Steve Adler of Friarhood gives his take on the San Diego Padres in the continuing NL West preview on Dodger Dugout. He picks the Giants to win the West. Not only that, Friarhood ran my entire piece on their site. That was very cool, and I should have thought to do the same. After all, Robert Timm (the Dodger Dugout webmaster) has so far mailed out the previews in advance to all the participants. I'll post the set here on RMC when the series is done. I know I did a long series of prognostication posts in mid-winter, but that was so long ago that everyone forgot. This is the blog world, after all, where the only rule is "update, update, update." Things have shaken out a bit now that Spring Training is nearly over, and our appetites are whetted. Some guest contributions will be welcome, don't you think? And they'll beat the hell out of reading the fecking Chronicle.
--M.C.
P.S. Fred Lewis' days are numbered, according to Extra Baggs. Chris at BCB gives his take, which I think most of us can agree with.
3 comments:
At least the fecking Chronicle is written by people watching games and talking to Giants personnel.
This, from Schulman's article today, is disturbing: "Matt Downs seems to have passed Frandsen in the backup middle-infield competition, and the team likes Eugenio Velez and Andres Torres as backup outfielders." Go, Matt. If you can kick Frandsen's butt, more power to you. Mr. Lefty Malo has made a good case on his site for Torres over Velez - mainly that he is a good defensive outfielder, although probably best used as defensive replacement. What I can't understand is how Velez rates over Lewis. Mr. Haft, as per your link, makes a good case for Lewis as a decent player. That case cannot be made for Velez. Either the Giants see such a vast potential for improvement (and it needs to be vast) that they are willing to waste a major league roster spot on that hope, or they are in love with speed for the sake of speed. I would love to see a really fast guy like Velez who can hit and field, and if he had those attributes, he would be sort of like Fred Lewis. Or, here is another idea. Maybe "putting Lewis on the trading block" is a clever way of getting another GM to salivate over Velez as the MORE PREFERRED player that Sabean would really, really hate to part with because of his tremendous upside potential. Whaddya think?
No one is willing to bite on Lewis because he has to clear waivers if he is released. There is no reason to trade someone for him when he could be acquired for nothing.
Agreed about Velez. I think his "versatility" is big with Ol' Boch. (Just what we need, ANOTHER second baseman.) Velez has not shown me anything in his time (other than speed). Torres, as we know, is an excellent OF. We will need him to shore up the D in late innings of close games. It's another wasted roster spot in terms of offense because he won't repeat last year's .876 OPS (his lifetime is .662).
Fred Lewis in his career is slightly above average (OPS+ wise). This equates to an above average Giant. I still don't get why the organization can't look past the surface and see how pretty good he really is. I like the guy.
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