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Showing posts from November, 2009

Offseason Starting Quietly

Although the Major League Baseball off-season isn't quite a full-month old yet, I'm pretty surprised at how quiet things have been. As far as the Giants are concerned, the only news to come from them in recent weeks, besides Tim Lincecum winning his second consecutive Cy Young award, has been Brian Sabean hinting that they'll steer clear of the top offensive free-agents, Matt Holliday and Jason Bay, this offseason . Now, this shouldn't come as a surprise to Giants fans, the team hasn't added a big time offensive player in decades, but for a team that has a need for offensive as much as the Giants do, I am a little surprised that Brian Sabean is already dismissing the idea of pursuing either of them. I made a post here a couple weeks back comparing Jason Bay and Matt Holliday here , so I'm not going to be comparing them as players today, but I'm just not sure what the Giants are waiting for in terms of building their offense? One bat like Holiday's o

Lincecum Wins Consecutive CY Young Awards

Tim Lincecum has done something that no other Giants pitcher in history has done, win two consecutive Cy Young Awards. In fact, the only two NL pitchers to ever win the award in consecutive seasons were Randy Johnson and Sandy Koufax. It was definitely a close call though, and by no means did the 25 year-old ace run away with the award. Adam Wainright, who led the NL in wins with 19 and innings pitched with 233, received 12 first-place votes, one more than Lincecum's 11. However, Lincecum received more second place votes and more total points. Chris Carpentar finished second in the voting with Wainright coming in third. Atlanta's Javier Vazquez and Arizona's Dan Haren also received votes. Lincecum only finished the year with 15 wins, but his 261 strikeouts, 1.05 WHIP and his .206 BAA made up for the lower win total. The lanky one who most call "The Freak", but I call "The Franchise", struggled a bit down the stretch and went just 1-3 with a 3.60 era in

Giants Showing Interest in Uggla, Damon

It's been a couple of weeks since the start of free agency filing, and the Giants apparently are wasting no time making contact with potential help for their ball-club. The team is apparently interested in free agent Johnny Damon, and have had talks with the Marlins about a potential Dan Uggla trade. The Giants have been interested in Uggla, it seems, for the better part of the last two years. The Marlins are always looking for ways to cut payroll if they can, and Uggla is entering the expensive phase of his career. He's got 2 more years of arbitration left and then will be a free agent after the 2011 season. The Giants desperately want and need his power, but they'd need to do some shifting in the infield if they were indeed going to make a major play for Uggla. Yahoo Sports reported yesterday that Uggla doesn't want to change positions if he's dealt, which means the Giants would have to move Freddy Sanchez to the hot-corner, while placing Pablo Sandoval over at f

Off-field Issues Surround Giants

The Giants organization has been in the news quite a bit lately, and it's not the kind of news that you hope for. I'm sure most Giants fans are aware of the trouble that "The Franchise" got into a couple of weeks back after being caught with an illegal substance, as well as the tragic news out of the Dominican that involves Giants' elite 19 year-old infield prospect, Angel Villalona . Now, these two issues are drastically different and on completely different levels, but both seem to be making news each day over the past week or so. The Lincecum news isn't something that is going to get him into any kind of legal trouble, or get him any suspensions from the MLB or the Giants, but it is something that will likely follow him wherever he goes in the immediate future. I'm not in anyway comparing steroid use to marijuana smoking, but I'm expecting the same type treatment from road fans towards Linceucm as Barry Bonds got after the steroid scandal. Obviou

Giants Still Need Infield Help

On Saturday, the Giants finalized a 2 year contract extension with Freddy Sanchez, who they acquired in July for Tim Alderson. The new deal for Sanchez will pay him 12 million over the next 2 seasons instead of 8.5 million for just 2010, which was his option for 2010. I've voiced my disappointment in Sanchez a few times here since the Giants dealt for him over the summer. He wasn't able to stay on the field full time to help this club with their run at the NL Wild Card, and even when he was in there, he didn't seem to make much of an impact in th e lineup. Now, I wasn't necessarily hoping the Giants would cut ties with Sanchez (they probably would have had to pay 4 million or so to buy him out), just didn't think he was worth upwards of 10 million dollars, and would have liked to see the Giants pursue someone like Orlando Hudson with that money. The Giants already have an infielder who's being paid about 3-4 times what his play over the last 2 seasons would indi