Jeff Fletcher | September 29, 2009

A couple weeks ago I wrote about how we had an issue with our record-keeping on the Giants Good Guy Award, which goes to one player for his cooperation with the print media. Rich Aurilia insisted that he had won the award twice, but our perpetual plaque only had him down once, in 2003.

Aurilia insisted that he could come up with the proof, emailing a photo of the two awards in his office back at home in Arizona. Not necessary, I believe him. Besides, anyone who feels that the validation of reporters is worth enough to lie to get it, probably ought to get it.

Also, the guy who we thought won in 2000 was Jeff Kent. Honestly. As I wrote before, Kent could often be prickly, but he was better with the beat writers than people just passing through. Also, in the 2000 playoffs, he was the stand-up team spokesman when the Giants lost to the Mets.

However, when we were debating it recently, Aurilia was there to plead his case, and Kent wasn’t. Good enough for me. Today I removed Kent’s name from the plaque and replaced it with Aurilia’s.

I’ll keep the Kent one, just in case.

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Jeff Fletcher | September 23, 2009

It seems whenever things start to go badly for the Giants, someone brings up the idea of trading Matt Cain, and the question was posed by the Chronicle Live Tweeter this morning. I’ve weighed in on this in the past. About a year ago, when the Giants were finishing up a 72-win season, I felt like the Giants should trade him. In May, when I was still skeptical of how good the Giants were,  I still believed that, if the Giants were to trade him, it would be better to trade him for multiple players, not one big one, a la the Dan Haren trade, the Erik Bedard trade, the Cliff Lee trade, etc.

How do I feel about it now? Well, I started to write a post about how the Giants actually have a pretty fair amount of money coming off the books, so they ought to be able to find a bat or two on the free agent market, then I looked at the list of free agents.

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Jeff Fletcher | September 23, 2009

This time he won the Catfish Hunter Award, which is voted by the players. It goes to one player for being inspirational, good in the community, etc. I’m sure his Good Guy Award from the media will be treasured much more than any silly old award voted by his peers, named after a Hall of Famer and given in part because of how he’s helped a friend who almost died.

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Jeff Fletcher | September 22, 2009

The writers presented catcher Kurt Suzuki with the Bill Rigney Good Guy Award before tonight’s game. It goes to one player from each Bay Area team for his cooperation with the print media. (Randy Winn won for the Giants this year.)

Suzuki joins a list that includes Huston Street (2008), Mark Ellis (2007), Frank Thomas (2006), Bobby Crosby (2005), Mark Kotsay (2004), Tim Hudson (2003), Scott Hatteberg (2002) … and that’s as far back as I can remember. I know Jason Giambi and Eric Chavez won in ’01 and ’00, but not sure which was which.

Quick Good Guy story. The first year we gave ‘em out was 1997, and the winners were Rod Beck and Matt Stairs, a couple of pudgy white guys. I joked that the award was actually for the player who most resembled a sports writer. (No disrespect intended to Beck, who was always a favorite. Still missed.)

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Jeff Fletcher | September 22, 2009

I’ve got a story over at FanHouse today on the future of the A’s, in light of their hot finish to this season. The money quote, so to speak, comes from Billy Beane, when he says the A’s are going to take a conservative approach to getting the A’s to the next step. In other words, they won’t be making any big deals over the winter.

“We’d look to add some guys, but we’re going to be very disciplined,” Beane said. “We’re trying to build something. We’re not going to go crazy in the offseason.”

So you can forget about sticking Jason Bay in the middle of the A’s lineup next year. Any reasonable A’s fan probably already realized that the cash-strapped team wasn’t likely to become big spenders (even though they have practically no one making any serious money next year). It seems that Beane likes the direction of the young guys on the roster now, and he’s going to let them keep playing, while waiting for the next wave (Chris Carter, Brett Wallace, Adrian Cardenas).

Based on my discussions with Beane, here’s how I think the 2010 stack up.

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Jeff Fletcher | September 21, 2009

When Randy Johnson pitched in relief for the Giants on Saturday, it marked his first regular season relief outing since July 18, 2001. (Of course, we all remember him pitching in relief in the 2001 World Series, and less of us remember him pitching in relief for the Yankees in the ’05 playoffs, but that’s another story.) Anyway, if you happened to check out the box score for Johnson’s July ’01 relief outing, you might have been scratching  your head.

Seven innings of relief? One hit? Seventeen strikeouts?

Well, there’s a story behind that, which I learned with the help of my FanHouse colleague, Ed Price, who covered the ’01 Diamondbacks for the now-defunct East Valley Tribune.

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Jeff Fletcher | September 21, 2009

I’m sure we were all shocked by the news that Giants prospect Angel Villalona is a suspect in a murder. However, the incident caused me to stumble into this blog by Giants minor leaguer Garrett Broshuis. In his most recent entry, he describes his shock at the news about Villalona, as well as telling some stories he’s heard from teammates about how tough life can be in the Dominican.

While I was reading, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the writing of young Mr. Broshuis. Frankly, I’ve never heard of him as a pitcher, but the guy clearly has a good head on his shoulders, and he’ll have no problem finding something if this baseball thing doesn’t work out. Heck, he could be a sports writer.

This entry about pitching in situations is very interesting. Apparently he’s also a blogger for Baseball America, where he wrote this post about missing his wife during the season. Heartwarming stuff.

Now that I know who this kid is, I’m going to root for him to make the big leagues. If for no other reason than it will prevent him from taking another job as a sports writer.

Just kidding.

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