I purchased two tickets for opening day for the Giants back in January.  The tickets are on the front row on the third base side.  Needless to say, they were expensive.  But it’s our son’s first game – and while he’s only seven months old, these are important memories.  My wife and I have been looking forward to this for a very long time.

Unfortunately, I still haven’t gotten my tickets from StubHub.

When I contacted them a few weeks ago, they informed me that the Giants hadn’t yet sent the tickets to the original buyer, who was going to then upload them to StubHub, where I would then download them.  And this was all supposed to go down on 4/2 (today).  Well first of all – let’s address the fact that I just paid all this money for opening day tickets and I don’t even get the physical tickets?  I have to print them out myself?  What about the souveneir of the actual ticket?  Second – it’s a lie that the Giants haven’t sent out tickets.  I know other season ticket holders that got their tickets three weeks ago.  And finally – how does it make sense to make a fan wait until the 11th hour to get their tickets anyway?  I ordered tickets for the A’s Opening Day and got them in the mail less than one week after the purchase.

Now here we are on 4/2, and I look at my StubHub account and the status of my tickets still says “not yet delivered.”  So I call StubHub and have to wait on hold thirty minutes just to talk to some kid that makes minimum wage and can’t give me any more info than what I already know (that the tickets haven’t been uploaded to me yet).  But he does assure me that the tickets are guaranteed.  So I look at StubHub’s guarantee, and all it really promises is that if the tickets don’t arrive in time I’ll get a full refund.  Well who f’ing cares?  I want to go to the game and get the exact seats that I paid for nearly FOUR MONTHS AGO.

I got so pissed that I looked on the Giants’ site and sent an email to the head suit that oversees ticketing.  To his credit, he immediately replied, and is sorting this out.  I did it more than anything to just let the Giants know that their “partner” is giving their fans the worst ticket delivery they’ve experienced in memory.  But I was surprised that he actually responded and is working to help me out.

But back to the partnership with StubHub – how exactly does it make sense for a great organization to entrust the critical exchange of goods to a third party?  I thought the Giants “Double Play Fan Zone” ticket exchange system of old was awesome.  Worked like a charm.  Buy tickets directly from other fans, and then pick them up at will call.  So they try to fix something that ain’t broke by introducing a wortheless third party into the exchange.  What’s next?  A call center in India?

In my humble opinion, the Giants should handle their own ticket distribution.  They did it well for as long as I’ve been going to games.  And the only party that’s benefitting from this new arrangement is StubHub.  Not the Giants, and certainly not the fans.

In recent interviews, Zito has been claiming that in certain counts this Spring Training he’s not using his changeup or curveball – but experimenting with other combinations.  When you only have an 84 mph fastball, I can understand why you’d want to use the offseason to try out variations in different pitch counts.

Last night I tuned into the Giants / Cubs preseason game.  It was the top of the 5th inning and Zito had six strikeouts and had only surrendered one run (the Giants were ahead 2-1).  This is encouraging, I thought to myself.  Well, Zito proceeded to fall behind in the count to the first two hitters, who both ended up with base hits.  Two more base hits made it 3-2 Cubs, and I shut off the tv and went to bed.

Checking the box scores this a.m., it turned out that the Giants won 5-3.  But through the course of the regular season, I don’t see the Giants bullpen winning many games if the starting pitcher can’t last more than five innings.

Zito – for as bad as he was last year – did have some stretches where he got the curve working and was having some good stretches of innings.  I guess like any pitchers, it comes down to that one inning and avoiding the crooked number (just like trying to avoid triple bogies and OBs in golf).  When Zito falls behind in the count and has to throw a strike, you just know something bad is going to happen.  That fastball’s got nothing on it, and these hitters are just too good to miss a low 80s pitch that catches any of the plate.

I keep holding onto this hope that Zito will somehow become a Jamie Moyer type and figure out a way to finesse his way through six or seven innings per game and win at least half of his starts.  Right now that seems pretty iffy.

Ryan Rohlinger has only batted 16 times for the Giants this Spring Training.  I’d say he’s made the most of it – 18 total bases, four HRs and 10 RBI.  I’ve said it before, but it’s so hard to evaluate talent during Spring Training.  Any player at this level (not named Dave Roberts, Omar Vizquel, Ryan Klesko or Rich Aurilia) can go on a tear and appear to be a slugger (Bowker, anyone?).

The Giants had Rohlinger in at 3B yesterday when he went hit his fourth homer – an inside the park job to right center that was a game-tier in the eigth.  I’ve been very concerned about the Giants’ corner infield looking ahead to the season.  But Ishikawa is looking promising, hopefully Sandoval will in fact be the real deal – and with any luck maybe Rohlinger can get some good pinch hit ABs and / or fill in at one of the corner infield positions once in a while.

Btw – “The Splash” (an SF Chronicle Giants blog) reported a 475 foot bomb to dead center coming off the bat of Jesus Guzman (Giants infield prospect) in yesterday’s game.  Henry Schulman called it the longest HR he’s ever seen at Scottsdale Stadium.  Niether Frandsen nor Burris could hit a golf ball 475 feet with an aluminum bat.  So again – who is that guy, and why isn’t he in the mix for the 2b starting job?

Q:  What do Aaron Rowand’s batting stance and Tim Duncan’s freethrowing have in common?

A:  They are both among the most akward things to watch in the entire wide world of sports.

I was enjoying McCovey Chronicles’ latest Giant’s player projection today (for Aaron Rowand), and as I repeatedly said “amen, brother” to Grant’s analysis (this Giants blog is playing checkers, btw, while McCovey Chronicles is playing chess) I shuddered to think about another season of watching Rowand “dig in” at the plate.  I can remember the first time my wife saw him on TV last season and asked me what was wrong with him.  For a guy who digs in that hard and very literally looks like he’s attempting to defecate while standing up (I have a seven month old baby, so I know the look), you’d think he could hit the ball a mile.  Instead it’s just ugly an ineffective.

Somebody needs to pull Rowand aside and say look, can you think of a single great baseball player that does what you are doing in the box?  No?  Ok, so cut that out, because it’s painful to watch. Same with Duncan – how could a player who is otherwise so athletic possibly think that such a rigid posture and process at the freethrow line will lead to success.  It just doesn’t make any sense.

I’m really not a big believer in Spring Training stats, but I thought it’d be interesting to take a look at where the Giants’ Spring team stats are right now in certain offensive and defensive categories, and to project whether these stats will translate into similar in the regular season:

Spring Training ‘09 Giants Team Batting Avg:  .287 (#8 in the Majors)- With the departure of Omar Vizquel, Dave Roberts and Ray Durham (all low average hitters), there is no question that the Giants’ team batting average will be higher in ‘09.  But when you look at the pitching in the NL West and the overall mediocrity of the Giants offensive lineup from top to bottom, it’s highly unlikely they’ll finish in the top 10 in the regular season.  Sign of regular season stats?:  NO

Spring Training ‘09 Giants Team HR:  23 (#1 in the Majors)- If this doesn’t indicate what a fluke Spring Training stats are, I don’t know what does.  The Giants are likely to finish dead last in the Majors this season in HRs.  I don’t know what’s in the water down there in Arizona, but they should bottle some of it up and bring it home for the regular season.  Unlikely the Giants will finish higher than the bottom five in the Majors in HRs this season, and impossible that they will even be sniffing the top 5.  Sign of regular season stats?:  NO

Spring Training ‘09 Giants Team BB:  36 (#25 in the Majors)- Considering hackers Bengie and Pablo and the young guys like Burris, Frandsen and Ishikawa … it seems very reasonable to surmise that the Giants will be near the bottom in team walks during the regular season.  This isn’t a very patient group at the plate.  Sign of regular season stats?:  YES

Spring Training ‘09 Giants Team ERA:  6.46 (#28 in the Majors)- Giants starters should easily finish in the top 5 in ERA this season, but the question is how far down will this weak bullpen drag the team ERA.  This Spring, Giants relievers are among the hardest hit pitchers in the bigs.  Ramon Ortiz (nice pickup, Sabean) has given up 11 runs in 4.2 innings of work.  Pat Misch has given up eight runs in three innings of work.  Billy Sadler has given up eight runs in 4.1 innings of work.  Keiichi Yabu has given up seven runs in 2.2 innings of work (and I believe was recently demoted).  Affeldt (Sabean’s big bullpen pickup in the offseason) has surrendered six runs and 11 hits in six innings of work.  You get the idea … the starting rotation could be great, but the bullpen is a disaster in progress.  But even when you throw Zito as the fourth starter into the mix, I still think the Giants team ERA will land somewhere in the top 10 by regular season’s end.  Sign of regular season stats?:  NO

Spring Training ‘09 Giants Team Pitching Strikeouts:  94 (#5 in the Majors)- Between Lincecum, Johnson and Cain – this starting rotation is going to rack up a ton of strikeouts this year.  Especially in the soft- hitting NL West.  Sign of regular season stats?:  YES

Spring Training ‘09 Giants Team Pitching Walks Allowed:  57 (#2 in the Majors)- The Giants walked more batters than any team other than the Pirates or Orioles in ‘08.  When you look at the top six teams for last season (for walks allowed), they all share one thing in common – none of them made the playoffs.  It’s concerning that cutting down on walks apparently hasn’t been enough of a focus for the Giants this Spring.  Unfortunately,  the Giants have regularly been around the top five in team walks for the last few seasons, so no real logical reasons to anticipate any different this season. Sign of regular season stats?:  YES

The SF Chronicle posted a good story on the Frandsen versus Burriss Spring Training competition for the 2B starting job.  According to John Shea:

“Frandsen is hitting .304 (one homer, three RBIs) in 11 games while his competition, Emmanuel Burriss, is hitting .355 (no homers, two RBIs) in 12 games. Frandsen has more power, Burriss more speed. Burriss, a shortstop until the second half of last season, might have a bigger upside – the Giants project him as a better second baseman than shortstop.”

I think Burriss’ speed should win that job.  When Shea says Frandsen’s got “more power” he’s referring to warning track power.  Frandsen’s not going to hit more than 8 homeruns as a starter, by my estimation.  Grant over at McCovey Chronicles projects Frandsen having significantly better AVG and on-base percentage numbers than Burriss over the course of the season.  I don’t know exactly how the voodoo works for projecting numbers over the course of a season for a player that was out injured the entire previous year, but I just don’t see Frandsen batting .284 with a .342 OBP.  Frandsen’s high average, OBP and HR totals are a big maybe.  Burriss’ speed is an absolute.

The absurdity of these position battles in baseball is that any player can catch fire for a few weeks and put up big numbers.  Based on the little Giants Spring Training action that I’ve seen so far, Burriss is a lot more explosive on the basepaths.  I saw him stretch a sure single into a double.  An infield grounder moved him to third, and then another infield grounder scored him.  Over the last few years I haven’t seen the Giants eek out many runs like that with only one hit in an inning.  I feel like we need that type of action on the basepaths a lot more than a warning track power second baseman.

Hopefully not (but probably so) a harbinger for the Giants bullpen today … Brad Coon takes Billy Sadler deep for a walk-off, 2-HR jack in the bottom of the ninth.  Who cares – it’s just Spring Training, right?  But disappointing after the Giants took the lead with a two-out, 2-run HR by Rohlinger in the top of the ninth.  Not the sort of “lights out” bullpen work that Molina talked about.

And the Giants PR machine keeps rolling.  Their latest mouthpiece:  Bengie Molina, who (according to this AP story) allegedly believes this Giants bullpen is shaping up to compare to the Angels World Series team’s bullpen.

“I feel the same way I felt in Anaheim,” said Molina, whose 2002 bullpen included closer Troy Percival, setup men Scot Shields and Brendan Donnelly and precocious late-season callup Francisco Rodriguez.

“It makes a huge impact in your team if you can have one of the best bullpens in the league. Sometimes we (won) games from the fifth or sixth innings, when the bullpen took over. It was done, seriously. It was lights out. That’s the way I feel this year.”

When I think about the Giants bullpen going into ‘09, words and phrases that come to mind include:  “fragile,” “uncertain,” “unproven,” “huge question mark,” “weak link,” “weak sauce,” and “uh-oh.”  Molina’s anticipation of “lights out” seems a tad optimistic.

O.J.’s murder case was tried in 134 days.  We’re now pushing three full years of hearing about this Bonds “investigation” and now it’s not even going to court until at least July.  Most legal experts I’ve heard on the radio say they’ve got nothing against Bonds on the perjury charges without the testimony of Greg Anderson.

What do O.J.’s case and Bonds’ case have in common?  We all know they did “it.”  But this whole trial / investigation into him allegedly lying to this federal grand jury is just absurd.  Here we are in California with the economy so deep in the toilet that state employees are getting laid off by the thousands … and yet the feds have the time and resources to pursue an ambiguous lie as if it were the Nuremberg Trials?

As a Giants and (previous) Bonds fan, it was crushing to have the legacy vaporized by the steroid use.  And there is no doubt that Bonds is a despicable person.  But we now know there were hundreds of players that took steroids.  And virtually every one that has been outed lied about it when confronted.  The extent to which Bonds has been singled out is absurd.  And the inefficiency and grandiosity of the investigation “process” is an embarrassment to the legal system.  They need to stop pretending this is a real trial and just let it go.  Bonds’ day of judgment will come, and he’s going to have a very long life outside of baseball to be miserable with his previous decisions.  So please stop this charade and get on with something more important.

I’m sitting here, reading about Team USA’s preparation for the World Baseball Classic and thinking the same thing that I thought four years ago at its inception:  who f’ing cares?  We have a world baseball classic every year, and there are 162 games worth per team.  It’s called the MLB (heard of it?) and it fields players from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Cuba, The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Japan, Korea, and many other countries from around the world.  I don’t like Bud Selig (who ends a baseball game in a tie, then decides the next year that game’s winner will represent the home field advantage in the World Series?), and I certainly do not buy this new made-for-tv contrived event that he has come up with.  Now every preseason we have to read the same stupid stories about “player x will / will not be at the WBC.”  The whole thing is a waste of time.  Leave baseball alone.  It’s already perfect (minus that one pesky steroids issue!).  Maybe it’s just sour grapes because no Giants are on the team.  Ah – who am I kidding, I’ll probably watch it anyway.