MVN - Most Valuable Network

Giants Baseball…On the Radio!

It’s funny, for the past three years I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I flipped on the radio to listen to the first Giants game of the spring. In 2004 I was housesitting for a friend and actually caught the Giants and Cubs on ESPN, excited at the first look at our brand, spanking new All-Star catcher. Yeah, we all know how that went. In 2005, I was down with a sprained ankle and really couldn’t do anything else. Last season I decided to listen to the Giants in lieu of doing some much-needed research for a school newspaper article. Ah, procrastination, how I miss ye.

This past Saturday, with a downed Internet and an inability to make any sort of headway in Gears of War, I tuned in to KNBR to relieve some of the weekend boredom. After a long winter of Krukow/Kuiper withdrawal, the dulcet sounds of Jon Miller and the relaxing drone of the crowd in the background were music to my ears. The games don’t mean anything and I really couldn’t care less about the random AAA scrub with Moonlight Graham-style dreams of grandeur who trots out in the late innings with a triple-digit number on his back. But hey, it’s baseball. Finally!

As for the numbers, well, I have very little use for spring stats. They’re mostly an irrelevant amalgam of players trying to work out the kinks, experimenting with new pitches, and not really trying all that hard anyway, and that’s all condensed into a small sample size. Russ Ortiz shuts out the Cubs lineup for three innings? Great. Let’s see it in April. Matt Cain gets rocked in two starts? Yawn. Robb Nen used to get beat around every spring and he was just fine in the regular season. Barry Bonds has bronchitis? Well, that sucks, but hopefully it’s not something that’s going to be a recurring problem.

No, spring games for me pretty much serve as a means of getting back into rooting shape for the coming season. A way to get back to into my old fanatical routine by getting back in tune with the sounds of bat on ball and the occasional obnoxious fan being picked up by one of KNBR’s microphones. It’s also a time to browse the news wire for any little tidbit that’ll help my fantasy team. Yes, it’s that time of year again, too.

It’s not as though spring training is completely meaningless, though. Here are some of the more interesting plotlines to follow over the next month:

The Battle For the Fifth Starter Spot: Okay, so this isn’t really a battle. Unless he goes all Ron Artest up in this bizzle, Russ Ortiz has got the job locked up, at least coming out of spring training. Sure, he might falter at some point (I’ll place the over/under on the first week of May), and give the spot to Brad Hennessey or Jonathan Sanchez, but him being a vet and a former Giant and all, it’s his job to lose. From all of the excitement Ortiz is generating out of Arizona, though, you wouldn’t think he had just been dumped by the freaking Orioles.

Lineup Shenanigans: The big news so far on this front is that Barry Bonds will bat in the number three slot in the lineup. This would seem like a no-brainer decision, what with the extra plate appearances and all, but Bonds has always liked the cleanup spot, which is why he has been hitting there since the middle of 2002. And hey, what Mr. Surly wants, Mr. Surly gets, right? Here’s what the Giants lineup will probably look like against righties:

1. CF Roberts
2. SS Vizquel
3. LF Bonds
4. 2B Durham
5. 1B Klesko
6. 3B Aurilia
7. C Molina
8. RF Winn

The absence of Pedro Feliz here is probably wishful thinking on my part. In a lineup versus lefties, Feliz would take third base and Aurilia would likely shift to first. Perhaps Todd Linden or Fred Lewis would take over right field and Winn would move to center, but my guess is that Roberts isn’t being paid to be a platoon player.

Also, Duane Kuiper brought up an interesting note on the radio on Saturday. Bengie Molina would likely be the ideal number eight hitter, what with his lack of on-base skills. However, according to Bruce Bochy, the fact that Molina is so godawful slow means that the sacrifice bunt from the pitcher is rendered almost totally useless with Molina on base. I had never thought of this before but it’s probably true: a pitcher would have to lay down an absolute beauty of a bunt to get Molina over one bag, because the guy runs like a sloth in a big vat of dry rice. Thus, expect Randy Winn to get a lot of time in the number eight spot.

Klesko and Aurilia vs. Feliz and Regular Playing Time: Even with his diminished power, Ryan Klesko’s ability to get on base makes him the obvious choice to get the lion’s share of the playing time at first base, moving Aurilia to third and Feliz to the bench. Arlo already went into this in depth on Sunday, although he tactfully refrained from issuing desperate cries to get Feliz out of the lineup. I, however, will do no such thing. Please, please, get him out now!!!

Randy Winn vs. Right Field Adequacy: Count me as one of those crazy folks who thinks that Todd Linden would be a more productive option than Winn as a regular right fielder this season. Hell, you don’t rip 30 home runs in half a season at AAA only to turn into a complete incompent at the plate at the major league level.

It’s not that I dislike Winn. He seems affable enough and I think he’ll rebound from his horrid 2006 to put up numbers around his .284/.343/.421 career norms. It’s just that now he’ll be playing right field, and that line just isn’t very good for a corner outfielder. Add that to the fact that he has no arm, and it’s not hard to see Winn being a total liability. At this point, with his ability to play all outfield positions, Winn is more like a good fourth outfielder, sort of what we wish Steve Finley could have been last season. It’d be nice if the Giants would give Linden a shot to see if his power could stick, but with Winn’s salary, fat chance.

Audition Armando Benitez’s Knee So That Maybe Some Other Team Will Be Dumb Enough To Trade For Him: That’s what this is really all about, right? Send Armando out there, showcase his now-healthy knee, provide lip service to the media that he’s really still trusted with the closer job, and then hope and pray that some ridiculous team will offer a trade. No Giants fan that I know of wants to start the season with Benitez as the closer, and I doubt the Giants front office is too thrilled with the idea either.

Maybe Benitez regains his lost velocity and becomes a dominant closer again. More likely, his velocity stays down, his splitter stays flat, he gives up lots of homers, makes weird facial contortions on the mound, and blames Dave Flemming for all of his troubles. It might be time to try out Kevin Correia or Billy Sadler to see what they can do closing ballgames. “Anybody but Armando,” says an entire fanbase.

Figure Out What To Do With Lincecum and Sanchez: As I said earlier, the fifth starter job is almost certainly Russ Ortiz’s to start, so the Giants need to figure out where their two pitching phenoms will go. The consensus on Tim Lincecum is to start him out at AA or AAA for some seasoning. Then, if he’s still dominating hitters the way he was in rookie ball, bring him up if/when Ortiz implodes.

Some believe that Sanchez could start out in the bullpen as the team’s second left-handed reliever, but it seems like it would be more productive to send him to AAA and let him get work in as a starter instead of having him waste his time in LOOGY-dom.

On a related note, Gary Huckabay at Baseball Prospectus wrote up a season preview of the Giants on Monday. Huckabay, if memory serves, is on record as being openly anti-Giants, but hey, I guess only Nixon could go to China, to paraphrase the ancient Vulcan proverb.

Anyway, Huckabay argues that the Giants should just stop mucking around and go with Lincecum, right now. Huckabay states a lesser-known, bastardized version of the TINSTAAPP mantra that says that since pitchers will doubtless get hurt later on in life, you might as well utilize the dominant ones while they’re still cheap. Lincecum is clearly a real pitcher now, according to the article, so the Giants would maximize their chances of winning now by putting him in the starting rotation. If you can, take the time to read the whole thing.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 8th, 2007 at 11:01 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.