Giantsblog

The Giants signed catcher Eli Whiteside to a one year deal a week after they looked like they didn’t him a contract last week.  Apparently they did offer him a deal though and he eventually accepted it.  With Posey hopefully coming back, Whiteside will be competing with Chris Stewart for the back up catcher job.

Whiteside had the lowest batting average of any hitter in the National League in the second half with a .163 average.  He finished the season hitting .197.  The Giants also have Hector Sanchez waiting in the wings but someone like Whiteside should fill in nicely until Sanchez is ready to come back.

The Giants resigned Guillermo Mota to one year, $1 million deal.  Mota is getting up their in age (38) but he had a decent enough season where he threw 80 1/3 innings with an ERA of 3.81.  He also had a nice 77/30 strikeout to walk ratio but he’s still prone to the fly ball.

The Giants also met their contract tendering deadline by signing Tim Lincecum, Ryan Vogelsong, Sergio Romo and Santiago Casilla.  I like the Mota move because you can’t go wrong with those one year deals and you don’t need to spend a ton of money on your bullpen to get some solid production.

Here are the top ten Giants prospects as determined by Baseball America.

1)  Gary Brown OF
2)  Tommy Joseph  1b/C
3)  Heath Hembree  RHP
4)  Joe Panik  SS
5)  Francisco Peguero OF
6)  Andrew Susac  C
7)  Eric Surkamp
8)  Kyle Crick  RHP
9)  Ehire Adrianza SS
10)  Hector Sanchez  C

Cody Ross and Pat Burrell won’t have a choice in testing the free agent market because the Giants declined to offer either of them arbitration. The down side for the Giants is that now the team won’t get compensation, but on a good note, they won’t be stuck with either player at a potentially inflated value.  This was pretty much expected and it now frees up some money to go up and shore up an offense that was one of the worst in baseball.

The Giants have a few other people testing the waters as well.  Carlos Beltran, Orlando Cabrera, Guillermo Mota and Mark De Rosa are all also free agents.  There’s also twelve younger players eligible for arbitration so the front office is going to be busy this offseason.

The Giants made their first big deal of the season by trading one time pitching prospect Jonathan Sanchez to the Royals for the speedy outfielder Melky Cabrera.  Cabrera is coming off a career year in which he hit .305 and scored 102 runs.  The nice thing about Cabrera is that he can play all three outfield spots so the Giants can make their moves and adjust if need be to fill in all of their holes.

One knock on Cabrera was that his one stint in the National League didn’t go well.  He spent 2010 with the Braves and he was eventually released.  That left the door open for him to go to Kansas City where he had the best year of his career.

Sanchez had the no-hitter and then the big post season win but other then that, he’s been hit or miss.  Plus we have plenty of arms so I like the move.

Despite being in the playoff mix most of the season in 2011, the Giants offense was horrible.  They were dead last in runs scored in 2011 and the team’s RBI leader had just 70 RBIs.  Pablo Sandoval was the lone standout with a nice season at the plate.  He led the team in just about everything including runs with just 55.  He probably deserves some MVP votes but I doubt if he gets too much.  Still, a .909 OPS isn’t anything to scoff at.

Losing Buster Posey just before Memorial Day hurt badly but you wonder how much of a different just one guy could have had.  The team’s OPS was just .671 and their OBP was dead last with .303.  Nobody had more then 50 walks.  And when Andres Torres is listed as a starter with 112 games, you know you’re in trouble.

Second base, short stop and outfield are spots where the Giants will probably looking to fill some holes.  You’d hope Brian Sabean will be busy this off season and with this pitching staff, you’d hope they make some moves to be more competitive.  I’ll be getting my Giants tickets well in advance because I expect them to be right there come playoff time in 2012.

SAN FRANCISCO — Colorado salvaged some of their season in the final regular season game against the San Francisco Giants.  They avoided getting swept for the third time in their last four series as they defeated the Giants 6-3 Wednesday afternoon.

The game had little meaning as the defending champs had been eliminated from the division and wild card last week.  But Colorado needed this win to have something positive to head into the off-season than dropping 11 of their last 14.

Colorado jumped out early and never looked back in the regular season’s finale.

Eric Young hit the first pitch of the game to right field for a lead-off triple.  Dexter Fowler then singled to drive in the first run of the day for Colorado.  Later in the inning, Kevin Kouzmanoff doubled to advance Fowler to third, allowing Seth Smith to groundout to second base, scoring Fowler for a 2-0 lead.

The Rockies doubled their lead in the fifth as both Kouzmanoff and Jordan Pacheco hit RBI-singles, giving Colorado a 4-0 lead over the former World Series champions.

However, in the bottom of sixth, San Francisco crawled to within a run of the Rockies as they piled up three runs in the inning.  Justin Christian led-off with a double and Jeff Keppinger brought him home on his RBI-single.  Brett Pill hit a two-out double to put runners in scoring position for Mark DeRosa and he delivered a two-RBI single to center as the Giants now only trailed 4-3.

In the seventh though, Kouzmanoff and Pacheco drove in two more runs as the Rockies doubled up the Giants 6-3 in the final regular season game of 2011.

The Rockies will have to reevaluate a lot of things after this season.  Their rotation will look very different without Ubaldo Jimenez in uniform in mid-February.  Another concern is Todd Helton.  He is getting old, 38, and maybe not be able to be an everyday position player.  His best option now would be to join the American League as a designated hitter.

In addition, the Rockies need better production out of Troy Tulowitzki, Ty Wigginton, and Carlos Gonzalez for an entire season.

PHOENIX — This is not an easy or enjoyable post to write.  However, as a professional, it needs to be written and shared for all to read who actually do keep up.

Last night, the 23^rd of September, the Arizona Diamondbacks used three runs over the course of the seventh and eighth innings to defeat the San Francisco Giants, eliminating the defending World Series champs from playoff contention en-route to their fifth NL West Championship in their 14-year history.

The Giants were limited, as they have been all season, to a low run total; one run in Friday’s loss.  At the moment, the Giants and D-backs are in the middle of game two in this three game set and San Francisco yet again has managed just a pair of runs while the D-backs have put up six spot in first following with a five run sixth-inning for an 11-2 lead.

As it looks right now, San Francisco’s season is over.  Atlanta just needed a win or Giants loss to eliminate San Francisco from the Wild Card race and it appears that will happen.  Atlanta now just has to get rid of those pesky Cardinals.

Arizona though is showing its determination to get that first-round home field advantage with a possible matchup with the Braves.  Otherwise, they will have to open up the best of five with the Philadelphia Phillies.

It has been fun and enjoyable to blog since February on the World Series champs and to write about this battle between the Giants and D-backs after the All-Star break.  I will have one more post on the Giants, that being their last game of the 2011 season.  We all know what the owners have to do in the offseason if they want to compete for a championship again next year.  I won’t say it because I have said it all season long.  Until next time Giants fans.

SAN FRANCISCO — I might be able to go from blogger to movie script writer depending on how the San Francisco Giants end their season.  One week ago, the Giants seemed all but out of gas with no chance of defending their title.

However, winners of eight straight and now just five games out with a three game series coming against the division leading Diamondbacks, San Francisco still has a chance to go to the post-season.  If they are somehow able to reach play in October and repeat as champs, this is definitely a Disney movie in the making of how to never give up as a team when things seem to be at their worst.

What the Giants are doing differently this past week that they were unable to accomplish the entire season is obvious to anyone looking at box scores; they are scoring runs in bunches.  Yesterday, they used six home runs to beat the Colorado Rockies 12-5 for a four-game sweep and second sweep in a row.  Finally, the Giants are playing like defending champs, but it may be too late.

This game was over after the fourth as San Francisco hit four long balls in the inning, two by Pablo Sandoval.

Esmil Rogers was in the trouble from the very first batter he faced.  He walked leadoff batter, Andres Torres, and Mike Fontenot followed by crushing a pitch to right field for an early 2-0 Giants lead.  Colorado cut the Giants lead in half as Seth Smith’s sacrifice fly scored Eric Young who was issued a leadoff walk in the third.

But, then the fireworks came.  Pablo Sandoval led-off with a solo home run.  Brandon Belt followed with one out solo blast of his own.  Brandon Crawford doubled and scored on Matt Cain’s first home run of the season.  Torres was walked again and Fontenot was hit by a pitch as Carlos Beltran’s RBI-single drove in Torres.  Sandoval came up to the plate for the second time in the inning and repeated his first action, but this time sent a three run home run into right for 10-1 lead as San Francisco scored eight in the fourth alone.

The Rockies scored a pair of runs in the fourth and fifth, but it was too much to overcome as the Giants easily won their eighth straight victory.  San Francisco is maintaining pace with the division leading D-backs who have cooled down since winning 18 of their last 21.  The window on the Giants post-season aspirations remains cracked open a little bit.  But with cold weather slowly coming back to the northern hemisphere, the window may be closed and locked on the Giants till Opening Day in 2012.

SAN FRANCISCO — Each win becomes even more crucial with just over two-weeks left in the 2011 season, however, wins are slowly starting to mean less for the San Francisco Giants.  Yesterday, the Giants blew out the Los Angeles Dodgers for an 8-1 victory but sit 8 ½-games out of first.

With the division-leading Diamondbacks playing phenomenal baseball as they have won 13 of their last 16 and the Giants struggling the entire second-half of the season to maintain their lead or grab it back from Arizona, it seems that fate is not on San Francisco’s side this year.  ESPN has the Giants playoff chances at 0.4%.

It is discouraging to win it all and not even make the post-season the following year especially when San Francisco brought back much of the team that won last year’s championship.  But instead of hanging their heads, this should be used a learning tool and motivation for next year.

The Giants know the problems they have had over the past two seasons, with it being clear that San Francisco must find a big bat in the offseason to be a run producer.  If they do not, I see a problem for the 2012 season as Arizona will likely contend again and Los Angeles is bound to bounce back from their less than disappointing 2011 season.

Starter, Madison Bumgarner, pitched a great five-innings as he struck out eight, opening the game by striking out the first four he faced and allowing just one run on three-hits.

Hiroki Kuroda of Los Angeles has pitched well the entire season, posting a 3.25-ERA, but like San Francisco’s starters, he gets little to no run support to back his strong efforts.  Sunday though was not one of those strong efforts, giving up three runs on eight-hits in 4 1/3 innings.

Los Angeles got their first run and first hit after four punch outs when Aaron Miles singled to left, taking second after a Rod Barajas walk.  Tony Gwynn then doubled on a live drive to right, driving in Miles from second.

In the home half of the second, Aubrey Huff’s hit was confirmed as a double after the play was reviewed.  Eli Whiteside tied the game 1-all on his ensuing RBI-single.

In the fifth-inning, San Francisco really began to pull away from the competition.  Jeff Keppinger’s one-out single led to Pablo Sandoval’s two-out RBI-double that broke the tie, giving the Giants a 2-1 lead.  Huff followed with a single to bring in Sandoval, extending their lead, 3-1.

But in the sixth, the Dodgers bullpen got roughed up as the Giants went up against three different relievers, pounding them for five runs in the inning.

Hong-Chih Kuo issued back-to-back leadoff walks as reliever, Josh Lindblom, did no better intentionally walking Cody Ross to load the bases for Keppinger with one-out.  He doubled to center, bringing in two base runners.

A new pitcher came in for Los Angeles, Scott Elbert, and got Carlos Beltran to strikeout, but then intentionally walked Sandoval to load the bases yet again. Another walk, the fifth of the inning, resulted in a run being walked in.  Mark DeRosa then put the nail in the coffin with his two run RBI-single, giving San Francisco their 8-1 lead.

In the final innings of play, both teams’ bullpens went into lock down mode as not a single hit was recorded over the last 3 1/3 innings.

San Francisco will now host the San Diego Padres as these two teams meet for the last time this season.