A little more multimedia. For the past month or so, we’ve done a weekly show, the MLB Hour, and it’s getting better every week. I urge you to watch the whole episode, and to come back to watch it every week, but if you are just interested in me and the Giants-related stuff, about 9 minutes in, I file a report on Pat Burrell. That’s followed by a little discussion of the woes of Tim Lincecum. After that I get into a little chat about my story on young pitchers on contenders whose workloads bear watching (like Madison Bumgarner).
As I’m sure you’ve noticed by going to FanHouse every day, we’ve been doing more and more multimedia stuff. This week I did a few FanHouse TV items out at AT&T Park, including this interview with Aubrey Huff.
Bumgarner, who just turned 21, has never thrown more than 141 1/3 innings, and already he’s at 153, with more than five weeks to go. The industry standard is to prevent young pitchers from increasing their innings by more than 20 percent. In Bumgarner’s case, that would be 169 innings, which would give him about two more starts, or three short ones.
The good news is the Giants have several off days the rest of the way, so they could probably skip him once through the rotation, if they wanted. Problem with that is he’s been their best pitcher lately.
Gotta admit, it was a little puzzling to see that the Giants put in a waiver claim on Cody Ross. Obviously the Padres would have some interest in him, because of the injury to Tony Gwynn Jr., so the Giants had a reason to try to block that move. However, the Giants had to know that a) Ross was slumping (.197 over his last 35 games) and b) the Marlins have Cameron Maybin in the wings. They must have figured there was a real chance the Marlins would just let Ross go.
Rays manager Joe Maddon just raved about how good the A’s young starters are in his pregame media session. I could just transcribe the whole thing, but I’m being lazy, so I’m just posting the audio so you can hear it yourself.
My pals over at the Cohn Zohn have asked today if you think that Brian Sabean and/or Bruce Bochy should lose their jobs if the Giants don’t make the playoffs.
My feeling is that neither should, and I think neither will.
I think the Giants have played at or above their talent level. Remember what I wrote way back in April? Of course you do, but here it is anyway:
Now, it’s possible that they could play much worse than their current .667 clip (8-4) and still win the division. You only have to play .556 ball to win 90 games. I certainly think they have a shot at that, because of the pitching, but a lot of things would have to go right with the offense and the defense. I still think they are an 84-win team, give or take a few.
You may recall a few weeks ago I figured that the A’s will have about $20 million to spend on additional players for next year’s roster. Well, as I was watching BP before today’s game against the Rays, I pointed to Carlos Pena and told a few of my media colleagues that I think Pena is near the top of the list of guys who might end up getting some of that cash next year.
I think Pena makes sense because he’s a legit power hitter, but he’s probably just a little on the downside of his career and he also plays a position where there are a lot of other, better players, out there. That means that he’s probably not going to be getting offers from the big-money teams. I’ll bet the A’s could get him for 3 years, $36 million. Something like that.
