Saturday, June 16, 2001

Bottom of the eighth. Aurilia leads off with a single straight up the middle. Rios lines a shot into Triples Alley and -- guess what -- gets a triple. Aurilia scores, obviously, and the game is tied at one apiece. Santiago lines the first pitch into left field, and the Giants have the lead.

Up comes switch-hitting Felipe Crespo as a pinch-hitter. This prompts Art Howe to pull Jeff Tam, a righthander who's given up solid hits to three straight batters, for a lefthander, Mike Magnante, with the intention of turning Crespo around. Crespo's 1-for-6 against lefties this year.

So Dusty calls for a bunt. Granted, Crespo's not the hitter from the right side that he is from the left, but he's rarely been called on to sacrifice as a Giant. The first pitch is bunted foul; the second is bunted through. Crespo ends up hitting a double-play ball to Miguel Tejada at short... but Tejada first drops the ball while making the exchange from glove to bare hand, then kicks it, and has no play. The Giants have runners on first and second with nobody out. An amazing stroke of luck.

Up comes Calvin Murray, the leadoff hitter. Now, given just how good a hitter Murray actually is, he pretty much has to bunt in this situation. And bunt he does. Right out in front of the plate. Catcher Ramon Hernandez fires to third, and Santiago is called out. Only problem is, he's safe, and it's not even close. The third-base ump seems to be screened off by Tejada's body, and he doesn't see that the throw bounces, then doesn't reach Tejada's glove until Santiago's palpably on third.

But no matter. Surely Ramon Martinez will do something helpful. Why, the outfield is even playing shallow, daring Martinez to smoke one over their heads. As Barry Bonds watches on deck, hopeful for a chance to do some serious damage, Martinez, naturally, grounds one right up the middle, only without the pickup Aurilia's base hit had. Tejada fields it at the bag and tosses to first for an easy inning-ending double play. Bonds stands there, wondering what he's got to do to bat with runners on base.

Robb Nen strikes out Frank Menechino on three pitches. Jaason Giambi doubles to left-center, and Mark Bellhorn runs for him. On the radio, Ted Robinson and Mike Krukow are talking about Bellhorn possibly stealing third.

Terrence Long takes a strike, then fouls one off. And fouls off another. Here's a ball, and the count is 1-2. And now Long hammers a ball to dead center, but it's right at Murray. Two down. Bellhorn bluffs toward third, but doesn't move. And here comes Eric Chavez, whose only career at-bat against Nen resulted in a game-winning home run last year.

Chavez rips one well to right, into the water... and foul. Strike one. Swing at a miss at a slider in the dirt, strike two. And now he just gets a piece of one, fouling it off. Santiago's chatting with Nen, and now we're back to live action. Low, ball one. And now Nen throws... Chavez swings and bounces one up the first-base line... Snow grabs it, tosses to Nen at the bag, and it's over. The Giants win 2-1. Five straight wins.

Now, this is plenty exciting, and quite a relief; beating the A's is always special. But the main reason I've gone into all this is to point out just how awful the top two spots in the order have been when Rich Aurilia hasn't occupied either of them, and the effect this has had on Barry Bonds.

Aurilia doesn't walk all that much -- only 16 times this year -- but you tend to excuse that in a guy hitting over .360 because you know his OBP's still very good. But Dusty has chosen, for reasons I cannot fathom, to stick Aurilia in the sixth and seventh spots quite a bit lately, preferring to go with Martinez and even Russ Davis in the two-hole. And "hole" is exactly the right word, here, because that's what the number-two spot becomes. Martinez isn't hitting at all, and Davis doesn't walk (especially for the Giants anymore, as he was designated for assignment yesterday). Add to this the fact that the Giants have gotten very little out of the leadoff spot, with Marvin Benard and Calvin Murray not hitting, and Shawon Dunston having drawn one walk this year.

I've recently discovered a simple, not particularly good, but reasonably fun computer baseball simulation that's entirely based on player stats. It'll have to do for now. I mention this because I input the 2001 Giants and have played them against a number of teams of the past, good and bad. Barry Bonds, as you'd guess, is homering with alarming regularity -- and they're almost all solo shots.

Actually, I think 20 of his 36, at most, are solo; that's 56 percent, which is entirely in line with guys like Willie Mays (55 percent), Hank Aaron (53 percent), and Mickey Mantle (54 percent) -- for Babe Ruth it was 49 percent, and for Ted Williams it was a pretty amazing 45 percent. I don't know how often these Hall-of-Famers batted with outstanding leadoff and two-hole hitters ahead of them, but I do know that it's not happening for Bonds.

Still, he's managed to drive in 65 runs in 68 games despite playing in a pitcher's park. That's pretty amazing, considering the fact that it seems as though his last 15 dingers have come with no one on (because Aurilia wasn't batting second).

And still Bonds taken tons of criticism from media people and fans for hitting mostly solo home runs, as if this reveals some sort of character flaw and shows what a huge choker he is. These folks say that the home runs are hit late in the game when the Giants already have big leads, and therefore they mean nothing. These people this have eyes. They have ears. They have brains. The eyes do not see. The ears do not hear. The brains do not function.

Right now the Giants are 36-32, and Bonds has done it largely by himself. Jeff Kent hasn't hit his stride -- he's the reigning MVP, which gives a player a brand new set of on-field pressures: pitchers pitch him differently, teams "notice" him more and work harder to neutralize him, the player has to wonder what he can do to top the MVP season, etc. Dusty experimented with flip-flopping Bonds and Kent, hoping Kent would see better pitches to hit with Bonds behind him -- after all, it worked for Aurilia. Didn't work for Kent, though.

Benard, as has been well documented in EEEEEE!, has not been a positive factor. Shawon Dunston's batting average has plummeted, and with it now at .287, to go with that one walk, well, you can see he's not getting on base. Calvin Murray actually got a hit today, but you might say he's still hitting a pretty soft two-thirty-something. And though Martinez is drawing walks, his OBP is still below average.

You want Bonds to give you that illusion of being a "run producer" instead of a selfish, stat-padding, "me first, last, and only" kind of player? You stick Aurilia in the two-hole, keep him there, and get someone in the leadoff spot who can give you at least a league-average on-base percentage. If Bonds somehow keeps up the ridiculous pace he's exhibited so far, he could drive in 200 runs this year.

Try it, Bonds-haters. Find yourself even a half-decent computer simulation and run a few test seasons with the current setup. See how Bonds does.

Then turn Benard/Murray/Dunston et al. into, say, Craig Biggio; keep Aurilia in the second slot; keep everything pretty much as it is. And tell me how Bonds does. I'm guessing that the main difference between the two scenarios is RBIs. Same for Kent.

Don't be fooled. RBIs are not a sign of mental toughness or "winner mentality."

My sense had been that they could put him back on the 25-man roster if they had to, but I'm wrong about that. I was relying on a faulty memory from an interview years ago with Ralph Nelson, then the Giants' assistant GM, so I took another look at my notes and -- for your enlightment, in case you don't know what "designated for assignment" means -- came up with this:

When a player is designated for assignment (or DFA), a team has 10 days to decide whether to trade or release him, or for him to accept the assignment to the minor leagues.

As Nelson put it, "Designated for assignment is a way to put a guy into kind of a holding tank, for one purpose or another, and yet be able to replace him on your roster." Some players are DFA because they're in a position to decide whether they would accept a minor league assignment, and sometimes a club has to make a move, but doesn't have time to ask a player. "It puts a guy off to the right while you either ask his permission -- in which there's some period in which he gives his permission -- or you ask waivers, which takes four or five days," Nelson said, " or we can talk trade with somebody."

For example, let's say the Giants have a player in the minors who's ready to come up -- let's pretend it's Fresno catcher Giuseppe Chiaramonte -- and they decide that to make room for this kid, one of the incumbent catchers has to go. Well, it's not going to be Santiago, because he's hitting .300 and the pitchers are happy with him; it's not going to be Edwards Guzman, because even though he has options left, Dusty likes his versatility. That leaves Bobby Estalella, who has no options left, but if he clears waivers, he'd have to take an assignment to the minors (because this will have been the first time he's been DFA). Well, there you go: Estalella's your man.

And that's what happened Thursday, except for the bit about Chiaramonte; Santiago and Guzman are the Giants' catchers now. (Anybody else remember a St. Louis pitching prospect from the early 1970s named Santiago Guzman?)

DFA, as Nelson said, is "just a mechanism to help out a club in the case of a situation where they're not quite sure what they want to do with a guy."

So in the last two days, Estalella and Davis are DFA, mainly because of the return of both J.T. Snow and Eric Davis from the disabled list. (In fact, R. Davis was designated when E. Davis came back. How often do you see one player dumped for another player with the same last name?)

So the Giants right now are heavy in outfielders, with six (Bonds, Murray, Rios, Benard, Dunston, and Eric Davis), and light in infielders, also with six (Snow, Kent, Aurilia, Pedro Feliz, Martinez, and Crespo). Crespo, Dunston, and even Guzman, add versatility, but not necessarily any defensive quality.

Among those who'll talk more about that, among other topics, are Tom N., James A., Paul B., Terry M., Paul W., "A is A," Jack V., Greg L., Jonathan, Arvin, Jon O., Rally, Rob C., Dave F., Dave M., JVV, Peter L., Dan L., Tobias, Anson, D-Lew, Steven R., Richard, Paul L., Jon R., and Peter H.

"And people say Barry is arrogant. Who do these sportswriters think they are? Do they think baseball was invented to give Mike Lupica something to write about during the summer? Barry Bonds' job is to play baseball, and the media's job it to tell us about it. If Dick Schaap wants to get out there and pitch a little BP for the Giants, then I'll worry about whether or not Barry Bonds is helping Schaap do his job.

"I'm a member of the media, and I would never tell someone who didn't cooperate with me that they weren't doing their job. People can decide for their own selves how much media coverage they want. If Barry Bonds doesn't want to be quoted in the papers, that's his right. I've never seen Roger Ebert refuse to review a movie because Robert DeNiro didn't go on a press junket for it. It's only sportswriters who think they're entitled to unlimited access to the people they cover.

"The kicker to all this is that Barry Bonds was featured on ESPN's own Sunday night conversation. It wasn't a new interview, but just clips of stuff he's said on camera over the course of the season. In other words, he has been talking to the media on selected occasions.

"So Schaap was not just being arrogant and biased -- he was factually incorrect as well. Nice trifecta, Dick."

"The annoying sense of entitlement is not an exclusive provence of athletes, that's for sure," says James A. "The weird part of that roundtable thing is that you have a guy like Lupica, who is at least open about his arrogance, but then you have Schaap, who acts as if he's some old-timer who is completely above it all. But of course when Schaap actually states his 'parting shot,' he is either just too cute about it, makes bad jokes, or is really smug (as he was yesterday.) I gotta give him credit though: he passes it off with a wink and a smile, and he gets lots of mileage out of that."

This is all just more support for my ongoing, evidently permanent complaint about how the media treats Bonds -- which, essentially, is as though he's a worse individual than Ty Cobb but not necessarily as bad as Stalin or Roseanne. To support their portrayal of Bonds, sportswriters (and other media stars, such as Jim Rome) find themselves making stuff up.

Even when they don't make stuff up, they often key in on stuff that either happens all the time or doesn't matter. For instance, as Paul B. says (back on June 6), "Barry has a rather low ratio of RBI (56) to home runs (30), which at a glance suggests that he's been hitting the mythical 'lots of solo home runs' that mediots and other jackasses like to accuse him of. And yet:

                                     OBP      SP
bases empty                         .393    .812
runners on base                     .542    .988
runners in scoring position         .621   1.000

"Obviously, the choker is not inspiring his teammates to get on base ahead of him!" teases Terry M.

Jim P. quotes the power rankings entries for the Giants, first from ESPN -- "Barry Bonds, get a single already." -- and then from CBS Sportsline -- "If Barry Bonds is a legitimate MVP candidate, he should at least be able to help his team score once in, oh, 18 innings. Or help thwart Pedro Astacio's no-hit bid."

To answer this, Paul W. quotes a famous Eric Cartman line from South Park: "If dolphins are so smart, why do they live in igloos?"

"The ESPN one is rather obviously facetious," says "A is A." "The CBS one? Well, maybe he'd have had more talent at getting a run scored in the 18-inning outing if they didn't intentionally walk him three times in the first nine innings."

Well, if certain media people and fans were to mention or even acknowledge stuff like this, it could come dangerously close to poking holes in their arguments.

Stats through Sunday, June 3, 2001:


             AVG  HR RBI    SP   OBP   OPS
Russ Davis: .262   6  15  .476  .335  .811
Jeff Kent:  .268   8  40 ..478  .333  .811

"Not a lot of blame seems to be directed toward Kent this year, but he simply hasn't performed well offensively. I guess he's allowed to have an off-year, but he's another reason this offense has sputtered for a lot of the season. (The other stiffs we trot out there regularly haven't helped either.)

"Just hard for me to believe that Davis and Kent have almost identical numbers, although Davis has fewer at-bats than Kent (thank God)."

"The difference is that Kent at least has a track record of not sucking, which leads one to believe that he will eventually get hot," says Greg L. "Benard and Davis have established track records of sucking."

Yeah, but Benard has also established something of a track record of not sucking.

"Well, [also] Kent is a passable or better second baseman who is also willing to play third or first if Dusty asks him to, while Davis is a laughably pathetic third baseman only," says Jonathan."

Arvin supplies some numbers for Kent and Davis from ages 24 through 29:

       AVG   OBP    SP
Kent  .269  .324  .455
Davis .256  .310  .442
diff  .013  .014  .013

"The difference between the two is their Age 30 years: Kent exploded with .914 OPS in 526 at-bats, and Russ imploded with a .741 OPS in 180 at-bats. Kent then proceeded to drop back down to .877 before exploding to 1.020 last year.

"Thus, the two of them had very similar offense levels, even through the very first year Kent played with the Giants (age 29, 1997). The difference was the second year Kent was here, age 30, where he proceeded to become a stellar second baseman.

"[It's been said] that the Giants and/or Brian Sabean were hoping Russ would become another Kent. And it does make sense based on their age 24-29 years. However, there are two other significant differences between the two players.

1. The obvious: the defense (although Kent was not known as a good defender, it was always adequate, as opposed to nightmarish).

2. Kent is a second baseman, Davis a third baseman. Makes a big difference: you expect much higher production from your third baseman (even though the Giants had always been satisfied with Mueller there).

"These two caveats more than make the point that Kent is much more valuable even at the exact same .811 OPS than Davis is. Even further, Roos didn't have Kent's breakout age 30, and has no history of doing so. Kent you couldn't have predicted, but since he did [have a breakout year], it has helped him tremendously, and you can use his past to predict his future. You can't use Kent's past to predict Davis' future, you only have ol' Roos."

And a potential fly in the ointment was that Davis went and got four hits in a game at Coors recently, and that kind of thing has a way of making Mike Krukow (and, I suspect, certain Giants on-field managerial personnel) of deciding that The Slump Is Over. But that's only part of the problem. Another is, how can you tell when a guy is in or out of a hot streak? How do you know who the "hot hand" actually is?

"[Existing evidence] shows that streaks and slumps aren't predictive," says Jonathan. "You can see that nicely with Dunston. By the time his hot streak was big enough to get noticed (end of April), he had collapsed back down to his normal self or worse (May). So, even with the best timing, you would have wound up getting more playing time for the very end of the hot streak and a good chunk of the cold." The worst part is that a player's early-season hot streak can really damage a team. When a guy's average drops out of the stratosphere to a more normal-looking .300, say, it gets written off as, "Well, he wasn't gonna hit .400 forever; now he's leveling off." Then by the time he's hitting .240, it's too late to realize how awful he's been since his average peaked.

With a guy like Dunston, Dusty knows enough not to play him all the time... but remember how hot Steve Decker was for those first three weeks in April 1991? That, plus three weeks at the end of 1990, had everybody believing in the guy long after we all should have stopped.

"Unless there's real good reason to believe that a streak or slump is a reflection of actual changes, I think you'll wind up shooting yourself in the back more often than not if you make lineup and playing time changes based on it," Jonathan says. (Probably from the angle of the entry wound, forensics would be able to determine that it was self-inflicted.)

"The exception I'm okay with is resting slumping hitters to get them through the slump; even if the slump isn't predictive, I do think there's always the chance that a slump can cause real damage."

Plus, certainly a manager can (or should be able to) tell when a hitter looks completely lost up there and should sit down for his own good. (Or, in the case of Bobby Estalella, designate him for assignment.)

"'Well, Kent said, 'the sun is going to come up tomorrow, and as far as I know we're going to have 40,000 at Pac Bell tomorrow night. The Giants have always been known for playing until the end, and I'm sure we'll do it again. We just have to deal with our suckiness and go from there.'"

"Quotes like this are why I love Jeff Kent," says Greg L.

Jon O., though, decides on the optimistic approach, at least at first. "First of all," says the San Diego-based Giants fan, "things that don't suck: Thanks to Channel 4 Padres, I'm actually getting to watch [a recent Giants-Padres] game. That definitely does not suck.

"Now, on to things that suck: Why are the Giants mired at .500?

            ERA
Hernandez  6.86
Rueter     6.41

"Benito seems to have become our everyday catcher. This sucks, even more than the Pedro Feliz situation, because Estalella has quite a bit of potential, whereas Pedro probably just had a career year down in Fresno. I suppose the idea is [or would have been, were Estalella not DFA -- GP] to let Benito tutor him on handling pitchers and all those other nice subjective qualities that baseball men like their catchers to have; but I think he'd learn a hell of a lot more, and the team would do better both in the short term and the long term, if Bobby was starting nearly every day.

"One of Marvin's greatest assets, BC (Before Contract), was his scrappiness. Now, AC, he's subverted to utter crappiness. Every year he's gotten worse as an outfielder. I've never seen a guy outside of Little League freeze on a ball the way he does now. [In his defense, though, Benard's still not half as awful as Glenallen Hill. -- GP] He's obviously been hurt the most by the new higher strike zone -- a pitch that he never could hit is now a strike, and it enables the opposing pitchers to make him look like a clown at the plate. Dusty won't even play him at home, it appears, because the fans are riding him so hard. He can't be a fun guy to be around in the clubhouse right now, if you're a believer in clubhouse chemistry. All of this points in the same direction: I think a biting-the-bullet, outright release may be the best thing for all involved.

"Of course, the best way for our Giants to start winning games is for that slacking, earring sportin', pantywaist left fielder of ours to stop padding his stats with rally-killing home runs and selfish walks, and start hitting some singles...."

Arvin says that as far as the Giants go, the biggest difference between last year and this year is Jeff Kent: "1.020 OPS vs. .811 OPS. Get off your ass and start hitting. The solution if pitchers are pitching 'around' you, as you might claim without Ellis Burks protecting you, is to take some damn pitches. Especially with the new strike zone. Why aren't you walking anymore? You haven't walked at this low a rate since 1998! You walked in 8.1 percent of plate appearances in 1998, 10.4 percent in 1999, 13 percent in 2000, and now you're back down to 9.1 percent. You suck. Take pitches. Get your walk rate up, and then you'll get better pitches to hit."

My theory is that Kent may be one who firmly believes in lineup protection, and he's psyched himself out because he now has to hit in front of guys like Santiago instead of Burks.

"For Bobby, the writing was on the wall in March," says Rally. "Just because he survived the spring training cut of Mirabelli didn't mean the job was his."

"Fine," says Jonathan. "So he lost the job to Santiago. But why does he lose the backup job to Guzman? He's hit better than Eds, and his fielding hasn't been a problem as far as I can see."

"If he clears he will head to Fresno and, hopefully, improve his skills, as Dusty put it," Rally says.

"The way Dusty wished him the best on the radio, I think he knows that Estalella's days on the Giants are finished," says Greg L.

"It did sound that way," says Rob C. "Hopefully, Dusty is just overestimating Estatella's market value."

"There's pretty much no evidence at all that Guzman can play catcher," Greg says. "I don't believe he's caught all that many games in the minors."

Baker said during spring training that Guzman is an excellent defensive catcher. I don't know that this counts as evidence, but at least someone in the organization believes in Guzman as a catcher.

"I have no stats," says Jonathan, but he caught 30 games last year in Fresno. I don't know about 1999, but he was listed as an infielder-catcher in the 2000 media guide.

"There's virtually no chance Estalella will clear waivers; he's a cheap, young, above-average player for his position. There will be a trade. Probably for Darrin Lewis."

"I fail to see how, by any measure, Estalella could be called an above-average player for his position," says Dave F. "It appears to me that after a brief hot spurt last year, he returned to his old self. Teams figured out how to pitch him. He has a long, looping swing. Just throw him inside fastballs, and he can't hit. His defense is certainly not going to make up for his bat. He'll be 27 in August, so there may be hope he'll come around, but it would be surprising.

"On the other hand, it's not like the Giants have any heir apparents behind the plate. Fresno has the best-named catching tandem in professional baseball, but neither Guiseppe Chiramonte nor Yorvit Torrealba appear to be legitimate major leaguers. Yorvit is almost 29. Guiseppe is only 25, but both have OPSes below .600. Given Santiago's injury problems, I would have cut Benard or one of the two recently acquired old guys first. Given what the Giants are paying Benard, I think he'd clear waivers anyway.

"It would be great if the Giants could get someone decent in trade for Estalella, but I'd be pretty shocked."

"Texas picked up a 23-year-old righty prospect from Boston [for Mirabelli]," says Dave M., "so you would think Estalella would fetch at a least usable prospect, but Sabean's track record suggests he 'won't be able to find a decent offer,' so he end up losing him to waivers for nothing."

"I wonder if he'll even try," says JVV. "In both Mirabelli's and Estalella's cases, the Giants made up their minds long before they pulled the plug."

"Everyone looks bad when they're slumping," says Jonathan. "Very, very few players who have a track record of success suddenly get 'figured out' and can never hit again. If Bobby Estalella had been awful for a full season, 500 plate appearances or more, I'd think it means something; that hasn't been the case. He was above average last year, and he only had less than 100 plate appearences this year, and it's not like he was down in Feliz or Guzman territory this year, either. Bad, but not horrible.

"In my opinion [designating Estalella for assignment] is a pretty major screwup. The guy was one of the better-hitting catchers in the league last year; his defense appears to be at least okay; and his big slump this year isn't a whole lot of defense."

Well, given how awful he's been at the plate this year, and how screwed up he's looked, he could clear waivers. It could also be that a trade is in the works. But he hasn't hit in over a year. I realize he hasn't had a full season's worth of at-bats in that time, but maybe there's a damn good reason.

"Meanwhile, we're left with a 36-year-old catcher who has been on the DL pretty much every other year over his career, and practically nothing if and when he's done. There's pretty much no evidence at all that Guzman can be a league-average hitter at catcher. And Estalella outhit Guzman by a substantial margin this year: same slugging percentage, and Estalella's miserable .295 OBP is 95 points higher than Guzman's."

Be that as it may, it seems to me that a move like this has been in the works since the day Felipe Crespo returned from the DL -- when the Giants sent Eds to Fresno to catch every day. (Then Snow went on the DL the next day, and back came Guzman; but a recent article by Henry Schulman suggested that the Giants still wanted to have Guzman catch at Fresno.)

"By the way, for all the fuss over [finally getting his first major league hit], Eds still hasn't drawn a major league walk," says Jonathan.

And yet... he's drawn only one less than Shawon Dunston this year, right?

"But Shawon is an omnipresent homerun threat," teases Rob C.

But he's only hit one more homer than Guzman this year, too, so Guzman is therefore kind of "Dunston Lite."

Jonathan says, "The only hope is that it's the prelude to a very nice trade, but that's a little far fetched at this point probably. Sabean's going to get major idiot points for this one."

I don't agree that it's a major faux pas. A surprise (even though something looked imminent), but it's not like Sabean designated Bonds or something.... Plus, again, Dusty has that Guzman is an excellent defensive catcher.

"Based on player preferences so far, I'm not sure I put any stock in Dusty's perceptions," says Jonathan.

Sure, that makes sense, but this is one that seems pretty harmless. I'm skeptical, too, but willing to wait it out for a while.

"Catchers who might be able to be very good hitters are very rare," says Greg. "Even if Estalella never becomes any better than Brian Johnson, it's worth finding out. The Giants haven't really given him any sort of opportunity to find out this year."

"There are two issues," Jonathan says: "Estalella as he could be, and Estalella now. The real disaster-in-waiting is that even if he's no better than he's been this year, he's still the second-best catcher in the organization, and we're left with a 36-year-old catcher."

Okay, is Estalella better than Chiaramonte? (I'm willing to believe he's better than Torrealba, mostly 'cause Torrealba's first name is Yorvit.)

"If Santiago gets hurt tomorrow, things get very, very scary. (Caveat: it's probably a trade on the way, and maybe Sabean has something good in mind)."

Wouldn't that be cool?

"Estalella's simply sucked at the plate this year," says Peter L. "Every time he came up to bat, it looked like he was waving randomly at the ball."

Now, that's kind of harsh. I would only go as far as to say that when the ball was low and away, he looked like he was waving randomly at it; when it was right in the hit-me zone, it looked like he was waving randomly through it.

"As much as Guzman might suck, he looks like he's got a better idea of what he's doing holding a bat than Estalella did this year. He had a relatively good start this year, but after that, it's all been downhill. Last month, his OBP was .208. That all said, he's had a lot more at-bats than Guzman, so maybe there's still hope. But Estalella in the form that he was at was in no way even a below-average catcher. I'm really hoping that the guy will clear and fix himself up at Fresno, but I suppose we'll see. He'll probably go to his new team, realize that he sucks, fix himself up, and become the new Mike Piazza. But I digress."

A tragically correct digression, I fear.

I figure Guzman's there at least partly because he's not a "heavy investment" at the major league level -- kind of, "If we have to write this kid off, no big loss."

Actually, we should look for Estalella to go to the Rockies. Just because. Ray Ratto of the Chronicle says, "if you're waiting to understand the Giants' logic behind the release of backup catcher Bobby Estalella, you already have the right idea.

"You have to wait.

"On the surface, it seems like a no-brainer to no apparent end. The Giants needed to activate first baseman J.T. Snow from the disabled list. Someone had to go, and it couldn't be any of the usual suspects," meaning Russ Davis (this is before Davis got the gate), Benard, or a pitcher.

"The Giants need a regular outfielder," Ratto says, "and the most appealing names that keep coming up are Tampa Bay's Greg Vaughn and Kansas City's Jermaine Dye."

I disagree. I work with someone named Greg Vaughn, and while he's a very nice guy, he has no interest in sports, and I don't suspect he'd be any good at baseball. The Giants don't need him.

"They also need a starter, because any significant Giants trade probably would have to include a member of the rotation, either Shawn Estes or Kirk Rueter."

Oh, right. Estes. Now. I could see trading Rueter, though.

"I'd be shocked if Sabean trades either one," says Greg. "Might not be a stupid idea now that Rueter's 'apparently' righted the ship and Estes' value is sky high again (for him)."

"Vaughn would be appealing except that he's almost 36, can't play the outfield every day, and doesn't play right field," says Greg. "Dye would be infinitely more intriguing just for age reasons (even though he's not having a very good year compared to his last two). However, how much will he cost? And where's the real backup catcher going to come from? And who gets released then?"

"It is generally agreed that the decision to let Ellis Burks go to Cleveland was a dreadful one, made of crypto-poverty claims and worry over his advancing age -- a worry that didn't stop them from going after Santiago, Eric Davis and Shawon Dunston."

"Burks hasn't played in the outfield since mid-May," Jonathan points out. "He's played a total of eight games in the outfield. He'd be on the DL if he were an NL player. Santiago, Davis, and Dunston combined cost something like a fifth of what Burks would have cost for one year, and with Burks it would have been a three-year commitment. Sabean did absolutely the right thing in letting Burks walk. What he did wrong was giving away the third baseman, and then failing to replace Burks or Mueller, and also failing to fill the hole in center field."

Jonathan provides this update from RotoWire: "Burks received injections of a lubricant in each knee and hopes to play left field this weekend against Pittsburgh... The lubricant is to cushion the friction from bone rubbing on bone in Burks' knee. Burks has not played the field since May 13."

"Good call, Ray," adds Jonathan.

"There is lesser consensus on the Bill Mueller trade," Ratto continues, "although it is hard to know whether Mueller with a broken kneecap would have been an improvement upon the combo plate of all-bat/no-glove Russ Davis and all-glove/no-bat Feliz."

I'm not sure who Ratto's been watching. (This was a common complaint when he was the Giants beat writer, by the way.) Feliz hasn't shown either glove or bat... much like Davis. And calling davis "all bat/no glove" is like calling Callista Flockhart "all height/no weight."

I'm convinced that Feliz has been given every opportunity to take the job away from Davis. Criminy, Petey, just go in and get a couple of hits one day, convince Dusty to start you the next day, and then get a couple more hits. Hey, what about just hitting the ball hard eight times and only getting three hits in those two days, maybe with a walk thrown in? Oh, and let's make the plays.

The day after Davis was designated, Dusty started talking about how Feliz would share the third base job with Martinez. And let's not forget about Guzman. Even Crespo is getting some mention as a potential third baseman, and not just in the Giants newsgroup. All of which means, third base is a huge problem -- as it has been since the moment Bill Mueller became a Cub.

"As we shall see where the Giants are going, and soon," says Ratto. "They cannot rely on the good graces of the Angels to keep them happy, so the Estalella deal can only be seen as the first of a series of dropping shoes."

"It only makes sense if the Giants get a better young prospect catcher on the roster than Estalella out of the whole deal, in which case they would have had to designate him for assignment or trade him anyway," says Greg. "I wouldn't be so stubborn as to suggest that it's probably a calculated good risk to say Estalella probably will never be a good major league catcher since he's only had one ML season of remarkable success. But when you got no better options, it's pretty stupid to give up on him then."

A lot of folks in the Giants newsgroup thought it would've been a better decision to give up on Benard and are mystified as to why it didn't happen.

"Apparently, it wasn't a baseball decision, but a money decision," says JVV. "Although I am tired of hearing from the Giants' owners about how Marvin's $11million is the end of the world. I didn't hear it, but a friend of mine says he heard Baker saying the Giants simply cannot eat Marvin's contract. If that's true, I want to know why the team outside of New York with the highest revenues can't. Why did they sign him to what's not really such a 'massive' contract if it's such a problem?"

"I imagine there's some kind of double standard here. If Nen just stopped getting saves, I don't think it would take two years for the Giants to stop using him as the closer, and to spend the second of those years pleading with the fans and media to get off Nen's back. Yet Nen has a multiyear contract too."

"While this may be true, if it is it was an incredibly stupid money decision," says Jonathan, "since it costs exactly the same amount to keep or release Marvin."

"But it costs more to pay both Benard and someone to take his place, especially if you want that someone to play center," says Dan L.

So at this point you really have to hope that the Giants have something very cool up their sleeves. I guess you could say they've "solved" their roster problems by designating Davis and Estalella, and you can only hope that they'll manage to trade these guys and get something decent in return. "Trades designed to solve roster puzzles always are discussed but very difficult to achieve now because most teams are reluctant to deal this soon before the July 31 trading deadline," says Henry Schulman in the Chronicle.

I wasn't real clear on why, so I asked him. He said, "'Cause the closer to the deadline, the more the price goes up as teams bid up the value of players on the block."

So I may as well stop hoping, at least in terms of Davis and Estalella. Perhaps we could've gotten something out of them six weeks hence. (I mean, hey, the Rangers got pitching out of Boston for Mirabelli.)

"I think most of us understand that Benard and Davis are just trying (albeit unsuccessfully) to do a job that has been given them," says Tobias. (And you could say that, to a certain extent, these guys earned their jobs.) "If you were to ask the bashers who they blame -- and heck, I'm a basher, ask me! -- most of us would say that we don't 'blame' Benard or Russ. Well yeah, okay... I blame Benard a little for never figuring out a way to keep from swinging at pitches above his shoulders, or figuring out how to judge fly balls. And I blame Davis a little for never having developed much in the way of plate discipline or defensive skill.

"Mostly though, I blame Baker for doggedly putting Benard's and Davis' names on a lineup card day after day. I blame Sabean for signing the two. I blame Peter Magowan and his group for not being willing to pony up the kind of money that would bring the Giants an adequate starting center fielder and third baseman -- the kind that would relegate Benard to the bench at best, and Davis to a second career. And I blame Major League Baseball for allowing the current situation to persist where more than half the teams in the league don't look for players who'll make them better; they look for players who'll make them more profitable.

"Thing is, Benard and Davis are the guys we see every day. Their presence and their play are the manifestation of all that other stuff. The problem is crystallized with every misjudged fly ball or booted grounder. It's underlined with every swing at every 5'10" tall pitch, and highlighted with every bat-swish at an 0-2 pitch that is two feet outside and in the dirt.

"So when I say 'Cut Roos Loose,' it's actually not directed at Davis. It's really more directed at Dusty, Sabean, Magowan and MLB. It's just that Davis and Benard provide almost daily examples of the problem."

"One of Benard's shortcomings is his own damn fault," says Arvin. "He is a passable leadoff hitter, but he just doesn't seem to want to be one. He thinks it's his job as a hitter to put fear into the pitcher that he can hit a homer any time up to the plate. This is an obsession with power, and it causes him to be a different hitter. There have been numerous quotes from him posted in this newsgroup which show clearly that he just fails to grasp the concept that it is his job to get on base by any means possible. It means taking pitches, hitting singles, bunting, etc. Rather, he swings at first pitches, and tries to pull half the pitches he sees over the outfield porch in right field, which is the worst thing he could do for his game.

"So in answer, yes, we do blame Marvin, because he's the hitter, and he just doesn't understand his job as a hitter."

If you were to ask him, "Say, Marv, what is your job as the leadoff hitter," I'd guess that he'd say, "To score 100 runs." The place where it'd bog down, I fear, is the part where you say, "How are you going to do that?"

Take a lesson from the Underpants Gnomes in South Park, who steal people's underpants at 3 a.m.:

• Phase One: Underpants.

• Phase Three: Profits.

"Benard doesn't understand why fans are booing him," says Anson. "He said he doesn't know what he did wrong. Anyway, Ralph and Tom were trying to rip him and be courteous at the same time, and Tom ended up saying something like: 'The fans are only booing a player because he's not playing well but he's making three-and-a-half million a year. If he's making $300,000, no one would care.' 'Exactly!' said Marvin. I doubt Tom meant that at all. He was just trying to be nice and go along with Marvin.

"I found this to be very funny: At the beginning of the interview, Benard said something like (as best as I can remember it), 'I got off to a slow start in '99 and nobody booed. I got off to a slow start in '00 and people started booing. I got off to a slow start this year, and people are booing again. I don't understand it. What went wrong? What did I do?' This could be one of those Sunday paper sports section quotes."

I really didn't find it funny. He honestly seems perplexed at why the fans would turn on him. But like many in the Giants newsgroup, I don't think it's him so much as Dusty and Sabes. And the reason, I think, isn't really about getting rid of Benard, but about getting someone good out there, and maybe returning Benard to the role for which he's best suited: fourth (or maybe fifth) outfielder.

"[Benard] sounded pretty reasonable [on KNBR]," says Rob C. "It seemed like his argument was: (1) I probably am better in right field than center field; (2) when I am benched I do not demand more PT -- I wait for Dusty to choose the time for me to play; (3) I have not performed well to date, and probably deserve some time off; and (4) the booing gets in my head and [messes] with my confidence and concentration.

"I still agree with starting Murray and Rios in the outfield, but I feel like I respect Marvin more now than I did before. He handled himself with dignity and limited his defensiveness to a few outbursts."

I feel pretty much the same way. It's only fair to consider some of the nastiness of his newspaper quotes to be the product of what has been a very frustrating season so far. I think he blames himself first and foremost for his shortcomings, but he can't be too pleased with the fact that on the whole, the crowd doesn't seem to be behind him.

Then again, D-Lew says, "That Marvin thing on KNBR was truly a thing of beauty! It made me realize that yes, all that matters is Marvin's feelings getting hurt. The first thing he said on the show was, 'I always start slow, I'm out there working hard... what did I do to make everyone boo me?' I was dying with laughter! The guy seems to think that it really does matter if he's trying. He also repeatedly made it sound like the fans have a personal problem with him.

"I like Marvin, a lot. I think he's a hustler and a seemingly good guy. But he's not doing his job. He hasn't done it for a long time. It was like I was listening to 'Being Marvin Benard.' We were all in his head and seeing that the guy just doesn't get it. He thinks he's doing nothing wrong and that must just be because Dusty, Sabean, et al., aren't being honest with him and his suckiness.

"The only thing I didn't like about the KNBR thing was, at the end, it seemed Ralph had sided with Marvin and felt sorry for him. Tolbert was gone by then, but Tolbert pulled no punches. Which is cool because Marvin was in the studio. That's gotta be weird... having the guy you've been bagging on show up. I thought Tolbert stayed on his ass and didn't buddy up to him at all. I felt Ralph got a 'new found respect' for Marvin, which is just pathetic."

"I didn't hear the interview," says Tobias, who didn't hear the interview. (Or at least I assume as much, based on his assertion that he didn't hear the interview.) "I've actually been fairly supportive of Marvin up to this point. Saturday's game may have driven me into the other camp, however. Specifically: top of the tenth, one out, go-ahead run at third base. Marvin just needs to get his bat on the ball, or even just get on base. Marvin strikes out though, swinging at a 3-2, helmet-high, ball four. How many times have we seen some variation of this very scenario? So, so many times. How many times has Dusty seen it? Gotta be more, right? Yet the scenario plays out over and over again like some freakish version of 'Groundhog Day.' That was bad enough.

"Cut to the eleventh inning, when Ramon Martinez scored what proved to be the winning run, on Jeff Kent's broken-bat single. There was a brief moment when the FX cameras showed us a glimpse of the Giants dugout. Everyone was up, all giving congratulations to Ramon -- everyone that is, except for Good Ol' Marvin. Marvin continued sitting down at the end of the dugout pouting, and glumly staring straight ahead. That ain't right.

"I don't know what it will take for Marvin to get back to being an effective baseball player. I don't know that he ever will get back to that. It may have been a fluke that he ever was one. What I'm beginning to suspect, however, is that if Marvin is ever going to do anything good, it probably isn't going to be for the Giants. I'm afraid he's gotten himself into such a bad place personally, and with the fans -- call it 'The Jeff Brantley Zone' -- I don't know if he'll ever recover as long as he's a Giant."

Ralph is vastly unpopular in the Giants newsgroup. For the record, I don't mind him that much, but he does indeed irritate me sometimes. He has a decent sense of humor, and he reacts pretty well to Tolbert deflating him sometimes. He's a smart guy, and, depending on his interview subject, asks some outstanding questions. On the other hand, I know too much about the guy, based on what he says about himself on the air.

There's a lot of talk about DUI arrests, but I don't know all the facts there, and none of this causes me to judge him as a radio personality. He strikes me as a pretty regular guy, if a bit of a "granola," but it's not as though that's a bad thing in itself.

I remembered just now that I actually spoke with him once, way back in 1985, when the Giants were so horrible. He wasn't a full-time on-air guy yet, and I wondered why the Giants would put someone on the air who had such a dog of a voice. In any case, I had called the news desk just to see if anyone could explain the trade of Bill Laskey to the Expos for Dan Driessen -- I mean, this really mattered to me, if you can imagine -- and Ralph answered.

I don't remember the content of the conversation, which lasted maybe 10 minutes, but I thought he was very likable when "just talking." Perhaps this is why I've usually cut him tons of slack.

Also, it has to say a lot for a guy who's managed to survive for so long in an on-air job with such an unpleasant speaking voice. (Sorry, Ralph.)

Barbieri's morning counterpart is Gary Radnich, the longtime sports anchor at KRON. I'm not sure why, but I have a lot more trouble cutting this guy much slack. I never minded him as a sports anchor, but he's always grated on me since joining KNBR.

Steven R., though, considers Radnich "the 'hippest' middle-aged white guy they've got," which I don't think is saying much. Plus, Steven's way hipper than Radnich.

"I liked Radnich an awful lot when he was on at noon," says Richard. "He was very enjoyable in the low-hype talk environment, and he could really draw out the craziness of [frequent caller] Joe in Livermore. He's not nearly as good in drive time. He just irritates me when I hear him before I've had any coffee."

I don't drink coffee, so you can understand how I feel when I hear the guy.

Steven says, "Radnich and Tolbert understand that if you aren't going to take the intelligence route, ironic and self-aware schtick will work better than self-importance a la Barbieri. Most of the rest of the KNBR guys do schtick but think they're doing intelligence, which is just awful. Barbieri is in a class by himself, of course, although he seems to have fooled Glenn Dickey, who said Ralph was better before Tolbert came along because of those legendary interviewing skills Ralph is so proud of. I've NEVER understood why people think Barbieri is a good interviewer:

"Ralph: We're here with Robb Nen of the Giants. Howyadoin, Robb?

"Robb: Great, Ralph, great to be here.

"Ralph: Well, what I wanted to talk about here, and this relates to what I was thinking about the other day when we were discussing the Giants pitching and I told Tom that the team has needed to improve the starting rotation, especially the number-four and number-five starters because they've really been dreadful in that area for some time now, and I know Brian comes on the show and he doesn't want to admit that he has budgetary constraints but, c'mon, we know the Giants don't have as much money as the Yankees, but we've had great bullpens all along, and this is what I wanted to talk about, and by the way this is KNBR, THE sports leader, and we're here talking to Robb Nen, the excellent closer of the San Francisco Giants, and what I was wondering, Robb, is if you remember back when you had a couple of bad outings in, I think it was May, maybe the end of April, it doesn't matter, what I wondered is, you know, the team's pitching.

"Robb: Yeah, well, all the guys in the bullpen are coming around, and...

"Ralph: Exactly. I really appreciate you coming on here and telling it like it is, because I've been saying for weeks now that the bullpen is coming around, in fact, if I remember right I was saying the same thing back in '93, which was before your time I know but it was a similar situation, and we're talking to Robb Nen of the Giants on KNBR THE sports leader, and anyway, Tolbert seemed to think otherwise, and he brought up some comment I'd made awhile back, but the fact is, you know, the team's pitching is up and down.

"etc. etc. ad nauseum."

Richard's only complaint about Steven's characterization: "You didn't have him drop Barry's name in there anywhere."

"Exactly," says Greg L. "A well placed '...and as my close personal relationship with Barry Bonds will attest...' would go well anywhere in the 100 words above."

Well, that's not exactly fair. Barbieri has never claimed a close personal relationship with Bonds, and, in fact, virtually every time Bonds appears on Barbieri's show, Ralph feels obligated to remind him and the listeners that before Bonds became a Giant, Barbieri had referred to him as a "punk."

I still think Barbieri asks some pretty good questions, though. The ass-kissing thing he does is pretty obnoxious, though (I mean, how many more times do we have to hear him apologize to Orel Hershiser for hating the Dodgers? How many more times must we hear him call Tommy Lasorda a "fellow paisan"?), and so's his tendency to interrupt his guests, a la:

Ralph: So, what do you think the problem is?

Guest: Well, I --

Ralph: The reason I ask is...

And then you hear three minutes' worth of his reason to ask, after which the original question never really gets answered, 'cause he's gone off on several tangents.

What really used to drive me bats was listening to former 49er great Gene Washington interview people. I'd sort of growl at the radio every time he made one of those "listening noises" -- "hmm... uh-huh... mmm..." -- that signified that he wasn't listening, but showing annoyance and impatience because the guest's incessant prattle in presuming to answer Gene's question was getting in the way of Gene's thinking up another question. Gene may be a smart guy, but I don't miss him.

But back to Ralph. I'm not sure whether his interview style has rubbed off on Tolbert, or should; Tolbert can't ask a straight question: "Marvin, and I don't mean this personally, but -- and here's why I ask...."

Barbieri me very uncomfortable when he really rips into a caller -- which, thankfully, is not often. During the Gulf War we was fightin' Charlie, and me and Red was pinned down behind a bunker, and I was yellin' "Red! Ammo! Ammo!" but it was too late... they killed us.

No, wait: During the Gulf War this guy called on the pretext of making fun of the 49ers' proposed new helmets -- remember the idiot USFL-style logo that the fans hated immediately? -- but instead basically told Ralph that he was disgusted that he, Ralph, used his sports talk show as his personal political soapbox. Ralph then went off on this guy for eons, just obliterating him -- eventually simply cutting him off so he, the caller, couldn't interrupt anymore -- and the gist of Ralph's tirade was, "It's my show!" Hard to respect a guy under circumstances like that.

But in going on and on about Barbieri and, to a lesser extent, Tolbert, I think we're being totally unfair to Pete Franklin, The King, who, just because he's gone, seems to merit no comment anymore, when in fact he managed to combine a profoundly obnoxious accent, an absolutely unlistenable voice, and a lack of sports knowledge past 1963 into a cataclysm of crappiness:

Caller: So Pete, Dusty Baker likes to bunt a lot. What's up with that?

Pete: Well, in answering that question, I could talk all day, and I don't have time for that. [FLUSH]

And speaking of people with unlistenable voices, do you all realize that there was a fairly long period of time when KNBR sported Ralph, Franklin, and Scott Ferrall?

In any case, I expect a talk show host to be opinionated, even when he's wrong, but it concerns me -- as it does when sportswriters do the same thing -- to see the facts being ignored. For instance, Barbieri goes on and on and on and on about what an outstanding leadoff hitter the Diamondbacks' Tony Womack is, and what a great threat, because for him a single or a walk becomes a double, and a double becomes a triple. Ralph ignores the actual numbers. (I don't know what the actual numbers are either, but my educated guess is roughly 130 singles a year, plus 40 walks, not to mention 25 or 30 doubles. Obviously he doesn't steal 170-plus bases... but the point is, he's not going to have that many steal opportunities with a .340 OBP... which means he's not much of a threat.)

I don't remember if it was Tolbert or a caller, but someone pointed out, circa 1999, that yeah, Womack's a stolen-base threat when he gets on, but because his OBP is in the toilet, the threat isn't that great... to which Barbieri againwent on about how singles become doubles, etc., as if the guy were Rickey Henderson.

I've actually seen and heard quotes from major league ballplayers along the lines of, "Walks don't matter; getting on base doesn't matter; on-base percentage doesn't matter; what matters is scoring runs and winning ballgames." Well, you don't win ballgames without scoring runs, and you don't score runs without getting on base. And when someone like Barbieri seems to ignore this simple truth, it's irritating.

Not as irritating, though, as a Dusty Baker quote in San Jose Mercury News article by Daniel Brown and Ron Bergman about Marvin Benard's appearance on the air with Barbieri and Tolbert. "All this was before Giants Manager Dusty Baker confirmed to the Contra Costa Times that Benard, who is hitting .201, has lost the center field job to Calvin Murray," write Brown and Bergman.

"'I'm sure a lot of people are happy about that,' Baker said, referring to the growing number of Benard bashers at Pacific Bell Park. But, Baker added, 'Everything is subject to change. We'll see what happens.'"

Like Benard, Baker seems to want to blame the fans, or to tell us we're wrong for pointing out the apparent nudity of the emperor.

"Geez, Dusty, you made a good decision," says Richard. "Why not do it without sniping at the fans along the way? It would be worse if they didn't care one way of the other, I would think."

But here are some of the highlights of the interview:

Barbieri: "Can you understand why people would think this way? Put somebody else out there. Somebody else would have to be better defensively. Almost anyone can hit better than .200. Almost anyone can make fewer than six errors."

[Not Russ Davis. He made 10 before the Giants dusted him. -- GP] Benard: "I'll be the first one to say I'm not doing the job. It's not like I'm going to go into Dusty's office and complain about not playing any more. He has a right to sit me down....

"If you're a hometown fan and you are a real fan, yes, you have the right to get mad. But booing isn't going to bring out the best in a ballplayer."

[This last statement is very revealing, and I'd agree. You might shout "Rabbit-ears!" at Benard, but I have the feeling he's far from the exception among professional athletes. -- GP]

Tolbert: "Don't you think that as a player, if you're willing to accept the adulation that you have to accept some of the negative criticism as well?... No one likes getting booed. It sucks to get booed. But you deal with it and you move on."

This is the one I find most disturbing:

Benard: "To be honest with you, not to put you down, but I've never listened to the show."

Barbieri: "Just as well."

I understand Barbieri's point, but was that really called for?

"The most telling thing in the interview for me is where Marvin talked about how he gets himself in trouble because he knows he can hit the ball out of the ballpark, confirming what many of us have always thought about him: he fancies himself a mini-power hitter," says Greg L.

"Also, he kept returning to the fact that runs scored are the most important thing for him and the rest isn't important, including OBP. [See? -- GP] Which just goes to show he's either an idiot or, like probably most ballplayers, he's oblivious to what separates good players from bad players.

"The part about 'Am I a leadoff hitter? No. Third? No. Fourth? No. Fifth? No. Sixth? Seventh' was classic. He didn't answer those last two rhetorical questions, but if he'd just kept extrapolating a little bit further, I think he'd have had the proverbial light bulb go on over his head."

Eh. I dunno. Benard, I think, is a tough player to pigeonhole. We all know he's not really a leadoff hitter, and he doesn't have the pop for third, fourth, or fifth. But he's not "clearly" suited for any one lineup spot.

But "clearly" there's some kind of organizationwide denial going on with regard to Benard, and for some reason the name "Kubler-Ross" comes to mind. To this notion Paul L. says:

1. "Oh, Marvin isn't really a .200 hitter, it's just early in the season. He'll get better."

2. "Dammit, why does Marvin have to always strike out with those high fastballs? I hate him!"

3. "Look, I'll go to more Giants games if you'll just start Calvin in center! I'll even buy lots of crappy souvenirs!"

4. "I can't bear to watch Marvin try to play center field any more. It's just too painful."

5. "Well, looks like we're stuck with him."

I think we all like Livan and want him to do well, but he's been one of the main targets in the Giants newsgroup this season, and for good reason. Then again, there's been so much going on in his life off the field (as with Russ Davis) that you have to cut him some slack.

But with regard to Hernandez, the person who deserves less slack is Dusty Baker. Hernandez had been overused throughout his major league career by Jim Leyland in Miami, and people who monitor pitch counts have been waiting for Livan's arm to explode. It hasn't happened yet, which is kind of amazing.

When the Giants acquired him, one of my concerns was that Dusty wouldn't use him any more intelligently than Leyland had and that he'd be washed up before age 28. It hasn't been that bad, but Livan routinely stays in longer than he should, far more than any other Giants starter. I sort of wonder if somehow Livan intimidates Dusty into keeping him out there.

Worse still, one reason Baker seems to leave him in games where he's getting hammered is that he wants to "get Livan the win."

"Baker should be more interested in getting the team the win, not Hernandez," says Jon R. At this point, with the number of hits he's given up and his ERA, Hernandez should be thankful he has a job. To put any 'faith' in anyone with his stats is sheer lunacy. I'm getting very sick of Baker's allegiance to 'his guys' at the expense of the team as a whole."

"I agree with you," says Tobias. "And yet here, I think, is one of the great Dusty paradoxes. Dusty's allegiance to his players is widely acknowledged as a huge key to his success as a manager. Furthermore, the baseball landscape is well-littered with the corpses of managers who unfailingly put team first. So Dusty does things that I disagree with in principle (letting the 'save' stat dictate when and how he uses Nen, sticking with Marvin to a fault, and continually leaving in Livan way too long are just three easy examples -- and that's not even bringing up how he deals with Barry), but those very things seem to be a key to why players love to play for him, and why the Giants succeed to the degree they do.

"Personally, I'd like to see Dusty persuade the Nens, Marvins, and Livans of the team [The Giants have one each. -- GP] to consider whether their personal goals are helping the team win. Dusty is big on insisting that his players 'respect the game.' Putting stats ahead of helping your team win doesn't sound much like 'respect' to me."

Especially given the nature of the "win" and "save" stats, which are basically arbitrary. I mean, a home run is a home run is a home run, and a batting average is absolute, because hits and at-bats are absolute. But wins for starting pitchers don't have to be based on pitching five innings with a lead, and saves don't have to have the constraints that they do. I've said many times that I consider the "save" stat dangerous because it locks a manager into using a guy who -- because of his "status" as the team's closer -- may not be the best guy for that situation.

"Dusty Baker has a penchant for leaving starters in for too long," says Paul L. "He's been doing it since he got here."

Yeah, but look who he played for, all those years: Tommy Lasorda.

"What I keep wondering is why Dusty repeatedly fails to yank Livan when it clearly is time to do so," says Tobias. "I suspect it's because Dusty is a 'Players' Manager,' and Dusty wants Livan to be happy. Dusty is quick to take his other starting pitchers out when they falter. Why is Livan different? Dusty's failure to go get Livan in the eighth [in last weekend's start against the A's] was just indefensible, strategically. Any reason Dusty had for leaving Livan in had nothing to do with winning yesterday's game. He might say it did, but he's either lying or incredibly foolish.

"It's the same thing with Marvin. Saturday, I watched him swing at ball four, flying by at about the same level as the 'SF' on his helmet. I just started yelling, 'Did you see that, Dusty? Are you watching? How many times does it take before you put a stop to it?' Dusty sometimes seems to be more concerned with guys' feelings than he is with winning ballgames. I think I understand that to a point, but I get to wondering how far the principle has to be carried out before Dusty finally quits coddling."

Paul says, "I find it ironic that a manager who has been heralded as so great is actually the major reason the Giants flop in the playoffs. After witnessing Dusty's postseason incompetence (every series), I will be overwhelmed with joy when both he and Barry get the hell out of San Francisco. Barry could hit 100 homers this year and he'd still flounder at the Mendoza line if we made it to the playoffs."

I don't know that I go that far. While I'm vastly disappointed at Bonds' postseason performance (and the fact that he can't shake the label), I tend to at least slightly excuse it because, more than any other player on the team (or maybe even in the National League), Bonds is the guy other teams key on. I'd be interested to see a study showing, say, opposition OOPSes for pitchers facing every hitter.

That's unclear. Sorry. Let me try that again. An OOPS is an "opposing OPS," meaning how well opposing batters do against a given pitcher. I'd like to see the OOPSes of pitchers who face Bonds, as opposed to pitchers who face, say, Kent or Larry Walker or Luis Gonzalez or even Mark McGwire. Or Russ Davis. What I'm getting at is, Bonds faces better pitchers than anyone else on his team, and perhaps better than anyone else in the league. That's because teams feel safe leaving a Jim Poole in to face Russ Davis, but they'd damn well better bring in a Mike Remlinger to face Bonds. But we won't know that without a study, and I sure as hell ain't gonna do it.

And the OOPSes would need to be geared to the specific situations. That is, maybe a Remlinger has an OOPS of, say, .850, which ain't great... but maybe it's .520 in the kinds of situations where you bring in a lefty specialist to face a Barry Bonds.

I don't know how to do the study, how to weight the factors, or how to reach the conclusions I'm looking for, but if Bonds isn't the most "worried about" hitter in the National League, he's gotta be the second-most. Which is to say it's no surprise that he hasn't performed well in the postseason, especially in late-inning pressure situations.

How'd I get here?

Oh, yeah: Paul had said he'll be happy when Bonds and Baker flee San Francisco because of their postseason failures. I understand why Paul says this, but the foregoing Bonds thing is my answer to why his performance isn't hard to understand. The Baker thing, however... I just don't know. I'd like to believe that Dusty can learn from his mistakes. He's certainly a very smart man. But if he can't see that managing in a playoff series is, and has to be, different from managing during a 162-game haul, he needs to be smacked upside the head, perhaps repeatedly.

Okay, you're saying, "All right, Gregg, it's fine for you to say that there's a difference in managing to win a division title and managing to win a postseason series, but how do you figure?"

All I can say is, I'm about to leave out some important answers that I can't think of at the moment, but here are some others:

• Basically you go to a four-man rotation. This means that your bullpen grows by one arm, an arm that can go five or seven or nine innings if it has to. That means you don't have to stick with a struggling starter.

• Any possible thoughts about leaving a guy in there "to get the win" must go out the window.

• Any possible thoughts about leaving a pitcher in to hit in an important early-game situation must not necessarily go out the window, but have to be tempered by the knowledge that you do have that extra arm in your bullpen.

• You can't manage for the long run. You really do have to take things a game at a time. Sure, early in a series, you adjust somewhat, but if your back is to the wall, you sure as hell don't manage for tomorrow, because if you lose, there is no tomorrow.

• You don't worry so much about "using the horses that got us there." Nor do you play every hunch. If your third baseman's been hitting .105 for the last six weeks and shows no sign of being, say, anything other than Russ Davis, you either sit him down or drop him in the order. You don't bat him fourth or fifth because "we got here with him batting fourth or fifth." Similarly, if your center fielder and third baseman -- your leadoff and second-place hitters -- have been major contributors all season long, you don't sit them down "on a hunch," or because the opposing pitcher is a lefty, especially if you need to win to stay alive. What this means, to an extent, is that yes, you use the horses that got you there, and yes, you play hunches, but you mold your thinking to situation you're in.

"These comments/critiques about interleague play are rather moronic and shortsighted. If we have interleague play it has to be scheduled in some consistent and fair manner; you can't just hand-pick your matchups. For example, any interleague play scheduling system has to be done as consitently as possible; for example, NL West teams would play AL East teams one year. In other words mix it up a bit from the West-West East-East Central-Central matchups. But it would still have to be consistent. For instance, if the NL West teams played the AL East teams, then the Giants would probably get to play the Yankees and Red Sox but they would also probably have to face the Devil Rays as well.

"The critics of the current system (West-West, East-East, etc. [although evidently Arizona has drawn the high card; see below -- GP]), seem to think that an alternative to the present system would be one where the Giants (or any other team) could pick their opponents in some sort of 'fantasy matchup' kind of deal. [And it would be a complete coincidence when 16 National League teams would choose the Yankees, while, strangely enough, zero National League teams would choose the Devil Rays. Go figure. -- GP]

"In short, the ideas I've heard have been completely out to lunch. I think that with any system that MLB adopts, there will be 'boring' matchups as the outcome of having to maintain some consistency [which is to say "fairness" -- GP] with the scheduling. But I don't think that the collateral 'boredom' that is the result of consistency can be used as valid arguments against any sort of regimented scheduling system.

"As I mentioned above, if the Giants (as a team in the NL West) play the AL East one year, a series with the Devil Rays would be likely. Such a matchup would be looked at as 'boring' and with an attitude of 'who cares?' But on the other hand, the regular MLB schedule already has many of those kinds of games (how about the Giants playing the Expos? Not exactly the epitome of excitement is it?) so there is already a precedent for boredom.

"So, I guess my point is this: If we have interleague play it has to be interesting... but it has to be consistent [which is to say "fair" -- GP]. To maintain that interest it might be good to have the geographical divisions (East/Central/West) of each league mix it up a bit (East-West, Central-East, Central-West). But it has to be done in a fair and balanced way. Those who criticize the present system because it doesn't allow them their specific desired matchups, while not offering any consistent way to accomplish that, are not really offering any valid criticism.

"An example of how whacked out the scheduling can be if consistency isn't maintained is what is happening now. Arizona gets to play two series against AL Central teams: Detroit and Kansas City -- the two teams in the AL Central with the worst records, by the way. I believe this is happening while no other NL West team plays any interleague games out of the AL West. This is completely unfair. This type of scheduling was made necessary because of the pairing up of 'natural Texas rivals' Houston and Texas (one in the AL West, the other in the NL Central). Well, that's great... but look what 'ripple effect' it has on the rest of the scheduling, with Arizona getting to play two series against the AL Central's worst teams. Once the decision to pair up Houston with Texas (for I think, two three-game series) was made, the outcome would be that there would have to be other NL West-AL Central pairings to make up for it. But why was Arizona chosen to play both of the two necessary series with an AL Central opponent? Geography? If so, that's a pretty lame reason. I'm pretty sure that's what they did, though: Arizona is the team in the NL West that is the farthest east, while I think Detroit and KC are the two teams in the Al Central that are the farthest West. In any event, the outcome of that geography-based decision is totally unfair to the rest of the NL West."

"This is an example of inconsistent and unfair interleague scheduling. It was done without looking at the entire picture. For example, if MLB wanted Houston and Texas to face each other they should have it done as the result of the entire AL West and the entire NL Central playing each other one year. If it could only happen once every three years (as the West/Central/East matchups alternate), so be it. The most important consideration should be the fairness of the schedule, most particularly as it effects teams that are in the same division."

"I can't speak for all those callers, but I think I understand where some of them are coming from, because I somewhat agree with their wishful thinking," says Anson. "Here's how it goes: originally I liked the idea of interleague play because fans get to see the star players from the other league whom normally they'd never get to see, but after two years of playing the same teams it became boring, so people (like me) wanted new matchups, such as West-Central or West-East. I'd love to see the Giants play the Yanks or Red Sox, for example.

"Then some people argued that you have to keep those rivalry games because they're drawing record numbers of attendance. You can't really argue with that. Even the A's draw record crowds playing the Giants, and they're not even real rivals. That's why these callers are opting for this crazy 'Play your rivals plus some other teams outside your geographical area.' I'd love this scenario, but I also know that no way this can happen since it can't be done in a fair way.

"I guess which scenario you choose depends on which team you root for or whether you're a casual fan or serious fan. A casual fan would love to see the above case, so he can see new teams and players. A fan of, say the Expos, who are at the bottom, might also like this, since they couldn't care less about fair competition. A Mets fan will want to keep playing the Yanks each year. Serious fans, baseball purists, or fans of teams like the Giants in a division where a few games can make the difference on a division crown, would rather not see interleague games. They want total fairness in competition. Of course, if you're a Giants fan, you get the added bonus of the weird schedule that always seem to screw the Giants and help their opponents (Diamondbacks). I guess I stand somewhere in between: I still like the interleague play, but I want teams in a division to all play the same interleague opponents, and I want them to rotate, i.e., not always West-West like right now, but West-Central, then West-East."

"I have to admit that I don't get it," says Peter H. "Some thoughts:

• MLB seems keen to tell us that "the fans want it," presumably pointing to increased attendance figures as proof. Fair enough, but has MLB ever held a complete referendum of baseball fans to discover to what extent they want it and what sacrifices they are prepared to forego to see it? For example, how many fans would say, 'Given a choice I would rather dump interleague play if it means we can return to a fair and even schedule with eight teams in each division' or 'I like interleague play but can it not count in the standings while some teams get easier games than others?" No, they haven't.

• I know this wouldn't work for all areas but when I wanted to see Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Cal Ripken, and other AL star of that stature on various trips to the Bay Area, I took BART over to Oakland to see them. Maybe Bay Area residents are luckier than most but given the way home games are split so that very rarely, if ever, are the Giants and the A's home on the same day, we don't need interleague play to see the stars of the other league.

• I thought interleague play had been with us for years anyway. Under the guise of the All-Star Game and the World Series.

• (Selfishly) I don't like AL rules and don't see why my team has to play their stupid game with a DH and, er, other things.

• Going back to the first point, MLB never seems to listen to the fans at all, unless they can defend one of their decisions by invoking the name of the punters who attend the games, which is why we get unbalanced schedules, wild cards, mini-leagues, the Fall Classic in the winter, and a whole host of other things. Interleague play is a marketing concept that must make money for MLB or they wouldn't allow it. What's it got to do with us? We just have to pay for it.

Well, I've gone on at length about interleague play in many previous installments of "EEEEEE!," but the long and short of it is, I don't like it, and here are just some of the reasons:

• I still see no reason to integrate the two leagues, which play by a different set of rules.

• Each team has enough opponents in its own league.

• If The Good Lord did not want National League fans to see American League players, He would not have invented television.

• I don't care what anyone says: integrating the two leagues screws up the record-keeping. How many home runs did Mark McGwire hit in 1998 against AL clubs? (I don't know either.) What if he hit more than 14? If so, why should he have a National League record for home runs in a season?

• Interleague play is a cheap, lame, transparent attempt to make money in the wake of the strike that drove fans away from the ballpark over the next few years.

• I'm sorry, but the Expos are way more important to the Giants than the A's are. Especially in this day and age of wild cards, a win against a team in the other league is nearly meaningless.

• No, sir, I don't like it.

Copyright ©2001 by Gregg Pearlman