S.F. Examiner: Baseball’s time in the sun

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

GOODYEAR, Ariz. – A manager’s dream. “I’m enjoying seeing those guys,” said Bruce Bochy. So are the rest of us. Not just the Giants, who Sunday out here on the desert among the scrub vegetation and abandoned jet planes, won another game.

Also the fans, few as showed up at Goodyear ballpark, seemingly halfway to California, which the Reds and Indians share each spring. It’s their time in the sun — and, yes, the sun was bright, if the temperature, 65, wasn’t that warm.

Read the full story here.

©2017 The San Francisco Examiner

Newsday (N.Y.): Willie Mays, still a much-welcomed presence at Giants camp

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The eyes aren’t what they used to be, which is understandable, and to Willie Mays understandably frustrating. “I can’t see the ball,” he said when watching baseball. Then as if to remind us of skills once magical, he adds, “but I know where it’s going.”

Where Mays, 85, goes down here late mornings is to a table near a doorway in the San Francisco Giants spring training clubhouse. He can be found, bundled in a warm-up jacket, sitting, signing and ruminating.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2017 Newsday. All rights reserved.

S.F. Examiner: Bay Area legend receives due credit

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

Yes, Holy Toledo! What else would we say? What else could we say? Except that those who vote on the Ford Frick Award for broadcasting excellence, a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame, got it right at last.

They’ve chosen the late — to add great, would re redundant — Bill King.

Read the full story here.

©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

Giants end was so painful — and appropriate

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — So painful. And so appropriate. The perfection of imperfection. A team that had bullpen problems all year, that had blown so many leads, blew its final game of the season, the one that couldn’t afford to be lost.

A big lead in the top of the ninth. So reassuring for the Giants. So worrying for their fans. A team built on pitching didn’t have the pitching when needed. Again and again, it happened in a season now at its end. The relievers could provide no relief.

“I would like to think you’re going to get three outs there,” sighed Giants manager Bruce Bochy. “We couldn’t do it.”

They couldn’t even come close to doing it.

Losing is never fun. Losing as the Giants lost Tuesday night was awful.

Ahead 5-2, after a beautiful eight innings from starter Matt Moore. But games last nine innings. Or more. And so Giants manager Bruce Bochy brought in Derek Law to replace Moore.

Then after one batter, Javier Lopez replaced Law. Then after one more batter, Sergio Romo replaced Lopez. Then after one more batter, Will Smith replaced Romo. And not one of them could get an out. Eventually, Hunter Strickland, the fifth Giants reliever, was throwing when Javier Baez — yes, him again — singled home Jason Heyward with the run that would give the Cubs the 6-5 victory and the National League Division Series, three games to one.

And before you knew it, there were the Chicago players dancing on the mound at AT&T Park, the Giants’ home. And before you knew it, some 500 to 800 Cubs fans were standing behind the first-base dugout, the Cubs' dugout, in an otherwise empty ballpark chanting and cheering for their Cubbies, their winners.

That Giants slogan, based partly on history and mostly on hope, “BeliEVEN,” was now only a reminder of a dream destroyed and a year gone haywire. The team with the best record in the first half of this “even” year flopped to the worst record in the second half. That they were in the playoffs at all was only because of a hot finish and two players, the remarkable Madison Bumgarner, who shut out the Mets in the Wild Card game, and Conor Gillaspie, who drove in the only runs that game with a homer.

Right after that, sure, anything was possible, but Giants manager Bruce Bochy knew what he had — and what he didn’t have. “We’re playing with house money,” Bochy mused before the playoff opener against the Cubs, who won 16 more games than San Francisco during the regular season.

Anything is possible in the postseason when baseball is distilled to a few games, and pitching is dominant. But that includes relief pitching, which the Giants lacked.

In a very quiet Giants post-game clubhouse, with teammates exchanging farewell hugs and handshakes, there stood Santiago Casilla, who had squandered his role as closer as August merged into September. He couldn’t hold a lead — what did he blow, seven games? — and neither could those who Bochy, in desperation, used as replacements.

The natural question was whether he thought Moore, who had thrown 120 pitches in his eight innings, could throw just enough more to get the victory that would send the series to the fifth game. He was willing. Bochy, obviously, was not.

“That was a lot of work he did,” Bochy said of Moore. “At that point where he was at, he did his job. We were lined up. We had all our guys set up. Everybody there. We just couldn’t get outs.”

Not one. Until it was too late.

“Sure, we can look now and say, ‘Hey, push him even more,’” Bochy said, “but we had confidence that these guys we put out there would get outs against that lineup, that we could get the matchups we wanted, and it didn’t work out.”

So the Giants are out. Done until spring training, when this even year will only be a distant memory and maybe Gillaspie, who hit so well in the last few games, finds a full-time place in the lineup and maybe somebody, anybody, develops into that much-needed closer.

“With the way the ball bounced in that ninth inning,” said Bochy, “I hate to use the word ‘destiny,’ but (the Cubs) had a great year, and that’s quite a comeback they mounted there. They got a break there on the throwing error (by Gold Glove shortstop Brandon Crawford) that set up the winning run.

“That’s frustrating when (Kris) Bryant beat the shift, and he hit the ball where the shortstop normally is ... But that’s baseball. You've got to get those last three outs, and that has been a problem for us.”

A huge, heartbreaking, season-ending problem.

S.F. Examiner: So much happened in Game 3, all that matters: Giants stay alive

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

Yes, it’s an Even Year. What else needs to be said?

Except Conor Gillaspie and Joe Panik are the new Miracle Workers. And there will be a fourth game in a National League Division Series that for most of a somewhat unbelievable and totally hysterical Monday evening seemed destined to end in three games.

Read the full story here.

©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

One stadium, two problems for A’s, Raiders

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — On Wednesday they were holding a baseball game in a football stadium, the yard lines still chalked on the grass.  

On Sunday they were holding a football game in a ballpark. What else should you call a place with a dirt infield neatly, and nearly, filling the area that spreads out from home plate?

The MLB-NFL Oakland Coliseum is the last of its breed, a multipurpose facility where the Athletics have to chase fly balls across an outfield chunked up by the cleats of 300-pound linemen and the Raiders must survive being tackled on a packed dirt surface that extends from one 20-yard line to the other.

The A’s are almost done for the 2016 season. From the attendance Wednesday, apparently most individuals thought it ended a few months ago.

Only 11,197 were in the place for a game, which admittedly meant little and ended in a somewhat bizarre manner, Oakland pinch runner Arismendy Alcantara caught trying to steal with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Houston won, 6-5.

Yes, Babe Ruth made the final out the same way in the 1926 World Series, the Cardinals beating the Yankees, but Alcantara isn’t exactly the Sultan of Swat. His attempt — A’s manager Bob Melvin thought Alcantara “didn’t get the best jump” — of course has nothing to do with the facilities in Oakland, or lack of same.

You know the narrative. Both the A’s and Raiders are in need and deserving of new stadiums. One team, the A’s, seemingly was headed to San Jose before that plan fell through. The other team, the Raiders, has been guaranteed a $2 billion stadium in Las Vegas.

Apropos of nothing but possibly pertinent to everything, the one East Bay team that doesn’t really need a new arena, the Warriors, is prepared to build one in San Francisco. Money, ask for it by name.

An investment group, which claims it has money, instead has asked to purchase the land where the Coliseum stands along the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland with the intent of keeping the Raiders there and out of the clutches of the casino types.

That the group has ties with Ronnie Lott, the Hall of Fame defensive back who played for the 49ers and the Raiders, may be pertinent. Or it may not.

A month ago, the big cash guy behind the A’s, John Fisher, who with Lew Wolff is listed as co-owner, took an exploratory visit of the Howard Terminal, in the Oakland docks, which would be an absolutely perfect place for an A’s ballpark — something to rival AT&T Park across the Bay.

Just kicking the tires, so to speak. Still, a visible search for a ballpark site, on the water no less — the same as the other MLB team in Northern Calfornia (hint: it is in the midst of a late-season collapse) — and a new move to keep the Raiders from moving are more than acceptable.

You have to start someplace.

It’s an open secret that the NFL commish, Roger Goodell, does not want a team in Las Vegas for various reasons, mostly the perception of a sport that is as popular for action at the sports books as it is on the gridiron might be seen in a different light when one of the franchises is based in Sin City.

Also, bless his heart, Goodell has a special feeling about the Raiders, as much for the venom with which longtime owner Al Davis battled the league as for the historical lunacy and success over the seasons of the team and its fans. Any team that had John Madden and Ken Stabler, made a roundtrip to L.A. and back, and was the first to have a “nation” needs to stay where it is.

Goodell may be a pariah in Foxboro but, in concert with others, saving the Raiders for Oakland would make him beloved at Jack London Square. Crab cioppino, Roger?

But let us not be too optimistic. It takes time, money and intelligence to transform these hopes from fantasy to reality. A new Raiders stadium? A new A’s ballpark?

A skeptic would say they have as much chance as Arismendy Alcantara stealing second with two outs in the bottom of the ninth on Wednesday.

Giants: Little things and big defeats

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — They’re not going to win the division. That’s for sure. Maybe the Giants still will make the postseason, get in as a wild card, and even that’s problematic.

But definitely the way they are playing, just poorly enough to lose, they won’t overtake the Dodgers — who gleefully overtook the tumbling Giants in the National League West days ago.

It’s not that the Giants are a bad team. The Atlanta Braves are a bad team. No, the Braves are a terrible team. The San Diego Padres are a bad team. They are 22 games below .500. And that’s after sweeping a three-game series from the Giants. For a second time this season.

The Giants are a good team playing badly. Or once were a good team playing badly, very badly as defined by a classical, baseball reference.

When they hit they don’t pitch, as they did and didn't on Tuesday night, San Francisco entering the ninth with a 4-1 lead and ingloriously losing to the Padres 6-4 on a home run by, not Nate Colbert or Tony Gwynn even, but Ryan Schimpf. The 27th blown save of the season. Oh, where are you now, Robb Nen?

When the Giants pitch they don’t hit, as they did and didn't on Wednesday in the sunshine and gloom (the mood, not the weather) at AT&T Park, San Francisco getting only four singles and thus getting whipped by the Pads, 3-1.

So the little bit of optimism created when the Giants had a sweep of their own, taking three in a row at Arizona over the weekend, has been trashed, smashed and tossed into McCovey Cove. So much for progress.

The Dodgers, who beat the Yankees for the second time in their three-game series at the Stadium, now are five in front of San Francisco. The billionaires at Chavez Ravine smirk.

In the post-game session Wednesday, Bruce Bochy, the Giants' manager, was asked if he had sleepless nights, to which he answered in the affirmative, adding, “I wish I could do more. Every manager or head coach does. It’s always on your mind.”

Some would say Bochy could have done more on Tuesday night if Brandon Belt hadn’t been out because he was ailing. Buster Posey was playing first, and there was a ball off Posey’s mitt, which became an infield single when reliever Hunter Strickland conceded he was slow to cover the base.

The little things, and the big defeats.

On Wednesday, the Giants' bullpen couldn’t be faulted. Neither could starter Madison Bumgarner. You allow only three runs, you’ll normally win. Not, however, when the season is coming apart at the seams.

San Diego starter Luis Perdomo mystified the Giants' batters. The first four men in the order, Denard Span, Angel Pagan, Posey and Brandon Crawford, had two walks and no hits among them. Only because Belt and Joe Panik managed back-to-back singles in the second, after a Crawford walk, did the Giants avoid a shutout.

“He had a good sinker,” Bochy, a former catcher, said of Perdomo, who didn’t look like someone who came into the game with a 7-9 record and 5.89 earned run average. Ah, but the Giants looked very much like the team that has collapsed (20-35 since July 10) in notable fashion.

Bumgarner, gracious as always post-game, stood there attired like a hunter (not Strickland) and was asked what needs to be corrected: pitching, hitting, whatever.

“I don’t know,” he answered quietly. “So far, the second half’s been a club I’ve never seen before.”

A club that Giants fans have seen too much of, one that's causing them to wonder what might have transpired if San Francisco, not the Cubs, got 100 mph closer Aroldis Chapman (or who the Giants would have been forced to trade to acquire him).

Bumgarner was unable to pick up his 100th career victory, a total that’s inevitable.

“There’s a lot of pressure this time of year,” reminded Baumgarner, reflecting on the chase for the playoffs and not his personal goals or difficulties. “It’s more of a mind-set this time of the year.”

Bochy could only agree.

“This was a big series,” he conceded about the three games, three defeats, against San Diego. “They’re all big.”

A little more than two weeks are left in a season that began so well, a season — an even year — in which the Giants were picked to be champions. How did we go wrong? How did the Giants?

S.F. Examiner: One divisional win doesn’t excuse a month of awful play for Giants

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

The fans’ thoughts are easy enough to imagine: The Giants are a disgrace, an embarrassment. It’s one thing to lose, but to collapse like a house of cards — and that’s not a St. Louis reference.

But what are the execs in the offices of AT&T Park thinking?

Read the full story here.

©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

Are these the new Swingin’ A’s?

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Well, all was quiet on the western front. Also in the East Bay clubhouse. No punches. No concussions. No conversation either. All reminders of the Swingin’ A’s of the 1970s are only coincidental.

Those guys could play baseball. They won three consecutive World Series, ’72-73-74. Those guys also could fight. Each other. There’s nothing wrong with teammates smacking each other around, as long as when the umpire yells “Play ball,” the priorities are reassessed.

As the Hall of Famer Rollie Fingers said two years ago when the ’74 champions had a reunion at the Coliseum, “We had some characters and, we were beating the bleep out of each other. But still we won.”

The ’16 A’s have not for the most part, although Oakland looked more than competent Tuesday night at the Coliseum, defeating the AL Central-leading Cleveland Indians, 9-1.

Solid pitching, timely hitting. Which is the way it used to be.

Minus an attempted haymaker or two. Ah, such memories of the glory and gory days.

Game One of the ’74 Series was at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Writers from around the country stood around the cage during batting practice, most skeptical of the Athletics’ reputation.

“I don’t believe all those stories of the fighting,” a journalist told the late Ron Bergman, in those days the only correspondent who covered every A’s game. At almost that very moment, Fingers and fellow pitcher John “Blue Moon” Odom began to brawl in the visitors’ clubhouse.

Ray Fosse was a catcher on the ’73 and ’74 A’s. Now at 69, he works with Glenn Kuiper as the Oakland television commentator. Fosse became famous for being run over by Pete Rose in the 1970 All-Star Game — and for breaking up a fight between Billy North and Reggie Jackson in that ’74 A’s title season.

“I just tried to pull Billy away,” said Fosse, who having incurred a crushed disk in his neck that still hurts, is reluctant to say much more about that battle.

Ballplayers are with each other virtually every day from February until October, on buses and planes, in cramped clubhouses. Nerves fray, tempers explode.

Jeff Kent once took a swing at Barry Bonds in the Giants’ dugout at AT&T. That Danny Valencia of the A’s conked teammate Billy Butler wouldn’t have been particularly noteworthy except that Butler was diagnosed with a concussion, a serious condition.

In fact, while one offers condolences to Butler — who must have taken a beating from Valencia — the incident has for a brief moment made the A’s relevant once again. Consigned to the back pages of the Bay Area’s dailies, they suddenly became front-page news.

They would prefer to do it by being successful, but until then any sort of attention will do.

“It’s not the first time guys have gotten in a fight in the clubhouse,” said Oakland general manager David Forst correctly.

“Unfortunately, when we’re having the kind of season we’re having, it’s a big story. If we were winning, it would be colorful, but we’re not.”

Precisely, and even though the A’s fined both Valencia and Butler, Forst and manager Bob Melvin perhaps were not displeased in their athletes showing some fire, if they didn’t appreciate Butler getting concussed.

Oakland team chemistry has been lacking — “not great” is the way Forst described it — which is hardly unexpected the way the A’s repeatedly ship people from Oakland to Triple A Nashville, and vice versa.

The insecurity has to have an effect on young players. How can there be chemistry when there’s no stability?

Through it all, Melvin, the A’s manager, has remained resolute and pleasant. While it’s true any manager is only as good as his players, the entire business, from lack of talent to losing a player because he was socked by a teammate, must be a downer. 

The rare triumph, such as Tuesday night’s — after loses in eight of the previous nine games — allows Melvin a brief chance to escape the craziness of the past few days, not to mention the season.

“Certainly we had this incident, but when you have losing seasons and you’re not playing well, it’s not going to go as well as when you’re winning,” Melvin conceded when asked about the fight.

“And we’ve had two tough seasons. So in that respect, you don’t expect everything to be warm and fuzzy all the time.”

As men such as Rollie Fingers and Billy North from those 1970s teams readily would confirm.

S.F. Examiner: Giants need to prove magic of spring isn’t lost in fog of summer

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

Bruce Bochy was telling the truth. A game in April is no less important — critical, was the word he used — as a game in August. But April is gone. So is the Giants’ lead. They are in second place now, behind the Dodgers, a team hailed and by some — Giants fans — hated.

A team against which San Francisco tonight begins a three-game series at Dodger Stadium.

Read the full story here.

©2016 The San Francisco Examiner

Newsday (N.Y.): As he often does, Bartolo Colon gives Mets what they need

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

SAN FRANCISCO — The fan in the dugout box to the first-base side of home plate, the one who unbuttoned his Mets jersey to display a stomach supposedly the equal of Bartolo Colon’s? The pitcher never noticed.

He was focused on something more important.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.

No longer any sweetness in Giants’ torture

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — This is torture, but there is no sweetness. The Giants are coming apart, greatness slipping away. Even on a day of blue skies there is gloom, foreboding, a sense of inevitability that runs counter to what we have seen, what we expected.

Sport is so bewildering, at times so demoralizing. A baseball team that for weeks seemingly couldn’t lose, a team that a month ago had the best record in the majors, is now a team that can’t win. Literally.

The Giants dropped another one Wednesday, this time to the Pittsburgh Pirates, 6-5. Or maybe that should read "again," this time to the Pirates. Three games against Pittsburgh at AT&T Park, three defeats.

The team that was 57-33 at the All-Star break, the team that had an eight-game lead in the National League West two weeks earlier, has lost 21 of its last 30 — nobody in baseball has done worse than that — and is now in second, behind the hated Dodgers.

There have been momentous shifts before. The Giants, the New York Giants, trailed the Brooklyn Dodgers by 13 games in August 1951, ended up tied and won the playoff on Bobby Thomson’s “shot heard 'round the world.”

There’s no sure thing. Except these days that the Giants will lose.

“We’re in a funk,” said Bruce Bochy, the San Francisco manager, before Wednesday’s game. And then, as if to prove him correct, the Giants blew a 4-0 lead like that, in a half-inning, when starter Matt Cain began the top of the fifth with a hit batsman and three straight walks and closed it by giving up a two-run homer to Andrew McCutchen.

Wham, a blow to left by McCutchen. A blow to the psyche by McCutchen.   

A 4-0 lead after four? Surely this was a game that would end the woes. It wasn’t, and with the New York Mets coming in for four games starting Thursday night and then the Giants going to Los Angeles for three games starting Tuesday, perhaps the woes won't end until the season does.

The Giants are not a bad team, but they are playing bad baseball. When they hit, as they did on Wednesday, they can’t pitch. When they pitch, as they did 11 days ago when Madison Bumgarner threw a two-hitter and lost, 1-0, they can’t hit.

A team built on pitching, the Giants gave up eight runs in consecutive games, first to Baltimore, next to the Pirates. They lost both, of course.

There was an eerie quiet in the Giants' postgame clubhouse. The few players in sight sat and checked their  phones. Not until Cain, as required, showed up for his interview, did anyone talk above a whisper.

Earlier, Bochy, the onetime catcher, had said in another room that Cain “lost his release point,” meaning that the place in his delivery where the ball is fired had changed. Like that.

Four batters, no hits, one run. Then a single for two more runs. Then a sacrifice fly for another run, and the game was tied, 4-4. But not for long. After another out, McCutchen hit one into the left field bleachers. Javier Lopez replaced Cain. Too late.

Bochy was thinking about his bullpen, which has been used far too much, and about Cain’s confidence, trying to save his relievers, trying to save Cain’s self-belief. Another time, that would have worked. Now, nothing works.

“It didn’t play out the way I thought,” said Bochy, when asked if he were second-guessing himself about the tactic. “I saw some good things. That one inning got away from us.

“Then their bullpen did a good job. The way we were swinging the bat, I thought we could come back.”

They nearly did, if anyone cares about possibilities along with results. With the bases loaded and no one out in the bottom of the ninth, Buster Posey — who already had three hits, despite that back pain — stepped up to the plate. But he hit into a double play, with the final run scoring, and so it goes.

“We’re taking some blows,” agreed Bochy. “We’ve lost some of our mojo. But we’re resilient. This is a tough club.”

A tough club that has found out how tough baseball can be.

Red Sox beat Giants at Fenway West

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Bruce Bochy told us it was just a game. Of course, that was before it was played. That was two hours before the first pitch, and a reporter wondered if the Giants against the Red Sox would give both teams, particularly San Francisco, the chance to find out whether each was as good as some thought.

Including the players.

“Same thing when the Cubs came in,” said Bochy, the Giants manager. “What these guys (his Giants) have been through, I don’t think they have to measure themselves against anybody.” Then he added, “This is a tough group, Boston.”

Very tough. And if the game, which the Sox won 5-3 in 10 cold innings Tuesday night at AT&T Park, wasn’t a measure, for the Giants it had to be a disappointment — and proof that missed tags and wild throws will beat you just as quickly as big hits.

No, this one wasn’t ordinary. Maybe no game involving the Red Sox is ordinary. Boston people can’t get out of their city quick enough. They go to Florida, to California, everywhere.

But if they leave the premises, they don’t leave their fanaticism for the old town team. They take great delight in overwhelming visiting ballparks, chanting “Let’s go Boston,” and generally acting as if the Red Sox had never traded Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

It’s one thing when, say, the Boston expatriates fill the normally empty seats at the Oakland Coliseum when the Red Sox face the A’s. But to see them swarming sold out AT&T is a bit unnerving. The place looked and sounded like Fenway West.

“Boston has a huge following,” Bochy as much as warned pre-game when asked if this two-game series were special, “and so do we. Both are storied franchises that have been very successful the past decade. It creates interest. These two teams are having great years.”

The most recent part of the Giants’ year has been less than great. San Francisco now has dropped three straight, two on the road to the St. Louis Cardinals and then the return home against the Red Sox.

“The little things hurt us,” said Bochy. He meant catcher Trevor Brown throwing the ball into center field on Jackie Bradley Jr.’s steal in the seventh, then on a ground ball to short by pinch hitter David Ortiz, the runner from first, Chris Young, eluding the tag by a diving Brandon Crawford. What looked like it could have been a double play instead was only a single out, and Bradley dashed in from third to tie the game, 3-3.

In the 10^th, with Santiago Casilla working his second inning for the Giants, Boston’s Mookie Betts laid down a bunt with two on and no one out — and beat it out. “We didn’t handle that one,” said Bochy. Not at all.

The Giants did get the runner from third on a force at home, but then with two strikes Xander Bogaerts blooped a ball in front of center fielder Denard Span, driving in the game-winners.

If there was any consolation for the Giants, it was the pitching of Albert Suarez, making his second start of the season. “We just want him to give us a chance,” Bochy said before the game. “I hope he throws like he did in his last start.”

He threw better, allowing only five hits, one walk and two earned runs in 6 1/3 innings. “Albert did a great job,” affirmed Bochy. 

Which most of us wouldn’t say about Casilla, although Bochy wasn’t critical of his closer, especially since he pitched more than the normal one inning. Sandy Leon led off the 10th with a double, however, and Casilla and the Giants were in trouble.

“That’s a tough lineup,” said Bochy of the Red Sox. “They lead the majors in offense and scoring. I thought our pitching did a very good job.”

When someone wondered if he might change his closer, Bochy all but shrugged. “I still have confidence in Casilla,” he said.

Bochy on Cueto: ‘This is why we wanted him here’

By Art Spander

It isn’t quite the sweet torture of a few seasons past. Oh, the Giants make you sweat, make their manager — the incomparable Bruce Bochy — wish it didn’t have to be as difficult as it seems to be. Yet, with that pitching staff, and Monday night Johnny Cueto was the man, there’s also a feeling the other team might never score.   

Now for two straight games, Sunday the awesome Cubs, Monday the not-so-awesome but very tenacious Padres, the other team hasn’t scored.

And finally the Giants did score. If barely. But when Cueto follows Madison Bumgarner, barely is plenty. Yes, consecutive games in which San Francisco could only score a run, Monday night when Hunter Pence, with a sore hamstring, pinch-hitting for Cueto, blooped a two-out ball to right in the ninth that Matt Kemp couldn’t reach.

Down went the ball, in ran Brandon Belt from first, and it was 1-0 Giants.     

Just as on Sunday it was 1-0 Giants, if against another team.

They’ve got the routine down. So exhale. And commend management for signing Cueto, a free agent, over the winter.

He is earning $130 million, a lot, but the long-held theory here is for cars, wine and ballplayers you almost always get what you pay for. Cueto is wonderful verification.

In his last four games, including this cold Monday night at AT&T Park, Cueto has allowed a total of three runs. The statement has been repeated often but perhaps not often enough: If the opponent doesn’t score, you can’t ever get worse than a 0-0 tie.

Which is what we had going into the bottom of the ninth. Now what the Giants have is a third straight win and 11 wins in the last 12 games. That ain’t bad.

“Pretty amazing what our pitching is doing,” said Bochy. Not really. It’s doing that it needs to do. What Cueto, 7-1, with a 1.93 earned run average (compared to Bumgarner’s 2.17) did was hold the Padres hitless the first 3 2/3 innings, give up only two hits total and pitch his second consecutive complete game after going nine in a 2-1 win against the Padres five days earlier in San Diego.

“This guy’s done it when he was with Cincinnati in that Great America Park,” said Bochy of a location as different as imaginable from spacious AT&T, a pitcher’s paradise. Cueto last year was traded from the Reds to Kansas City, where he was on a World Series champion. As a free agent he joined the Giants, where life is both beautiful and nerve-wracking.

“I’m enjoying it,” said Cueto, a Dominican, through translator Erwin Higueros. “I can handle these close games.” He understands the English questions well enough but is more comfortable giving the answers in Spanish. His fastballs and sliders speak a universal baseball language. Get out of here.

Cueto swings a mean bat, but he doesn’t always connect. In the bottom of the seventh, with two outs, Angel Pagan, who had walked — and subsequently reinjured his hamstring — was on second and Gregor Blanco, walked intentionally, was on first. Bochy may have considered a pinch hitter but not for long. Cueto had thrown only 78 pitches so he came to the plate — and struck out swinging.

“I was thankful that finally Pence came in to get a hit,” said Cueto.

So was Pence, who before the game was tentative about getting into the lineup. “But I felt fine,” said Pence, “when I went up there.”

Bochy was pleased with the ending but less so with the progress of the game. “We made it hard,” he said. “We had those two runners on in the first. We didn’t execute.”

Kelby Tomlinson and Matt Duffy had back-to-back one-out singles, Tomlinson going to third. But Duffy was caught attempting to steal second and Buster Posey struck out.

“Their guy did a great job too,” Bochy said of Padres lefthander Drew Pomeranz, who went seven shutout innings. “We thought it would be a close game.”

Isn’t it always when the Giants are involved? Sure, there are exceptions, such as Chicago’s 8-1 win on Friday night, but otherwise it was 2-1 and 3-1 over San Diego and then 1-0 and 1-0 over the Cubs and the Padres.

“That game Sunday,” said Bochy about the victory over Chicago “was one of the great baseball games. It had everything. Then we come back with this one.

“We had Johnny Cueto on our radar last year. This is why we wanted to bring him here.”

Newsday (N.Y.): Michael Pineda gets first win since April 6

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — Michael Pineda stood taller, literally, extending his body to the maximum, which is considerable for someone who is 6-7. And also figuratively, finally looking like the pitcher he and the Yankees believed he was.

It had been a difficult seven starts for Pineda, who was winless in each of them. But he came to the mound at O.co Coliseum on Sunday after working on standing more erect, which would help him throw sliders to the bottom of the strike zone.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Rob Refsnyder gets big hit, but will he be staying with Yankees?

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

OAKLAND, Calif. — The question was inevitable. So was the answer.

Rob Refsnyder had the big hit Saturday, proving that on this day, at least, he deserved to be on the Yankees. But not unexpectedly, the present seemed less important than the future — the immediate future.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2016 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Giants: Hard to win when you don’t score

By Art Spander

Bruce Bochy was talking about the little things, about moving a runner, about laying down a bunt. It’s the big thing that’s beating the Giants, an inability to score, whatever which way, a ground out, a home run. And when you can’t score, you can’t win. That’s a sporting truism. And right now, a San Francisco Giants flaw.

Everyone was so worried about Matt Cain, the Giants starter, winless since the middle of last season. What happens if Cain gets battered around as he did in his last start against the Rockies? The question was academic. San Francisco’s offensive woes seem to be endemic. Cain had his best game of the year. So encouraging. The Giants, beaten 4-0 by Toronto on a chilly, Candlestick-type Tuesday night at AT&T Park, had another scoreless round — shut out for the second time in three games.

Three runs over the last four games for the Giants — who somehow won one of those games, but none of the last three. “We ran into some well-pitched games the last two nights,’’ said Bochy. No question. It was lefthander J.A. Happ on Tuesday night for the Blue Jays. He was within one out of his first complete-game shutout in six years. It was righthander Aaron Sanchez on Monday night in the 3-1 win.

“We just need one critical hit,“ said Bochy, “one at bat that works.” Nothing is working for the Giants when they have a bat in their hands. The heart of the order, Buster Posey (0-for-4 including a double play), Hunter Pence (1-for-4) and Brandon Belt (0-for-3 with a walk) seem mystified.

Three days ago, there was near-panic about the fourth and fifth pitchers in the Giants’ rotation, Jake Peavy and Cain. Peavy made it through five innings on Monday night. Not without problems, yet he allowed only three runs. Then Cain was very effective Tuesday, going eight innings — his hadn’t gone more than six in his previous 18 starts — striking out seven, walking none and allowing six hits.

And the Giants couldn’t get a single run. Just as on Sunday they couldn’t get a single run.

In order, the Giants lost 2-0 to the Rockies, 3-1 to the Blue Jays and 4-0 to the Blue Jays. The Bad News Bears weren’t that bad.

“We’ve got to find a way to beat them,” said Bochy. One way is to get people across home plate.

It's hard to knock your pitcher when he’s decent on the mound and botches something when he’s at bat, but in the bottom of the sixth the Giants had runners on first and second with nobody out and their pitcher, Mr. Cain, coming up. Everyone from McCovey Cove to Cooperstown knew he would sacrifice, and he tried, without success.

Cain’s bunt was fielded by Happ, who forced the runner (Jarrett Parker, who had walked). Then leadoff man Denard Span grounded into a double play, the sequence of a team for which everything of late goes wrong — and nobody goes home.

Cain was as upbeat as someone can be when the ballclub is losing.

“I felt like I limited my mistakes,” he said. “We did a good job of keeping those to a minimum. This is something to build off of and carry into the next one.”

Unfortunately, he’s now 0-5 and is winless in 14 consecutive starts.

The bunt? “I didn't get the angle right to third," Cain said. “That's our job as pitchers. We need to be able to execute. That could have changed the game.”

That’s the Giants right now, talking about what might have been, could have and would have. If this had happened... but what did happen was another defeat, and with the homestand ending Wednesday with yet another game against the Blue Jays, San Francisco has a losing record, 17-18.

“I’ve tried to shake things up,” said Bochy, who had Duffy batting sixth instead of second (he was 0-for-3 with a walk). “But our big hitters are cold.”

Maybe they can sign Steph Curry to bat cleanup.

Will Lincecum save Giants after the pounding?

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — It’s all set up for Timmy.  All he has to do is show he still can pitch. Because the fourth and fifth starters in the Giants' rotation haven’t been able to thus far. So if little Tim Lincecum can show he’s a scintilla of what he used to be when he showcases Friday down in the desert, he very well could be the man to get his once (and former?) team out of the wilderness.

Life is timing. And that includes baseball. Who knows whether Lincecum, unsigned after hip surgery last year, still has enough to get batters out in the majors? But over the past two games, Wednesday in Cincinnati and Thursday night in San Francisco, the guys who took the mound for the Giants certainly didn’t. Suddenly there’s a sense of desperation at AT&T, a feeling of “OK, after Mad Bum, Cueto and Samardzija, what can we do?”

As capably demonstrated Thursday night on the banks of McCovey Cove, nothing. Except hope that Timmy still has something from his glory days of Cy Young Awards and that the Giants re-sign him.

On Wednesday at Cincy, Jake Peavy, the No. 4 starter, gave up three home runs in one inning. Then on Thursday night, the Gigantes (hey, it was Cinco de Mayo and that was the name on the uniform) were embarrassed by the Colorado Rockies, 17-7, giving up 13 runs in the fifth.

Yes, that’s been Matt Cain’s obstacle of an inning of late, but never was it as bad as on Thursday when, having been pounded for eight runs and 10 hits, he didn’t even wait for manager Bruce Bochy to take the ball but in a case of virtual surrender reached out and gave it to Bochy.

“We have to find a way to help the rotation like we should,” said Cain, certainly not willing to concede his place. “This is not easy. It’s frustrating.”

Cain had a 2-0 count on Colorado’s Nelson Arenado, with one on and two out in the first. A changeup got out over the plate, and Arenado, one of the game’s better hitters, hit it over the left field fence for his 12th home run of the year. The Rockies, just like that, were up 2-0.

“The biggest thing is to keep trusting myself,” said Cain, who threw a perfect game four years ago, before undergoing surgery in 2014. “My location was good, but the balls were just a little higher than we wanted.”

One game out of 162 can be ignored — in the World Series championship year of 2014, the Dodgers scored 14 in a late-season game against San Francisco — but when two-fifths of your staff are ineffective, you’re in trouble. And maybe in the market for replacements.

“We discussed Timmy,” Bochy said before the game, hardly contemplating what would happen during the game. “(General manager) Bobby Evans can say more about that than me. Timmy still is loved here. There are going to be a lot of teams there watching him. I can’t tell you what is going to happen.”

If the Giants don’t get help by Peavy and or Cain improving — as unlikely as that appears 30 games into the season — San Francisco signing Lincecum or trading for a top-line pitcher is a huge worry. Already the bullpen is a mess, and Vin Mazzaro, just brought up from Triple A, was a disaster after relieving Cain, allowing seven earned runs in a third of an inning.

Bochy was not so quick to dismiss Cain or Peavy. It’s the manager’s nature to keep on a level and never belittle his athletes, although thinking of the 12-run inning by the Mets and the 11-run inning by the Rockies, the manager shook his head. “It’s hit us twice in a week,” he said.

Knowing there may not be anyone better than Peavy or Cain, Bochy said that each of the pitchers, at times, has shown he still deserves to be part of the rotation.

“We just couldn’t get out of that inning,” said Bochy. “I thought our guys had good at bats this game, but the pitching just wasn’t there. Matt’s stuff was fine. It was his execution. He made a few mistakes.”

The question might be whether continuing to send out Peavy and Cain is a mistake. Then again, there may be no other option. Unless Tim Lincecum comes through in his glorified tryout and the Giants subsequently add him to the roster.

“We know our guys,” said Bochy. “We stand behind them. We know they’ll get better.”

They couldn’t get worse.

S.F. Examiner: Optimism escapes Bochy as Giants lose fifth-straight

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

He’s normally a man of silver linings and orange-and-black optimism. Bruce Bochy has spent a career believing everything’s not as grim as the rest of you would think. But there was a different Bochy after the Giants, his San Francisco’s Giants, were smacked around again Thursday by the Arizona Diamondbacks, a Bochy whose frustration could be sensed, whose disappointment could be heard.

Baseball, we’re told, is a game of ups and downs. There have been no ups for the Giants of late.

Read the full story here.

©2016 The San Francisco Examiner 

A’s pull a number on the Royals

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — He was wearing a Warriors T-shirt, as seemingly half the Bay Area is these days, the gold one passed out a day before, the one reading “Strength in Numbers.” But for Chris Bassitt, a Cleveland Cavaliers fan under that shirt — understandably, since he’s from Ohio — there was only one number Sunday, 114, the career-high number of pitches he threw for the Athletics.

He didn’t get a win for that effort, but the A’s did, beating the World Series champion Kansas City Royals 3-2, and suddenly everything was as joyful and upbeat at the Coliseum as it had been some 24 hours earlier next door at Oracle Arena.

The weather was the best of the weeks-old baseball season, only 70 degrees at first pitch but climbing to 79 at the final out of an efficient, tidy game that required only 2 hours 37 minutes. The A’s closed out a home stand that began with four straight losses and ended with two wins, both over K.C., of course. And the stadium, often as lonely as a graveyard at midnight, was nearly full, 29,668 fans, after 25,584 on Saturday.

John Axford got the pitching victory. He was the one in the lineup when, in the bottom of the eighth, Billy Burns tripled down the right field line. “It was this close to going foul,”  said Burns, pinching his fingers together, “and that close to being caught.” Burns then scored the tie-breaking, winning run on pinch hitter Josh Reddick’s sacrifice fly.

But the 6-foot-5 Bassitt was no less responsible for the victory than anyone in the Oakland clubhouse. He went the first seven innings, giving up two runs, one a homer by Mike Moustakas. “I was not committed on the pitch,” said Bassitt. That’s acceptable. The A’s — every team in the majors — would delight in their starter allowing only two runs.  

Sunshine and success alter everything at the Coliseum. Maybe it’s not AT&T Park, and yes, the A’s still need a ballpark, but with blue skies the figurative atmosphere is changed. So too are the A’s fortunes. Now, one game below .500, they head to New York for three games at Yankee Stadium.

“We’ve got some momentum,” said Burns. “Scratching out a win against (the Royals) is big.”

The Royals pride themselves on their late-inning relief. Their template for winning the World Series was to get through the sixth inning in front or tied, then call on a bullpen some would say is the best in the majors. So A’s manager Bob Melvin was particularly pleased the way his team, trailing 2-1 into the seventh, rallied to tie and win.

“Coming back against this team is something,” said Melvin. “Typically, in the seventh, eighth and ninth, it’s a big challenge.”

So many games in baseball, 162, and yet this one game, especially at home, where the A’s were 2-7, the second-worst home record in the American League, was important. Teams need to do well at home to make believers of the ticket buyers. People want to leave a ballpark in a good mood. And Sunday at the Coliseum, most of the people did.

“We’d been struggling at home,” confirmed Melvin. “Now we’re going on a 10-game trip against good teams.” Those teams, in order, are the Yankees, Blue Jays and Tigers. “This was significant,” Melvin added.

Ryan Madson pitched the ninth to get his fourth save (and the A’s only have six wins).

“He did the job,” said Melvin the onetime catcher.

Which Madson considered ordinary, or at least nothing out of the usual. Just get on the mound and throw strikes, whether it’s the Royals — with whom he won a World Series last season — or the Mariners. “The idea,” said Madson, “is to keep the pressure on the hitters.”

The pressure’s been on the A’s in many ways. They’ll always be in the shadow of the club across the Bay until they get that ballpark and then have the revenue to retain their stars. Also, having bottomed out in 2015, the Athletics need to prove they’ve put together a team that can win and also be attractive, not that one doesn’t follow the other.

So there’s Bassitt, wearing his shirt for the most attractive, winningest team in the region — and in basketball — that of the Warriors. “I’ll root for them until the finals,” said Bassitt, who played at the University of Akron, close to Cleveland. “Then I’ll root for the Cavs.”

Everybody makes mistakes.