Bay Area Sports Blog

BASB’s weekly baseball roundup from both sides of the Bay — and an excuse to post a photo of Crazy Crab knocking Stomper off a tricycle.

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HR Huff and Stuff: Aubrey Huff, who is making Giants fans forget all about offseason flirtations with Nick Johnson and Adam LaRoche, homered twice and drove in four runs Sunday. Huff, who has hit 8 of his 10 homers this season at AT&T Park, is quietly off to his best start ever.

Sweep Swap: The Giants and A’s split this year’s Bay Bridge Series, with each team sweeping at home.

First of Many: Buster Posey CRUSHED his first major league home run at Cincinnati.

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(Really) Mad Bum: Madison Bumgarner was ejected from a PCL game and suspended for three games. Bumgarner’s inability to keep his cool may have cost him a call-up to take Todd Wellemeyer’s spot in the rotation.

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Hats off to the guys at Fire-Sabean.com, who released this so-bad-it’s-awesome parody of the Fray’s “How to Save a Life” after the Giants’ 7-6 loss to the Reds today.

Step one you say we need to trade,
Our offense sucks, it’s the offense you have made.
But Sabean, where’s the magic wand?
You realize you’re nothing without Bonds.

And it only gets better from there. Bravo.

BASB’s weekly baseball roundup from both sides of the Bay — and an excuse to post a photo of Crazy Crab knocking Stomper off a tricycle.

CRABS UP

Dingers: We’re not exactly sure what has gotten into the Giants–steroids, perhaps?–but they’ve been hitting home runs at an alarming rate. Like, two home runs in one game by Eugenio Velez alarming. Yes, that really happened.

Draft Day: It’s impossible to predict who the Giants will take in tonight’s amateur draft, primarily because they’re picking 24th, but that only adds to the excitement.

Backup Catchers: Eli Whiteside is having himself quite a season as Jonathan Sanchez’s personal catcher.

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John Bowker: Despite hitting better than Carlos Lee and Aramis Ramirez in April, John Bowker was relegated to the bench. After starting only eight games in May, he’s been relegated to Triple-A. Welcome, Pat Burrell.

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Occasionally we’ll post rebuses: word puzzles based on images. Put the images together and you’ve got a name.

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BASB’s weekly baseball roundup from both sides of the Bay — and an excuse to post a photo of Crazy Crab knocking Stomper off a tricycle.

CRABS UP

Buster Posey: Finally. (So he won’t collect three hits every game.)

AT&T Park Confidential: NBC sheds some light on a few AT&T Park mysteries, like, where do they keep all those panda heads?

Pat Burrell: A Tampa columnist called Pat Burrell’s signing the worst idea in Rays history, while others have labeled him a clubhouse cancer. The Giants don’t really have much to lose by signing Pat the Bat to a minor league deal.

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The Freakanchise: Tim Lincecum hasn’t been his usual, dominant self in his past three starts. The Nationals rocked him last week, while Ubaldo Jimenez outdueled him Monday. Lincecum hasn’t been this, um, not ridiculously awesome since his rookie season. One scout said “something is going on” with Big Timmy Jim, then realized that that “something” is probably a blister.

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Also known as Hitting Independence Day. Yep, the Giants have finally called up their hot prospect catcher/first baseman from Fresno after they noticed he was the only person in the entire organization who can actually, you know, hit a ball with some kind of consistency.

Posey, who did play in a handful of games for the Giants late last year, was hitting .349 this season for the Grizzlies with six home runs, and the fan clamoring to call him up was reaching epic levels. The call-up could bust the Super-2 arbitration deadline of mid-June. So the Giants may have to go to arbitration with Posey in 2012 instead of 2013, just like they had to go a year early with Tim Lincecum.

Ah, Tim Lincecum. You may recall the fan clamoring reached epic levels just before Big Time Timmy Jim was called up from Fresno. Apparently if Giants fans want a player called up before the Giants front office is ready, just flood the sports-talk radio lines and blogosphere and it will be so.

After the jump, a look at some other similarities and a look at Lincecum’s start, to see what might lie ahead for Posey.

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Last we reported on Operation Panda, Pablo Sandoval was beginning a three-week training program to lose weight and get in shape for the current season. Yesterday, OP was revived. The target? Kids. From the Chronicle:

Nicknamed after a pudgy animated panda, Giants third baseman Pablo Sandoval kicked off a campaign Wednesday to promote physical fitness to schoolchildren.

Yep, insert joke here.

OK, but only because you insist, Jill Tucker. If the ‘Top Kill’ effort fails, the government may consider plugging the oil well in the Gulf of Mexico with — oh, forget it.

We love the Panda and we think it’s great that he told the children of the Mission Education Center, a public elementary school for recent Spanish-speaking immigrants, to “eat fruit instead of candy, drink lots of water, read at night before bed, get plenty of rest and listen to their parents.” We also loved his quote after 9-year-old Merlin Dominguez blasted a couple of home runs in a game of Wiffle ball.

We could use her on the team. I should get Sabean to hire her.

Yep, insert joke here.

(Photo via)

The blogosphere jumped all over Steve Phillips after the former Mets GM commented that he’d consider trading Stephen Strasburg for Roy Oswalt. If this is all part of Phillips’ master plan to be remembered for something more stupid, but less incriminating, than his affair with an ESPN intern, it’s working.

It was a ridiculous statement to be sure, as not even Brian Sabean would deal Strasburg for an aging, expensive Oswalt in the name of winning now. But what about Tim Lincecum? If you were the Nationals GM, would you deal the most hyped pitching prospect in recent memory for the Freakanchise? Jim Duquette and Kevin Kennedy pondered that very question Tuesday on MLB Network Radio, as transcribed by the DC Sports Bog.

Hmm, let’s see: A 25-year-old, two-time Cy Young Award winner who drives a talking VW bus to boot for a prospect who has yet to throw a major league pitch and whose delivery reminds some of Mark Prior? If you’re the Nationals, you make that deal faster than you can say Todd Wellemeyer. Seriously, faster than that, because Wellemeyer is a bit of a mouthful.

With the Nats in town, Wellemeyer was unusually effective and helped himself out with the bat in the Giants’ 4-2 win. Lincecum takes the mound Wednesday for the Giants, assuming he hasn’t been traded for Strasburg and the Nationals’ No. 1 overall pick in the June draft.

After a scoreless weekend in Oakland, Giants fans were left to bemoan the lack of offense on KNBR or dream of Prince Fielder. But don’t expect the cavalry any time soon. No, seriously, that’s what GM Brian Sabean said: “the cavalry might not come.”

In a quarter-pole interview with Hank Schulman at the Chronicle, Sabean seemed to hop right back on the “happy with what we’ve got” hamster wheel.

Q: There’s a perception in a tight division that the guy who wins it might be the general manager who makes the best move by the July trade deadline. Do you agree?

A: “I don’t necessarily buy that. There are not enough players to go around. It’s more what you can do today to keep your team moving forward, knowing the cavalry might not come and you might not be in a position to secure a player in a trade. Teams are less apt to trade for free agents-to-be, especially with premium talent. It’s really a matter of how you tweak your roster and try to solve your problems internally. That doesn’t preclude us being involved in trade possibilities looking forward to the deadline.”

Sure, it really sounds like Sabean is working the phones.

Not enough players to go around, really? That’s what you came up with? Twenty-three other teams have more runs than the Giants. San Francisco is in the bottom 10 in almost every important offensive category. Somehow there are enough players to go around for the rest of the league. But not for the Giants. Never for the Giants. Good sassy molasses!

BASB’s weekly baseball roundup from both sides of the Bay — and an excuse to post a photo of Crazy Crab knocking Stomper off a tricycle.

CRABS UP

Clever Craigslist Ads: For all your ERA lowering needs, please contact Brian Sabean! (via McCovey Chronicles)

Walk This Way: Brandon Crawford, the Giants’ fourth-round pick in the 2008 First Year Player Draft, is off to a strong start for the Richmond Flying Squirrels, in part because of a much improved walk rate.

Trade Talk: If the Giants are going to contend for anything this year, they’ve got to do something about their anemic offense. Pat Burrell? No, thanks. Prince Fielder? Holla! It’s only speculation at this point and it would probably take Jonathan Sanchez or Madison Bumgarner to make it happen.

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