Giants Take Series Against Padres, Brandon Belt Given Funeral at Sea

The Giants gained a game on the Diamondbacks, then lost it again. Whatever. Brett Pill came up and hit two home runs in his first two games, so Brandon Belt will never play another game again, ever. Bochy continues to start Orlando Cabrera every day, even against right-handers, even when he drops routine pop-ups that lead to back-breaking runs.

I watched the Giants lose to the Padres yesterday live from sunny Petco Park in San Diego, which is a fine stadium with plenty of Giants fans around. I have been to two Giants/Padres games at Petco this year, and both games featured a Giants loss, but a coupon for two free Jack in the Box tacos, so I'm torn as to which side of the ledger these games fall on.

The Sabean/Bochy strategy of which players are valuable and worth starting and worth giving lots of leeway when struggling and why is absolutely baffling and defies all logic. If 2012 is anywhere as big a disaster as 2011 was, I think Giants ownership HAS to try to start fresh by ousting one or both of these guys, World Series goodwill or no. But I'm fearful that the ownership is just as pleased as punch with the status quo, and will continue to be so, indefinitely. The Giants offense has finished dead last or near to it in five of the last six seasons. They had a league-average offense in the other year. They can develop and craft pitching like nobody's business. They have pitching scouts out the wazoo who are out of this world. Dave Righetti must be like some kind of crazy Pitcher Whisperer, the George W-looking freak. But by this point, far removed from the heyday of Bonds, Kent, and Burks, it's plain as day that Brian Sabean has absolutely no idea how to evaluate a hitter's worth, and Bochy understands even less what stats to look at.

Here's the perfect Bruce-Bochy-in-a-nutshell insight into how Bruce Bochy thinks: With both Mike Fontenot and Brandon Crawford (both left-handed batters, both far better defensively than Orlando Cabrera) available to start at SS against RHP Aaron Harang, Bochy went with righty Cabrera, citing Cabrera's lifetime 3-for-5 against Harang. There's small samples sizes, and there is THIS. Five at-bats. Five at-bats that happened in 2003. It's just...I can't...

Awesome. Now Let's Get Back to Baseball.

Bunch of rad dudes between a couple of giant dorks.

I love the All-Star game every year. Love it. Love it despite the players who decline, the coach favoritism, the stupid home run derby, the ridiculous home field stipulation, the terrible announcing, the stupid non-factoids on the screen, and the shuffling of the players every inning.

I love it despite the Arizona fans being the most ungrateful, bush-league fans I've seen in a really long time. I can only imagine how hard Roger Angell was shaking his head during all of this. I love the All-Star Game despite the staunchest complaining and whining from everyone on the internet, in every magazine and newspaper, and all over my television. Bruce Bochy picked too many of his own people! Bruce Bochy didn't play his own people!

I would probably love the All-Star Game if it were nothing more than a bunch of dudes in all different uniforms playing wiffle ball. Luckily -- and the past two years especially -- we usually get a well-played game that is both exciting and fun. This year's game took me back to watching Bo Jackson crush a monster home run onto the black tarp of the upper deck while every other superstar stood around gape-mouthed. It took me back to Barry Bonds picking up Torii Hunter like a ragdoll. It took me back to Benito Santiago watching a called third strike to send everyone home with a tie.

I listen to everyone from Joe Posnanski to anonymous blogger number 532 whine about how the game isn't fun any more; that it's obsolete and a mockery of baseball. I wonder what the hell game they were watching. Because baseball is amazing, and watching the best players -- or even second-best players -- in the world do their thing and truly have a good time doing it, that's amazing too.

This blog exists because baseball makes people catch feelings about it, for good or ill. It seems like a bunch of people to get paid to talk about and write about baseball have come down with Joe Buck-itis. They don't enjoy it any more for whatever reason, and now they have to make the rest of us as miserable as they are. Well you can go to hell, Joe Bucks of the world. The name of the game is BASE BALL, and it is glorious.

Now let's get back to business as usual.

- Bill

Slugger Tejada is Benched, Giants Manage 3-1 Win

AWOOOOOOOOO

Not a lot to say on this one. Matt Cain looked pretty un-Cain-like in the early innings, then settled down late, getting outs when he needed them. Huff got an 0-fer but got BABiP'd on a couple of well-struck balls. Manny Burriss, replacing Michael Tejada in the number 2 slot, was 3-for-4. If he hadn't gotten picked off first following a leadoff hit in the fourth inning, the score would have been 4-1. Brandon Crawford got his first AT&T Park hit and RBI with his family in attendance, which is neat. Dude's a lifetime Giants fan. Feel-good story of the week, easily.

Giants still look good enough to keep plugging along. Rockies still look pretty lousy overall. Brian Wilson still can't get a three-batter save under any circumstances. The big Giants news of the past couple days is Giants GM Brian Sabean going on the radar and calling for a hit on Scott Cousins and his family, and the Joe Torre calling the Giants and being like, "ARE YOU INSANE" and then the Giants releasing a statement that is all "lol taken out of context" so it was a shameful couple of days for this front office to say the least.

Jason Giambi pinch-hit in the top of the ninth and was summarily booed vociferously. This pleases me a great deal. Being a fan of the team where Barry Bonds is the ultimate hometown hero and the repentant beloved white steroids abuser is enemy number one is pleasing on many levels.

Giants attempt to win the series tomorrow, and depending on where you live the FOX SPORTS RANDOM NUMBER GENERATOR may determine it's your local game of the week. MLB.tv will black out all four potential games because the hell with you, buddy. You should own a television, pay for cable, and live in whatever location you need to live to watch the game you want. Anything less would be uncivilized.

Remember how Barry Bonds totally took some stuff and then said he didn't know what it was?

Looks like crazy chest hair at first, but I think he's just standing behind a fuzzy headed person.

You could be forgiven for not realizing that the Barry Bonds perjury trial is underway, but a jury has been selected and everything. This thing is happening. Stephen Brunt has it right in the Globe and Mail, though, when he says (or I guess the headline writer does, but whatever), "Bonds hits court, and the world yawns."  Pretty much!  I mean, make no mistake, I think it would be kind of awesome if he was found guilty -- not because it will have made any of this worthwhile or anything, except for the sake of lolz, which is an end in and of itself I suppose -- but I'm actually way more into the looming Roger Clemens case, just because Clemens has so thoroughly played himself in all of this that it's going to be a much better show. If Bonds perjured himself, he totally did it in his own idiom, which is not caring at all what you or anyone else thought about him, or about anything, really.  Bonds' perjury, if that's what it is, is a perjury of not giving a fuck: "Not that I recall," "No," "No, no," and "Right" are the four counts of perjury.  That's kind of awesome, and way cooler than Roger Clemens' (alleged) perjury, which revealed him to be a total carelord.  Watch again, if you haven't recently, the testimony that got him charged with obstruction of congress (obstruction of congress!), and it's like, well done, your carelordship. 


Anyway, they're both probably going to go down.  Or maybe they'll both get off, who cares?  I don't, really.  But I think it's worth noting that, yeah, the specific ways these guys perjured themselves (allegedly) is revealing of their characters. Bonds: so arrogant that, strangely, you almost admire it. Clemens: such a try-hard that you can't help but feel even worse than you already did for poor Mindy McCready, who Clemens may have had a decade-long affair with, but who he totally didn't statutorily rape, right?


KS