San Francisco SuckWatch 2008: Brian Bocock Sucks
How sucky are the Giants this year? Our ongoing occasional series, “San Francisco SuckWatch 2008,” keeps you up to date! So with out further ado, let’s dive right in and see what is sucky about the Giants this week…
- Someone named Brian Bocock has played every inning at shortstop except one so far this season for the Giants. His batting line so far? .179 / .303 / .196. And as ugly as that line is, it is unlikely to get much better. Last season Bocock did not play a single game above A-ball, and in 345 at-bats at high-A San Jose, he posted a batting line of .220 / .293 / .328. Even if those stats from last year were directly transferred to the major leagues, they would instantly make Brian Bocock the worst-hitting shortstop in baseball, yet those were the stats he compiled last year, in A-ball.
- Bocock has been so bad that the Giants are calling up his double-play partner from A-ball last year, Emmanuel Burriss. This has become necessary because Omar Vizquel, the 41-year old shortstop the Giants resigned after he batted .240 last season, is not healing as fast as was hoped from his knee surgery. If the Giants’ fallback plans at shortstop are two guys from A-Ball, and Bocock is the best of those two, you really have to wonder just how truly terrible the other guys they have playing short in the Giants system must be.
- Bizarrely, in calling up Emmanuel Burriss the Giants DFA’d Rajai Davis, one of their few major-league ready outfield prospects, and the prize they swiped from the Pirates for Matt Morris. Although in the long run Davis projects as a fourth outfielder type, he is highly regarded as a defender in the outfield, and is not entirely incompetent with the bat, so you have to wonder why the Giants are risking losing him to a waiver claim.
- As of this writing, the Giants remain last in the entire Major Leagues in runs scored with 61 runs in 19 games, an average of 3.21 runs per game.
- According to the USS Mariner, the average velocity of Barry Zito’s fastball in 2008 is 82.7 miles per hour. Yes, that is the average, not the lowest. And according to calculations by The Big Picture, Barry Zito will make an estimated $86,000 per inning over the life of his contract, and that is assuming an extremely generous 35 starts per season and 6 innings per start!
- Putative staff ace Matt Cain had the worst outing of his career this week, getting hammered for 9 earned runs in 3.2 innings of work.
- As noted by Baseball Digest Daily, the Giants presently have the third longest championship drought in baseball, at 54 years and counting, behind only the Cubs and the Indians.
- Also via The Big Picture, piling on the Giants has become so fun that even the automated computer feed that updates the scores of ESPN’s game tracker has joined the fun.
March 13th, 2008 at 10:59 am
Here’s someone that’s defending Shelley Duncan. It’s someone named Shelley Duncan:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/spring2008/news/story?id=3291224
“Shelley Duncan watched video of his hard slide in the Yankees’ game Wednesday against Tampa Bay and still doesn’t think it was a dirty play…
“I saw it a couple times,” Duncan said Thursday. “I still don’t understand why they were as upset as they were.”
Jackass.
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Its the best when someone charges the perp and the perp does his best impersonation of Dion Sanders and does a half-ass attempt to take out the legs. and then, and then it turns into a big tickle fight where they exchange recipes with the other team. Bring Back the craziest man of all, Izzy Alcantara!!!!!!!!!!
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Or Jose Offerman and his BAT OF DOOM.
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
The best part of a good baseball fight is when the old man gets the better of the young guy (see Ryan vs. Ventura).
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I’m still a huge fan of the Chan Ho Park dropkick.
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
He didn’t cleat him in the groin. The picture shows the moment after the cleating.
Duncan cut a gash on his thigh. It’s right above his knee.
I just now watched video of it. Didn’t hit him in the groin at all.
Quality reporting yet again.
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Shelley Duncan missed Akinori’s groin by thismuch only because Shelley Duncan has bad aim.
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
That’s very funny and all but isn’t that kind of libelous?
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
The best part of fights (next to the bullpen having to run out) has to be the names given to the fight afterwards. You never get to hear words like brouhaha or donnybrook anywhere else
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 3:45 pm
I think it would have been funny if the yankers were playin the Rays today and Billy Crystal got plunked.
just adding my $0.02
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
wait, wait. if drunk guys who fight have beer muscles then do baseball players who take on guys they shouldn’t have dip(chewing tobacco) muscles? ala zimmerman vs. petey martinez help i’ve been thrown down and can’t get to the dugout!!!
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Greatest fight of all time, Izzy Alcantara kicks the catcher and then takes on all comers. Of course the Ryan/Ventura fight was just HILARIOUS!
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
It’s not surprising to see Dave Duncan’s son engaging in this type of pathetic nonsense. Tony LaRussa and his “long-time companion” have routinely encouraged their players to perpetrate this type of retaliatory behavior. Joe Girardi set the tone for this classless action by complaining about what was a completely clean play that resulted in an unintended injury. I am still trying to understand why the Yankees felt it necessary to try and “get even” not once but twice for a play that was in no way dirty. It seems like a sickening display of their sense of entitlement. “No castration, no foul,” is an utterly lame defense of Duncan’s spikes coming in late and high.
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 7:08 pm
The Stankees are a bunch of low down dirty, and cheating players. Always have been always will be…
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 7:25 pm
The problems with Johnson’s charging the catcher are:
1) It’s spring training. These games are meant to stretch out pitchers and hitters and get the players into fighting trim for the season. The games don’t matter so why take the unnecessary risk of charging the catcher. And this isn’t the first time the Rays have done this. The Yankees have a prospect who can’t start the regular season because some kid was trying to impress his coach with his scrap-hearted-dirty-dirt-dog-ocity because he can’t do so with his bat. The real kicker is that if he succeeds, he’s still on Tampa Bay, a solid AAAA squad.
2) He didn’t even have to charge the catcher. He could have slid past his ankle (watch the video) like everyone else in ST. He went out of his way to lower his shoulder and really hurt Cervelli.
When you put it in context, it’s a lot less than a “clean play.” Just because it was technically legal doesn’t make it right.
Does Mike Lowell get the same stigma for what he did to Robinson Cano last season in retaliation for Dustin Pedroia?
Every team retaliates. Only the Yankees are hated for it.
Stankees? That rhymes with Yank– HEY!!!
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
So now attempting to cross home plate is “charging” the catcher? If the catcher doesn’t want to be charged maybe he shouldn’t block the plate. So it’s the base runners responsibility to make sure not to make contact with a catcher blocking the plate? That’s ridiculous and it doesn’t justify the Yankees retaliating not just once but twice. There is no context in which it would be acceptable to spike someone the way Duncan did. It was a low blow with no justification. Any attempt to justify it is nonsensical. Lowering a shoulder into someone standing in the baseline is not the same as attempting to put your cleats through a guy’s sack.
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
“So now attempting to cross home plate is “charging†the catcher? If the catcher doesn’t want to be charged maybe he shouldn’t block the plate. So it’s the base runners responsibility to make sure not to make contact with a catcher blocking the plate?”
Absolutely, yes. He could have slid around the catcher like everyone else in ST does.
If you watch the video, you’ll see that only his ankle was blocking the plate. You can definitely slide into that play. He went OUT OF HIS WAY to tackle the catcher.
“There is no context in which it would be acceptable to spike someone the way Duncan did. It was a low blow with no justification. Any attempt to justify it is nonsensical. Lowering a shoulder into someone standing in the baseline is not the same as attempting to put your cleats through a guy’s sack.”
I wasn’t trying to justify Duncan’s slide. I was just saying that Girardi had a right to be angry. And I certainly wasn’t equating the two plays.
However, Duncan was nowhere near his sack. I blame Sarah for the inaccurate reporting on that one.
Would it be OK if he had just planted a shoulder into Iwamura ala Mike Lowell? Nobody raised a stink over that.
REPORT COMMENT
March 13th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Brian, I’m going with what I see right there in that picture with my own two eyes. Duncan’s spikes. Are. Right. Next to. Iwamura’s. Balls. Maybe you see something different when you look at it. And that’s fine. But even all the Yankee blogs I read this morning thought it was out of line. Only you seem to think it’s okay. Well, you and Shelley Duncan of course.
REPORT COMMENT
March 14th, 2008 at 1:47 am
A) I never said it was OK.
B) That. Picture. Is. Taken. After. The. Cleating.
It’s stuff like this that gives proper journalists credence when they criticize bloggers. You don’t have to abide by libel laws on your blog so you can just say that this guy tried to cleat a guy in the groin. It’s seems kind of silly to nit-pick where he cleated a guy but when the ding-ding is involved, it’s an important distinction.
Usually your bias is charming. It’s kind of disgusting and irresponsible here.
REPORT COMMENT