Does anyone have last night's game still on their DVR? Fourth inning, section 103, Mike Cameron was up, and I actually looked the ball into my glove this time. I doubt I made it on the air, but you never know....

Cain. Sabathia. Crazy Crab bobbleheads. If there were ever a game to attend in person...

Don’t bother looking for it. It’s in there. Trust me. Would I fabricate a quote just to amuse the 2% who think I’m funny? But Billy Faulk is spot on; I loves me some Bumgarner. And I’m just giddy about Tim Alderson, too. When I’m feeling down, I go back and read the open draft thread from 2007. It’s hilarious. Seppuku and the drafting of high-school pitchers: Are your readers safe?

Fast-forward to 2008, and most of us are just giddy about that particular draft. As it turns out, Beau Mills wasn’t the polished, majors-ready beast that a lot of us were hoping he was. The only hitters who probably could have helped the 2009 or 2010 Giants (Matts LaPorta and Wieters) weren’t around. Ben Revere might be up in the next couple of seasons, but ohmahgawd would there have been gale-force moaning from the blognoscenti if the Giants had picked him. Speed, defense, center field, and all that. Our collective heads would have popped like pimples.

The 2010 Giants might need pitching. It’s silly to project rosters two years down the road. In 2006, John Bowker was a .750 OPS guy in the low minors. In 2008, he’s getting a bulk of the at-bats at first, and most of us are just ducky with that. All things being equal, Bumgarner and Alderson might have been the perfect choices for the 2010 or 2011 Giants. Unless you’re sure a player will have a Jim Abbott/Will Clark path to the majors, and unless you’re sure that said player is a special talent, don’t draft for need. The Giants were right to go with (who they thought were) the best players available in the first round. Lesson learned.

So now that I’ve made my peace with the pick., we get this:

The fabled young-pitching-for-hitting maneuver? Could it be? It was only held up as the main reason the Giants drafted pitcher after pitcher in the first rounds of the draft for the past decade. Problems I can see with this scenario, though:

1. Prospect-for-prospect trades never happen. Salomon Torres for Shawn Estes is the only example I can recall, and that was more of a "challenge" trade. My great pitching prospect for your great hitting prospect? Not going to happen.

2. If a hitter is young and a middle-of-the-order hitter already in the majors, it would take a lot more than even Bumgarner and Alderson to get him. Young, middle-of-the-order hitters currently in the majors: Evan Longoria, Nick Markakis, Carlos Quentin, Justin Morneau, to name four. Teams aren’t exactly itching to trade players like these for A-ball pitchers, even if the pitchers in question are exceptional. The teams would hang up the phone the second the names passed Sabean’s lips.

3. Young hitters who will be free agents in two years or less would be bad, bad risks to take. Matt Holliday, I’m looking at you. Adding Holliday to the Giants doesn’t make them contenders any more than it made the 2008 Rockies contenders, and it would probably be a ridiculous package with Sanchezes and Lewii flying between the teams. No thanks.

So it would seem that the Giants should just enjoy the sweet wafting aroma of pitching on tap.

Unless…

…say there’s a team that’s contending with an underproducing middle-of-the-order youngster. They could use a short-term fix in the outfield to help win the division, but they certainly don’t want to just give up on the talent of this player for a stopgap fix. They’d need to get a piece for the future that helps soften the blow of the future potential they’re giving up.

Fred Lewis, Randy Winn, and either Tim Alderson or Madison Bumgarner for Delmon Young and Chris Parmalee. Carlos Gomez goes to the minors for seasoning, the Twins have a new and productive outfield for the stretch run, and they’re still making a trade for the future. The Giants hope that Young becomes the cleanup hitter he was projected to be as the 1st-overall pick.

Grant effigies are on sale in the McCovey Chronicles store for one-stop shop-and-burn convenience.

Jake Esteves.

The scenario: Tie game, seventh inning. Our intrepid skipper calls for…a guy with five innings of MLB experience? A guy who had never even pitched above AA until a couple of weeks ago?

The result: Double, out, home run. The loss is given to the reliever in question.

The analysis: This is probably one of my favorite things about Bruce Bochy.

Managing a bullpen has to be one of the ficklest things in a manager’s job description. The urge to react in a knee-jerk fashion has to be strong. Two consecutive outings with three-run homers? It’d be just so easy to justify an ol’-fashioned banishment. Tyler Walker hasn’t been scored upon in 32 of his 41 outings, but in five of the outings in which he has given up a run, he’s given up several. In one particularly horrid stretch, Walker gave up 11 earned runs in four innings. Yet Bochy kept running him out there in the eighth inning.

Good. I like a manager who isn’t worried about a reliever’s ERA. Walker is striking hitters out, and the rate of home runs he’s allowed is disproportionate to his career average. He’s a perfect example of Bochy’s commitment to non-panic. Unfortunately for the Giants’ deadline trade hopes, Walker’s ERA isn’t going to make him worth a whole lot. But he’s a better pitcher than his ERA would indicate.

The youngsters don’t need long to ingratiate themselves to Bochy, either. After Alex Hinshaw’s debut in a four-run deficit, Bochy started bringing him into closer and closer games. Young relievers are innocent until proven guilty. Again, after ten years of Dusty and four subsequent years of the worst bullpen management I hope to ever see in my lifetime (Felipe Alou), this is beyond refreshing.

Almost every young reliever the Giants have could stand to throw more strikes, but that's why it's nice that they're getting innings. So instead of giving letter grades to every reliever in the bullpen, I’ll just give a solid B+ to how I feel about the future of the bullpen. Hinshaw, Romo, and Matos are getting innings, Wilson is going to be given every chance to be the closer for the next half-decade, and Taschner should be either cheap or tradable for a long time. The promotions might have left the organization a little thin, but Geno Espineli and Justin Hedrick are still in the high minors, and hopefully Merkin Valdez comes back soon. Yabu and Walker are taking the bulk of the high-leverage innings, so the burden isn't entirely on the youth.

If you needed a one-sentence explanation to sum up my overall satisfaction with how the bullpen has been handled, here it is: Scott Munter is back in the organization, but the Giants preferred to bring up promising relievers from AA rather than go down the same unproductive path again when a need came up. If I had the time to photoshop the head of Bruce Bochy on a picture of Gold Five, I would.

I love the All-Star Game, but without Lincecum in the game, I think I'll just play Civilization all night...

Ah, who am I kidding? I still like watching the players I don't get to see that often. Hanley Ramirez, for one, and Joe Mauer for another. I'll watch, and I'll enjoy it.

But those bastard Germans want me to give up the secret of Printing Press for four turns of peace! I can't just ignore their bleating for an entire day. I have an image to uphold, and pikemen to build.

But I also like that the AL starter's name sounds like an adverb.

"Cliffly, he walked through the camel tent with his shoes off..."

And Brian Wilson is fun to watch, even if we all know that Giants pitchers give up grand slams to Fred Lynn and 550-ft. homers to Bo Jackson, or they bean Edgar Martinez in the noggin. I'll predict that Wilson allows at least two baserunners, but he ultimately holds the lead.

Verdict: I'm a watching, and I'll enjoy it.

Back in the day, I mused that an average offense might be enough for the Giants to be successful. It was a theory akin to "discovery of cold fusion could improve the economy"; it’s a perfect blueprint if you ignore that it’s impossible.

Five of the eight players with the most at-bats on the roster this season, however, have an OPS+ that is at or better than the league average. Two of the eight are above 90+. The offense isn’t as bad as expected, and yet the team is still far below .500. Does that mean the pitching hasn’t been as good as advertised?

Not really. Just because a handful of hitters are right around the league average, it doesn’t mean they’ll make up for the pile of wretched hitters who haven’t had as many at-bats. The Vizcock combo has been the equivalent to an extra pitcher in the lineup, and the other reserves (with the exception of 37 at-bats from Travis Denker and three from Ivan Ochoa) have been WILL YOU SHUT UP THAT DAMNED JACKHAMMER UP? JUST SHUT IT THE HELL UP! JACKHAMMER OUTSIDE OF MY OFFICE SOME OTHER DAY. DON’T YOU KNOW THAT I’M WRITING AN EXTREMELY POPULAR GIANTS BLOG AND MY FANS COUNT ON MY STELLAR WIT AND ANALYSIS AS IF IT WERE RHETORICAL INSULIN? HAVE SOME RESPECT! quite awful. This is just an ineffective offense when all of the parts are added together, and that’s the main reason why they have one of the worst records in the league

So keeping that in mind, it’s time to grade the pitchers. Note again that the grades have nothing to do with how the pitchers are doing compared to the rest of the league. They’re grades given relative to my own preseason expectations.

Starters                

Tim Lincecum – A

Matt Cain – B-

Jonathan Sanchez – A+

Barry Zito – D

Kevin Correia – D-

Lincecum was supposed to be good, but I wasn’t expecting him to be one of the best pitchers in the game quite yet. Cain has been inconsistent, but I half-expected as much. The difference between a ‘B-‘ and a ‘C’ is that his strikeout rate moved from above-average to one of the best in the league in the second half of last season, and I didn’t think he’d keep those gains.

I would have pegged Sanchez for an ERA in the high-4s or low-5s, with enough good starts to give hope for the future. Instead, he’s been better than Cain, and his starts are almost as fun to watch as Lincecum’s. I’m glad he wasn’t traded for Edwin Encarnacion, even though I would have jumped on that trade in December.

All I wanted from Zito was an ERA around 4.50. I thought his second-half performance from last season portended good things. I was wrong. The bar was a foot off the floor, but Zito does a mean limbo, apparently.

Correia has been the most disappointing starter, even after taking Zito into account. Since coming back from injury, Correia has sniffed a decent start just once. Zito was supposed to be the ace once upon a time, and Correia is just a fifth starter, but that’s a pre-4/3 mindset. The post-4/3 mindset might be unfair, but we expect more from our young pitchers than we do our erstwhile ace.

As always, constructive criticism is welcome in theory and ignored in practice, so have at it. This was longer than I expected, TWSS, so I'll do a relief post another time, if at all.

The preseason question that everyone was asking was along the lines of this:

The answer, invariably, would be something like this:

Other than the indefatigable Lou Seal and the non-indefatigableness of Barry Zito, it’s amazing at how much of a success this season has been in Theoryland. Not one, but two position players have looked like they deserve to be a part of the rebuilding process. Two of the wretched veterans from last season, Rich Aurilia and Ray Durham, look like players that other teams would actually want. Tim Lincecum is already one of the best pitchers in the game, Jonathan Sanchez has been very impressive, and, Matt Cain kept the gains in his strikeout rate from the end of 2007. Madison Bumgarner and Tim Alderson are establishing themselves as two of the best pitching prospects in the game.

And yet, this team still makes me want to punch myself in the face. Note to self: Modest expectations don’t make a difference to the face-punching quotient.

The grades below, though, are relative to preseason expectations. The Giants don’t get an A+ for their first basemen compared to the rest of the league or division. Not even close. But considering that the Giants didn’t appear to have anyone in the organization who could hit enough to be a first baseman for the St. Paul Saints, the mini-emergence of Bowker and the resurgence of Aurilia might be the most amazing things to happen to the team this season.

Today, the position players. Tomorrow, the pitchers. Wednesday, the world.

Catcher

Molina, on average, has been exactly what we expected: a guy who could help a good team by hitting a little bit from the catcher’s position. As a clean-up hitter, he’s one of the most unfortunate bullet points on Brian Sabean’s resume. The hot start was replaced with a brutal slump, otherwise this grade would have been higher.

Grade: C

1B

See above for a more detailed explanation, but Bowker’s success is impressive because he adjusted to the league’s initial adjustment to him. If he enters 2009 as the starting first baseman, I’ll be happy. That isn’t something I expected to say about anyone in the organization as of February.

Grade: A+

2B

Durham bounced back amazingly, but the grade is dropped because of Kevin Frandsen’s injury and Eugenio Velez’s eugeniosity. This was one position that I would hoping would be a non-issue for 2009, and that’s not the case.

Grade: B-

SS

Hey, if there are imaginary numbers, are there imaginary letters that scientists can develop to give a grade for the shortstops? The Giants received an ampersand/(f-) offensive performance from two of their shortstops, and that's being extremely generous. No one expected any offense from the shortstop position, but the Mendoza Line would have been nice. Emmanuel Burriss and the collective defensive performance makes it possible to forego the controversy and give a real letter for a grade.

Grade: F+

3B

I forgot Jose Castillo existed when I posted this an hour ago. I guess that's better than him being unspeakably awful, which is what I expected from third this year.

Grade: Ehhhh +

OF

Fred Lewis has been one of the team’s best offensive players, Aaron Rowand has been productive (though streaky), and Randy Winn is Randy Winn is Randy Winn. According to the stats, they’ve been the best defensive troika in the league to this point. It all adds up to a solid ‘B+’, but the fact that Lewis is getting the at-bats in the first place makes the grade…

Grade: A-

Comment starter: So, like, how stupid are these grades? Oh, yeah? Then put your money where your fingers are, and give out your own grades, smart guy.

Hint: It uses some of the same chords found in Daydream Believer.