I've been a Giants fan my whole life, and not the sissy Giants fans that started coming to the ballpark when Pac Bell opened in 2000. No, I was there at CandleStick since the mid 80's when I was a toddler. The days of Will Clark, Matt Williams, Kruk, Darrin Lewis, Glen Allen Hill, etc.... What Giants fans fail in life in general is that they still stick up for Barry Bonds. I was watching the news the other night, and they interviewed fans from the city, and they asked if Bonds was being singled out? Their responses were, "why don't they try other baseball players for steroids and send them to prison?" Well, last I checked dumb asses, no one has been caught lying to the FEDERAL GRAND JURY! God these fans are such pussies and have no idea what it's like to be a true, CandleStick Giants fan when our GM Brian Sabian didn't **** up our orginiztation with a bunch of gay stupid trades. What I'm trying to get to is, most, but not ALL of San Francisco Giants fans suck. I consider myself to be a true fan, and I just felt like pointing that out.

/rant

so you mean to say that getting A.J. Pierzynski for Liriano, Bonser and Nathan was a bad trade? and you call yourself a die hard fan...pshaw...SW

Being a Dodgers fan living in Giants country, I will have to say that I whole heartedly agree with this post/thread. Heh I actually follow the Giants closer then most Giants fans do since I'm a baseball nut (and obv know thy enemy ), and I would agree that as of late the Giants fan base has become less knowledgable/more casual. I think it was just the influx of fans for the ball park and Bonds that dilluted the fan talent pool so to speak.

At Candlestick the fans were more of the die hard variety, and even as a little kid I was intimidated by all the drunk losers there. Now, I pretty much have no problem going into Pac Bell/SBC/Dodgers Stadium North or whatever it is now, because over all the fans are pretty vanilla. It's also doesn't hurt that the Dodgers pretty much have made it their home away from home (opening it with a sweep, winning 11/13 or whatever it is currently).

I agree though that the whole attitude towards Bonds over the years makes Giants fans look stupid, as well as the Bay Area in general. I said for 5 years + that the Giants would never win a WS with Barry on the roster, so for your guy's sake hopefully you can rebuild now that he is gone. You have great young pitching (which scares me since I was hoping the organization would never realize that pitching wins championships), and if Sabean doesn't f things up (50/50), one would think you can become competitive in the division again. As much as I enjoy watching the Giants suck and their fans suffer, it really takes away from the rivalry.

We have our own problems though now that Ned Colletti/Bernie Lomack runs our front office. I really can't bring myself to trust someone that was mentored under Sabean....

This is all true. I ran into a bunch of Giants fans today and they were saying we should trade Lincecum for hitters, bringing back Bonds, Sabean is good. Most Giants fans are of this nature, UGH I hate it!

I tend to respect your opinions, but this is the kind of sentiment that makes no sense to me. Barry Bonds was probably the greatest baseball player of all time. They almost won a World Series, and he CARRIED them. He was singlehandedly responsible for like 13 wins a year OVER HIS ENTIRE CAREER. The fact that Bonds didn't win a World Series means absolutely nothing about his ability as an MLB player. It just so happens his teams never won a WS.

Wang

What's wrong with this?



























(sw)

FYP

I'm willing to bet steroids has a far, far lesser impact that the average baseball fan thinks it does. It's probably minimal. There's a good website that tackles the steroid question objectively, and comes to some pretty dismissive conclusions.

Lemme see if I can find it.


Wang

When you examine the physical progression and the statistical progression, it suggests that steroids are what made Barry Bonds "Barry Bonds" and not 'just another' Ken Griffey Jr.

There is no question that they had a massive impact on his strength and thus, ability to hit the longball.
There's no way to prove it, but if we had the magical "God Hypothetical Camera" and could see what Ken Griffey Jr. would've been if he had taken a similar course with steroids, I'd bet that Steroid-Gorilla Griffey would've been better than Steroid-Gorilla Bonds- and this is the exact problem we run into whenever roids are tossed into the equation.

It has nothing to do with Bonds abilities (or lack of), but with how the Giants payroll and team was structured around him. I'm not someone that puts too much stock in team chemistry, but there is definitely a case to be made that he disrupted his team over the last few years of his tenure there, mostly once all the steroids talk started.

Mainly though, I felt that Sabean's model of bringing in mid priced verterans to fill holes around one superstar every year was flawed and wouldn't work with what they were willing to spend on payroll. Not to say Barry was incapable of winning a title as the featured player on a team (although he never did, you can't put that all on him), I was more saying that Barry and the SF Giants would never win a WS together. The Giants continually sacrificed the future to get more HRs (and revenue) out of Bonds; not only by trading young players, but also by losing draft picks for veteran FAs they sign.

I agree with you though that Barry is possibly the best of all time. 'Possibly' is as far as I can bring myself though as a Dodgers fan.

On a side note, off the top of my head, it's hard to even think of the last WS team to win that had the consensus 'best' player in the game.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/bondsba01.php

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/dt/griffke02.php


Griffey was awesome, but even if we look at their respective careers before the age of 34 (around when Bonds started juicing), it's still not really close. Look at those WARP 3 numbers. Bonds blows Griffey away WELL BEFORE there was any steroid use. Bonds's OBP was well over .400 ever year, while Griffey rarely did. And other geek stuff I won't get into. Suffice it to say, it's not really all that close.


Wang

This is pretty much spot on. It really is a shame (well not really as a Dodger fan), that they f'd up the Bonds era so much. And it seems like everyone knew it as it was happening... but Sabean still has a job?????

You can make an argument for Pujols with the Cardinals in '06 as the "consensus" best player in the game. Close enough for my tastes.

Sabean was/is a terrible GM, but as long as you're not suggesting it's:

a) in any way Barry Bonds fault that the Giants did not win the World Series

Barry Bonds would somehow make a team that has him LESS likely to win the World Series

then we're okay. As long as you're not even hinting at either of those two things. Yes, Sabean is retarded. Yes, he threw money at turds like Aurilia and Vizquel and I don't even KNOW who else, but that has nothing to do with Barry Bonds. Even if Barry Bonds DEMANDED Sabean do that -- throw money at overpriced mid-level free-agents -- it still wouldn't be Barry's fault.


Wang

Heh, nope I'm not saying it's Barry's fault. He was a beast that year, and pretty much every year he played there. I was constantly worried about when he was due up next vs the Dodgers, what the situation might be, etc. For a few years, every time a Dodgers pitcher threw anything even remotely close to the strike zone vs him, I cringed (although he did hit relatively poor by his standards at Dodger Stadium).

I would say he got close to the max out of Sabean's system, and if it wasn't for Dusty Baker, would probably have gotten a ring as well.

However, it entirely was his fault the Pirates never got/won a WS.

me likes this trade.

p.s. AJ is a prick

1) You assrimming faggot, actually cornering me into doing math here.
2) That baseball prospectus site is awesome

To get a snapshot of an "unjuiced" Bonds versus Griffey, lets start out with the quantitative stuff and compare some key offensive stats yielded for either player from ten seasons from the ages of 21-30/31, (since the Bonds/Juice thing seems to have occurred somewhere around 34 (?) and Griffey started playing when he was 19 compared to Bonds 21)

Bonds/Griffey- 21 Years Old to 30/31 Years Old (comprising 10 seasons)
OBA:

Bonds- .396
Griffey- .385

Bonds + .11

HR:

Bonds- 292
Griffey- 400 (lol)

Griffey + 108 home runs (this includes one season where he only played 60'ish games due to injury)

Slugging:

Bonds- .542
Griffey- .585

+ Griffey .43

Bonds was a better base stealer than Griff, so I won't bother doing that math. Big edge to Bonds in SB's during this time frame. One thing I just noticed- which I'm sure someone else has noticed before but I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere- is that Bonds SB tally seemed to dramatically tail off right at the same time he started hitting for insane power. Unlike other players where speed and power tend to be roughly correlated, Bonds seemed to get drastically "stronger" but markedly "slower", going from averaging about 35 SB/Season up until he was about 33, then, at 35 and 36 years old he hit 49 and 73 HR, but only swiped a mere 11 and 13 bases respectively. This is hugely indicative of him going from a lean, wiry player with classic baseball speed and power to a bulkier and slower, pure power roidmonkey, as evidenced in those pictures.

Qualitative stuff:

Griffeys career (and totals) have been gutted by injuries. While I think that trying to argue "what could have been" in a statistics debate with a frequently injured player is nothing more than conjecture and usually fanboy bullshit (of which I am a KG fanboy), it's a pertinent fact here given that muscle mass and strength is a key contributor to remaining injury free. Had Griffey been a roidmonkey, its entirely possible that his "lost seasons" of 95, 02, 03 and 04- the latter three being what should have been the apex of his career- might have been not only statistically par with his past years, but substantially higher. Furthermore, while Griffeys abilities tapered off with age, as is expected with a normal human athletic performance cycle, so much of Bonds 'extreme performance' came after he was juiced and during years when a players abilities should naturally be on the decline. He effectively took years of his career that for an unjuiced player would've been spent diminishing and, as a result of better baseball through chemistry, made those years into his absolute peak. There's no question that steroids were the sole reason for this and likely the chief reason he broke the SSHR and ATHR records.

I was 1000% wrong about Randy Johnson. I'm probably 30%-35% correct on this one.

I will have a response to this at some point today. You make some reasonable points, but they ignore some key aspects of Griffey's Jr. and Bonds's careers.

Since WARP (Wins above replacement level) uses defensive metrics (including FRAR, which has come under some criticism recently), I'll direct you to a purely offensive statistic. RunsCreated per 27 Outs. How many runs per game would a team of JUST this player score?

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=OF

http://www.fangraphs.com/statss.aspx?playe...amp;position=OF


I linked to Griffey's and Bonds's pages on fangraphs (an awesome website with some really good content, especially on the main page. I spend a half hour/day there checking out pitching matchups so I can lose money gambling). The number I'm referring to is RC/27, which can be found in the "advanced" chart. Bonds starts slower, but in 1992 he puts up an 11+, and never looks back. Of course, that's his year 28 season, and statistically, should be the beginning of his prime.

I'm hoping to track down that steroids webpage so I can link it, because I know so very little about steroids, and don't want to say something without knowing it's, you know, kinda trueish.


Wang

The thing with Bonds that the steroids did not change, was his bat speed. He has always had the fastest bat in the game. The steroids gave him not only the power to hit bad pitches further, but the muscle regeneration to prolong his career. How many extra HR's did he hit because of roids or THG, who knows. Was it 10 or 100?

Shit, I had some other points and just lost my train of thought because I got interrupted. I'll try and remember.

This is true except that the Giants would have won a World Series if not for one bullpen meltdown against the Angels.

And I agree 100% with Wang about Bonds. Steroids did not help him put the fat part of the bat on the fat part of the ball over and over. And that was his greatest skill....the guy hit the ball hard every time.

dvanced statistics were invented so Asians could enjoy team sports.
I don't understand them well enough to argue the results one way or the other.

How I wish I were Asian...

Advanced statistics were created so baseball could be more thoroughly and objectively quantified, to eliminate the subjective, old-time-mythological analysis that is so prevalent in the game I love.

OKI remember what I was going to point out. Look into comments that Mike Schmidt has made regarding steroids and smaller ballparks. He is bitter that he was not in that era. He is kind of a douchebag about it, but I also agree with him. He said every year he hit between 5-20 warning track shots and that if he had played in the smaller parks or used steroids he would have averaged 50+ HR's for his career.

I think it is an interesting take, that those warning track shots would have been HR's in the smaller parks, or with a little extra power would have gotten out.

Steroids helped the ball leave the outfield.

Schmidt is one of my all time faves and he is 100% correct, however, it's relative.
How many would Aaron have hit, or Ruth, or Mays under the modified circumstances? Plenty more too...
Basically, all the "old guys" have a legitimate gripe, but complaining about parks is kind of like 1970's era professional bowlers or golfers bitching about the advances in equipment that changed the game and drastically increased performance. There's no going back; all you can really do is know that the purists acknowledge the difference.

I blame the guy with wrist bands. Giving the game ball to Ortiz on the mound, overusing Nenn (granted this off memory, I'd have to look at his workload that year to be sure) so he was unavailable at that point, starting Livan in game 7, etc. I can't even recall what scrubs he pitched that the Angels lit up, but I'm reasonably sure one was Tim Worrell. Anyone that puts trust in a Worrell deserves to lose.

Also, **** the Marlins until Sunday IMO.

This site kicks ass.

If anybody wants, I'll link you guys to all my daily baseball reading. I just use an iGoogle homepage, and click to my heart's content for 3 hours each morning/afternoon. Some of it is analysis, and some is a little lighter, but all of it is really good.

::raises hand::

1) Fangraphs

http://www.fangraphs.com

These guys are awesome nerds, and the site has mini-articles written and posted more than daily. Their stats collections are near peerless.


2) USS Mariner

http://www.ussmariner.com

A Mariners fan site. I read it daily even though I'm not a Mariners fan because these guys are shockingly good. Just fantastic. Dave Cameron also contributes to fangraphs.


3) MLB Trade Rumors

http://www.mlbtraderumors.com

Exactly what it sounds like.


4) Joe Posnanski

http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/

Joe writes for the KC Star, and started a blog to promote his Buck O'Neill Buck "The Soul of Baseball." He kept writing it. He's a fantastic writer.


5) Fire Joe Morgan

http://www.firejoemorgan.com/

Comedy writers and baseball fans send-up bad journalism. I hate bad logic, and these guys do, too, so: yay!


6) The Baseball Analysts

http://baseballanalysts.com/

Rich Lederer and friends analyze baseball. Like everyone on this list, these guys have a very rational, reasonable, SABRmetric bent. Good stuff.


7) The Hardball Times

http://hardballtimes.com/

Lots of content.


9) Rob Neyer

http://sports.espn.go.com/keyword/search?s...tring=neyer_rob

The man himself. The only problem is, lots/most of his ESPN stuff is ESPN-Insider only, which is subscription-based.


10) Shysterball

http://shysterball.blogspot.com/

Craig Calcaterra's take on baseball action. Lighter, less analytical, but still insightful.



11) Sabernomics

http://www.sabernomics.com/sabernomics/

SABRmetrics and economics. The site has fallen off a touch lately, and as such has been moved down my list.

ESPN did a great statistical analysis on Page 2 once about Bonds HRs. They took all his HRs from his "steroid era" and wiped all the fence scrapers off the books. He lost like 50-75 HRs if I remember right.


PMJ, phear the phish.

that's quite the reading there, wang. necessary homework for your 'job' though. I hate espn insider because I've had a subscription to ESPN mag for a little over a year (error in my favour!) and apparently this doesn't translate to me having insider as well. thanks espn for selling me a magazine where all of the articles are available on your website before the mag comes out.

Nen was pitching injured that whole postseason.
Worrell was pretty good that year. He wasn't a bad pitcher until he left the Giants after 2003.
Dusty in that series started Shinjo, a defensive specialist who wasn't much of a hitter, at DH (seriously) and put Kenny Lofton in center field (seriously).
Livan over Rueter in Game 7 was a complete disgrace. Livan was awful that year except for Game 4 of the series against the Braves.
And the team was completely flat in Game 7, too.
I'm glad I'm thinking about this. I wasn't angry enough before. Time to go punch a baby.

Yeah I recall Nenn being banged up the last half of the year, but I've chosen to blame Dusty w/out any proof. With his track record with pitchers, it wouldn't surprise me that he over worked him, but like I said I can't recall the exact details around his injury. Did he ever pitch again after that year?

I remember Worrell was decent for you guys that year, but the Worrell name just brings up unpleasant memories for me. On a side note, Tim never seemed to recover from that game.

I had forgotten about the Lofton/Shinjo thing. LOL at Shinjo at DH. Wasn't there some issue with Lofton and the Cardinals fans earlier that post season?

Dusty starting Livan is almost as bad as Dusty starting Torres on the last day of the season in 1993 over Bill Swift. SOmeone should have reminded Dusty that you have to get to the 1 game playoff in order to use Swift, so no point in wasting him. Luckily, a rookie Mike Piazza was able to show him the error in his ways.

No, he basically destroyed his arm trying to win the Series. Here'sa good ESPN article about him that year. He had nothing.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/eticket/print?page=nen

Good article, thanks for the link. I was familiar with the basics of the story, but I didn't know the details. That tidbit about the Giants turning off the radar gun was especially interesting.

EDIT: Just noticed it was an Eric Neel article. I like him, although he reminds me of Plaschke at times. I also might like him because he is a big Dodgers fan.

so I walked into my class tonight and there was a hot asian chick wearing a dodger manny jersey. I told her that the Dodgers suck, and she pointed out in a ever so gleeful, polite manner that at least the Dodgers have won a World Series in the past 50 years. I fell in love and also despised her at the same time. And obv she had no clue that the Dodgers signed Manny, typical clueless Dodger fan.

She must not have a TV, the internet, or a radio.

fyp

kirk gibson faked his injury

I know this topic is from awhile ago, so I don't know if it is worth discussing anymore.

But weren't Cardinals fans just as bad when trying to defend Mark McGwire. I think Cardinals fans give Giants fans a run for their money.

obv he did, he hollywood'd it.



Lol, and just last year ESPN or one of those sports stations ranked cardinal fans as the loyalist and smartest of any teams fanbase.