Stolen Dreams

The Chronicle is full of dumping predictions for the Giants. Brower waived. Foppert starting Tuesday. Snow to the bench. Niekro starting. Young relievers I can’t remember are up from Fresno. Todd Linden might be coming up and will be a starter if he does. Presumably Grissom to the bench or worse.

Hey, they suck. They lost 5 of 6 at home to the weak AL Central teams, and were beaten pretty badly in all of them. Wait ‘till next year.

The Pecklers are not heavily invested in the Giants, at least on the pathetic hitting end. We’ve got none of them. We do have their 2 best starters (Tomko doesn’t suck, and Lowry only sucks for one inning per outing) and their closer (Walker, the scariest closer in baseball, though I did see him throwing at 97 MPH last week). With the worst minor league system in baseball, and with almost all the big contracts locked and loaded for one more year (Barry, Dunston, Alfonso, Visquel, Alou), there is not going to be any kind of quick fix other than through the return of Barry to 2001 hitting levels. What a disappointing season.

But not so for the Pecklers, who are hanging in there amongst the BABI leaders. We need Bradley back (end of the week, or so it seems) and Hampton (his $3 contract should be tradable). And despite the fact that we’ve got 2 of the NL’s closers, Looper and Walker are so inconsistent in getting saves, that we’re stuck in the mud for saves.

Busch Leaguers: 65 points. And they’ve got a lot of upside in pitching. Toys predicts 80 points for them. I think that’s way too much, and I think it will be a dogfight among 6, then 4 then maybe 3 teams. Success will be based on team management the rest of the way. I think the Leaguers will be in that group. I think the Lickers will also be in that group. As for the rest of the contenders, I’m not saying. I HOPE the Pecklers will be in that group.

It’s interesting how forgiving this game can actually be, assuming that you are not hit with serious, long-term injuries to your stars. We paid $22 for Kaz Matsui. I think $8 would have been more like it. We thought he’d be 15+ HR’s and 15+ steals and hit .275. It doesn’t look like hi'll come near any of those numbers. We had a long list of starting pitchers that we expected to go from $9-$15, and ended up with Lowry (big miss) and Webb (tough no-decision yesterday, but solid). And we swapped Tracy (nice young player, but only part-time now because of the torrid Tony Clark) and Dustan Mohr (piece of shit) for Jim Edmonds. We got some money to spend in the draft on that one, but we’d probably be in first place had we not made that deal. But we’re still up there, and should be competitive if we can do decently during the trading season which is now really upon us.

The Pounders have made Furcal available, and someone is going to make that deal. He’s leading the NL in steals, and has been on a tear, but his other numbers are horrible. And he’s now playing hurt. Kevin’s probably dying over Furcal’s .220 BA because even if he was hitting only .260 he’d be way more tradable. But the 4 or 5 points he gives you in SB are probably lost in BA and power points, at least they are for us.

Kevin is asking for top quality keepers for Furcal. We won’t identify who he asked for from us, but they were good names. But that BA with the huge number of AB’s he gets is a killer. See my piece early on here about Ichiro. We’re barely hanging on in BA and we need to go up, not down. I suspect there is someone out there who can afford this, though, because like Podsednik last year, he is unique as a base stealer. But there was a big difference when we traded Pods to Lou last year: he had hit 10 homers, and he was hitting around .260, not .220. AND, he finished with 70 steals last year. Does anyone think Furcal is going to finish with 70 steals?

What is most interesting about Kevin’s offers are that I can’t tell if he’s dumping or playing for this year. He’s looking for good hitting back, but he asked for hitters who all have good contracts for next season. If he’s playing for this year, he’s got to make the deal soon or else he’s going to be too far behind (he may already be there). But if Furcal could put on a little hot streak and get his BA over .250, he’d have a lot more buyers. He spent $30 on Furcal, and based on his performance, it was too much. But he is on course for 50-60 steals, which is a real number, particularly in the NL. It’s easy to be an expert with hindsight. I will say I thought $30 was a decent price for Furcal when Kevin bought him. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.