According to an e-mail from Antonio Pierce to the Newark Star-Ledger, he has been cut by the Giants. It was the right move by the Giants. AP is 32 and just had a season ending neck injury. His play over the past two years has declined. With that being said, AP will always be a Giant. I thank him for being the heart and soul of a Championship Defense. He had once said he wanted to be mentioned as part of a long tradition of great Giants linebackers. While he will never be mentioned in the same breath as LT, Huff, or Carson, he is definitely part of that next group with Banks, Armstead, Van Pelt, Kelly, Pepper Johnson and Robustelli. Good Luck, AP. Read the rest of this entry »

This, folks, is a terrible football coach. His name is Bill Sheridan and until yesterday at 4:45PM U.S. Standard Time he was the Defensive Coordinator of the New York Football Giants. He was originally the Giants linebacker coach where he rose to “prominence” coaching up the Above Average Antonio Pierce, Porn Star Chase Blackburn, the Underachieving Gerris Wilkinson, the Incredibly Mediocre Danny Clark, the Incompetent Jonathon Goff among others. After Super Bowl Champion Defensive Wizard Steve Spagnuolo went to St. Louis to begin his career as mediocre head coach, the Giants felt they should promote Sheridan and have him continue on with Spags defense. Unfortunately, Sheridan sucks and fucked it up. Read the rest of this entry »

The Giants wide receivers are more of an issue than I thought. Well, I guess most of you thought it. Anywho, bumps in the road. The reason you are getting a recap of the Jets/Giants preseason game 5 days after the fact is that were were hacked by the CIA on Monday and all of our government secrets were taken and disseminated. Since this was so traumatic to me I needed a few days to give you a post that you all salivate for. I am sorry. Truly sorry. Please understand how sorry I am. Well, enough apologizing. This is ‘Merica and you want to talk footbaw.

Here are my thoughts on Saturday night’s all import third preseason game: Read the rest of this entry »

The Giant defense with out Antonio Pierce is going to be in trouble. I DVR’d the Giants/Bears preseason game and only watched the first half before shutting it off in disgust. A few thoughts on the game: Read the rest of this entry »

With a new contract almost signed and miscreants such as Plaxico Burress and Jeremy Shockey long out of his life, Eli Manning is finally the true leader for the offense of the New York Football Giants. With this in mind, MLJ decided to do a pictorial on Eli’s first week at Camp. Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time we will be taking a look at some of the few bright spots on bad teams or highlight guys who deserve more recognition than they are currently getting. To kick off the series, who better than Tim Lincecum? The only reason I’m not starting with Edinson Volquez or Aaron Harang is because they’ve gotten some run lately. We’ll get back to them later in the year.

If he didn’t play for the Giants or look like the main character from Kids then maybe he might get more run, but he does on both counts so there’s really no getting past it. Lincecum has the second best ERA in the league behind Volquez in eight more innings of work.

Lincecum is only 23 years old (he’ll be 24 next month) and he is simply dominating the competition. And consider this: his BABIP is high (.321) right now so there’s a chance that he could get even better as the season goes on and that reverts to the mean. Volquez’s BABIP is .287.

Another amazing sign that this isn’t a fluke: Lincecum’s K/9 rate is 9.48 which is great but the fact that he doesn’t rack up a lot of walks either (3.22 BB/9) is a real testament to his control. To put it in context, Nolan Ryan’s career K/9 was 9.7 but his BB/9 was 5.0. When Ryan was 23 his rates were 8.8 and 6.7 respectively. A high strikeout to walks ratio is a giant signifier that this kid isn’t going anywhere.

And it’s not like his record is poor. He’s sitting at 5-1 which should get the traditional stat guys to take a look at him. In his eight starts so far this season, he’s given up 3 ERs only once and suffered a 3-2 loss to the Rockies. In his two no decisions this year, he gave up 1ER and 0ER. If his team had any offense in them whatsoever (15th out of 16 in the NL), he could be 8-0.

He needs to improve his GB/FB ratio, especially when he’s on the road, but considering that he’s not giving up a ton of homeruns, it shouldn’t be an issue so far. He’s got an HR/FB ration of 6.4%. Roy Oswalt’s ratio is 25% (?!?).

Again, if this kid’s team didn’t suck so much (the Giants are 16-22 in what is arguably the worst division in baseball), Lincecum would be a star.

From time to time we will be taking a look at some of the few bright spots on bad teams or highlight guys who deserve more recognition than they are currently getting. To kick off the series, who better than Tim Lincecum? The only reason I’m not starting with Edinson Volquez or Aaron Harang is because they’ve gotten some run lately. We’ll get back to them later in the year.

If he didn’t play for the Giants or look like the main character from Kids then maybe he might get more run, but he does on both counts so there’s really no getting past it. Lincecum has the second best ERA in the league behind Volquez in eight more innings of work.

Lincecum is only 23 years old (he’ll be 24 next month) and he is simply dominating the competition. And consider this: his BABIP is high (.321) right now so there’s a chance that he could get even better as the season goes on and that reverts to the mean. Volquez’s BABIP is .287.

Another amazing sign that this isn’t a fluke: Lincecum’s K/9 rate is 9.48 which is great but the fact that he doesn’t rack up a lot of walks either (3.22 BB/9) is a real testament to his control. To put it in context, Nolan Ryan’s career K/9 was 9.7 but his BB/9 was 5.0. When Ryan was 23 his rates were 8.8 and 6.7 respectively. A high strikeout to walks ratio is a giant signifier that this kid isn’t going anywhere.

And it’s not like his record is poor. He’s sitting at 5-1 which should get the traditional stat guys to take a look at him. In his eight starts so far this season, he’s given up 3 ERs only once and suffered a 3-2 loss to the Rockies. In his two no decisions this year, he gave up 1ER and 0ER. If his team had any offense in them whatsoever (15th out of 16 in the NL), he could be 8-0.

He needs to improve his GB/FB ratio, especially when he’s on the road, but considering that he’s not giving up a ton of homeruns, it shouldn’t be an issue so far. He’s got an HR/FB ration of 6.4%. Roy Oswalt’s ratio is 25% (?!?).

Again, if this kid’s team didn’t suck so much (the Giants are 16-22 in what is arguably the worst division in baseball), Lincecum would be a star.

Remember that scene in Little Big League when Billy Heywood’s favorite player gets a single and he starts cheering from the dugout and clapping like crazy. And the reason he’s cheering is because the player, Jerry Johnson, hasn’t hit anything all season? Then Billy leans over to his bench coach and says something like, “see, I told you he’d come around.” And his bench coach replies, “You realize you’re getting excited about a single, right?” Well that’s how I feel about Barry Zito. You see, I was stumbling through some box scores today and I realized, “oh yeah, Barry Zito earned his job back” and then I laughed because using the word “earn” and Zito in the same sentence is funny, even if that sentence is trapped in your mind.

But looking at his line, I was surprised. He pitched five innings, giving up 2ERs with a HR, 5 hits and 2 walks. That’s a pretty good outing. But then I looked closer: 99 pitches for 5 innings. An average of almost 20 pitches/inning…against the Pirates. You know why he has to throw so many pitches? Because his fastball isn’t a fastball anymore. His fastball is topping out at 86MPH which makes his curveball much less effective. The Pirates were fouling off all of his breaking pitches, just waiting for him to throw the fastball which is nice and slow and fat. His pitch count rose quickly as the Pirate hitters waited patiently for him to throw a pitch they could handle. And this is a team that ranks 19th in OBP at .322. Imagine what’ll happen next time when we faces a team with a better offense. I’m guessing it’ll be more of the same as what we’ve seen this year.

So no, I won’t get excited about this outing. I will play the role of the bench coach. The wise bench coach who shows Billy the ropes and convinces him to cut Jerry Johnson. But, happy ending, Jerry comes back as the hitting coach. Where am I going with this you ask? I have no idea.

Remember that scene in Little Big League when Billy Heywood’s favorite player gets a single and he starts cheering from the dugout and clapping like crazy. And the reason he’s cheering is because the player, Jerry Johnson, hasn’t hit anything all season? Then Billy leans over to his bench coach and says something like, “see, I told you he’d come around.” And his bench coach replies, “You realize you’re getting excited about a single, right?” Well that’s how I feel about Barry Zito. You see, I was stumbling through some box scores today and I realized, “oh yeah, Barry Zito earned his job back” and then I laughed because using the word “earn” and Zito in the same sentence is funny, even if that sentence is trapped in your mind.

But looking at his line, I was surprised. He pitched five innings, giving up 2ERs with a HR, 5 hits and 2 walks. That’s a pretty good outing. But then I looked closer: 99 pitches for 5 innings. An average of almost 20 pitches/inning…against the Pirates. You know why he has to throw so many pitches? Because his fastball isn’t a fastball anymore. His fastball is topping out at 86MPH which makes his curveball much less effective. The Pirates were fouling off all of his breaking pitches, just waiting for him to throw the fastball which is nice and slow and fat. His pitch count rose quickly as the Pirate hitters waited patiently for him to throw a pitch they could handle. And this is a team that ranks 19th in OBP at .322. Imagine what’ll happen next time when we faces a team with a better offense. I’m guessing it’ll be more of the same as what we’ve seen this year.

So no, I won’t get excited about this outing. I will play the role of the bench coach. The wise bench coach who shows Billy the ropes and convinces him to cut Jerry Johnson. But, happy ending, Jerry comes back as the hitting coach. Where am I going with this you ask? I have no idea.

What the hell happened here? At the beginning of play today the combined win/loss differential of the NL West stood at -7, as in 7 games below .500. As in a losing division, collectively speaking. I only bring this up because this was the division that everyone was arguing was the best division in baseball during Spring Training. And I use the “everyone” compassionately because I was one of those people. This is a division that last year represented the National League in the World Series; the division that provided the Wild Card which was decided in a one game playoff that featured another NL West team.

So of course the sports world made some predictions that seemed to make sense:

• The Rockies would have some carryover from their 14-1 stretch that vaulted them into the playoffs (where they then swept their way to the WS) due to their increased talent. This is not an unrealistic expectation. Who would have thought that Troy Tulowitzki would start the way he did hitting .152 with 25 total bases for the year? Likewise, Ubaldo Jimenez has taken a step back.

• The Padres, with one of the best rotations in all of baseball, would be able to compensate for their lack of offense by playing 81 games in a pitcher’s park like Petco. This team’s motto is the reverse Patrick Ewing line from the NBA strike: “Sure we don’t score a lot of runs; but we don’t allow a lot of runs either.” Instead, their pitching has played down to their offense. They’re 8th (out of 16) in team ERA and are dead last in offense. Their bullpen, with the exception of Heath Bell has not been good and their offense couldn’t score on a Hilton (too topical?)
• The Giants, oh, the Giants. The one team that everyone seemed to cast aside like my kids during the NLCS has actually outplayed expectations despite sitting at a middling 14-19. Their offense has been nearly as atrocious as the Padres (worse if you factor in the park they play in) but their pitching has been downright impressive in parts (8th in the NL, just behind the Padres–but again, factor in their park and it looks even better). Tim Lincecum has been outstanding with his 1.49 ERA and his 9.57 K/9. And Merkin Valdez in the bullpen has been lights out with 1.15 ERA and WHIP. This team has a ton of young talent this year that needs to play at the big lead level.

I’m curious then what this says about the success of the division’s other two teams: the Dodgers and Diamondbacks. It’s obvious then that early division play has been beneficial to each. The Diamondbacks are 17-5 against the division and the Dodgers are 10-6 excluding AZ (against whom they are 1-4). In limited play (less than 10 games) against the rest of the league, these teams are right around .500. It’s certainly too early to attribute their records to playing in such a weak division but there’s no way that the Dbacks will maintain a 108 win pace. By the same token, the Padres probably won’t maintain a 103 loss pace. It’s not April, but is it still too early to try and gauge a team’s strength based on their competition? I’ll get into this more when I look at the convoluted NL Central and NL East later this week.