Enough, Bruce Bochy. E-Freddy-nuff. OK, that’s not fair, since Lewis mercifully didn’t see any part of the starting lineup today. But neither did Nate Schierholtz, and I’m even more pissed than Kellen Winslow two weeks after a Nandrolone cycle.
I’d feel like I was just piling on after listening to Damon Bruce bitch about the same thing for an hour, except I’ve been in Schierholtz’s camp since the Giants starting messing with his emotions back in 2007. What the hell is Bochy doing starting both Randy Winn and Aaron Rowand at the same time?
Either Bochy has it all wrong, or Major League Baseball is a more toxic environment than the high schools of Clueless, Mean Girls and Heathers combined. A real manager would play the best players, not worry whether the veterans on the team respected him.
On a team where base hits have been tough to come by, it’s like Schierholtz’s hits come with a caveat: he got lucky…or something. Schierholtz hits .300 for his career, and he’s fighting it out for at-bats with $21 million of veteran suck and the baseball version of Mickael Pietrus, only more emo.
I know, the Giants won tonight, and they had 18 hits and 10 runs. What’s the problem? Well, if Schierholtz didn’t pinch-hit for Joe Martinez and crush a double that should have been a homer in the sixth, blowing the game open and keeping the game from devolving into just another recent bullpen implosion, the Giants would probably be sitting in silence on their way to Cincinnati after Brian Wilson walked Fernando Tatis with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 10th.
Alright, we get it, Schierholtz is getting hosed worse than Ant Randolph last season. Too bad Bochy doesn’t get it.
Stuff
— I’m pretty stoked on the Ricky Jean-Francois era. C’mon, a gigantic, boisterous LSU Tiger with an interesting name? It’s not often you can pretty much add Shaq to your defensive line. (Matt Maiocco)
— You know what’s damned delicious and incredibly easy to make? Sangria. It’s not often you can find the optimal use for the wine in your fridge that wasn’t quite good enough to drink after you opened it.
— People talk about the worst part of the steroid era being how every time someone does something great, there are always whispers. Actually, it’s worse. Now, people distance themselves from athletic greatness. Albert Pujols and Usain Bolt are quite possibly the most perfect athletes we’ve ever seen (Michael Phelps would be in this category, but the post I wrote where we used the “Weedies Box” picture of Phelps hitting the bong is still a top-5 pageviews post on BASG…he’s just elite comic relief at this point), and it’s like we’re all just waiting for the New York Times or Mark Fainaru-Wada to let us know about the HGH shipments in each athlete’s name.
— I absolutely love the guy, and I know he’s got soft hands, but the truth is Pablo Sandoval’s a portly, range-free third baseman who makes an error every 10 games and looks tired whenever he has to play 15 games in a row. Sandoval’s the team’s best hitter by a mile, he’s 23, and there’s no better position for El Pando (because he’s masculine) than third base. He doesn’t need to rest, he needs to actually dance to that Pitbull song he loves instead of just listening to it in his car.
