Results tagged ‘ Pablo Sandoval ’

A Game Within A Game

When Mark DeRosa’s bunt rolled past the yellow-lined target a few yards from home plate, he huffed out of the batting cage to a hail of trash talk.
“They didn’t bring me over here to bunt!” he shot back, laughing.
DeRosa was competing in the team bunting contest this afternoon, a little competition that served mostly as an opportunity to try out new insults on each other.
There were two teams: Starting pitchers vs. position players. Five players on each team. Closer Brian Wilson boycotted the whole thing, watching from a good distance with his arms crossed..
“Not worth watching if there are no relievers,” he said.
DeRosa was joined by Kevin Frandsen, Andres Torres, Pablo Sandoval and Eugenio Velez. Freddy Sanchez was offering tips to his fellow position players.
“You want to hit it right here,” Sanchez said to DeRosa and Sandoval, pointing to the fattest part of the bat. “Right here.”
By the end of the first round -the vague rules were devised and enforced by third-base coach Tim Flannery – DeRosa and Sandoval were out as were most of the pitchers. 
“You got to use ash!” Sanchez was now advising Frandsen and Torres. “Maple’s too hard.”
By the end, Frandsen was the last man standing. Not sure what he won, other than the lasting respect of Freddy Sanchez.

The Clubbies Speak

So I showed up in the clubhouse this morning after being away for almost a month. I stopped in the players’ dining room to get my morning cup of coffee. Three of the “clubbies” – the men who take care of the players’ uniforms, food, equipment, everything — were cleaning up from breakfast.
I asked how spring camp was going so far. 
“Best in a long time,” one said. All three clubbies had been around for many years.
“This team,” he said, “something special about them.”
“Don’t you think that every spring?” I asked.
“I haven’t seen this since 2002,” he said.
All three talked about a sense of maturity and confidence they saw in clubhouse. The young guys who came up together in the minor-leagues – Lincecum, Cain, Romo, Sandoval, etc. – had now had time to mesh as big-leaguers. And among the biggest stars, there was no jockeying for power, no ego-driven attempts to establish their importance. 
“Do you know which player has been with the Giants longest?” one clubbie asked me.
I thought about it. No Randy Winn. No Rich Aurilia. Barry Zito?
“Matt Cain,” he said. “Four-and-a-half years.”
I wondered what that meant for a club — to have an entire roster of guys who were fairly new to the team. In the clubhouse, Aubrey Huff was sitting in front of his locker after workouts, reading a magazine. Did he, as a veteran player new to the Giants this spring, think the relative newness of the players have an impact on team chemistry?
“I think so,” he said. “I’ve been on teams where you walk into a clubhouse and it just doesn’t feel right. I walked in here and everyone’s ragging on each other. Everybody here seems to dish it out. And everybody takes it.”
In other words, everyone seems on pretty much equal footing. 
“You look at a guy like Lincecum,” Huff said. “He doesn’t have that ‘I’m in the paper everyday’ attitude. There are a lot of guys who are self-promoters, but he hasn’t let anything go to his head. So that sets a tone right there.
“I’m a big believer in chemistry. Sure, you can spend $300 million and probably win. But for most teams, chemistry is one of the things you have to have in order to win.”
That’s the buzz from here. Yes, it’s spring. All this optimism might be nothing more than a byproduct of 82-degree weather and a 14-6 record. 
But when the clubbies are waxing poetic, you can’t help but wonder.

A Glimpse of Spring

If you can’t make it to Scottsdale this year, set your DVR to Comcast SportsNet Bay Area at 4 p.m. Saturday afternoon. (See other times and dates below.)
You’ll get an hour of spring ball like you have never seen it. 
“Inside the Clubhouse: Spring Training 2010 Part 1” takes you into the clubhouse in Scottsdale, where the cameras first follow longtime clubhouse manager Mike Murphy  (and his dog, Bella) as he dotes on the players like a favorite uncle. 
“Everybody’s here early,” he says on the first day of camp. “First time I’ve seen that in a long time.”
You’ll hear from Bengie Molina about how much it means to him to be back with the Giants after an uncertain off-season. New players Mark DeRosa and Aubrey Huff weigh in on their expectations for the 2010 club. You’ll see Manny Burriss and top prospects Thomas Neal and Darren Ford hold hands in prayer before digging into breakfast at their favorite spot, Lo-Lo’s Chicken and Waffles. 
The cameras also followed Tim Lincecum on the day in November he found out he had won a second consecutive Cy Young, and they follow him to New York for the awards ceremony in January. 
And you also get to see Pablo Sandoval’s famous hike to the top of Camelback Mountain during Operation Panda.
Tune in. It’s an insider’s experience of the sights and sounds of Giants baseball in the desert (plus Tim and his Cy Young).
Air dates on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area:
Sunday March 21 @ 5 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.; Tuesday March 23 @ 6:30 p.m.; Friday March 26 @ 1:30 a.m..
Then look for the debut of “Spring Training 2010: Part II” on Tuesday March 30 at 6:30 p.m.

Day One

Day One : Those were the words at the top of today’s workout schedule, posted on the bulletin board outside the Giants’ clubhouse.
Today was the first day that the full team worked out together. There was a closed-door team meeting at 10:30 this morning. It had been scheduled to start at 10, with workouts beginning at 10:30. But the field was covered with frost, so everything was pushed back to allow the sun time to warm up the grass. 
A few notes from the clubhouse:
  • Jeremy Affeldt will be starting a video blog called The Set-Up on the Giants’ website. He’s one of the funniest guys in baseball. Check out his video on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area from earlier this week. You’ll get a taste for what his vlog will be like when it starts sometime next month.
  • Affeldt is a big believer in chemistry on a team. He says chemistry was the key to Colorado reaching the World Series when he played there in 2007 “This team is as close to Colorado as I’ve been on. We have a lot of fun together. Lots of inside jokes.” He said it helps the team’s chemistry when the main star of the team, Tim Lincecum, is a good guy. “It’s like Matt Holliday in Colorado. He was a good family man. Really humble. You always see Lincecum signing autographs. He has so much fun when he plays. Timmy brings that dynamic. He reminds you that the game is supposed to be fun.” 
  • Thomas Neal, the 22-year-old minor-leaguer, is here in his first major-league camp. But he is very familiar to manager Bruce Bochy. Neal played with Bochy’s son on a traveling team in Poway, in Southern California. The two young men are still good friends, and Neal has spent many an afternoon and evening at the Bochy home.  ”(Bochy’s wife) and my mom are pretty good friends,” Neal says. 
  • Neal has another major-league connection: He went to his high school prom with Tony Gwynn’s daughter. 
  • On a day-to-day basis, no one – other than perhaps Pablo Sandoval – is happier in the clubhouse than reliever Sergio Romo. He couldn’t wait to get to camp and back on the field. “I have such an appreciation of where I’m at,” he said. “I do enjoy what I do.” He said he feels invincible when he stares in at a batter. When I’m out on the mound, it’s the only place I’m not 5 feet 10.”

The Giants – Back Together Again

Outside in the light drizzle, before they went on stage, the Giants players threw their arms around each other like brothers at a reunion. Many hadn’t seen each other since the 2009 season ended in October. Now they were together on Thursday night at the Delancey Street Theater in San Francisco for the first-ever “town hall meeting” for about 400 season-ticket holders who had won the chance to attend. 
The guys caught up on each other’s news. Alex Hinshaw and Matt Cain married their longtime sweethearts. John Bowker got a “puggle,” half pug and half beagle, named Scout. Brian Wilson went to Australia with Brad Penny. Brandon Medders had Halloween and New Year’s Eve gigs with his band in Tuscaloosa. Alabama. Manny Burriss, rehabbing from his foot injury, spent time going to hockey and basketball games with his five-year-old son, Jamari. Kevin Frandsen, after playing winter ball, served as a groomsman at Hinshaw’s December wedding in Oregon.
Inside the theater, when the players had filed in and filled the first two rows of seats, Mike Krukow got everyone standing – fans and players alike – for a rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”
“Nice goin’!” he said after the final note. “It’s officially baseball season!”
Krukow and Duane Kuiper hosted the event, calling the players up to the stage in small groups by position. It was a rare opportunity to see and hear the players off the field and thus get a sense of who they are as men. General manager Brian Sabean watched from the back of the theater, among the standing-room-only crowd. He had planned to stay for just a few minutes. But, as he told his players at a team meeting the following morning at AT&T Park, the event “was so compelling I stayed for the whole thing.”
“I was very impressed with last night,” he told them. “In listening to everything you had to say, three themes emerged: You are humble. You are respectful. And you have passion. This team is in a great frame of mind going into the season.”
The two-hour event will air on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area on Feb. 16 at  6:30 p.m. Here are some snippets:
? Jeremy Affeldt emerged, as he always does in these things, as a natural entertainer. He got everyone laughing with pointed barbs at manager Bruce Bochy for making him pitch to a guy “who hit about .900” off him. When, a few minutes later, Kuiper asked the relievers to name their all-time favorite player,  Affeldt deadpanned, “Bruce Bochy.” (The next morning at the team meeting, Bochy said he was ready to name his Opening Day pitcher: Jeremy Affeldt.)
? Asked what position he would play if he got to choose, Pablo Sandoval didn’t hesitate. “Hitting!”
? Sergio Romo showed off the T-shirt he had bought earlier in the day. It was pure Sergio who, besides Pablo, is the most playful guy on the team. The design on the front of the shirt lit up whenever he talked, which meant – as his teammates will tell you – it blazed all night.
? Dan Runzler, who played at every minor-league level last year before making it to San Francisco in September, was asked what it was like to pitch to players he had only seen on TV. “I was in more shock going into the locker room (of the Giants),” he said. “I had never been to a major-league spring training, so I was completely star-struck.” 
? When the pitchers were asked when they knew they wanted to be pitchers, Runzler said,  ”I knew I wanted to be a pitcher when they took the bat out of my hands and told me to pitch.”
? New second baseman Mark DeRosa made an impression with his down-to-earth style. “To me,” he said, “it’s all about trying to win championships. When you have a starting rotation like we have, and a bullpen and closer like we have, we’ve got a great chance.”
? Tim Lincecum, the one player to prompt a standing ovation, was asked what he could do to top his accomplishment of winning two Cy Young Awards in two years: “Hit a home run for the first time in my life.”
? Barry Zito was asked what musician he’d like to jam with. Because he’s been into drums lately, he said, he would choose drummer Carter Beauford of the Dave Matthews Band.
See you tomorrow at FanFest!
Shots from the Town Hall Meeting:
Brandon Medders and Tim Lincecum
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Players calling lucky Season Ticketholders today from the front office at AT&T Park:
Jeremy Affledt:
 

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Mark DeRosa:

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Buster Posey:
 

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Sergio Romo:

Sergio.jpg
 
Eli Whiteside:

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Brandon Medders:

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Flying Panda

A quick post to show some photos of Pablo Sandoval in Venezuela Friday for the big Caracas v. Magallanes championship game.
As you probably know, Pablo flew from the Sharks game in San Jose on Thursday night (view video) to Miami, then to Caracas, where a helicopter was waiting. It flew him to Valencia, then Pablo was whisked to the ballpark with a police escort. 
And all of it was shown live on national television. 
“I didn’t have permission but I talked to (Brian Sabean) when I was in Miami, and they said yes, but only as DH,” Sandoval told an MLB reporter in Venezuela. He went 1-for-4.
“A Caracas-Magallanes game is something else. You feel like your heart is going to come right out of your mouth,” Sandoval had told reporters earlier.
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Pablo and Friends

The latest “Inside the Clubhouse” episode just taped here at AT&T. The star – no surprise- was Pablo Sandoval, who shared the stage with Nate Scheirholtz, batting coach Bam-Bam Meulens, trainer Dave Groeschner and host Greg Papa. 
Pablo, as you know, is one of those guys who are born to live in the spotlight. As he said when an audience member asked if he set goals for each season, “I just go play and have some fun.”
He did, however, reveal one goal for 2010. Having lost around 12 pounds so far in the off-season, he wants to steal more bases. So when Greg Papa joked about going for 20-20 (home runs and stolen bases), Pablo nodded.
“That’s my one goal,” he said. “I told Groesch. Twenty-twenty.”
I asked him afterward if he was serious. “Yeah, I think I can do it,” he said.
He confirmed that he had gained just a pound during his time in Venezuela playing winter ball and eating his mother’s cooking. 
“One pound, and it’s muscle!” he said.
He also returned to the states with a new look – a Mohawk. He joked with Groeschner on stage that he ought to get one, too.
“Take us to the World Series,” Groeschner said, “and I’ll do it.”
When Meulens talked about getting players to be more patient at the plate, he clarified that he was basically leaving Pablo alone. “I’d be crazy to mess with him,” Meulens said. But Pablo said that wasn’t true. 
“This year I’m going to be different,” Pablo said. “I’m going to be more patient. I’ve been working on it in winter ball with Bam-Bam.”
The result? He hit .395 in the regular season and .477 in the playoffs. 
“I want to narrow his zone,” Meulens said, “but I don’t want to take away his aggressiveness.”
Schierholtz also is making a big change at the plate: He is wearing batting gloves for the first time in his life.
“I never used them growing up,” he said. “Just grabbed a little dirt and go. But in Puerto Rico (in winter ball), I had 75 at-bats with gloves. I’m getting used to them slowly. I’ve gone through a lot of different brands to get the ones I want.”
He’s also been working on recognizing pitchers more successfully and working within his own strike zone. He hopes it will produce more home runs. 
“I have more power than what I’ve shown,” he said.
When asked if he had superstitions, Nate said he eats the same thing every day if he’s on a streak. 
“Cheetos,” he said, smiling, “have a lot of hits in them.”
Pablo, sitting next to Nate, smiled and raised his eyebrow, stealing a glance at his trainer.
“There are a lot of hits in bananas, too,” Groeschner said.
Photos from Inside the Clubhouse:
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 Greg Papa, Pablo Sandoval, Dave Grosechner

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Greg Papa, Nate Schierholtz, Pablo Sandoval, Hensley Muelens, Dave Groeschner
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Winter League Lessons

I phoned Giants player personnel
director Bobby Evans this week – he’s back east with his family
for the holidays — to talk about the fall league and winter ball. I
wanted to know what he learns about his players when he looks at
their stats from these brief seasons in far-flung places.

“For most of the players, it’s a
development opportunity,” Evans said. “These are not rec
leagues. They’re competitive, spirited, driven programs. You
succeed or you come home. The pressure is high and the stakes are
high.

“As hard as it is for young Latin
players to come to the U.S. and succeed, that’s what it’s like
for American players to go into competitive winter ball leagues.”

Nate Schierholtz, for example, hit .324
in Puerto Rico after a frustrating regular season that saw him
sidelined for a stretch with a strained hip. Winter ball “was a
strong development opportunity for Nate and shows how tough he is,”
Evans said.

Kevin Frandsen also did well in the
Puerto Rican league, hitting .337. “He’ll compete to be one of
the utility guys on the big league club,” Evans said. “He was
healthy all year and showed what kind of player he’s capable of
being. Just like Nate, by doing well in Puerto Rico, it turns heads.
Helps people see, ‘Hey, I’m not slowing down. I’m going to do
everything I can to compete.’ ”

For Brett Pill, the young first-baseman
who had a breakout 2009 season in the minors, the winter league in
Venezuela was a confidence boost. He batted .329 with a .411 on-base
percentage.

“When you’re playing alongside
major-league players you’ve only seen on SportsCenter, and you’re
doing well, it’s an eye-opener. You’re thinking, ‘I can compete
with these guys.’ It’s going to help him approach the next level
- his first major-league spring training — with a lot more
confidence.”

Evans puts less stock in the
performances in the Arizona fall league, where Brandon Crawford and
Buster Posey played.

“You can’t read too much into
whether you were successful or unsuccessful because you get such
limited at-bats,” Evans said.

Crawford hit .312 and Posey .225.

“As much as he might have struggled
offensively,” Evans said of Posey, “he showed a respectable
on-base percentage (.324). It was a long year for him between
big-league camp, five months in the minor leagues in two different
places followed by a September call-up and fall league. Not question
there was strain on him.’

Evans said Crawford, whose impressive
performance in Single A early on in 2009 seemed almost effortless, is
expected to start the season in Double A “and see where the season
takes him. What we’ve seen in him is a sense of passion. He’s
driven.”

No word yet on whether Pablo Sandoval
has been successful in maintaining his weight-loss from his Operation
Panda conditioning camp. He hit .395 in Venezuela, his home country.
The Giants expect to see Sandoval back in San Francisco in a couple
weeks.

John Bowker’s winter-league season
was cut short by a quadriceps strain. (He played in just three
games.) He’s been receiving treatment in San Francisco and is
expected to be ready for spring training.

Have a great New Year. See you in 2010.

From the Horses’ Mouths

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It sure looks weird to see the clubhouse in the off-season. Even filled as it was last night with fans in folding chairs, it was like walking into an abandoned building. There’s a kind of ghostly loneliness about it without players slapping domino tiles on table tops and answering fan mail in front of their lockers and yanking down the bills of their caps as they rush out to take early BP. Is April really still three-and-a-half months away?

The next best thing to the actual baseball season, though, is talking about it.

Up on a temporary stage, erected on the far right of the room near the starting pitchers’ lockers, Giants manager Bruce Bochy was sitting next to general manager Brian Sabean and taking questions from moderator Greg Papa.

“He’s the best all-around player that I’ve ever seen because he can play everywhere,” Bochy was saying. “He has a very similar body type to Tony Gwynn.”

He was talking about Pablo Sandoval, who embarked on a rigorous conditioning and weight-loss program during the off-season, a one-man camp the Giants dubbed “Operation Panda.”

“Obviously,” Sabean cracked, nodding at Bochy and himself, “we haven’t been in the same camp.”

Packed into the room, in rows of chairs bordered by four walls of lockers, were season-ticket holders who had been invited to talk baseball with Bochy, Sabean, managing general partner Bill Neukom and relief pitcher Sergio Romo.

Asked by Papa if two-time Cy Young winner Tim Lincecum’s stuff matches up with the all-time greats, Bochy didn’t hesitate.

“Sure it does. He’s by far the best pitcher I’ve ever seen. When you have four pitches, especially the best or close to the best changeup in baseball right now, he’s up there among the greats. He’s a thinker out there and knows what the opposing team is doing and that’s why he’s won two Cy Young Awards.”

“What’s interesting about him,” Sabean said, “is in college he would throw 140 pitches on a Friday night and then be the closer for his team on Sunday. He’s proved to have a rubber arm and has an inner strength that other people don’t have. He’s fearless and he thinks that on any given day that he’s better than anyone else.”

Perhaps the highlight of the evening was Sergio Romo. He’s a player that fans don’t know very well yet, and last night they got a glimpse of his sense of humor and his boyish excitement for the game – starting with the fact he was texting his mother as he climbed onto the stage to tell he was going to be on television.

“You’re from Brawley, California, near Los Angeles,” Papa said, “so who was your favorite team growing up?”

“No comment,” Romo said, smiling. “Let’s just say I started hating the Dodgers the second I put on a Giants uniform.”

After struggling with injuries last season, he said he’s “very excited for the season to start . . . I miss my number 54 on my back.”

When Papa opened the discussion to questions, one of the first was an update on the Giants’ up and coming players.

“Peguero is a young outfielder that we just placed on our 40-man roster,” Sabean said. “He’s a lot like Sandoval in that he has a lot of energy. Thomas Neal came into his own last year and developed an all-around game. Brandon Crawford is going to be our shortstop of the future. We have a flow of talent that people will be proud of.”

As for the readiness of pitcher Madison Bumgarner and catcher Buster Posey, Bochy said, “I really think that they can start for us next year. Posey is gonna be a front line catcher and he’s on the fast track. Bumgarner did a heck of a job last year when Timmy went down. Here are two tremendous kids that stood out and both held their own. I’m curious to see how Buster looks this spring.”

One fan wanted to know about keeping Lincecum and fellow pitcher Matt Cain as Giants for the long haul.

“Cain has two more years before free agency,” Sabean said, “and Lincecum has four more and is going through arbitration right now. We are in a good situation because they both want to be Giants for a long time.”

Sabean also addressed the decision not to resign veteran pitcher Brad Penny.

“We had a short window and in our estimation we thought we had home court in our situation. We couldn’t bring ourselves to overpay when we have Madison Bumgarner in the wings.”

Still want more? Tune in to a full broadcast of the event on Comcast SportsNet Bay Area on January 15 at 6:30 p.m.

Some shots from the taping:

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Sabean’s Strategy

Giants general manager Brian Sabean is honing a skill not innate to a baseball man who cut his teeth at the New York Yankees.

Patience.

“The market right now is as slow or slower than last year in developing,” he said during a break today from internal strategy meetings in preparation for next week’s winter meetings in Indianapolis.

“Whether teams are still getting their budgets together or what, the free agent market has yet to develop. Players and agents are slow to do anything. It’s a sign of the times.”

Sabean said the Giants last week offered a one-year deal to pitcher Brad Penny, and yesterday offered one year and an option to infielder Juan Uribe. Both offers were declined. “At this time I’m not sure there will be further discussion,” Sabean said. (He said veteran catcher Bengie Molina probably has been offered a multi-year deal by another team, essentially guaranteeing he would not return to the Giants.)

Sabean’s strategy in building the 2010 team boils down to three basic – but difficult — questions:

· How can the Giants maximize the talent they already have?

· What can be accomplished on the free-agent market?

· Are there smart trades to be made – and what homegrown talent is the team willing to give up in order to secure valuable immediate help (such as a bigger bat in the lineup)?

“What we’re doing right now – to get a bat, to figure out the catching situation, everything – is due diligence,” Sabean said.

In other words, there is no magic formula. No shortcuts. No blockbuster, bold-headline quick fixes. Just hours and days and weeks of poring over scouting reports and statistics, working the phones and updating the huge erasable boards with lists of free agents and players likely the trading block, plus evaluating in every possible way the Giants’ own prospects. (Who among them will blossom into big-impact major-leaguers, and when?)

“In a perfect world, you’d love to have (Madison) Bumgarner and (Buster) Posey burst on the scene,” Sabean said. “But you don’t want to rush them. So you keep at it, at the grindstone, and be ready when the best opportunities pop.”

There might be interesting “secondary free agents,” Sabean said, “but maybe that doesn’t make as much sense as giving our own kids a chance. We have to continue to identify what we really have internally and not count on the outside world.”

Sabean mentioned two “burning questions” for the Giants:

· If the Giants don’t get Penny and instead bring up Bumgarner, their top pitching prospect, they will have a particularly young starting rotation. So what do you do about the bullpen? Do you counterbalance that with a more veteran bullpen and, say, bring Bob Howry back?

· What position does Pablo Sandoval play? If he stays at third, what options are available to upgrade the situation at first base outside the organization?

“In the past, we’ve been more aggressive,” Sabean said. “But we’re willing to go at the pace of the marketplace and show more patience. Trades don’t have to be made at the winter meetings. So people shouldn’t read anything into it if nothing happens in Indianapolis. It’s just not a very sexy market at this time.

“But we’ll come home with more information. It’s a fact-finding mission to figure out who matches up with us in terms of free-agent interest. We’ll have a clearer picture of trade scenarios. We’ll find who our partners might be and how we can do business.”

Chat with Giants’ GM Sabean:

Brian Sabean will participate in a live Web chat from the Major League Baseball winter meetings in Indianapolis on Wednesday, December 9 at 1 p.m. PT. Fans are invited to chat with the GM about his goals for the club during the week’s Winter Meetings. To participate in the chat, please register at: 

http://mlb.mlb.com/fan_forum/chat.jsp

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