Posted By Jeff Fletcher on January 26, 2011 9:15 am

Hey guys, it’s about time to shake my blog out of its winter hibernation, huh? I know, hasn’t been much here lately, but it’s the winter, and I was on vacation. (Turks and Caicos… thumbs up.) Anyway, last night I did a double-dip at CSN Bay Area, going on Chronicle Live and then doing Hot Stove. I’d link to clips of my appearances, but they didn’t put any on their site.

So now we’re about to begin the home stretch toward spring training. That means that the A’s and Giants will be trotting out a bunch of players for media availability over the next two weeks. The A’s are having an event on Thursday, and I’ll be at that. I am planning to report back here with details of what happens, as well as perhaps some video.

Next week the Giants are holding a similar event, and I’ll definitely have something from that.

If you aren’t following @baybridgeball on twitter, you should do so, because it will give you an instant heads-up whenever I add to this blog. I plan for that to be more frequent in the coming weeks and months.

In the meantime, here are a few thoughts on what’s happened over the past few weeks.

• I like what the A’s have done. A lot. They made their offense much better with the additions of Josh Willingham, David DeJesus and Hideki Matsui, as I wrote on FanHouse. Those names don’t get you as excited as, say, Adam Dunn, but they still are a marked improvement over what they had. The subsequent moves to add depth to the bullpen (Brian Fuentes, Grant Balfour, Rich Harden) are also very good. The A’s already had a very deep pen, but Billy Beane has shown a recognition of the fact that last year’s good relievers aren’t necessarily this year’s good relievers,  so it’s best to have a lot of them.
• The Giants aren’t getting another shortstop to back up Miguel Tejada. I made a call yesterday because that’s one of the questions I got via Twitter prior to the Hot Stove Show. I was told that the big names out there (read: Orlando Cabrera, Felipe Lopez) are all looking for more money and playing time than the Giants can offer. The Giants also have a full 40-man, so they’d only be offering minor-league deals with invites to spring training, at this point. I think the Giants can get by with a combination of Manny Burriss, Mike Fontenot, Mark DeRosa and Brandon Crawford as the backups to Tejada. Although Tejada isn’t as good as he used to be, he’s still pretty durable. He’s played at least 156 games 11 of the past 12 years.
• I’m not buying anything Pablo Sandoval is selling. I’ll believe that his career (and his weight) are back where they should be only after he’s finished 2011.
• Finally, you should check out the FanHouse 15, which started off with Buster Posey. It’s a countdown of the 15 most talked-about players in the majors. Not necessarily the best players, although they are all good, but the ones with the most buzz. We have segments on each guy, and Buster is the first. There is at least one other Giant in there, if I recall correctly. Maybe two.