Ready for more Sabean and Bochy?

I'm watching Baggs' live chat this morning. This exchange came up:

Q: Bruce Bochy and Brian Sabaen's contracts are both expired after the season. How successful do the Giants need to be (playoffs? world series appearance?) for Neukom to bring them back?

baggs: Pretty good chance they'll be back based on the team's progress to date. Remember, Neukom's goal was to be .500 this year. They're ahead of schedule. And they had what most observers believe was another decent draft. The minor league system is healthier. It seems like Neukom has a great respect for the way Brian and Bruce go about their jobs. When I asked him just prior to the All-Star break if Bochy deserved credit, he said yes, the manager has created a good esprit de corps and has put players in position to succeed. I've been told all parties intend to honor a pledge not to negotiate extensions until after the season, but I wouldn't be surprised if they've already come to some kind of loose arrangement. If they go to the playoffs, it'll be all the more automatic.

Are we ready for more of these two? Have the GM and coach done well enough to come back for more? Admittedly, the Giants have done much better this season than I anticipated. But I can't help but shake the feeling that the team could have done even better with a different skipper.

"Zeet Games"

There's a new baseball stat, courtesy of Tim Kawakami: "Zeet Games": http://tinyurl.com/lsbt4k. The leader in ZGs? Barry Zito, of course.

Sadly, Randy Johnson has also logged a number of Zeet Games.

I have to agree with Kawakami - when does management decide that Zito is hurting more than helping in the wild card race, and stick him in the 'pen?

I'm suspicious of my mailman. . .

I've subscribed to Sports Illustrated for at least 15 years. My absolute favorite issue is the annual baseball preview issue. And yet, for the last 8 years, I have never (and I do mean never) received this issue in the mail. All other issues (including the swimsuit issue) arrive week in and week out without fail. But the baseball preview issue? Never comes.

I've had a number of years to ponder why. And I have no good answer. So I let the irrational part of my brain try to figure it out. And my crazy side determined that my mail carrier is a stinkin' baseball preview issue thief. I'm picturing someone sitting in the post office, sorting mail, and saying "This here Sports Illustrated baseball preview issue has a GIRL's name on it. No way a girl likes baseball, so I'm sure she won't miss it if I take it home to read in the john." And so he does. And then I never get it (although I suppose I should be grateful that the mailman doesn't deliver it a week later after enjoying it on the throne).

So today I put in my annual request to Sports Illustrated for a replacement copy.

And I'm gonna give my mailman the stink eye next time I see him.

Barry won't be a Twin (duh)

The Twins have passed on Barry Bonds this year. The GM says their OF is fully stocked, and they don't need a cranky old man with creaky knees (you gotta read between the lines to pick up on that last part).

Should we expect 30 stories about each team that passes on Bonds?

As much as I would have liked to see Barry play one more season, I'm not sure I want to see 44 year old Barry try to strap on the elbow armor at this point.

Google Calendar Hates Baseball!

Okay, maybe not. But I did discover yesterday that Google Calendar has made adding a SF Giants game schedule to your calendar a lot more difficult than it used to be.

It used to be that when you wanted to add a public calendar to your own, you could browse through a "gallery" of calendars, searching by calendar title, to find the one you want. There would usually be a few SF Giants schedules available, complete with broadcast info. You'd pick one you like, click on a little doo-dad button thingy, and it would be added to your calendar. Easy-peasy.

So in anticipation of the start of the 2009 season, I opened up my calendar and clicked on the "Add" button, only to find that there was no more browsing capability. Turns out Google decided it was too hard to maintain the list (umm, isn't finding and pointing to information kinda what they do?), so they killed it off last month. It took a bit of searching through the Google Calendar support forums to figure this out. Funny thing - Google puts all sorts of crap up in the top corner of my calendar page to point out the useless stuff they add to the calendar, but they don't bother to tell you about the useful stuff they take away.

At any rate, to add a public calendar now, you need to know the URL. How the hell am I supposed to know the frakkin' URL of a public calendar that somebody makes? Fortunately, the SF Giants schedule page offers help to add the schedule to your Google Calendar. Unfortunately, the URL they give you is incomplete and useless (at least using Firefox on Mac - YMMV).

Not one to give up easily, I perused the page source and found the correct URL, and finally added the schedule to my calendar.

For those of you who want to try this at home, ignore whatever the SF Giants schedule page tells you to do. Here's the right URL: http://mlb.mlb.com/soa/ical/schedule.ics?team_id=137&season=2009

Now go ahead and add in the schedule, so that you never miss a game!

Interesting Perspective on A-Roid

I spent some time reading what FoxSport's Jason Whitlock had to say about not just Alex Rodriguez and his little steroid problem, but the issue of steroids in general and where the real culpability may lie (hint: not necessarily the players, but maybe the owners).

I don't have much time to add commentary right now, but wanted to post the links to Part I and Part II. Go read 'em. I may get a chance to write something about it later.

Giambi

The best part of the Jason Giambi signing? It wasn't with the Giants.

No worries, though. I'm sure we'll find some aging has-been who could never recapture his steroid glory days to sign before the season starts.

(Yes, I know this blog has been woefully ignored for many many many months. I hope to remedy that. I'm almost over my denial at the underwhelming off-season so far, and get back to writing a bit here and there about the team I love.)