Bumgarner launches shots, snots and blogs at an alarming clip

This is the magic of small sample size but look who has be the 6th best slugging percentage among Giants hitters -- after we exclude the small sample size that is Adam Duvall.

None other than ace pitcher and major league leader in snot rockets, Madison Bumgarner.

Ahead of Pablo Sandoval BTW which make my platoon argument even more palatable by the minute.

from Yahoo Sports:
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/teams/sfo/stats/?sort=mlb.stat_type.25

G	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	BB	K	SB	CS	AVG	OBP	SLG	OPS
Adam Duvall	1	4	1	1	0	0	1	1	0	1	0	0	.250	.250	1.000	1.250
Michael Morse	77	259	32	74	19	1	13	44	17	68	0	0	.286	.339	.517	.857
Brandon Belt	35	129	18	34	4	0	9	18	8	38	3	0	.264	.317	.504	.820
Hunter Pence	80	315	57	93	16	4	11	29	30	60	7	2	.295	.359	.476	.835
Brandon Crawford	77	249	33	64	13	8	7	36	30	64	2	2	.257	.334	.458	.792
Buster Posey	71	254	32	75	12	0	9	39	23	34	0	1	.295	.351	.449	.800
Madison Bumgarner	17	35	5	8	1	0	2	7	1	14	0	0	.229	.263	.429	.692
Pablo Sandoval	78	287	37	76	14	2	9	34	20	52	0	0	.265	.311	.422	.733
Tyler Colvin	35	96	11	23	10	2	1	15	6	36	1	0	.240	.282	.417	.698
Angel Pagan	63	241	37	74	14	1	3	19	19	29	11	3	.307	.356	.411	.767

Don't laugh Kemo Sabe, but there is a site that apparently tracks and catalogs Bumgarner's Snotrockets, the (in)appropriately named:
http://bumgarnersnotrockets.mlblogs.com/

I didn't look but I imagine there either is or will be a Bumgarner Crotch Grabbers site up and running very soon. It's the times we're living in.

Giants Prospect Report a real yawner - Astros George Springer is not

Susac showing he is maybe still a year or so away as a hitter, probably best if he keeps getting AB's in AAA, unless injury bug hits behind the dish. And Hector does seem to get hit by a lot of balls. Brown, Jones and Arroyo provide the hat trick of disappointment, the younger guys struggles at those levels are somewhat alarming at this point. Brown is showing signs of life, blocked by Blanco and Perez may tell you all you need to know.

Nothing to get excited about yesterday on the pitching front. The new draft signees should start posting some stats fairly soon. We'll keep an eye out.

Baseball America Prospect Report
Compiled by Baseball America   June 27, 2014

SF		AAA		Susac, Andrew C		4		0		2		0		.276		BB (21)
SF		AAA		Brown, Gary CF		3		2		2		1		.270		BB (21), 2 SB (13)
SF		LoA		Jones, Ryder 3B		4		1		2		0		.247		2B (15), BB (15), SB (3)
SF		SS		Arroyo, Christian SS		5		1		2		1		.150		2B (1)

--

SF		AA		Hall, Cody		1		0		0		0		0		1		2.91		Sv (8)
SF		AAA		Cordier, Erik		0.2		0		0		0		0		0		3.86
SF		AAA		Kickham, Mike		8.1		2		0		0		3		9		3.68		W (6-5)
SF		HiA		Johnson, Stephen		2.2		3		0		0		0		5		3.28

This Springer kid down in Houston is not much of a disappointment however. I've stumbled onto a couple of Astros games recently on ROKU and this kid can just launch balls. They get out of the park in a hurry. He's still striking out a lot, but given the rate and the impact of his bombs, the strikeouts may be worth it.  

from milb.com:

 http://www.milb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130528&content_id=48820016&fext=.jsp&vkey=news_milb

"He does a lot of good things," Bodie said. "He came up here last year at the end of the season in August, and he was not able to do those things.

"There are certain locations where people will throw to him and he has trouble getting to those points, but he's made adjustments to hit some pitches he's been getting after they got him out a certain way. He can come back and make those adjustments. You mature as you go through it, and it's a slow process at times, but he's doing a good job of doing it."

Springer's talents put him in a special category. Like everybody at Double-A, he still has strides to make, but at least athletically, he's in a rare class -- Bodie even mentioned Mike Trout as a player he saw at Double-A with a similarly diverse set of talents.

"When you're watching somebody who possesses those attributes and skills, namely the speed and the power, the sky is the limit for players like that," Bodie said. "Plus he plays a premium position.

"He's an exciting player, and he has a chance to be a perennial All-Star."

Duvall debuts with a dinger

Maybe, just maybe he can add a little power boost to the 3B slot. Sandoval has a weird split in that he is a .803 OPS versus RHP this year, yet a .604 OPS versus LHP when he hits from the right side.

.....And Duvall conveniently hits from the right side.......Hey, wait a minute!!! You're not suggesting that Bochy entertains the notion of platooning the rookie with the Panda at 3B are you?

Yes, I am. Why not?

If it motivates Pablo, so be it. If it gives them future leverage in contract negotiations down the road, so be it. If Duvall is the real deal, you have to find out sooner rather than later.

In his most complete season with San Jose in 2012, Duvall struck out 116 times while sporting a 30-100-.258 stat line in 598 plate appearances. This year he was on pace for approx. 46-134-.297 with a .980 OPS. A bit of a pull-back in 2013 at AA Richmond across the board for Duvall stat-wise, so the Giants hope that his breakout is more a case of the light-bulb going on for a power hitter rather than a park-induced statistical mirage. He will be transferring from a hitter friendly park to AT&T Park.

Time will tell, but time is ticking as far as the position goes, so IMO there is no time like the present to find out how much Duvall can produce. He's likely to only get a small sample of 100-250 bats, barring the unforeseen, but it will be something and the Giants have made snap decisions on hitting prospects before, albeit with varying results.



from Giants Extra:

POSTGAME NOTES: Crawford, Pill, Guillermo Mota (!) and more -- Duvall joins the club; Timmy talks Powerade bath and GIFs - Giants Extra:

Adam Duvall has been here about a minute and a half, but he already knows all about AT&T Park. When Duvall hit a two-strike slider deep into the night, he wasn’t sure he had his first career homer.

“To be honest, I was just hoping it would go out,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot of talk that it doesn’t fly here. It’s hard to hit one out. I was just hoping it would be enough. It was a pretty cool feeling.”

It’s one 13 Giants have felt before, including Brett Pill (the last) and Brandon Crawford (the one you probably remember). Duvall joins the trivia list of players who can say their first hit was a homer in their first game. You know who else can say his first hit was a homer? Guillermo Mota, with the Expos. And that’s why baseball is awesome.

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Norwood, Ravenelle Lead Vanderbilt To First CWS Championship - BaseballAmerica.com

Congrats to coach Tim Corbin and his staff for bringing Vandy their first national championship in baseball. For years, maybe going back to the Mark Prior years, it seems like they have been developing great pitchers and advancing them into the pro ranks. Lets hope that trend continues for Tyler Beede with the Giants.


It was definitely a different College World Series from the gorilla ball days. We've gone from blasting to bunting in a decade or so. Given the lack of scoring, you would think the games would be a wee bit shorter and less tedious to watch. At least with a football score, you get a little bit more excitement for your 3 1/2 hours of time. Something to watch out for in the future, how this effects viewership and attendance.

from Baseball America:
Norwood, Ravenelle Lead Vanderbilt To First CWS Championship - BaseballAmerica.com:

Corbin and his fine coaching staff have built a model program in part through their incredible ability to recruiting marquee players with winning makeup. The current groups of sophomores and juniors both rated as the No. 1 recruiting classes in college baseball when they showed up on campus in the falls of 2011 and 2012. Vanderbilt has gotten plenty of meaningful contributions from talented freshmen in recent years, but Norwood and righthander Adam Ravenelle were raw talents when they arrived in Nashville in 2011, and both played sparingly for loaded Vandy teams over their first two seasons.

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Baseball and amphetamines

The amphetamine era was another blight on the game, albeit an under-reported one. 

Amphetamines were a Schedule II controlled substance since the 1970's (ie: illegal).

Players in the clubhouse passed it around like candy for years before and after the 70's because it gave them a competitive advantage.

WAIT!!! WHAT ???

Players in a competitive sport, look for a competitive advantage over their competitors? 

WHO KNEW?!?

I understand why people will refuse to engage in a conversation that goes against their own personal belief system (willful, blissful ignorance, cognitive dissonance, whatever). It would be hard to remain offended by one group of baseball players use of illegal substances to break records when they come face to face with the knowledge that the same group doing the most carping used illegal substances to obtain their own position in the record books. 

AIN'T THAT A BEES-WAX????

In the end, everything comes down to the choices we make; moral or immoral, self serving or serving others.... etc. We can always change our future choices, but not the past. Those who are ashamed of their past choices rewrite history so that others do not know the depth of their betrayal.

Kreidler: Black day for the greenies, too

			Kreidler: Black day for the greenies, too Steroids are the headline. But the fact amphetamines are in baseball's new proposed agreement is real news.
			View on sports.espn.go.com	Preview by Yahoo

The only time anybody ever said anything bad about Tony Gwynn was when, in retirement, he spoke to a reporter about players habitual use of amphetamines. A lot of players still in the game, taking pills attacked Tony for this. Their attacks reflect mostly on them, IMO.

The Baseball Vision Of Barry Bonds

This article documents the predominant skill that all the great hitters -- from Babe Ruth to Ted Williams to Barry Bonds -- have and that is superior, off the charts  visual skills.

from Baseballnews.com:
The Baseball Vision Of Barry Bonds:

In almost 50 years of vision testing Major League hitters, Barry Bonds has no equal, according to Dr. Harrison.

Bonds may have had the greatest hitting specific vision of any batter in history the way he could stop from swinging at marginal pitches and go after pitches he could drive hard the vast majority of the time.

“I have a battery of tests which I have performed on Major League players going back to the early ’70s for a number of organizations,” said Dr. Harrison.

“In testing thousands of Major League hitters, Barry Bonds tested out with the highest vision readings of any baseball player we had ever worked with. I first saw him in 1986 during spring training as he came out of A ball after signing with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ organization after playing for Arizona State University. He was not considered a legitimate Major League prospect for the Pirates at the time."

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more from the article...

“When I tested Barry Bonds, I gathered all the information on him and left the room. Barry is the only player who had achieved 100 percent in each of those categories and subsequently received a 100 percent in terms of high level binocularity. I then talked to Syd Thrift, general manager of the Pirates. I told Syd that the last player I saw (Bonds) was the most visually gifted of all the players I had evaluated since 1971, which was 15 years at the time. I had never seen a baseball player as gifted visually and mentally as this guy.

“Barry Bonds was in AAA for the Pirates’ organization that year. Around May, the Pirates’ AAA team was playing in Phoenix, and Syd Thrift asked me to watch and work with some of the players. I saw Barry in action for the first time, and he looked terrific. That evening, I called Syd and told him this guy really was phenomenal because he visually tracked every pitch, saw it deep and squaring the ball every time. Syd jumped on a plane the next morning for Phoenix.

“In the middle of the contest the next day, Syd called Bonds out of the game and asked the manager to get the young ball player on a plane to Pittsburgh immediately. And the rest was history.

“As I look back at evaluating many hitters on the professional, college and even high school levels close to 40 years now, Barry Bonds is still my gold standard. Barry had the whole picture when it came to all the aspects of vision I look for. He not only could he see pitches deep. But over time, he saw the ball early out of the hands of pitchers.

“All the great hitters I have been around, which include people such as Barry Bonds, George Brett, Tony Gwynn, Rod Carew, among many others, really bought into the idea of seeing the ball right out of the pitcher’s hand. The method of getting there can be variable. It will only happen if the hitter is highly visual. I refer to being highly visual as almost being out of the body as the hitter is totally unaware of what the body is doing. They let their body go on automatic pilot. Generally, it will only work if the athlete is totally thought free.

“So being totally free of thought, being totally unaware of the body and being able to turn the light switch on just as the pitcher releases the ball toward the catcher is vital. When they do that, these premiere hitters aren’t even aware of what the pitcher’s motion is or who the pitcher is a lot of times. Hitters who are really good at this aren’t concerned with a pitcher telegraphing a pitch.

1.