NOW Javier Lopez, TIM LINCECUM and 'MORE MONEY BALL' - SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS COUGH IT UP AGAIN

NOW Javier Lopez, TIM LINCECUM and  'MORE MONEY  BALL' - SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS COUGH  IT UP AGAIN  


Just in - Thirty-six year old Javier Lopez signing for $13.5 million for three years. Based on his 40 innings of work last season (which translates to about 10 pitches an inning or 400) means that JAVIER IS GETTING $10,000 PER PITCH !  Yes, like most of the Giants, his numbers seem to get better-  as he gets older -hmmm! - one has to question another overpayment by the Giants. Unless he's on something , which is very possible being a Giant - one cannot expect a 36 year old pitcher to continue posting a 1.50 ERA. Unlike other pitchers who have to stay out there and field and hitters who have to field, Javier usually only has to come in for a batter or two and that's it! What a job!  Of course Javier and others return to the Giants in glowing terms because, when you pin them down, nobody offered naively higher salaries.
The Giants seem incapable of going out and getting decent, prime of career, non-using players  so they continue to hang on to their aging players until they finally - PEDs  or not - backfire on the team; think Huff,
Rowand, Tejada among others. GM Sabean, the man of the 'band-aid cures' for the team.  Sure, the Giants finally won the two World Series - as they will remind you-  but only because of  PEDs,, namely Melky Cabrera and, indirectly, Jose Guillen as previously mentioned - and a number of other 'suspicious' players we've talked about in the past... Even with the extra 'help' the Giants didn't come close this year. Now they have a couple over paid , aging pitchers in Lopez and Tim Hudson, plus , for that matter, Tim Lincecum. Why not add Vogelsong to that list, though he only got one year, amazingly.



It looks like it's all about marketing for the San Francisco Giants.  Frankly, the only thing thats going to give Tim Lincecum a semblance of the greatness he had in his early years    is if he gets 'help' from an outside source, if you know what we mean. And, that may be what GM Sabean and President Baer -long known for espousing  ' win at any cost ' - are counting on  in signing their popular , thin , right hander to a $35 million, two year contract.  Lincecum will be the second highest paid Giant, yet with one of the worst records. For the early part of the season and last year he had the worst ERA in the league among regular starters. So, he improved  the latter half of 2013 for whatever reasons. Is that still enough to throw $17 million a year at him? . We never believed he would ever have been brought back to the Giants after two years in a row  of below 4.00 ERA baseball. Remember how greatful local fans were when the Giants didn't have to pick up that 5 year 200 million contract?  Lincecum's overall performance the past two years isn't even mediocre. Except for   games,  against the weak Western division teams like Houston (now in the American League) , Lincecum  got  lit up. He gave up 44 homers this year  . Even Barry Zito had a better record than Lincecum last year - and Zito is 35 years old.



So we have this new contract after Thin Tim   comes  off his third losing season in a row with a mediocre 4.36 ERA.  Yeah, he had a no-hitter in which he threw 144 pitches -against the weakest link, Houston Astros -which is just one reason to suspect that he might be getting that needed 'help.'  He also raised his velocity back up to 91, which is also interesting, indicative that he already started getting 'help.' But  help or not, you can't expect Lincecum to do any better as he gets older than what he did this year.  You've got only so much to work with. Perhaps the Giants don't mind over-paying since they got a good deal in Lincecum's early years.




If the Giants will be happy with a third or fourth man starter losing  more games than  he wins, that's what they'll be getting in Lincecum- even with that 'help.' (You can't make a superstar out of a now average player, even with 'help.' )   Perhaps they feel Lincecum - a likable yet  flaky guy - is the 'face of the franchise ' to  whom local   fans can relate in the  most liberal city of San Francisco - the only place where  the smell of  marijuana permeates the stadium   during  World Series games. Of course, Lincecum is a known marijuana user,  himself.  And so what if it were found out he was using PEDs to bring up his velocity and game; the fans had no problem , in fact, they loved Barry Bonds for a decade - and still do, even after he admitted to using steroids and having perjured himself in court. Not to mention the band of other Gaint Taints as in Melky, Mota, Guillen and going back to Rich Aurillia, Matt Williams, Bonds - over 20 INDICTED players (Mitchell Report and recent suspensions) many of whom gave the Giants very unfair advantages in regular season and resulting in Playoffs and World Series.  Take away just two of those guys , Cabrera and Guillen, and the Giants would never even have been in the the only two World Series victories they've seen in 60 years. Only in San Francisco.



The Giants have similarly hung on to players like Pablo 'Panda' Sandoval, whom other teams would have dismissed long ago, after numerous issues (from poor performance to continually being overweight to even being involved in a sex scandal). Only in San Francisco.



One wonders, however, why the Giants ever let Brian Wilson go to the Dodgers. Wilson had 'San Francisco' written all over him, with the beard and his eccentricities. Fans  loved him. Yet when he was gone
it didn't seem to really bother the fans that much. (Wilson, at this point, would seem to have much more value to the  team than Lincecum, what with his sub 1.00 ERA this year. ) Wilson, no doubt, wasn't the 'yes man' on which the Giants depend. He didn't want to have to come back to ATT for  a public party - that would show 'how great' the Giants treated him - just to get his World Series ring.  Similarly, there are reasons that announcer Hank Greenwald, owner Bill Neucomb , trainer Stan Conte and others quietly - or not-so-quiety- walked away from the Giants.  And, if Lincecum were not re-signed,  the fans would probably quickly forget and still be back for whatever it is that Baer and Co. put in their drink that lures them to the ATT ballpark. Half price tickets?  Players with cute names like Panda and Giraffe? . Un-natural, win-at -all-costs (well, not always)   PED baseball? The Giants management are the Obamas of baseball, pulling the wool over the eyes, purportedly giving people what they want - until something happens.



 Leave it to Baer and company to do whatever it takes to win. And, if they can't win, at least they got their so-called  150+ sell outs. And lots and lots of MONEY.



TIM LINCECUM and  'MORE MONEY  BALL' - SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS COUGH  IT UP AGAIN 

2013 'Extreme' Playoffs - Is This Baseball or Blowout Ball?

10-14  Sorry Commissioner, but  it seems ever more apparent with the baseball playoffs, in our opinion - to be rather blunt - that certain  'cultures'  are alive and strong among a number of major league baseball's teams.  Playoffs are when teams are especially under pressure to win  in   short ,  season-ending series. We've seen signs of secondary evidence of PED (performance enhancing drug) use  with unusually improved on field performance, especially in pitching this year and number of strikeouts and high velocity. How is it that these players, after long seasons can not only continue to throw baseball's in the mid to high 90's -  but even ramp up their performances to the tune of three no-hitters through five innings  for three games in a row!   Unheard of! 

It's the last gasp, at least this season, for players  several games away from season's end - most will NOT win the coveted ring - and  not only do they want to do well, themselves, but are concerned about their contracts for next year. So, they are especially inclined to take extreme measures that they might not during the season. Another reason for this is that there is no apparent drug testing during  the playoffs . ( in fact the latest bargaining requires only a minimum of one drug test during the season !).  Add to that the drug tests that ARE given may not have kept up with the latest designer PEDs, undetectable only hours after taken, which are,  purportedly the current drug of choice.  There a  number of other aspects that make us have these politically incorrect thoughts of our baseball players which we have outlined before and won't repeat here and now.

So, if you're wondering why the grand old game has taken on an unusally dark, less competitive air with one team blowing out the other with fastballs , perhaps this may be the answer - or at least part of it. Sure, we only see the the top pitchers in the playoffs but the same can be said of the hitters. Teams pull out all stops  but its not only pitching but hitting, too. Sure, the weather is a little colder, perhaps , and balls don't fly out of the park quite as well in Northern cities but hitters still hit and pitchers pitch.

We first noticed the trend to unusual dominance with the unlikely San Francisco Giants in 2010 and then again in 2012. This team of mostly journeyman players dominated  the teams expected to win. Many players on the Giants with average numbers during the season became superstars the last months of the season and in the playoffs, e.g. the starting staff, except perhaps Cain and Bumgartner, seemed to raise their performances - and velocity (which is generally a pretty set number). Even Barry Zito reenacted his old Cy Young-like performance for a rare moment in time.  Pablo Sandoval, who had only hit 10 homers all season hit three in one game and seven in the playoffs against top pitching.

Marco Scutaro, who had only hit .262 through mid-season before being traded to the Giants, suddenly began hitting close to .400 and cutting his strikeouts in half living up to his 'Giants' name - and only got better  through the playoffs, this for a 37-year-old journeyman who had never hit better than .299 in a single season with a lifetime average in the .260s.  In 2010  it  was the same pattern for the Giants but, even more surprisingly, with a largely different cast of characters. No-names like Ross, Uribe, and Renteria  performed sudden damage on their openents with other-worldly numbers (Ross hit eight homers his last month, about half his year's total) .  Over-the-hill guys named Burl and Huff suddenly performed like it peak career players only to fall flat the next year. Just the two INDICTED Giants, Jose Guillen in 2010 and Melky Cabrera in 2012 were enough by themselves to make the difference in the Giants getting into the playoffs... We could go on.

Perhaps Detroit , a very similar team in makeup to the Giants, caught wind of the Giants' propensities when THEY got blown out by the Giants in last year's playoff because, this year, Detroit looks like a carbon copy of the Giants in the 2013 playoffs.  It's pretty odd, to say the least,  to see a playoff team (Detroit) throw three no-hitters in a row through  the first five innings  of the playoffs; in fact,  it's never been done. Also,  it was the first time that a grand slam decided a game that late into a contest. The St. Louis Cardinal pitchers have performed a similar act against the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League playoffs; there may not be the no-hitters, but Los Angeles has fared even worse, scoring all of one run in the first two games.  If this trend continues either ALL the teams will have to do whatever Detroit and Saint Louis are  doing or we'll have to put those teams in a separate league, perhaps with the 2010 and 2012 Giants -  and maybe even the 1919 Black Sox. At least if the Cardinals and Tigers play each other in the World Series they should be evenly matched; perhaps it will be the first World Series that no runs are scored thorgh nine - or, the fewest runs scored, anyway. A final note on this topic... it's interesting to note that guys coming up with the big hits in playoff games have been  indicted drug users Johnny Peralta (beating the A's) and Big Papi, bringing Boston back in the second game against Detroit.



The above is our opinion. We would love to be wrong as what we have seen - save the end of the second game with Boston and Detroit-  is not good baseball or good FOR baseball, perhaps not even true  baseball. At this rate, so much for the many prognosticators who expected the truly best teams, Boston and Los Angeles,  to meet in the World Series. Let's see how the rest of the playoffs play out before we make any further judgement. So far NOT so good.

Celebrate the A's Road to Success with Limited Edition, Exclusive 100 Year Old Poster and Tshirt

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The A's Had A Truly GREAT Year and No Team Could Have Beaten Verlander the Way He Was Throwing so Don't Worry, Be Happy with your Oakland A's. (We're not even so sure Verlander was all Verlander, if you know what we mean, nor others on the team, but what can you do... see more below and other blogs)  Enjoy the offseason - celebrate by posting this great, 100 year old 'ROAD TO SUCCESS' poster and/ or Tshirt ( or give to a friend) in honor of the A's SUCCESSFUL 2013 Season.  Makes a great gift for fellow fans or even students, business people or anyway who has achieved true success or  who  on the path - great motivator, too.  For a larger blowup and more details on this great, exclusive  poster go to http://RoadToSuccess.biz or http://RoadToSuccess.us


Celebrate the A's Road to Success with Limited Edition, Exclusive 100 Year Old Poster Print

Oakland A's Post-Mordem Not Bad - Perhaps More To It Than A's Weakness

The A's Had A GREAT Year and No Team Could Have Beaten Verlander the Way He Was Throwing so Don't Worry, Be Happy with your Oakland A's.  Enjoy the offseason , starting with a nice Deal over at Mangia's in Lafayette , and sign up below for more  great local offers in the offing!

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All we can say, if Verlander continues to pitch as he did against the A's in the next series, along with Max Sherzer - and those guys pitch at least two of the first four games and three of the seven, will be surprised if anyone beats them, just off those pitching performances alone. And, really, who knows what's REALLY going on with Verlander -can't comment on Sherzer. In this day and age of unnatural things - such as when a team like the SF Giants can PED their way to two World Series in  three years with journeyman talent suddenly hitting like superstars (and two virtually different teams doing it - read on) in our opinion - anything can happen in baseball these days. We'll take  our guys - just happy to play baseball and smaller fanbase in an old ball park, at whatever cost  - anyday , over those overpaid, over-contracted , so-called 'sellouts' across the  Bay. If anyone tries to tell you the Giants were able to beat Detroit but the A's weren't don't even go there. You can't argue against a team loaded up on who-knows-what (for more than a decade now) along with  ownership's 'win-at-all-costs' ego (again , read blogs below for more on this if you like).

The fact of the matter is that there are no great teams in baseball this year and haven't been for the past several years. Otherwise, the Giants wouldn't have made it to the World Series twice, with or without PEDs. Not taking baseball, sports, or much of society too seriously anymore, we can still enjoy watching baseball and especially a team like the Oakland A's for what we believe it to be  - a bunch of young, eager , unspoiled guys playing hard to win.  Hopefully, Billy Beane won't take the A's performance against Verlander too seriously and  won't make any wholesale changes in the off-season. The A's are one of the best teams in baseball, if not the best; take away Verlander's other-worldly and, perhaps, unnatural performance against the A's and they'd be right in the series now. The A's teams that lost those Game 5's  over the past decade were NOT as good as this year's team.  It's too bad that certain things may still be influcening the game - including that homerun, to some degree (though we have to let that go) - but that's the way it is in today's society. But, we can still speak our mind if anyone's listening.

Justin Verlander's Changing Velocities over course of season(s), showing surprising improvement end of last two seasons.

This chart  is not complete and would should a drop in ERA at the end of this 2013 season and into the playoffs, but they're averaging it with one figure per year.

Who knows even what's up with Verlander.  His numbers have looked somewhat suspect  over the past couple  years, with him coming on strong, suddenly, at the end of  seasons 2012 and 2013 when most pitchers, if anything, lose something on the fastball.  How does a pitcher improve his velocity from averaging 92 to 94 or better from the beginning to end of the season as well as not losing anything from year to year  ( Five years ago Verlander was only throwing around 90 . Reminds me of the Giants' hitters (and pitchers) suddenly upping their performances the last month of the seasons in 2010 and 2012 World Series years like somebody gave them a magic pill  . Ha!  Nobody questions these things anymore and probably  there are still dozens if not hundreds of players still using the new, undetectable designer PEDs that MLB testing has not caught up with yet - and may never.  (Not a single major league player was caught this year to our knowledge; of course commissioner Selig will tell you it's because baseball is all 'clean' now). Right.  Just , again , read into the below posts...



You have to start wondering about a lot of these teams and their players, seeing so many hitters going down, ie striking out,  in the playoffs, not only on the  A's but on the Dodgers.  It's almost not even like a contest watching the St Louis Cardinal pitchers mow down the Dodgers one after another . One does have to consider after seeing things like the formerly invincible Lance Armstrong busted, Milwaukee Brewers' former good guy and MVP busted along with many others going back to  guys like Aurillia and Matt Williams  on the Giants - guys you would never have expected to be juicing (Mitchell Report).  THE FACT THAT NO DRUG TESTING IS REQUIRED IN THE PLAYOFFS, as we believe  (AS LITTLE AS ONE TEST DURING THE REGULAR SEASON ( NONE IN PREVIOUS YEARS), you just have to consider recent history and the society we're living in whether or not at least a share of what we're seeing is UNNATURAL and PED - induced. 
You have to wonder how a guy like Verlander can ramp up to 97 in the LATE INNINGS of a game, this coming late in a season where he wasn't even hitting 95 in the first months. 
 Remember how the Giants, the team most prevalent with PED users of all  for over a decade (highest number of indicted players) overpowered their opponents in the 2010 and 2012 series with even Barry Zito chipping in last year when he hasn't been able to do anything much before or after for years. You had guys like Sandoval hitting three homers in a single playoff game when he couldn't hit more than 10 the whole season, Scutaro hitting nearly .500 and  almost .400 since joining the Giants mid-year (after hitting only .262 at Colorado.  Just think about it: No drug testing in the playoffs is like an open invitation especially to slumping and mediocre players:   the Giants had at least one minor league coach in their system known to suggest getting such 'help ' through artificial means.  Just keep this in mind as you watch the rest of the playoffs. 




So, enjoy the off season and look forward to the A's coming back for another exciting season, beating the Giants. PEDs or no. PEDs can only go so far. There has to be SOME talent there in the first place to make them work across the team.  It's still a sad situation with drugs in sports, especially baseball, today - the fact that we can't really take the sport seriously.  And sign up for those future offers below, follow us on facebook http://facebook.com/bayareacoups and http://twitter.com/bayareacoups

The noted trend, above, continued into the Detroit-Boston series, as well as, perhaps, the St. Louis - Los Angeles NL series with as few as two runs scored for the first time in two games on the same day in playoffs history. Dozens of overpowering strikeouts and a near no-hitter...

Oakland A's Post-Mordem Not Bad - Perhaps More To It Than A's Weakness

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GRAY TO PITCH MAY BE RIGHT DECISION for A's AFTER ALL

GRAY TO PITCH MAY BE THE RIGHT DECISION for A's!  After more research on our part - and the A's 'smart' folks 'upstairs' it looks like their decision to Start young Sonny Gray Is probably correct. Off the several factors 1) Gray's last excellent start under similar conditions 2) Colon's poor track record against Detroit including last outing troublesome first inning, 3) Gray's seeming unflappability. Detroit is one of the few teams Colon has not fared well against - and we missed that. So, go A's for the good research. With no more questionable homeruns, perhaps the A's will be allowed to stay on course with good judgement and get the win and playoff series today! GO A'S Meanwhile for MORE A's and A'S STORE and   review and analysis of the homrerun (it should not have counted three ways)  

We're still concerned about probably managerial mistakes, however, these could have perhaps resulted from quick turnaround after controversial homerun and upset and pressures to make quick decisions:
1) Not hitting Gaiaspo (fifth lowest strikeouts in the league) for Reddick (proliffic stikeouts)  or Vogt with runners on second and third and no outs in the seventh inning
2) bringing in Brett Anderson, not a true reliever and untested of late to pitch the sixth inning. Blevins would have been a better bet

Melvin believes in 'lefty-right' matchups only when it comes to hitting but perhaps he should rethink this , on occassion, as well as with pitchers - io the opposite direction. But again, much of Tuesday's game downfall may have been the result of momentum shift and sudden pressure following the controversial homerun (which should not have been called a homerun -see elsewhere

After the A's took the three run lead you could literally feel the wind go out of the sail of the Detroit ship with four innings left to go. The A's were sailing along. Straly had given up only 1 hit. But that's the time one must not take anything for granted, about the time starters can get tired in the fifth or sixth inning... Hopefully the A;s and management will be on top of their game tonight

SUNNY GRAY vs BARTOLO COLON To Start Game Five?

SONNY GRAY vs BARTOLO COLON To Start Game Five?

So, they don't reverse the homerun call...Perhaps the biggest question now is whether to start for Bartolo Colon or SOnny Gray. I would say to go ahead and stick with Colon,  who has been 'the man' all season, with consistency. Just because he had a hickup in the first inning of the first playoff game, just make sure he gets a lot of warm up pitches and   have Sunny Gray available and ready to come in at any time. Plus, there's no assurance Sunny Gray could repeat his shutout performance of Game Two, again; Colon has the track record that Gray doesn't have.  So,  it's like you have two chances that way. Theres no tomorrow  in this first playoff series if the A's lose and you don't have to worry so much about the upcoming starter as there will be several day break before the next series would begin.

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HOMERUN OPINION 3 - BLOWUP PHOTO SHOWS BALL HEADED FOR REDDICK'S GLOVE

click to view video

Slow Motion video of controversial Victor Martinez homerun in Oakland A's -Detroit Tigers playoff game, October 8 -  Only sure takeaway is that was definite fan interference @LBSports http://larrybrownsports.com/baseball   We believe fan interference should have been called @  http://wheredidyougojoedimaggio.blogspot.com

 

By blowing up the previous CBS photo, we get a good perspective on the flight of the ball. And, with the ball in motion, we are given the added advantage of seeing its trajectory, which is downward more than on a line. If the ball were not interfered with it appears that it would have right to Reddick's glove, which is just below and back of the fans' interfering hands. This shot is probably presents a clearer perspective than the video - too bad the umpires didn't see this photo rather than the video.

As per previous blog, 
1)fan interference within the sphere of the field is grounds for calling the batter out, according to the baseball rule book (per Keith Oberman, MLB, and other similar sports coverage following the game incident). Then, we have the added possibilities that
 2) the ball would have likely been caught without the fan interference and
 3) the ball might not have even gone over the yellow line to be called a homerun at all - interference or not. But we'll never know. With these several questions  , the  right thing to do would have been to call 'fan interference,' it is our belief , born out by these pictures.

BLOWUP PHOTO SHOWS BALL HEADED FOR REDDICK'S GLOVE