GAME THREAD DODGERS/GIANTS: Part II

Good.

 

Haha. Grandal was framing those pitches so good, Maeda thought the umpire was squeezing him. Grandal had to go and show him that they were out of the zone. Hope Grandal can stay healthy this year, but yeah, not holding my breath.

On a side note my Rugby League sides huge signing just blew a knee and is gone for the season. Sports can be cruel.

 

all blacks?

 

Nah. Rugby League is a different sport than rugby, which they play. More like American football, without the gay stuff.

 

It did backfire. Haha. Fucken big head ain't so cool now.

 

You bat a player 9th to try and get more people on base for the better hitters. Where most fail is that they bat some POS 9th or 1st/2nd that doesn't get on base.

 

Kenta is really cool. We've had great luck the teh Asians. Get more!

 

Can't sleep and watching the ESPN replay of the game.

I don't care what people say about ESPN. Yeah, they're biased and lame, but they put together great broadcasts. Aesthetically (simple pleasing graphics, rich colors and clear picture), great play by play with Schulman, decent enough analysts in the booth usually, and better than Fox in every way. Fox slaps lipstick on regional quality broadcasts and shoves it on their new cable channel nobody watches.

I would love if ESPN got post season rights with LCS and WS games on ABC. Not gonna happen, but just watching ESPN's presentation of tonight's game makes me wish they had more natonal rights for the playoffs.

 

Is this the same Schulman who wrote that Joc has an attitude problem? He is a Giant beat hack (which doesn't mean he's a poor play by play guy), and is the one CKWG referred to earlier.I checked up on it a bit, and he did apologize for writing that evidently...but why he would do it in the first place is troubling, imo, if it is baseless in fact, in the first place. Talk about reeking of douchebaggery...
He sounds like a Giant fan to me, and there's too many around for my liking, in the announcing booths.
Jessica Mendoza however, sounds like she likes the Dodgers, and has large round breasts, which is a huge plus in my book.

 

Not the same guy

 

The beat writer you're referencing is Henry Schulman, the Giants' beat writer for the SF Chronicle and yes.....he's a douche.

Last night's announcer was Dan Shulman, who I think is as good a play by play man as there is nationally.

I would Jessica filling out a tight skirt as another one of her assets. Not a bad analyst, either.

 

Mendoza and Boone are a lot better than the garbage they usually throw out there. Mendoza is great, Boone is meh. The standard is so low for color commentators. I've said it before, but it's weird that some of these people spend their whole life playing the game, and yet they know next to nothing about it.

 

We've seen it clearly backfire for Arizona this year as well. On the flip side, there are instances where it helps - yesterday Samardjkha made the last out in the 2nd inning with nobody on base, which turned out good for them because now he wasn't leading off the 3rd inning. If you crunch the numbers, they do not support batting the pitcher 8th (unless he is actually a better hitter than whoever you bat 9th).

Funny thing is LaRussa, who pioneered the idea in recent years, justified it because he wanted Albert Pujols batting 3rd to maximize the number of ABs he gets, but also wanted more hitters in front of him so he'd also be more likely to hit with men on base. The funny part is there are numbers that suggest your #4 hitter should be a better hitter than your #3 hitter anyway, so LaRussa should have put Pujols #4 and leave the pitcher 9th. By doing what he did he de-optimized his lineups in 2 ways.

Of course, when we talk about lineup optimization decisions, we are talking about 1-2 runs over the course of an entire season. Yesterday we saw hitting the pitcher 8th hurt the giants. Another day we will see it help. Just depends on the circumstances in the game. All I know is, math does not support it, and this appears to clearly be a case of managers overthinking. I'm glad we don't hit the pitcher 8th, and I hope we continue to play that way. Also funny that it's the "manager of the year" guys who seem more likely to do it. Not sure what that says...

 

I think it's like the shift...sometimes it's maddeningly successful (if your on offense), and other times, it fails miserably...like yesterday when it cost us a DP.
I guess when you roll the dice, you make your point more often than not, so worth it.

 

I think they know a lot about it. They just don't know how to communicate it. They're jocks, not communicators.