The BRIAN WILSON Thread

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Brian Wilson earns victory for the Dodgers in his first game against the Giants
Mike Oz, Big League Stew -- 7 hours ago

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Brian Wilson and his monstrous beard emerged from the bullpen Thursday night wearing that Dodger blue that still seems so strange on him. He was coming into a tie game, 2-2 in the 10th inning. A tense situation, no doubt, but nothing the guy who turned "Fear the Beard" into a way of life hadn't fearlessly faced before.

The situation wasn't new. But the opposition was.

From the mound, he stared at the San Francisco Giants, the team that drafted him in 2003, brought him up through its minor leagues, turned him into its closer and let him grow into this hairy character we see today. This was Wilson's first time pitching against the Giants and it gave San Francisco fans a type of "torture" they'd never experienced.

Wilson shut down the Giants in the 10th inning, making quick work of them, except for a walk to Brandon Belt. He even got his former catcher Buster Posey to line out. When the Dodgers scored the winning run in the bottom of the 10th, it was Wilson who was awarded the win. The upside-downness of this was so confounding that the online box score still had Wilson in Giants gear beating the Giants.

He wasn't bubbly about it. Or sad. Or anything, really. He didn't say much after the game. "I didn't do anything," he told Giants scribe Andrew Baggarly of CSN Bay Area and the flock of reporters waiting to hear if Wilson would unload a goofy quote. He didn't. Just walked on by. He wasn't talking before the game either — blowing off Bay Area reporters, as Baggarly wrote it.

Andrew Baggarly ‏@CSNBaggs 13h​

An observation: I saw Giants players/coaches offer WAY more handshakes/hugs/hellos for Melky in Toronto than I saw for Brian Wilson today.
8:10 PM - 12 Sep 2013​

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After the game, the Giants were nice enough when talking about their former fan favorite. According to CSN Bay Area, Posey said "it was fun" facing Wilson. Manager Bruce Bochy commended Wilson for doing to the Giants what he'd watched Wilson do to so many other teams while wearing orange and black.

"Well, he got us out," Bochy said. "He did his job. He did a good job for us and I appreciate what Brian did for us. He’s with another club, and we were trying to score off him there."​

The two teams have three more games running through Sunday, so there's a good chance Wilson and the Giants might meet again on the field. And he'll have plenty of opportunities to talk nice about the team that gave him a World Series ring, or downplay the whole thing if he so chooses. The reporters — and the eyes of Giants fans — will be stuck on him like a beard on a chin.

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So Brian Wilson Is the Setup Man Now, Isn’t He
Posted on September 25, 2013 by Mike Petriello



The only thing better than seeing Yasiel Puig crush a homer off of Matt Cain in the 2-1 Dodger victory on Tuesday night was seeing Matt Kemp do the same thing, because if Kemp is back, then this Dodger offense has a completely different look to it. But without shortchanging either of them, or Hyun-jin Ryu, who contributed yet another good start in what’s been a shockingly good season for him, the main takeaway from the game for me is Brian Wilson, who returned to his former home to strike out two in a scoreless eighth inning, keeping a one-run lead for Kenley Jansen to finish off in the ninth.

Granted, Gregor Blanco and Juan Perez aren’t exactly the heart of the Giants order, but it was still an impressive performance — and with a 0.73 ERA in 16 games as a Dodger along with the struggles of Ronald Belisario and Paco Rodriguez, Wilson looks to have gained Don Mattingly‘s trust enough to be Jansen’s main setup man headed into the playoffs. The almost zero-risk signing that was so controversial back in July seems to have paid off and then some for Ned Colletti.

But how much of it is for real? You know I don’t put a lot of stock in ERA, especially for relievers, and doubly so over a span of only 12.1 innings. Let’s look a little deeper and see what Wilson is really providing.

Turns out, the news is good — mostly. Throughout Wilson’s first few weeks with the club, my concern was that his velocity was down and that he wasn’t really missing a ton of bats, striking out just six in his first 11 appearances, but my hope had been that after such a long layoff he needed some time to get back up to speed. That’s basically what has happened, with six whiffs in his last five appearances, and steadily increasing velocity:



Wilson’s cutter velocity has been trending upwards over the last few weeks, going from an average in the high 80s to just under 92 last night. His fastball was even more impressive, touching 95, but I focus on the cutter here because it’s been a pitch he’s been using more and more for a few years, which aligns with what he told reporters after his first minor league rehab stint, throwing “four or five cutters” among his eight pitches.

You can see that change in pitch selection charted across his career, because he used to be a fastball-first kind of guy:



Although there were reports that he was working on a slider and a change-up, that hasn’t materialized yet, and he’s almost entirely a two-pitch pitcher at this point. It’d be nice if there were some more variation there, I suppose, but he’s making it work so far, especially in that he’s walked just three. That was always the main strike against him, that even when he was saving 40+ games for the Giants, that he’d often have trouble getting the ball over the plate. If he’s managed to rein that in somewhat — perhaps by not throwing as hard as he used to — then he can still be effective, just in a different way.

Even Giants fans were impressed last night, so that’s something:

Except … he looked good. Like, really good. He had velocity and command. Remember the rumors that he was working out at USF with Giants people in attendance? What in the hell happened? How were they not seeing that? What, the bullpen was filled with irreplaceable talents?​

Still, it’s hard to be effective when you’re not even topping 90 mph, so the fact that his velocity has steadily improved over the last two months is a wonderful sign. No one should get too worked up over that 0.73 ERA, of course, because it’s just not a number that means a whole lot over a short amount of innings for a reliever, but thus far, Wilson looks to be one of the better acquisitions of the season. Going into the playoffs, he’s arguably the second-best reliever behind Jansen.

That’s not a thing I thought I would ever write, yet here we are. Never stop being weird, baseball. Never stop.

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yeah, never understood that
i was never a huge nomar fan, but wtf did he ever do to warrant being booed?
because he's on a different team? #lamesauce

 

Brian Wilson walks across the field to confront Giants CEO Larry Baer, reportedly about his World Series ring
Mike Oz | Big League Stew -- 5 hours ago



The scene starring Brian Wilson that took place after Thursday's Los Angeles Dodgers-San Francisco Giants game was a lot like Wilson himself — bizarre.

After Wilson's old team closed out a 3-2 victory against his new one, Mr. Fear the Beard marched out of the Dodgers bullpen, across the AT&T Park diamond and confronted Giants CEO Larry Baer, who was watching the game from seats near the Giants dugout. And Wilson was fuming.

It wasn't immediately clear what had Wilson so upset. Turns out, he was angry about the 2012 World Series ring the Giants had yet to give him. That's according to the Giants, at least. Wilson, on the other hand, didn't go into detail, telling Andrew Baggarly of CSN Bay Area:

"Just a conversation between me and him,"​

The Giants, however, said this was all about the ring. But they also said they made numerous attempts to give Wilson his ring and were ignored. Here's more from Baggarly:

Club vice president Staci Slaughter said Wilson's ring was made in time for the ring ceremony in April, but he declined an invitation. Slaughter said several members of the organization, including Baer, manager Bruce Bochy and VP Bobby Evans, have tried over the last seven months to arrange a meeting with Wilson but their calls weren't returned.​

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The Giants finally gave the ring to a Dodgers official on Thursday and asked that it be passed along to Wilson.​

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"It's disappointing. It's unfortunate. It's bizarre, really," Slaughter said. "This organization really has tried to do the right thing and I don't know where this is coming from. It wasn't for a lack of effort on our part. Larry, Bobby, Bochy — everybody has made an effort to reach out to him."​

Henry Schulman of the San Francisco Chronicle passed on a few more interesting Wilson vs. the Giants tidbits via Twitter:

Henry Schulman ‏@hankschulman 8h​

#sfgiants apparently tried to meet Wilson Tuesday and he said, "Just put it in my locker." By yesterday he wanted big on-field ceremony.​

11:36 PM - 26 Sep 13​

Henry Schulman ‏@hankschulman 7h​

Fan Steve Chandler sent me this photo. Said Wilson told Baer to stop using his image in stadium video highlights. pic.twitter.com/zprE6J3kkO​

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Henry Schulman ‏@hankschulman 7h​

Well, When I texted Baer the photo so he could frame it, he responded that he didn't hear anything about video image. All about the ring.​

12:23 AM - 27 Sep 13​

Sounds like Wilson is now on the correct side of the Giants-Dodgers rivalry. If all (or even most of) this is true, he's no Giants fan these days. But Wilson's clash with the Giants likely has less to do with Dodger blue and more to do with not being in Giants orange.

The Giants chose not to re-sign Wilson this season after his 2012 ended prematurely and he needed Tommy John surgery. In fact, he only pitched in two games in 2012, the year of the World Series ring in question. After the injury, Wilson worked his way back, tried out for a few teams (including the Giants) and eventually signed with the Dodgers. He was a good fit there, since L.A.'s bullpen had been shaky at times this season.

It's enough to make you wonder, though: Was all this really about a ring? Or was it a scorned closer, one who had previously tried to downplay his side-switch, finally lashing out at the management of his ex-team?

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