Archive for San Francisco Giants

Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Summary
Black might have the most velocity of any minor leaguer.

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Each weekday during the minor-league season, FanGraphs is providing a status update on multiple rookie-eligible players. Note that Age denotes the relevant prospect’s baseball age (i.e. as of July 1st of the current year); Top-15, the prospect’s place on Marc Hulet’s preseason organizational list; and Top-100, that same prospect’s rank on Hulet’s overall top-100 list.

Summary
A small Venezuelan southpaw, Lopez has command of three solid pitches at a young age.

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The South Korean media should love Luke Scott. The outspoken outfielder will be playing for SK Wyverns this season and there’s a good chance not all of his bombs will come via his bat. Controversy and Scott have gone together like hand in glove.

That is not an indictment of his character. In a politically-correct climate where many athletes coat their opinions with vanilla, Scott’s candidness is refreshing. You may not agree with his views, but they’re dead honest. The erstwhile Astro, Oriole and Ray doesn’t shoot from the hip so much as he shoots from the heart.

Talking with Scott last summer, I learned that a pair of events helped shape not only his career, but also how he approaches life. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Crick isn’t a nibbler. The 6-foot-4 right-hander’s approach is to attack hitters, and while his command isn’t where it should be, he’s going about things the right way. In 14 starts this year for high-A San Jose — an oblique injury kept him on the shelf for part of the season — he logged a 1.57 ERA and struck out 12.5 batters per nine innings.

Crick is a power pitcher. The 49th overall pick in the 2011 draft is also the top prospect in the San Francisco Giants organization. More refinement is needed, but it’s only a matter of time before he’s pitching at AT&T Park.

Crick — who celebrated his 21st birthday last week — finished the 2013 campaign in the Arizona Fall League with the Scottsdale Scorpions. He talked about his attack-dog mentality at the tail end of the AFL season. Read the rest of this entry »

I watch a lot of amateur baseball. You can maybe tell from my articles and tweets that the origin of prospects and how they enter professional baseball is of great interest to me. While brainstorming ideas for this article I was looking over the San Francisco Giants farm system and I got to looking at where their prospects originated from. I don’t only mean high school or college… I mean where geographically.

Teams can’t draft entirely locally of course – even those in California. Yet, teams do often like to snag talent from their own backyard when they can. Among the Giants top prospects the only California natives are outfielder Gary Brown, catcher Andrew Susac and pitchers Martin Agosta and Chase Johnson. Brown and Johnson are SoCal guys, while Susac and Agosta come from the Sacramento area originally. Only Susac and Agosta would arguably be “local” kids for the Giants and even that may be a bit of a stretch. In terms of schools, Brown went to Cal State Fullerton, Johnson attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and Augusta went to St. Mary’s up in the Bay Area. Among the team’s 2013 draftees, Brian Ragira and Garrett Hughes went to Stanford, Johnson we already covered and Nick Vander Tuig was a UCLA Bruin. Of the high school draftees catcher John Riley was taken out of high school in San Joe in the 31st round and Jonah Arenado came from the Los Angeles area.

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Earlier this month, former St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Bob Tewksbury discussed how he approached pitching to 10 of the best hitters of the 1990s. He did so with the help of his old notebook, which includes scouting reports, results of individual at bats, and more.

In the fourth installment of Tewksbury’s Notebook, the veteran of 13 big-league seasons talks about how he pitched to Barry Bonds. From 1987-1994, Bonds went 15 for 46 versus Tewksbury, with three home runs, three walks, and four strikeouts. Read the rest of this entry »

The voice is instantly recognizable. So is the easygoing style and depth of knowledge that makes him one of the best play-by-play announcers in baseball. No one calls a game quite like Jon Miller.

Miller is best known as having been the voice of ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball from 1990 to 2010. Paired with the polarizing Joe Morgan, he developed a reputation as a great storyteller with a genuine love for the game and a deep appreciation for its history. He has also been a part of history. Miller has called numerous World Series and League Championship Series, as well as Barry Bonds’ record-breaking 756th home run. A member of the San Francisco Giants broadcast team since 1997, Miller was honored with the Ford C. Frick Award in 2010.

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Miller on Broadcasting the Numbers:“[Broadcast partner] Dave Flemming and I talk about advanced stats all the time. I recall UZR coming up for us in 2010 when we saw Andres Torres playing a great center field. I remember thinking, ‘Torres covers so much ground.’ Then I read this note saying he was number one, in all of Major League Baseball, in Ultimate Zone Rating. I figured that would be of interest to any Giants fan, so I used it on the air. I said it was a method of determining how much ground a guy covers.

“Back in the 1980s, when Bill James’ Baseball Abstracts first came out, I would pore through that stuff. It was fascinating to me. Runs Created were interesting.

“In 1984, Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken had great years on a team that didn’t hit at all. Read the rest of this entry »

Kyle Crick enters 2013 as the top prospect in the San Francisco Giants organization. Having seen his final start of the 2012 season, I can attest to his having both the raw stuff and durable frame to eat innings at the Major League level. On a night where I saw him bad, Crick’s arsenal was awfully good. Seeing a great prospect on an off night presents an opportunity to discuss both Kyle Crick, and the value of a single look in context.

Video after the jump Read the rest of this entry »

The moods in the respective clubhouses were predictably different after last night’s game. Here are what eight players — three San Francisco Giants and five Detroit Tigers — had to say about the 2012 World Series:

Prince Fielder: “It’s definitely unfortunate that we lost, but we did everything that we could. We played hard. You can’t try harder. We battled, it just didn’t work out. Good pitching does that at times. We had some good at bats, it’s just that they made good pitches when they had to.”

Jeremy Affeldt: “I think this has been as good as you can ask for. This is a situation for Bochy and for Rags, and Sabes as a GM, where they should be very happy with how the starters have thrown. This is what good starters do in the playoffs.

“You can build an offense all you want — you can put up guys who can score 10 runs — but if you give up 11, you lose. You’ve got to have good pitching to go to the World Series”

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As they had throughout the postseason, ushers handed out white rally towels to fans entering Comerica Park before tonight’s game. Walking through the concourse, I overheard a woman wryly ask her husband, “Are these crying towels?”

They proved to be prophetic words.

The better team — at least for four games in October — won the 2012 World Series. The San Francisco Giants were deserving. The Detroit Tigers were equal parts anemic and star-crossed.

A first-inning at bat epitomized the Tigers fortunes. On the ninth pitch he saw from Matt Cain, rookie outfielder Quintin Berry hit a line drive to right field that landed inches foul. Not to discredit the Giants, who clearly outplayed Jim Leyland‘s team, but the Tigers seemed unable to catch a break.

In the top of the second, the Tigers couldn’t catch drives off the bats of Hunter Pence [a double to left-center] and Brandon Belt [a run-scoring triple off right-field wall]. The back-to-back hits came after three of the first four Giants hitters went down on strikes. It was typical Max Scherzer, who had the highest K-rate [11.08] and second-highest BABiP [.333] among all qualifying pitchers [teammate Rick Porcello had the highest, at .344].

Conversely, Giants starter Matt Cain, at .259, had the 84th-highest [and fifth-lowest] BABiP. The numbers are indicative of the advantage San Francisco held on the defensive side of the ball. It showed throughout the four games.

In the third inning, with Austin Jackson on base, Miguel Cabrera hit a fly ball to right that looked relatively harmless off the bat. Buoyed by a gust of wind — the baseball gods giving the Tigers brief redemption — it ended up carrying into the seats. Detroit led for the first time in the Series, and for the first time in 57 innings the Giants trailed in a game.

Told about the streak [54 innings at the time] following Game 3, Giants reliever Javier Lopez was duly impressed.

“It’s pretty impressive to see that we’ve been able to do that,” said Lopez. “It speaks to the strength of our ball club, which has been the pitching. Those guys have been able to hold onto leads.”

The Tigers couldn’t hold their 2-1 lead. In the sixth inning, Buster Posey homered with Marco Scutaro to board to put the Giants back on top. In a Series that had lacked back-and-forth drama, the game was just starting to get interesting.

In the bottom of the inning, Delmon Young — who has more postseason home runs than any player in franchise history — made it 3-3 with an opposite-field blast. After Andy Dirks followed with a single, Jhonny Peralta hit a deep drive to left — into the same wind that helped Cabrera‘s ball — that didn’t quite have enough to get out.

The Giants stranded the go-ahead run on second in the seventh. Jeremy Affeldt struck out the side in the eighth. Phil Coke did the same in the top of the ninth. In the bottom half, Peralta hit another deep drive, this one run down by centerfielder Angel Pagan.

Then came the tenth and the return of the baseball gods to San Francisco‘s side — again, no disrespect to the team that swept the Series.

Ryan Theriot blooped a single. Brandon Crawford sacrificed. Scutaro blooped a single to drive in the deciding run. In a Series that featured numerous big-name players — mostly on the losing side — a trio of lesser-known players helped small-ball the Giants to a championship.

Sergio Romo closed out the game, with Cabrera going down on strikes to end it.

It wa perhaps fitting that Cabrera made the last out, as he and Pablo Sandoval exemplified the Series. Each hit third in his team’s lineup, making them only the second pair of third basemen to bat in that spot in the order in a World Series [George Brett and Mike Schmidt did so in 1980]. Cabrera finished 3-for-13 with a home run and three RBIs.Sandoval went 8-for-15, with three home runs and four RBIs, and was named the Series Most Valuable Player.

The Giants pitching staff could just as easily have garnered the award, as could Bruce Bochy or Brian Sabean. What matters is that Tigers fans were left crying in their towels and the Giants are bringing a trophy back to San Francisco.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland expressed it best.

“I tip my hat,” said Leyland. “They’re World Series champions and they deserve to be World Series champions.”