Boy. Isn’t that the truth?

Well, maybe I’m just a little more old school and really want to go after the best with the best with everything on the line. Thats all there really is to look forward to when you are on a team that sucks green rocks. I hate intentional walks when you have dominating stuff. Obviously if its the pitcher, thats one thing. But when you’re out there, and you have really dominating stuff, you want to beat the shit out of the other guy. When you’re on a drub team, there is not a lot to play for except for the matchups. Yeah. He prolly gets Feliz. Hell, you or I probably get Feliz. But that is bigger. Burrell who hits a ton, or Feliz who swats at invisible gnats. When you get beat by their best thats one thing. Getting beat by a shit like Feliz, no matter how much more favorable the matchup, is still sucko.

Like I said earlier. He only missed by a little bit. It always comes to execution. Anyway. I respect 100 percent your point of view, and I know you do mine. I just like mine a little better. But thats probably because you were a catcher and I had the extremely difficult task of always trying to keep guys like you from screwing things up from 60 feet away, so its no surprise that we disagree.

Good to see you really engaged again.

Maybe I’m splitting hairs, because I do agree with you; but I think there’s been more thought about it between you and I these last 12 hours than Bonehead put into it at all. I don’t believe that he considered he was putting Wilson in a simulated playoff face-off; either Wilson completely missed his off-the-plate location, or Rags and Bonehead forgot who was on deck. Krukow called it a challenge fastball when the ball finally landed; again, I ask, why do that? Why challenge the hottest hitter on the team when you don’t have to? As I write this, I guess I’m thinking I don’t agree so much.

The simulation you’re talking about sounds good in theory, but isn’t getting the save the real test? I’d think that going through Utley and Burrell in the ninth with a one-run lead is enough of a beat your chest kind of accomplishment, without having to “challenge” the hottest hitter with a chance to give your pitcher a win. Seem like that’s enough pressure…. No?

Oh my. “Over time”.

And what I’m alluding to is what do you do in a playoff game if THERE IS NO BASE TO put Burrell on. Do you really want the first time for Mr. Wilson to have to go after somebody with only one pitch to actually be in the bottom of the ninth inning of a real playoff game. What I meant and I think you may not have understood this, is that last nights game was a “simulated playoff situation”.

Its a similar teaching tactic used in air combat training. You simulate worst case scenarios in a safe environment. You do the same thing with a young team when you are trying to figure out who has balls and who doesn’t. Who can perform under adverse conditions in pressure situations and who cannot. So yes, you can have a meaningless game and a playoff simulation situation simultaneously. How’s that for alliteration?

I’ve been complaining for years about our pitches tendency to take an at-bat from 0-2 to 3-2. The 0-2, two foot outside waste pitch is a staple of the Giants approach to the game. Rags’ whole approach is avoid avoid avoid. So, going after Burrell there isn’t a learning experience. If that was a playoff game, YOU WALK BURRELL TO GO AFTER FELIZ. And anyway, you can’t say the game was meaningless AND a playoff atmosphere at the same time.

This was merely a teaching experience for Bochy letting it be known, that at some point, Wilson is going to have challenge guys like Burrell and Howard and Utley in games that actually mean something. The last inning was a pressure cooker kind of inning that comes in playoff baseball, and that was one hell of a learning experience for Wilson. I was particularly impressed as the ball left the yard. Wilson never says a word. He doesnt hold his head or do any of the other stupid shit that so many others do. He never grimaces. He doesn’t look intimated or defeated either. He was perfect Rob Nenn, Mariano Rivera redux. He still looked confident coming off the mound as if to shrug and say “you got me on that one, but I got you on the next two”

With a young pitcher who is still learning his craft, you can tell a lot more about his attitude towards himself with the way he handles a blind-side defeat, than a 1-2-3 eight-pitch save with a 3 run lead.