Tim Kawakami wonders if the Giants can complete one of the most unprecedented and frankly improbable collapses in baseball history:
…. They can’t run and they had better not hide.
The Giants and their fans are backed into a corner today, the final day of the regular season, and there is no denying the anxiety and fear that accompanies this situation.
Could they really blow this?
Well, yeah, they could. The failures of the Giants’ brain-trust are catching up to them all at once.
The failure of Bochy and Sabean to adequately prepare Matt Cain for his penultimate start, allowing him to come into the game amped out of his gourd, unable to corral his emotions and his pitches.
The failure of Righetti and Bochy to figure out a way calm him down once the game began.
The failure of anyone on the team to recognize that the Gonzalez at-bat was the game-decider, and that, in that moment, an unintentional-intentional walk was the way out of that early jam.
The failure of the Giants starters in these first two starts is simply staggering. The Padres came out of September having scored 81 runs in the entire month of September, and to allow them to hang up a 10-spot in the first two games in as unexpected and disappointing as I can imagine.
The failure of Bochy and Sabean to realize that they had to set up their rotation so that Zito wouldn’t pitch again this season has come back and bit them in the ass, bit them hard.
Much like Dusty Baker’s decision to start Livan Hernandez in Game Seven of the 2002 World Series, a decision that ignored statistics and instead was based on “veteran” bullshit and favoritism; the “decision” to allow Zito to start that game yesterday was wrong-headed, wrong and foolish and lazy. And, just like Hernandez, Zito put the team in an immediate hole, one that they could not overcome.
And now, the Giants send out Jonathan Sanchez, who will almost certainly lead the league in walks –coming into today, Sanchez is second to Ubaldo Jimenez 91-92– against a team that has proven to be willing to take pitches from the Giants pitchers all season. This game will be decided by strike one, simple as that.
It is worth noting that –for whatever reason– the umpiring in the season series between these two teams has been one-sided and inconsistent. The Padres starters have benefited from a far more generous strike zone than the Giants starters have, these last two games have been no exception; and consequently the Giants hitters have had to expand their strike zones in a way that the Padres hitters simply have not had to deal with.
Given that, Sanchez will have to give in right from the start. Just throw the ball right down the pipe and get that 0-1 count. Otherwise, the Giants will lose this game. Simple as that.
If Sanchez is electric, or, God forbid, the hitters erupt, these faliures will all be forgotten. All will be right in the world of the Giants. If the Giants have to go to San Diego, well, it’ll be Lincecum, at least. But it would still be an unprecedented and historic collapse.
UPDATE: Posey goes yard bottom of the eighth, Giants lead 3-0!!!
UPDATE: One out in the ninth!!
UPDATE: Two down!!
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John, too bad we now have to face the mighty Tim Alderson in Game 1 of the playoffs – oh no wait, Alderson’s languishing in the minor leagues for the Pirates, while Freddy Sanchez, who we traded him for while you cursed and swore and cried, knocked home the deciding run that clinched the division. And I love your howler of a comment, “The failure of…Sabean to adequately prepare Matt Cain for his penultimate start”. Sabean! Preparing the veteran pitcher Matt Cain for his big game! God damn you Sabean! This NL West title is all your fault! You need to get in there and calm the pitchers down!
i can finally breathe, I’m going to get really drunk right now.
Sanchez and the pens balls are absolutely massive, crushed it every single time the pads had any momentum. lets fuck shit up boys!!!!!
irony
the pitcher that everyone wanted to have traded last season won the game that got the giants their first division in7 years
irony
got creamed in the season series by the friars, but won the one game that mattered
irony
they did it despite bochy and sabean
grats to the giants
Latos is off…and pretty much everyone is squaring the ball up…except Guillen. Why he was left to bat in the 6th with two on…complete joke. whilel nate still sits.
Casilla is filthy. Thak Billy Beane for that one.
In spite of Bochy and Sabean…we can win. Which speaks volumes.
They deserve none…and will get no credit.
Heyas. Thankx Marc. Joe Posnanski to me is the Charles Kuralt of Sports. While Kuralt had the ability to make everyman appear special and unique by letting them reveal themselves in their own style, Joe Pos has the ability and humility to enable the special and unique athlete reveal themselves to be everyman.
Unfortunately, there is only one Joe Posnanski and too many Mike Lupicas and Jay Marriottis.
I have the same problem with the Nuekom’s Sabean’s and Bochy’s et al as I have with the Yorks and Nolans and Singleterry’s. Antiseptic, mediocre at best, arrogant, ignorant and indecisive at worst. Which is bad enough when the perpetrators are home-grown or there is a history or demonstration of something beyond a clinical business relationship.
But when confronted by failure after failure after failure by outsiders who have no history, no relationship, no bonds, no ties to anything other than a sterile employment contract where performance is measured against the lowest common denominator, all we get from Bay Area media like Baggs of Shit, Ratto Rants, and the rest of the Comcast Shills and whores at KNBR, perhaps it helps to explain the apparent one-sidedness of John’s (not that he needs me to explain his writings)and my posts.
Its not like I am a fucking baseball genius. If folks would look at their favorite sports team the same way they asses their bosses, or the city council or board of supervisors oor banks or tax preparers or any other professional or service provider they write checks out to, who has their own agenda to promote and expectations to fulfill, they wouldn’t swallow 10 percent of the shit that gets shoveled at them by the Giants and their fucking intellectually bankrupt apologists.
Anyway. Fuck Bochy and Sabean for the fiasco that has been created by the continued presence of Zito and Rowand and the continued outdated 80s NCAA Div III style of talent evaluation and player relationships.
Fucking neanderthal cocksuckers.
Jonathan triples and Torres whiffs, of course.
bochy didnt plan to win….he planned for a worst case scenario…and he is about to get it
the phils have rolled over for the atl in the final game
which brings up the worse case scenario
and never mind that he has been in a 2 week slump, has no wheels and cant really patrol right field….guillen is in right
bochy is a joke
agreed, +mia – Bochy is pedestrian, Black is cool. Black is a good manager, Bochy is (sometimes) adequate.
Righetti sucks. Why wasn’t Cain cooled out? That game should’ve been it. This season, the steadiest pitcher in the rotation. And Zito… I posted on another board how he was the LAST person I wanted pitching a crucial game. Thank god he’s not pitching today.
Tough one today – maybe Posey can handle Sanchez. Maybe Sanchez pitches a two-hitter. But of all the guys to set up for the last two games of the season, Ztio and Sanchez, it’s just asking for a meltdown. And we all know, the Giants give up four runs and that’s probably all she wrote.
Glad you like Poz – he rocks. Yeah, we lose today it’s not the end. But in Poz’ column he points out that the loser could play 4 games in 4 cities in 4 days. I don’t see how any team could do anything but split those four, so I sure as hell hope the Giants win today, else they’re done. Not sure what the baseball gods have in mind for Bobby Cox, but it’ll be dramatic. They’ll sweep everything to the title or else they’ll lose tragically… and I’m not sure the Giants can do “dramatic”.
The Ghost of Mushbrain
Joe Posnanski is a wonderful human being and a philosophic sports journalist and rabid baseball fan. He makes the following observation going forward to Giants game 162.
Lets see.
Since the they returned home from a road trip against Milwaukee on August 23, the Padres have had a grand total of two off-days. The Padres have had to burn their pen because their 40 million dollar payroll actually hits like a 40 million dollar payroll. The difference is the Giants have/had Buster Posey. Or whats left of him since Aug 30 was the last time Bochy untensed his sphincter muscles enough to pull Posey out from behind the dish except for one game in San Diego when I think Posey was pinned under an Amtrak locomotive. Anyway, if you’ve seen his swing, Posey is out of gas)
Thats what bureaucratic fucktwats like Bochy and dogmatic dickbreaths like Sabean do when the heat is on. Panic. Play the players who will create the least controversy for you with the front office and the media..
So every strategic and tactical advantage over San Diego has embarrassingly been squandered (there’s that word being applied to Bochy and Sabean again) and now the “Padres have their best starter, Mat Latos” matched up against the Giants no. 4 starter.
Just a reminder of Mat Latos against the Giants:
PA 101 BAT .248 OBP .274 SLG .376 OPS .650
Now before you go all fucking cowshit; I know that Latos’ last few outings have been horseshit and just plain bad and the Padres pen has been pounded into the ground non-stop for the last several days and that there are some guys who have pitched 4 and 5 days in a row etc, blah, blah. I also know that Jonathan Sanchez has thrown no-hitters and one-hitters and essentially owns the fucking Padres during the regular season.
And in case anybody forgot from 3 days ago his numbers against Padres batters are little league-esque.
PA 175 BAT.160 OBP.272 SLG.240 OPS.512
Latos is 22, and while he lost to the Cubs in his last outing he gave up only 2 er in 5.2 while punching out 7. Not spectacular, but not toast as the sycophants and Giants aplogists, excuse makers and bleeter would have you believe.
But this is Sanchez’ first big game in the show. We saw what happened to amped up Cain Friday night, and if HP umpire Tim Mcclelland starts squeezing the strike-zone which hp umps tend to do in “big hairy ass important games” then Katie bar the fucking door. Tim Mcclelland has never called a Matt Latos game. On the other hand Sanchez has had Mcclelland behind the plate once before for a win and he struck out 8 while walking 3 in 7.2 innings. For whatever its worth. But with Bochy gumming things up, every little bit helps.
Players pick up from their managers. Bochy had a penchant for choking his Padre teams, which is why he was shown the door after the 2006 season. The Padres embarrassing display of scoring only 6 runs while losing 3 out of 4 games to the Cardinals, even though they had the home field advantage was the final straw. It was deja vu all over again as they had been swept by the Cards the 2005 LDS. Thats 1 win in 7 attempts. Mistaking Vinnie Castilla for Barry Bonds didn’t help Bochy’s cause either.
Bud Black, and Bruce Bochy were finalists for the Giants job. Black was good pitcher. A smart pitcher. A good Giant. A popular-with-the-fans-Giant. A kid growing up just down the road from the Stick in San Mateo, kind of Giant. But he was gone from the Giants and his pitching days were over before Sabean crashed the the Giants’ party in 1997. Sabean knew Bochy though. Sabean didn’t know Buddy Black. Sabean knows about Buddy Black now though. And not just because he was the pitching coach for the 2002 Angels. He was not a great pitcher, but he was a smart pitcher and unlike Barry Zito, he was never ever intimidated or afraid of a hitter. And he really understood pitchers and he understands pitching. (One need only look at the pitchers he developed at Anaheim and Sand Diego) He would have maybe one bad inning per game, and thats what kept him from being a great pitcher and only a good pitcher. But unlike Zito since he has come to the Giants, Black was almost inevitably able to adjust and extricate himself from jams.
Black started 296 games in his 15 season career, he won 112 games and never pitched in relief after coming to the Giants. He learned from another smart pitcher turned manager; Roger Craig. And when Black went out he went out with style and he went out with class. There were plenty of opportunities for him to catch on as a loggy mercenary. He wasn’t havin’ any of it. Too much style. Too much class. If he couldn’t pitch to 100% of his capacity anymore he wasn’t going to embarrass himself or his teammates. When the Indians wanted to send him to the pen or work out a trade in 1995 after 10 starts, a 4-2 W=L and a bloated 69 ERA+, that was it. He had just turned 38 and the Indians were on their way to the AL pennant with a 100 win season. So into retirement he went.
What has he done since? This former Giant who grew up in the Bay Area. Besides being the pitching coach for the 2002 Angels team and fucking miracle worker in San Diego in all the same chaos that the Dodgers are now experiencing, he has them on the verge of the playoffs, and has out-managed Bruce Bochy almost every step of the way since he took over the Padres and Buckethead sucked off the skippers job from the imbecilic Sabean. Remember how the Giants used to own the Padres before Alou and Bochy? As Chris Farley said to Paul McCartney when stating something painfully obvious and painfully passed: “Yeah. That was Awesome”
The Giants vs the Padres starting in 2007 through yesterday
2007 4-14
2008 13-5
2009 8-10
2010 5-12
30 Wins 41 losses against his old team since he got run out. Against a team with little fan support, even in a new downtown stadium. 5 and 12 this year against a Padre team with one established star, a AAAA payroll, their best pitcher (Chris Young) spending most of the season on the DL and the best that Sabean and Bochy can do is squander 2 of the 3 games they led by, with 3 games left in the season. Thats what Bochy and Sabean have accomplished against Buddy Blacks collection of Hairstons, Eckstein, and previously unknown 20 somethings pitching staff who are in the process of throttling the Giants without any off days?
I feel horrible for the Giants players. Especially the guys who may not get back here again. To be sure, there is at least one game after today, but to watch Bochy and Sabean handle the pennant race the way the British handled the American Revolution, is sickening. That Bochy was fucking banished from San Diego for just such ineptitude makes it even the more revolting.
You can damn well believe that Steinbrenner wouldn’t have had any of this shit, because Steinbrenner would have hired Black and not even given Bochy the time of day. Because that’s how the boss rolled. Winners only need apply, and 1 and 7 in the LDS doesn’t cut it.
Squandered opportunities are the result of ineptness and lack of preparation combined with ignorance, arrogance and timidity; traits that have long been attributed to Sabean and his sidekick Bruce Bochy. Win or lose today, they have spent the past week making asses of themselves.