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One Last Look at the San Francisco Giants Before the Majesty of Opening Day

by Andrew Nuschler

It's official—Opening Day for the 2009 Major League Baseball season has finally arrived.

The first pitch of the game tonight between the defending World Champion Philadelphia Phillies and the Atlanta Braves will herald the opening of another 162-game sprint. The rest of baseball opens tomorrow or on Tuesday.

Our beloved San Francisco Giants are among that latter group of teams whose fans must endure not one, but two barrages of opening days before seeing their favorite set of nine take the diamond.

Hopefully, the '09 season will be worth the wait.

And, if you like the optimistic interpretation of the Orange and Black's spring session, there is very good reason for hope.

By now, the secret (if you could ever really call it that) is out regarding San Francisco's pitching staff. Even the cooler heads around MLB expect the Giants to sniff around the edges of the National League West race based on the arms alone.

Having done so a number of times, there's no reason to further extol the virtues of Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez, Randy Johnson, Barry Zito, Brian Wilson, and the rest of the bullpen.

Nothing has changed except for the usual minor bumps and bruises of the preseason.

Who knows whether those are genuine or just possum sightings in an extended Spring Training and who cares? The Big Unit's sore, Sanchez burned his finger, and Wilson has some sort of infection in one of his digits—none of that sounds terribly serious even if legit.

Nah, the developing story as SF romps into the regular season is the offense:

1. Pablo Sandoval hit .442 with three home runs in 77 spring at-bats.

2. Freddie Lewis hit .366 in 71 ABs.

3. Emanuel Burriss hit .341 in 85 ABs.

4. Eugenio Velez hit .324 in 68 ABs.

5. Travis Ishikawa hit .316 with seven home runs in 79 ABs.

It's true veterans like Edgar Renteria, Randy Winn, Aaron Rowand, and Bengie Molina all struggled. But this was a brutally long and alien preseason because of the World Baseball Classic.

If veterans tend to coast through a normal Spring Training, it would stand to reason 2009's was even less enthusiastically received. This is why it's important to pump the breaks as the boys break camp (I'll get to that later).

Barring substantial injury, Winn is gonna hit around .300 with 10-15 HRs, 30-40 doubles, and he'll steal you around 20 bags. Forget about his spring and write it down—not only are those essentially his career averages over 162 games, they're basically the numbers Randy's tallied every year since 2002.

Rowand and Molina should put up a very similar year compared to the production the two players combined for in 2008.

By that, I mean Molina will probably regress a little because his '08 body of work was a masterpiece of clutch hitting and carrying an offense using sheer power of will. His year doesn't look too unusual compared to the rest on his resume, but he was playing the role of Barry Bonds last year and not doing a poor job considering the amount of pressure such entails.

It's unfair to expect Big Money to do that again—the man is mortal like all others (except for the chemically enhanced Super Bonds).

On the other hand, Rowand had the year most people expected after leaving the potent lineup and small yard in Philly. He lost almost half his '07 runs, over half of his bombs, almost 20 runs batted in, and he dropped 30 points off his average.

While Bengie will probably come down to Earth a tad, Rowand should be able compensate by having a better year, the one he's capable of having—it won't look like his breakout season in 2007, but somewhere in between should do nicely.

Who knows what the Giants will get from Renteria? I doubt it will be as profound an upgrade as the brass is trying to spin it, but the dude HAS to be an upgrade.

Even if the new shortstop returns to his most glorious of glory days, this was never a splinter that was going to power the offense. At his pinnacle, Edgar was a very nice piece to move runners around and score runs himself.

But his OPS maxed out at .874 in 2003 and has broken the .800 barrier precisely three times in a 13-year career. In other words, all versions of Renteria will need help from the rest of the bats—a rejuvenated one included.

Which is why the springs put together by some of the younger guys are so encouraging.

Unfortunately, it is my duty to remind you, fair reader, Spring Training must be taken with a grain of salt.

It is not usually representative of the regular season for many, many reasons. Perhaps the most significant is the different approaches different players take.

Unproven commodities trying to make the team or win a starting spot tend to attack the preseason with a midseason ferocity. Established players tend to coast or focus on weaknesses.

Pitchers usually work on their arsenals in a piecemeal fashion—that greatly skews the hitting sample because a power pitcher may be working on his dookie or a crafty vet may be working one approach with predictable and hittable repetition.

Mix it all together and you'll see some highly misleading results.

This is the other way to interpret the spring session—the pessimist's perspective. And there's more to it.

If SF's glass is half-empty, you must also include the rising expectations and the solidifying NL West picture.

A young ballclub like the Giants needs to sneak up on people to maximized its potential. Our guys can no longer do that—MLB has circled Sandoval as a guy to watch and treat gently.

The impressive production from the other youngsters will certainly raise a few eyebrows, skeptical brows though they may be.

I implied the cover had recently been blown off the pitching staff, but—in truth—the Freak's Cy Young probably did that a while ago and the Big Unit's arrival only drew more attention. It's a safe bet even casual observers knew this would be the strength of the team and one of the better collections in all of baseball.

The San Francisco Giants are no longer flying under anyone's radar—they're a big, loud blip on the screen. That doesn't necessarily mean they won't play loose and free to potential, I'm just saying it's gotten more difficult since February.

Furthermore, both the Los Angeles Dodgers and Arizona Diamondbacks are looking stronger and stronger.

LA obviously gets a boost from Manny Ramirez, but Matt Kemp sounds like he's maturing mentally as well as physically and that could mean trouble for the rest of MLB. The rotation still looks borderline dreadful to these eyes, but James McDonald could turn that ship right around if he can tread Big League water.

In Arizona, you're starting to see stirrings from Eric Byrnes and Felipe Lopez is beginning to worry me. If Byrnes can return to a shadow of his top gear and Lopez becomes the player experts once thought he was destined to become, the Snakes' O gets a dramatic boost.

Throw in a resurgent Chad Tracy, a core of young-but-experienced uber-talents (Stephen Drew, Mark Reynolds, Chris Young, Connor Jackson, Justin Upton, etc.), that ridiculous staff with Max Scherzer progressing at the back end, and the Diamondbacks look more like the team to beat with each sweep of the clock.

If you've got your rose-colored specs on, the young maple and ash has you feeling pretty good about the boys. The pitching should be able to compete with any team's stable so it won't take too much offense to hang with the other contenders.

The seeds of that offense seem to be blooming so indulge those dreams of an NL West flag.

If you've draped yourself in a wet blanket, Spring Training is meaningless and popping up on the radar screen turns the San Francisco Giants from dark horse to overrated in the wink of an ESPN column.

The beautiful thing about Opening Day is that we get to start stripping away the ifs and see who's right.

It's time for some real baseball.

Today, life is very good.

Source: bleacherreport.com

Giants get reassurance on territorial rights

By John Ryan

We occasionally get to have a different definition of "news" here on the Morning Buzz page. As such, it was determined that this is the proper place to address events of recent days on the A's stadium front: whole lotta, maybe not nothin', but probably not quite somethin' either.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig met with Giants managing partner William Neukom and President Larry Baer on Sunday in Arizona and, Baer said, hinted that he would protect the Giants' territorial rights to San Jose.

"From what we could tell, there is no change in his position," Baer said.

Didn't exactly set off panic with A's boss Lew Wolff, who seems to be down to one option after pulling out of Fremont talks and giving Oakland the back of his hand, or San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed.

"I wasn't at that meeting," Wolff told the Mercury News' Denis Theriault, adding that he was in Arizona and busy watching the game.

Said Reed: "This is truly a very inside baseball kind of thing, and it's impossible to tell from the outside what's going on. We're just getting ready to get in the game."

In other words, plans continue apace for that City Council meeting April 7, as long as Reed can maintain his reserve of baseball-related metaphors without accidentally throwing in a stray March Madness reference.

Twins and Giants interested in 14-time All-Star Ivan Rodriguez

By Jon Heyman

MIAMI -- The Twins and Giants have emerged as new potential landing spots for free agent catcher Ivan Rodriguez, joining the Astros and hometown Marlins, SI.com has learned.

While declining to discuss the teams, Rodriguez said, "Some teams are calling ... You'll find out pretty soon."

The new possibilities, Minnesota and San Francisco, were identified by a source with a National League team in the bidding.

The Twins' interest may depend on the health of star catcher Joe Mauer, who's had a back issue early in camp. The Giants have Bengie Molina to catch, and he's even penciled in as their cleanup hitter, but Pudge could get games at first base and third base in San Francisco, which is planning to employ youngsters Travis Ishikawa and Pablo Sandoval at those positions, respectively.

The Marlins play only 15 minutes from Rodriguez's home, but they also like their young catcher, John Baker. The Astros' catchers are struggling this spring, but they haven't been very aggressive so far in their pursuit of Pudge, who's played superbly for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic, hitting .545 with two home runs.

"I'm in tremendous shape and still believe I can play on an everyday basis," said Rodriguez, whose Puerto Rico team plays the United States Saturday night here in a marquee second-round matchup. "Whatever happened last year unfortunately happened in a free agent year. But last year's over, and I'm focused on putting a good year together. I'm ready to play every day, and if the opportunity comes to play every day, I will do a good job. I care about baseball, and I'm a winner. I'm feeling good, and I still have a lot of baseball left in me"

San Francisco Giants seeking host families for players

Signing a professional baseball contract can be an exciting experience for any young man. But the early years of a pro baseball career can be difficult and lonely.

Many of the players — most of them in their late teens and early 20s — find themselves away from home for the first time. And while things may be pretty glamorous playing under the bright lights on game night, the rest of the time may lead to some lonely hours.

That's where Linda Pereira comes in.

Pereira is the director of player relations for the San Jose Giants, the local Class A affiliate of the San Francisco Giants, and one her many duties with the club is to locate host families for players each season.

The search is now on for host families for the 2009 season that runs April through early September. Linda Pereira of the Giants needs to find enough families for the players by early March.

Host families provide a player with a room, and the Giants provide season tickets and parking passes for all of the club's games at San Jose Municipal Stadium. The team also hosts picnics for the families and sponsors other events.

"It's really a great program, for the both the players and the host families," said Pereira.

Pereira says that placing players with local families is one of the most rewarding parts of her job.

"I try to match the right players with the right families, and I'm proud of my record," she said. "It's incredible ... the

players become part of the families, and the families come to the games and live and die with their players.

"And when the players get to the big leagues, they're just right up the street [at AT&T Park in San Francisco]."

For more information on the host family program, call Pereira at (408) 297-1435, ext. 19.

SJ Giants jobs

With the California Baseball League season about to begin, the San Jose Giants need you!

No, the local Class A ballclub has plenty of pitching and hitting, but they do have some opportunities for those looking for seasonal work at the ballpark.

Positions available include batboy, camera operator, concessions staff, fun zone attendant, parking attendant, program and scorecard vendor, shift supervisor, ticket taker, Turkey Mike's BBQ staff and usher.

All applicants must be a minimum of 16 years of age, with the exception of those applying for the batboy position where the minimum age requirement is 14.

Applications are available online at www.sjgiants.com. For additional information, contact the San Jose Giants at (408) 297-1435, ext. 45, or info@sjgiants.com.

By Dick Sparrer

Johnson Has Lost a Little Off His Fastball but Not His Reputation

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The San Francisco Giants, having faced 6-foot-10 Randy Johnson more than any sadist would suggest, figured after signing him this off-season that the coast was clear. No more sidearm fastballs at their ribs. No more leg-trembling at-bats against the most intimidating left-hander of their lives.

Or so they thought. In Johnson’s first throwing session against Giants hitters on Saturday, his new teammates took a few too many pitches for his taste. Unabashedly incensed, Johnson grumbled afterward, “Swing the stinking bat!”

“Something tells me the next guy who takes a pitch against Randy’ll get a fastball right in the cranium,” one Giants player said, requesting anonymity because he preferred not to be that guy.

Johnson may be 45, he may have lost a bit off his fastball and his back may have more scar tissue than Joan Rivers. But he remains a pitching force, and a fine fit for the lurching Giants.

His contemporaries Roger Clemens, Greg Maddux and Mike Mussina have all retired, and Tom Glavine’s elbow may not hold up for the Braves. But Johnson still stands tall, five victories short of 300.

Somewhat under baseball’s radar, after two operations in 10 months ruined his 2007 season and carried over into 2008, Johnson dominated the National League for the Arizona Diamondbacks in the second half of last year. He struck out fewer batters than usual and allowed a few more hits, but he posted a 2.41 earned run average that ranked fifth in the major leagues.

“I’m only as good as my back feels,” Johnson said, noting that his herniated disk has not been particularly troublesome for about a year. “My arm feels fine. As good as my arm feels, I don’t think I’ll be the pitcher my arm would allow me to be, because my back won’t tolerate the amount of force that it needs to provide to do the things that I did in the past.”

Beyond his 295 wins, that past includes two no-hitters, five Cy Young Awards and 4,789 strikeouts, second to Nolan Ryan.

Johnson pitched 194 innings last year, 10 of them in two minor league rehab games in April, over 32 starts. But his days of consecutive complete games or starts on three days’ rest are probably over, and he readily admits that his fastball has lost some zip.

Johnson’s fastballs averaged 93.6 miles an hour in 2003, when he was 40, but have steadily slowed to 90.4 last year, according to the Inside Edge scouting service. In part because of this, he throws fewer of them on the inside part of the plate, preferring to nibble on the outside corner more than in his flamethrowing past. But Johnson’s reputation has diminished less than his pep.

“Randy is known not necessarily as a headhunter, but he’s definitely someone where you take too big of a hack or lean in too far he’ll let you know,” said the Giants right-hander Matt Cain, who at 24 is close to half Johnson’s age. “I want to talk to him about how to take advantage of the inside corner, and not to let hitters dig in.”

Johnson, who agreed to a one-year, $8 million contract with $5 million more in incentives, was signed in part to mentor the Giants’ three young starters: Cain, Tim Lincecum (who won the 2008 National League Cy Young Award) and the rehabilitating Noah Lowry. His presence will also help San Francisco’s other primary starting pitcher, the troubled Barry Zito.

Zito and Johnson could not be more different in repertory or temperament. But Zito, who emerged in Oakland on a young staff and flopped after moving to San Francisco as a headlining free agent, said he expected to relax more with an older star in the rotation for a change.

“I feel younger,” Zito said of Johnson’s presence in the clubhouse. “I feel like I have a more fresh perspective coming into this season. I can just be a kid again, like I was when I came up.”

Johnson is reminded every day that he is no kid, not with lower-back issues he said he first experienced late in his second and final year with the Yankees, in 2006. He took two epidurals to numb the pain before his Game 3 start against the Detroit Tigers in the first round of the playoffs that year, but pitched poorly and lost. Surgery and a trade back to Arizona, where he had won a World Series and four of his Cy Young Awards, soon followed.

At 45, Johnson has a 25-year-old arm and a 65-year-old back. He undergoes about 30 minutes of back stretching exercises to throw reasonably safely; one awkward move could reinjure the disk and end his career.

“Being a tall guy and the incline of the mound, that puts a lot of stress on his back,” Dave Groeschner, the Giants’ trainer, said. “Throw a weakness in there and he has to be extra-aware of stretching and keeping his legs and arm in proper position.”

Johnson will do that in his first exhibition start on Friday, and continue the routine for as long as he pitches, which could be longer than most assume. One full year of pitching comfortably the way he did last summer would leave him fit to go again next year; only one pitcher in the post-1961 expansion era has made more than 30 starts at age 46, and that was the knuckleballer Phil Niekro.

Johnson’s pitches still zip half again as fast as Niekro’s did, though. And he has no intention of slowing down.

“I got through last year and proved that when I’m healthy and I give my back ample time to recover, I can pitch 180 or 190 innings,” Johnson said.

Asked if he could pitch until he was 50, he did not rule it out. Like opposing hitters — and even his own — Johnson will keep moving Father Time off the plate.

written by: ALAN SCHWARZ

San Francisco Giants expect Renteria to have a good season

During his 11 seasons in the National League, Renteria played in the steamy environs of Florida, Atlanta and St. Louis. Two years ago, he hit .332 for the Atlanta Braves.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Giants continue to express confidence that new shortstop Edgar Renteria will have a bounce-back year, citing his successful track record in the National League.

But what if the league had nothing to do with Renteria's sharp decline last season? What if he struggled with the Detroit Tigers last year and the Boston Red Sox in 2005 not because they are in the American League, but because they tend to be cold-weather cities through Memorial Day?

Renteria said there might be some truth to that theory.

"Cold weather is for football, man," he said. "That makes a big difference. You always want a fast start, but I'm the kind of player who never starts good. When the weather gets hot, I get hot."

When that statement was relayed to Bruce Bochy, the Giants' manager gulped hard — perhaps thinking of chilly fog that billows over the scoreboard at AT&T Park.

But Bochy likes what he has seen from Renteria this spring, and he doesn't admit to any concerns.

"You're talking about April in Detroit and Boston, where it's in the 30s and 40s," Bochy said. "Nobody gets used to that. Sure, it gets chilly in San Francisco, but I actually think it helps veteran players stay fresher late in the season."

Bochy also pointed out that Renteria has fared well at AT&T Park, which the stats support. Renteria's .344 career average at AT&T Park is his second highest in any N.L. park, trailing only Coors.

"He absolutely wore out the right-center gap," said center fielder Aaron Rowand, who was with the N.L. East-rival Philadelphia Phillies in '07. "He tore it up every game against us. I didn't see him last year, but he looks like the same guy to me. I'm excited he's here."

Renteria knows it's vital the Giants get off to a fast start. He said he'll do everything in his power to get his bat going in the No. 2 spot. And he has a good feeling about Pablo Sandoval and Fred Lewis, two hitters who will follow him in the lineup.

"They have great talent, man," Renteria said. "You can see in batting practice. They hit the ball everywhere. They know what they're doing at the plate. I think those guys are going to be very exciting this year."

Giants special assistant Felipe Alou was paying close attention as left-hander Jonathan Sanchez threw another impressive batting-practice session Sunday. Sanchez is scheduled to pitch the third game for Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic next month, facing the Dominican Republic team managed by Alou.

Barry Zito and Randy Johnson will pitch in a four-inning intrasquad game Tuesday, Bochy said. The Giants usually pitch non-roster players and prospects in intrasquad games, but both former Cy Young Award winners said they wanted to face hitters one more time before Cactus League games begin.

Left-hander Noah Lowry, who was home sick with the flu the two previous days, threw off flat ground.

The Giants will begin baserunning drills today. It's a final step in Lewis' rehab work after bunion surgery on his right foot. After some hesitation, Bochy said Lewis should be ready for Wednesday's Cactus League opener.

Former Giants Vinnie Chulk and Matt Herges are among the Cleveland pitchers scheduled to take the mound Wednesday. Indians left-hander Jeremy Sowers will start against Tim Lincecum.

By Andrew Baggarly

originally publishes at: http://www.mercurynews.com/athletics/ci_11762771

Die-hard fan strikes out at San Francisco Giants big FanFest

The Register’s Web guy, Brian Kennedy, is a die-hard San Francisco Giants fan. As a byproduct of that devotion, he is a huge follower of Cy Young Award-winning ace pitcher Tim Lincecum.

So, seeing as how Brian is scared to go into the big city by himself, I sucked it up and accompanied him to the Giants’ 16th annual FanFest on Saturday at AT & T Park. Before we go on, some disclaimers:

• FanFest was free to the public, a big feather in the cap to the Giants in this dismal, downtrodden joke of an economy.

• On the whole, the thousands of people who showed up seemed to have a good time.

• Staff members — especially the ushers — were very friendly and helpful;

• The team did the best it could to accommodate as many people as possible, given the size of the crowd.

• Brian and I would probably go again, with one small but significant change to the procedure for getting autographs.

We arrived nice and early. Brian brought his Sports Illustrated with Lincecum on the cover and a blue Sharpie pen.

We soon found out that there is absolutely zero advantage to getting there early, because once the gates open it’s a free-for-all.

Here was the basic set-up for the event, which ran from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Four autograph stations were set up throughout the ballpark, and three or four players and/or coaches were at each station for an hour. They then were supposed to rotate to the other stations.

However, when we took a lap around the park in the first hour to scout out all four stations, Lincecum was nowhere to be found.

A staffer told us he was at a VIP party in the suites, for which you needed a ticket.

We asked her when he would be going down to the regular stations, and she said she didn’t think he would be because he was “so popular.”

Not what we wanted to hear. Our theory was that there was no way Lincecum could blow off the general public.

For weeks before the event, radio station KNBR 680 AM — the main sponsor of the event — had run commercials with Lincecum himself saying, “Come out to FanFest, me and my teammates will be signing autographs ...”

That would leave the average guy — and if you look up “average guy” in the dictionary, Brian’s picture will be there — to believe that you can get a Lincecum autograph at FanFest.

The truth was, the autograph lines were so long that there was no guarantee you would even meet the players before the hour was up.

Brian’s strategy, eventually adopted by many, was to pick a line and hope that the right players rotated into your station by the time you made it up to the front.

(The strategy worked out for me, because I got to meet Will Clark, one of my all-time favorites. Many, many people did not.)

Two things happened at this point:

1. People toward the front of each of the lines started telling others to “go ahead, I’m waiting” ... meaning if you really wanted the signature of third base coach Ron Wotus — who rotated into our station twice, by the way — you could take cuts. If you were in the back of the line and you really wanted to meet somebody like Will Clark, Matt Cain or Randy Johnson (the other one), well, better luck next year.

2. Brian and I started to realize we might strike out, and like the rest of the masses, starting panicking.

It was truly a magnificent example of crowd psychology.

With Brian holding our place in one line, I would take a lap around the park each hour to see who had rotated in to the other three stations.

Out of the five signing hours, I went on three laps. I never saw Lincecum or heard anybody buzzing about where he was.

It’s possible he signed autographs for two of the five hours, precisely the two hours in which I did not take a lap. But — and I can’t prove this — I don’t think he ever signed for the general public.

If I’m wrong, I apologize to the Giants in advance.

I wouldn’t be writing this if Brian and I, speaking on behalf of many Giants fans, didn’t feel somewhat taken — specifically by the KNBR commercial.

If Lincecum himself wouldn’t have said it on air, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that he was being saved for the VIPs and sponsors.

By RANDY JOHNSON