?
I’ve thought it over and I think I’m a dedicated enough Giants fan to actually go against the team this year. I want them to go 40 – 122 and score the fewest runs per game in history… it would be so incredibly bad they’d have to fire Sabean and then a new GM could deal Cain or Lincecum properly and rebuild our farm system (those two guys are really our only chance at having a winning team in the next five years, and I mean indirectly). At this point, we are basically like a franchise team, we really are.
…84 miles per hour! Earlier Vin Scully had some stat about the Giants with Bonds being something like 70 wins over .500 and the Giants w/o Bonds being something like 30 games under .500. Huh, he didn’t elaborate. Good thing we don’t have him any longer…that Bonds guy.
Which is more ridiculous, batting Rowand sixth or letting Zito get the Opening Day start?
This is going to be a long year.
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Oh my God, his fastball tops out at 84 miles per hour. I…could…literally do that.