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.)

Gamer Defense

The way Aaron Rowand plays defense reminds me of some career advice my father-in-law dispenses. He said that if you do your job competently, you don’t typically get noticed. What gets you noticed is when you fix a problem. So, says he, sometimes you might need to make it look like there’s a problem that you’re solving, and you can get noticed and given credit for your “great work.”

Rowand is generally competent out in CF (problems with the accuracy of his throws to home aside). To me it seems that he’ll sometimes make something look so much harder than it really is, so that when he makes the play it looks great (flopping on a dive, running into the wall, general Gamer! stuff). He makes it look like there’s a real problem, which he takes care of.

I’m sure it’s not a calculated move on his part, but his approach sometimes gives the impression of great defense, when really it’s just regular defense, sometimes done to look really good.

Castillo vs. Feliz, the final round

End of summer has been busy for me - I haven't been able to dutifully tend my blarg. So I'm a few days late with my final comparison between the Giants' now-former third baseman Jose Castillo and his predecessor Pedro Feliz. I've compared both fellas twice before (most recently on June 1), and with Castillo being DFA'd on August 13, now is the time for the final head-to-head.

Note that Feliz has been on the 15-day DL since July 26-ish, so the games played and such won't be equal, but I think the more general stats will still be instructive to compare.

Let's start with offense. In 112 games through August 12, Castillo had 96 hits and 150 total bases (including 28 doubles, 4 triples and 6 homers). He also grounded into 16 double plays (it seems like soooo many more). Feliz, in his 99 games through July 25, had 87 hits and 144 total bases (almost as many as Castillo had in 13 more games), which included 17 doubles, 2 triples, and 12 homeruns. His GIDP number was 12 (it seems like soooo many more). Feliz was sporting a .256 batting average when he went on the DL (he's actually been fairly consistent with the bat); Castillo's BA dropped to .244 when he was DFA'd (his production suffered greatly since the break).

The last time I compared the two, their OBP/SLG/OPS numbers were actually pretty similar, with a slight edge to Castillo. This time around, however, we can see how Castillo has been struggling - his .290/.381/.671 is a pretty big drop, while Feliz stayed pretty steady at .304/.424/.728.

And although Feliz had far fewer games, his RBI total still far exceeds Castillo's, at 46 to 35. Castillo's strike out total of 71(!) was far more than Feliz's 42. Castillo had become even more of an offensive liability since the break.

On to defense. The number of games each started at 3B was still similar - 103 for Castillo, 97 for Feliz. Yet Castillo recorded 15 errors to Feliz' 8. Comparing FPCT/RF/ZR, Castillo sits at .934/2.34/.774 (which is yet another drop from his numbers on June 1, which were .950/2.65/.806); Feliz is much better defensively at .968/2.79/.828 (again, consistent with his June 1 numbers).

I was getting very nervous with the front office talk of keeping Castillo around this year and next to see if he could be a productive member of the team. His numbers are worse than mediocre - and he's not going to get any better. So I was relieved when he was DFA'd - that meant that management had wised up and determined that his offensive and defensive futility were not going to be a part of the necessary rebuilding.

Rich Aurilia is currently doing respectably at 3B, while rookie Ryan Rohlinger gets an accelerated promotion and a chance to impress management. So far he seems overwhelmed at the plate, and he's already made a couple of errors, but I'll enjoy watching him play much more than I ever could stand to watch Castillo (who, in turn, was less stomach-turning than Feliz - go figure). At least I'll have the eternal optimism that youth can improve and contribute before cynicism and disappointment creep in.

All too familiar

Conversation I had with my fella while watching the game last night after the Braves scored their 11th run in the 9th inning:

me: We can turn this off now.

him: You've already watched this game before?

me: Yeah, about 100 times this season.