Giantsblog

The Giants took a 9-3 lead into the ninth inning and almost blew as Brian Wilson gave up five runs in the ninth to make it a razor thin 9-8 margin.  Matt Morris had a solid start at least.  He gave up two runs on seven hits and no walks with two strikeouts in six innings of work.

At the plate, Eliezer Alfonso went yard for the first time this spring while Todd Linden had three hits and two runs. 

This wasn’t a huge surprise but Tim Lincecum was sent down to the minors yesterday.  He’ll start the season at Triple A Fresno where hopefully he’ll work on a few things.  The kid is just about ready though so if anyone shows any weakness in the rotation for the Giants, you should expect to see Lincecum come up to replace them.

Chris Haft at MLB.com profiled Tim Lincecum yesterday.  It goes through his brief minor league career and it also talks about his compliment of pitches.  There’s some good quotes by Dave Righetti and it also hints the Lincecum will start the season at Triple A.

MiLB.com reviewed the Giants minor league system today with the spotlight being on first round picks Tim Lincecum and Emmanuel Burriss.  You get profiles of players at each stop along the Giants minor league system as well as a few predictions. 

While Armando Benetiz will probably start the season as the Giants closer, it’s not for certain that he’ll end the season that way.  And the question marks don’t stop with the closer either as the Giants have a pretty wide open field for the final bullpen spots this spring.  Steve Kline probably has a spot on the team as the primary left hander but the back end of the bullpen is still a crap shoot.

Of course it’ll all be sorted out in the next week or so, which makes the spring season that much more interesting.  and hopefully Dave Righetti can work a little magic as well.  The Giants have some question marks in the rotation so having a solid pen will go a long way towards a successful season.

Russ Ortiz was touched up for two runs on five hits and a walk in 3 2/3 innings of work today as he didn’t even make his full complement of innings.  The loss drops the Giants to 9-7 on the spring.

Omar Vizquel was a perfect two for two with a run and a double while Barry Bonds went hitless.   The Giants have a day/night split squad game tomorrow, they’re last of the spring. 

This has been bouncing across the blogosphere but it looks like Barry Bonds is going to bat third this year.  Like Grant at McCovey Chronicles points out, this isn’t a major deal and at the day, doesn’t mean much when it comes to scoring more runs.  Bonds seems to be making a bigger deal out of it then anyone.  Personally, I’d like to see Bonds hitting second but we all know that won’t happen.

Also, the Giants and Omar Vizquel appear to be talking about a two year contract extension.  Like the rumor box states, Vizquel has said he’d like to play through 2009 and a two year extension would get him there.  As long as his defense holds up and he hits like he did last year, I could live with it despite his advanced age.  Although according to Baseball Prospectus’ fielding runs above average, Vizquel was average in 2007 with a 0 FRAA.  He did make up for it with the bat though and his WARP was right around what he’s put up the past few years.

Wow, the Giants front office actually made a good move.  They signed Matt Cain to a four year, $9 million deal that will cover the future star pitcher through all of his arbitration years once you include the option the team has in 2011.  At $2.25 million a year for four years, this is going to be a huge bargain in my opinion.  Cain’s a stud and my guess is sometime during this contract, he’ll supplant Barry Zito as the team’s ace.

PECOTA is projecting Cain to have a nice season in 2007.  His weighted mean average has him at a 1.34 WHIP with a 4.27 ERA although I think he could hit his 75th percentile, which puts him at a 1.26 WHIP and a 3.64 ERA with 170 strikeouts in 176 2/3 innings.  Regardless, with Cain and Zito locked up for a while, the Giants have a nice one-two punch until some of their younger players start moving up, like Lincecum.