The Giants Baseball Blog

Here we are, entering July, and the Giants don't really have a clear cut, must pick all-star. Jason Schmidt has had a very good year so far, and was on his way to maybe earning the starting bid for the NL, but his 6 wins may hurt him. Barry Bonds and Omar Vizquel are the only Giant position players who are in the running for the trip to Pittsburgh. Bonds definetly is the least deserving out of the 3 based on performances up to this point, but there still is an outside chance that he will make it back to his former city for the all-star game as he is the teams' leading vote getter. One guy who has been metioned, but not quite enough, has been Omar Vizquel. Jose Reyes has had a great season, and deserves to start the game at short, but Vizquel has had as good of season as any other NL shortstop, not to mention he has broughten gold glove defense again. Vizquel has been the Giants' most steady player throughout the first half as his average has yet to dip below .300 since the ...

Armondo Benitez is looking less and less effective as the season goes on. He blew another save Friday night in San Francisco vs. the A's, and it was almost like you could feel it happening before it did. It's practically a given that if Benitez allows a runner to reach first base, chances are is that he's scoring. I thought Robb Nen was bad at holding runners on untill I've seen what Benitez has done this season. The guy rarely even checks on runner's at first base, and he's so slow out of the stretch, that it would make it difficult for any catcher to even get off a throw to second base. It's one thing if the pitcher is throwing 96 mph and strikes out 2 guys an inning, but Benitez isn't that type of pitcher any longer. He needs to be more compact out of the stretch and worry about runners on base a little more than he does. If you look at his numbers for the season, they still don't jump out at you as being bad, but he has allowed a bunch of inherit...

Matt Cain turned in one of the most exciting starts I've ever seen Monday night in San Francisco vs. the Angels. I happened to be at the game and the electricity in the park was very intense towards the last half of the game. Unfortunetly, I had to pull a Dodger fan move and show up in the 3rd inning, and missed all the scoring and offense, but Cain made it all worth the 18 dollar ticket. I mentioned in a post a few weeks back that Cain looked a little wild and maybe needed to go back to Fresno for a few starts, but he showed Monday what he is capable of doing every time he takes the ball. His stuff was solid from the first pitch, up untill pitch number 131. His fastball was still hitting 96-97 mph on the gun in the 8th inning. I'm sure Felipe Alou and Dave Righetti would have had Cain go out there for the ninth if the no-no was still intact, but the kid would have been approaching 150 pitches, something that I doubt he's ever came close to doing. Someting happened in this ...

It's pretty obvious why the Giants aren't getting it done. Their offense has been obsolete over the last week and it really hasn't been good at all this season. The Giants rank no higher than 10th in the NL, in all major offensive categories. 10th in runs, 13th in home runs, 10th in RBI's, 12th in hits, last in SB's, and 14th in slugging percentage. The Giants' line-up is really starting to show their age. Only Omar Vizquel and Moises Alou are having what they'd consider a decent season, and Alou has missed 1/3 of it already. Barry Bonds is no longer the offensive catalyst that he once was and the Giants offense, which rely's so much on what he does, has suffered substantially because of it. I don't care what a guy has done over his career, or how many times he walks, if a teams clean-up hitter is hitting .240 with limited run production, that team likely doesn't have much of an offense. Unfortunetly, the Giants don't have too many open spot...

Steve Finley has been taking a lot of ground balls at first base lately and Felipe Alou says he is starting to feel more and more comfortable with the thought of Finley at first. I have been asking for this since the Finley acquisition and I knew the Giants weren't going to add a legit starting first basemen. Lance Niekro can handle lefties pretty well, but looks overmatched against right-handers' with any kind of hard breaking balls. I would not mind Finley getting a start or two a week at first base, it would get his bat in the lineup along with Barry Bonds and Moises Alou to give the Giants a decent 3-4-5 hitters. Finley is a solid center fielder, and I think he will make the adaptation relatively well. There isn't a better 41 year-old athlete in pro sports. The Giants' rotation continues to have their roller coaster season, it seems they all can't get on track at the same time. Right now, Jason Schmidt is throwing at Cy Young award pace, but Jamey Wright and Ma...

The Giants just took 2 of 3 from one of the better teams in the National League, the New York Mets, and beat up on the Marlins in the first game of a 3 game series, 14-2. They are starting to play a lot better baseball and a major reason why has been the performance by Jeremy Accardo. Accardo has allowed only 2 earned runs and 9 hits over his last 10 games, a span of 14 innings. Accardo has silently taken the set-up spot, that was supposed to be Tim Worrell's, and ran with it. Up untill the blow up at Shea, Armondo Benitez hadn't been throwing the ball to bad either. The scary part about Benitez's season is the fact that he has blown 3 of 7 save chances. His era is in the low 2's and he is striking people out at a better rate than last season, but Giants fans are starting to see some of the explosions that Mets' fans got so used to out of Benitez. The thing that really got to me about Benitez's blown save, was the fact that all he did was laugh about it. I don...