Newsday (N.Y.): Shohei Ohtani’s mound debut for Angels somewhat underwhelming

By Art Spander
Special for Newsday

TEMPE, Ariz. — The long-awaited debut in a major league uniform of Shohei Ohtani, nicknamed the “Babe Ruth of Japan” because of his skills as both a pitcher and a batter in that nation, might have been less than what was imagined but perhaps was what should have been expected.

Ohtani, who signed with the Los Angeles Angels in December — forgoing a chance to join the Yankees — was the starting pitcher in Saturday’s Cactus League game against the Milwaukee Brewers and worked 1 1⁄3 innings. He threw 31 pitches, gave up two hits and two runs (one unearned), struck out one, walked one and threw a wild pitch. One of the hits was a double, the other a home run.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2018 Newsday. All rights reserved. 

Giants’ Cactus League opener: Good pitch, no field

By Art Spander

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Once again, you’re reminded that exhibition baseball games don’t mean a thing. Except to the people playing them. Or, in the case of the Giants in the Cactus League opener of 2018, misplaying them.

As you know, and other teams — heh, heh — are gleefully aware, the Giants may not be able to hit, but as indicated Friday, they can pitch. The assumption was that they also could field. Sorry.

Which is a perfect description of San Francisco’s imperfection at times when the Milwaukee Brewers were at the plate. “I thought the pitching was good,” said manager Bruce Bochy, “but we got a little sloppy there in the middle of the game.”

Sloppy as in six errors. Sloppy as in, can’t anyone catch and throw? Final scores don’t mean much in exhibition games — the Brewers won this one, 6-5. Individual performances mean a great deal. Oops.

“We shot ourselves in the foot,” was the Bochy description.

It was cartoon ball, movie comic ball. It was the kind of ball that destroys the sort of pitching produced by the Giants, particularly Ty Blach, who didn’t allow a run the first two innings and Andrew Suarez, who didn’t allow a run the next two.

“Blach, Suarez, I thought they threw great,” said Bochy. He was in the dugout after the game, bundled but wearing Maui Jim sunglasses, maybe wishing he was somewhere else, like the Gulf Coast, where it was sunny and bright and 81 degrees, In greater Phoenix, it was dark and gloomy and, ahem, 60 degrees.

“They were sweating bullets in Florida,” he said wistfully after watching a few minutes of Tiger Woods at the Honda Classic long before the baseball game.

“When Blach missed,” said Bochy returning to the subject at hand, “he just missed. He was right on, a very impressive outing for Ty and for Suarez.

Pitching invariably is ahead of hitting early in spring training — or that’s what we’ve been taught over the decades. Yet, the theory didn’t seem to have an effect on Nick Hundley or our old pal, Pablo Sandoval. In the second, Hundley hit a homer to left, the Giants' first run, and in the sixth Sandoval, swinging left-handed, hit one to right that nearly cleared the fence behind the fence. In other words, it was way out there, maybe 450 feet.

“I was focused,” said Sandoval. “I worked in the winter.”

Pablo is a link to the Giants’ three World Series titles. He caught the ball that was the ultimate out against Kansas City in 2014. Someone wondered if the new kids, the rookies, the hopefuls, asked him about those good not-so-old days.

“Yeah,” said Sandoval. “I tell them that we are better when we have fun, when we play together and not try to do everything individually but play as a team. We had great communication.

“We have an opportunity. The pitching here is great. We have to stick to our game, focus on the little things and get better every day.”

The monster home run in the first game of the spring was reassurance. “You can face your teammates,” said Sandoval. “Otherwise they’re going to be on you all spring.”

Bochy said again Sandoval will be used as a backup at first (where he played Friday) and third and as a pinch hitter. “That was a pretty good swing by Pablo, wasn’t it?” said Bochy. “A lot of good things happened.”

Excluding the errors, certainly, inexcusable for any major league team and especially one that last season was outscored by 137 runs. When you’re scraping for runs, you better scrape up ground balls or you’ll be the worst team in the division.

Oh, right. That’s what the Giants were.

A chill in the Giants camp

By Art Spander

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — “Frost,” the sign read. “Stay off grass.” No one-liners, please, even if the warning is so very Nor Cal. Besides, this was after the Giants had worked out Wednesday in weather chilly enough to keep observers bundled, but not chilly enough to keep young ballplayers from working out.

There’s a new field at the Giants' complex, with two infields. Not exactly as impressive as, say, the White Sox and Dodgers' facility 15 miles west at Glendale, where each team has a dozen diamonds apiece. But the Giants have civilization, which counts for something.

Not as much as some power hitting and relief pitching, of course. This spring training of 2018 is one of problems and questions. For the first time in years, San Francisco enters — let’s say it — as an also-ran, a team theoretically without hope.

The Giants bottomed out in 2017. A chill. A fall from the heights. Three World Series championships in five years, certainly. But that was then. Now is a muddle.

Will Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutcheon make that much of a difference? The Dodgers and Diamondbacks are locks, aren’t they, and the Rockies should make the postseason. The Padres were seven games in front of San Francisco and just signed Eric Hosmer for millions.

It is a sobering reminder that last season the Giants not only didn’t win four out of every 10 games, they finished 40 games behind the dreaded Dodgers. That seems impossible. It wasn’t.

Maybe it’s the temperature, the high down here just 61 degrees. Maybe it’s the reality. But for the Giants, the usual optimism of spring training seems absent. How do you pick up 20 games on the Dodgers, never mind 40? And how do you feel good wearing parkas in Arizona?

Giants manager Bruce Bochy spent a good part of Wednesday on that new back field, watching prospects such as Andres Blanco and Chase D’Arnaud. “I need to put the face with the name,” said Bochy, ”although I know them all. They have it a little tougher.”

He meant tougher than the veterans, who are not to be rushed. The Giants’ exhibition season opens Friday, split squad against Milwaukee, and Buster Posey will be watching, not playing, and probably a game or two after that. Posey is approaching 31. Catchers wear down.

Pablo Sandoval already is 31 and, at times, being dropped by Boston and then returning to the Giants in July 2017, already looked worn down. He hit .225 with five home runs in 47 games with San Francisco.

Bochy said Sandoval, with a history of being overweight, is in good shape. He’ll be used at third base and first base, backing up, and at times as a bullpen catcher. Where the Panda will not be used is in the outfield.

“We were playing one of those postseason games in Taiwan, a lot of major leaguers,” said Bochy. “I put Pablo in left field. There’s a line drive in the gap. He looks to his left at the center fielder, a speed guy (it was Curtis Granderson), as if, ‘That’s your ball.’

“But everything that’s happened to Pablo over the years hasn’t fazed him.”

What happened last season certainly fazed the Giants and their fans. The AT&T Park sellout streak ended at 530 games. Madison Bumgarner fell off a dirt bike and missed a couple of months. It was as if the baseball gods were making San Francisco pay for the glory of earlier years.

When Bumgarner went down, Ty Blach stepped up. And Blach will start the Cactus League opener on Friday. The usual contention is that exhibition games don’t mean anything, that pitchers are working to get in shape.

But for a team built on pitching, a team coming off a rotten year, these exhibition games over the next month could mean a great deal. They could make everyone, players and fans, believe.

“My job,” said Bochy, “is to get these guys ready for opening day.” Being ready does count. Being successful counts much more.

Dramatic A’s win, and now Coliseum belongs to Raiders

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — That’s it for baseball at Oakland. This year, at least. A dramatic conclusion, a successful end. Now the Coliseum will be in sole possession of the Raiders.

The pitching rubber was dug out almost before the before the ball Mark Canha smacked in the bottom of the ninth Wednesday cleared the left field fence.

The next day or two, the infield will disappear. No more dirt. No more ground balls. No more home runs. Until next spring.

Until baseball returns to the East Bay.

Before that, the merchants and politicians can debate the proposed A’s stadium near Lake Merritt that, knowing how things work in Nor Cal — or maybe that should be don’t work — might never be constructed.

Whatever, the ball club has been built — and disassembled and rebuilt — and with only four road games remaining this season of ’17, all against the Rangers, the A's seem destined to be considerably better in the years ahead. Depending on the whims and needs of the front office.

It’s a long season. We know that, 162 games, from the end of March until the end of September. Yet, it’s not the grind we remember, it’s the moments.

The little things. Franklin Barreto, sprinting around the bases in the third — “out of the box, running hard,”  said A’s manager Bob Melvin — a double and getting to third on an error. He would score on Jed Lowrie’s sacrifice fly.

The big things. Canha, a Cal guy as is Melvin, hitting his second walk-off of the year, on a 1-0 pitch in the last of the ninth that gave Oakland a 6-5 win over Seattle, which Melvin in so many words indicated was huge.

This had been a good month, September, 14-10 for an A’s team with a bad overall record, 72-85. But add a victory in each category.

”We had a lot of good things going, and then to get swept the last series at home ... ” sighed Melvin. Which, after dropping the first two games to Seattle and then losing a two-run, eighth-inning lead Wednesday, appeared a strong possibility.

Then Canha came to bat with one out, nobody on and the score tied, 5-5. He was 0-for-8 in the series. Wham. He was 1-for-9 and being swarmed at home plate by jubilant teammates.

“It was a fun way to end it,” he said.

An appropriate way to end it, according to Melvin. This was the A’s 11^th walkoff win of the season (out of the 73 so far) and the eighth by a homer.

Yet Melvin didn’t approach it as enjoyment as much as relief.

“We’ve been consistent at home all year,” said Melvin, “and to get swept the last series would have been pretty disheartening. And of course we wanted to win for our home fans on this last day."

Few as there might have been, the announced attendance of 13,132 perhaps a bit misleading. But the gate was not the issue, the game result was.

Finale or not, it still was an autumn, midweek afternoon game against a team with talent but not much charisma. Maybe not even the Yankees or Red Sox would draw, given the particulars.

The A’s players found contentment in the score and their contribution.

“I had a tough series until (the home run),” said Canha. He’s from San Jose and Bellarmine Prep. After Cal, he was taken by the Miami Marlins, then chosen in the Rule 5 draft by Colorado, which traded him to Oakland for Austin House. Canha led the A’s in home runs in spring training 2015 and that year led all American League rookies in RBIs.

But 2016 brought hip surgery, and then this year he was optioned to Nashville April 15. He came back. In a big way, a walkoff home run in May, and now another.

“It happened so fast,” he said of the pitch from Shane Simmons and the swing that produced only his fifth homer of the year. “It’s been an up-and-down season for us as a team and for me personally. Nice to cap it off with that.”

Very, very nice.

Bochy on 2017: 'This isn’t who we are'

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — That was a Giants flag, a black SF on a circle of orange, almost like the Great Pumpkin, flapping in the freshening breeze and incoming fog atop the right field foul pole at AT&T Park on Wednesday afternoon.

A rare sight after a rare victory, a tease of what should have been this season, decent pitching, timely hitting, a good break — Jarrett Parker’s excuse-me double in the seventh that scored two runs — a 4-2 win over Milwaukee and a rare series victory.

A little more than a month remaining in the Great Lost Season, when the players stopped performing — for the most part — and the fans stopped coming, and given the farm system and budget restrictions, no one is quite certain how corrections can be made.

Unless, perchance, they don’t need to be made. Unless, as Giants manager Bruce Bochy said when the talk drifted from failure to frustration to potential, this season of 2017 was an aberration, a rare set of misfortunes that now and then strike teams in baseball.

“We don’t think we’re the team that had this rough a year,” said Bochy. ”We’ve been there the last six, seven years. These are really good ballplayers, really good pitchers. This year is different, injuries, off years. This isn’t who we are.”

So, instead of talking about 2018, Bochy's idea is to play well the rest of 2017, to regain lost confidence, find new belief.

No small issue, but with baseball's reliance on home runs, the Giants ought to find some new power. San Francisco’s cleanup hitter, Buster Posey, while batting .317, has only 12 home runs. The Brewers’ cleanup batter, Travis Shaw, has 27.

The cliché is good pitching will beat good hitting, but for the most part — yes, Madison Bumgarner was out weeks — the pitching hasn’t been that good. Which is why Matt Moore’s third straight quality start had Bochy enthusiastic and explanatory.

Moore went six innings and allowed only a run. He left when the game was tied 1-1. Hunter Strickland got the win, Mark Melancon the save — just as it was planned in March, before Strickland was inconsistent and Melancon was injured.

Still, Moore has a 4-12 record and a 5.54 ERA. And as we know, the Giants were eliminated from postseason play in mid-August, something unimaginable in spring training.

“It’s how you finish,” said Bochy. ”You’re going to have your struggles, your hiccups, bumps in the road. Matt had some good starts now. For him, less is more. He’s backed off his pitches a little bit.”

And some would say a little late.

The reflection of this season is as much in the bleachers and grandstands at AT&T as on the field. This is the 18^th season for the park, but the first when there were huge areas of empty seats. 

The announced attendance Wednesday, meaning tickets sold, was 40,015, some 2,000 below capacity. Even in that streak of sellouts, which ended earlier this year, were unfilled seats. Now there are hundreds, probably thousands.

Giants fans, Bay Area fans, cannot accept losing. Interest in the Giants and Athletics has tumbled. No longer are BART trains packed with fans wearing orange and black.

The Wednesday game was joyful for those in attendance, a reminder of the way it was. A Giants win and that black-and-orange flag.

Giants show some fire, but what about the future?

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — That was an interesting figure of speech from Bruce Bochy about an apparent controversy dealing with the pre-game stretching routine by relief pitchers. “It’s pole vaulting over mouse droppings,” said Bochy, or something a trifle more colorful

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports reported that Mark Melancon, the closer the Giants paid $62 million to hold the leads they almost never have, along with his fastball and sinker brought his own exercise program, “one that rubbed teammates the wrong way.”                            

Nothing is too small to be overlooked when a team is playing as poorly as the Giants are, certainly. Losers have issues that nobody notices or fusses about on winners.

But a debate over stretching? As Melancon said, it brought back memories of Allen Iverson missing a workout and whining, “We’re talking practice, man.”

In other words, irrelevant. Pole vaulting over mouse droppings.                                     

The discussion ought to be how the Giants escape this disaster of a season when losing streaks seem to last forever. Mercifully, the most recent one, five games, came to an end on Monday night at AT&T Park, with San Francisco beating Colorado, 9-2.

Jeff Samardzija pitched, shutting out the Rockies for the first six innings, and virtually everyone hit, Buster Posey, Hunter Pence, Joe Panik. Still the Giants are 2-12 in their last 14 games. Those are 49ers numbers.

Tim Flannery retired as the Giants' third base coach two years ago and now on occasion sits in the NBCS Bay Area studio after game telecasts and gives unfiltered opinions.

On Sunday, after a listless San Francisco loss to the New York Mets, Flannery said “there is something missing” from his old ball club. He didn’t mean in personnel. He meant in attitude.

“If I were in that clubhouse,” Flannery said, "I’d kick a few butts." 

And not long after that, Mike Krukow, who shares TV play-by-play duties with Duane Kuiper, growled that the Giants seemed accepting of their fate, saying, “They had no spirit.”

That’s not at all surprising for a team that has underachieved, a team with a lot of high-price players, a team out of the pennant race before the end of June. What’s to get excited about?

San Francisco, however, belied all the negative comments on Monday night, showing spirit and competitive fire, if against a team with its own troubles, the Rockies having lost six in a row — although their first to San Francisco after nine straight wins.

And Panik, who had two hits, two runs scored and two RBIs, insisted the team, even if it had lost games, hadn’t lost its way. “Being professional is coming to the park every day and playing hard, no matter what,” said Panik.

So, according to Panik, the Giants haven’t conceded. The fans? Well, the Giants announced a 550th straight sellout, 41,388, but at least 15,000 of those seats were empty. Baseball and blue Mondays never have been the best of matchups by the Bay, yet this was reminiscent of those seasons at Candlestick.

What has happened this season is a contradiction, bewildering and yet understandable. The Giants in March seemed very much a contender — but with Madison Bumgarner injured, the pitching, other than Samardzija and Johnny Cueto, has been a mess, especially the relief pitching.

The team ERA is 4.78, awful for a club dependent on pitching for success, which is why there hasn’t been any success.

Posey can hit. He’s batting .347. But he’s a singles and doubles hitter, in the cleanup spot. Pence had three hits Monday night, but in too many games he looks like the 34-year-old he is, striking out, grounding out.

In the media dining room before Monday night’s game, the talk was less about the Giants’ present than the future. Do they trade or sell Cueto and/or Pence? Do they bring in a more efficient defensive centerfielder than Denard Span? Do they go after a home run king like Giancarlo Stanton?

No mention of pole vaulting over mouse droppings.

One day, but a day of homers and brilliance for the A’s

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Sometimes you have to take a day out of context, have to appreciate what happened in those few innings or few hours, forget about what it means in the great scheme of things, the standings, the record book, and revel in what happened.

At the Coliseum on maybe the warmest Saturday of the season — the temperature hit 80 — and for the Oakland Athletics unquestionably the most exciting, seemingly everything happened, from a ton of home runs to an 8-3 victory over the Red Sox that all but silenced all those expatriate New Englanders.

Fine pitching? Absolutely. From Oakland starter Sean Manea, who went five innings, allowed three runs and got the win (he’s now 2-3), and relievers Frankie Montas and Josh Smith, who extended the A’s bullpen streak of scoreless innings at home to 25.

Power hitting? Certainly. Four Oakland home runs, including one to dead center in the fifth by Chad Pinder that landed in the seats of the plaza level, some 460 feet away. He joins Mark McGwire, Larry Walker and Jarrett Parker to have landed balls there in the lower region of Mt. Davis since the area opened in 1996.

Consternation? Indeed. A’s manager Bob Melvin was angry after a ruling in the second on a ball that was thrown by Boston catcher Christian Vazquez (for an error) into the right field visitors bullpen. Everyone believed that Melvin argued because he wanted an extra base, but he said after being ejected by crew chief Mike Winters that he had another issue.

The A’s are last in the American League West. Boston is in the middle of the AL East. So this one didn’t exactly quite change the standings. But it was wonderful for entertainment, and isn’t that what we most demand of sports?

The Red Sox fans who once filled the Coliseum are not quite what they used to be, in numbers or voice. Game one of this four-game series Thursday night drew only around 14,000 people — a number that you might expect for the Rangers. The gate was 24,378 Friday night, but Saturday, as fine an afternoon as one could imagine, there were only 20,235. Did Red Sox Nation shrink?

Oakland had home runs by Jed Lowrie, Khris Davis, Mark Canha and that monster by Pinder. Well, shrugged Melvin, when the A’s are hitting, that’s their game. Especially when the weather is hot. Over the years, the cold nights in Oakland cost Reggie Jackson, Jose Canseco and McGwire so many chances on balls that were hit hard. But on a day like Saturday, everything takes off — as Melvin agreed.

”Everybody just sat up and watched,” said Manea. “We had a good time in the dugout. Never seen a ball hit as far as Pinder hit. He’s really built.”

Melvin said Pinder is no surprise, although he hardly expected that sort of shot. “Everybody raved about him,” Melvin said. “We just have to find a position for him.” On Saturday Pinder was the designated hitter — emphasis on the word hitter.

Pinder’s homer followed those of Canha and Khris Davis in a five-run A’s fifth. There were some walks and a single in the mix. What do we call these guys, the Lash Brothers?

"Day games, the ball carries a little more, but I don't know if any of them would have been affected," said Melvin. "It seems like they got longer and longer. Canha crushed that ball. K.D. (Khris Davis not Kevin Durant, Warriors fans), we've seen it, and the Pinder one, I don't even know how to explain that.”

Neither does Pinder, but he doesn’t need to. "It's one of those swings where you kind of just black out," Pinder said. "You see it and you hit it, and you don't know what happens after."

What happens is the ball goes forever, and people who have seen it grab their head in disbelief. Including Khris Davis, who now has 13 homers himself.

"That was amazing," Davis said of the Pinder bomb. "He's got a great swing. That was impressive."

So, on this warm day of excitement and long balls, were the Oakland A’s.

Bochy on the Giants: ‘I like to think this was a start’

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — Still learning. “That’s the goal,” said Buster Posey, "to learn.” About the Giants, and himself. To learn how to improve, and even for a former MVP, a World Series hero, the education never stops.

For Buster. For manager Bruce Bochy. For the fans, after a week of successful baseball that finally arrived after too many weeks of failing baseball.

They learned, and we learned, that for a few games at least the Giants were able to combine pitching and hitting, play as they once played, play — yes — as they were supposed to be playing.

They won five in a row, five out of seven on a home stand that concluded Wednesday afternoon at AT&T Park with a defeat, not surprising since the other team was the Dodgers and the other pitcher was Clayton Kershaw.

“He was his usual good self,” said Bochy, an understatement of sorts. Pitched the first seven innings. Didn’t allow a run. Impossible to win if you don’t score, although the Giants finally did, on an Eduardo Nunez bases-empty home run off of ex-Giant Sergio Romo in the ninth. It was a bit of face-saving in a 6-1 defeat.

In effect, the game was over in the first when Yasmani Grandal doubled in two runs off of Johnny Cueto. Kershaw with a 2-0 lead before two innings had been played? “Very tough,” said Bochy.

Two words that apply to the Giants' road trip, which starts Friday at St. Louis and then goes to Chicago. The Cardinals are in first in the National League Central. The Cubs are World Series Champions. Posey will learn something about the Giants.

“I like to think this was a start,” said Bochy of the home stand. “We lost the opener (falling 12 games below .500), and everyone is thinking we’re out of it.

“The thing I liked is we played Giants baseball. We were in games, got quality pitching, which gave us a chance.”

In the previous few games, at Cincinnati and New York, they barely had a chance, losing 13-3, 14-2 and 6-1. The return to San Francisco, to AT&T, a pitcher’s park, changed scores and perhaps attitudes.

“We kept people away from the big inning,” said Bochy. “The thing I like about this team is there’s a sense of confidence. We just have to keep playing the way we have been.

What appeared to be a reminder of the historic Dodgers-Giants rivalry popped up — in a manner of speaking — in the third. Cueto, possibly upset with himself after giving up the first-inning hits on two-strike counts, yelled at Grandal in the third for stealing signs from Posey after the first-inning double. An inside pitch, and like that both dugouts and bullpens emptied. And that was it.

In fact, Kershaw walked through the three dozen or so players from both teams that, as is the situation in most baseball confrontations, were just grabbing or yelling and marched to the mound to take his warm-ups for the bottom of the inning.

After the game, Grandal and Cueto (now 4-3) apologized to each other. No ejections, no fines and, for the usual sellout crowd at AT&T Park, no real excitement.

“It caught me by surprise,” Grandal said of the Cueto pitch, and no, he wouldn’t dare steal a sign and relay it to a batter, one of the many unwritten rules of a sport that has many.

“We talked about it,” said Grandal, the Dodgers' catcher. “We apologized, so we’re on good terms, I guess. Let’s not make it a larger deal than it really is.”

Everything between the Giants and Dodgers is large. San Francisco fans have forever chanted “Beat L.A.” Dodgers fans, and, wow, were there great numbers at AT&T, many of them hoisting a blue banner that covered much of the right centerfield bleachers, shouted “Let’s go, Dodgers.”

On Wednesday, after losing Monday and Tuesday, the Dodgers went. It’s obvious they’re a very good team. The Giants? We, and they, still are learning.

S.F. Examiner: After finally winning three straight, maybe the Giants are on to something

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

AT&T PARK — Maybe. That’s the only appropriate word. Maybe the Giants are about to play as everyone thought, as their manager Bruce Bochy conceded, to expectations. Maybe the breakout — their first three-game win streak of this so-far rotten season — is an indication.

Or maybe it’s just a tease.

Read the full story here.

©2017 The San Francisco Examiner 

A’s not going anyplace — except maybe in the standings

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — “Rooted in Oakland.” That’s the A’s slogan, their implied promise. “We ain’t going anywhere, people,” they’re telling us. Unlike the Raiders. Unlike the Warriors.

Except, with good fortune, going up the American League standings.

It’s different on this side of the bay. No ballpark by the water. No Frank Sinatra recording of “Strangers in the Night” in the top of the seventh. Hey, when the announced attendance is only 11,383, nobody’s a stranger.

The A’s dropped one on Tuesday night to the Angels, 7-3. Three walk-off wins in a row and then a loss. Anyone in baseball gladly would accept that statistic.

Especially the Giants. They’re awful, and becoming more awful. They can’t win any, never mind three in a row.

The A’s? The Royals? The Blue Jays? No, the San Francisco Giants have the worst record in the majors. They lost opening day, and there went the season.

About the time the A’s were coming out for batting practice Tuesday, just after 4 p.m., the Giants, having played only two innings against the Mets in New York, were behind, 5-0, the score posted on the right field board even though nobody but players and workers were inside the Coliseum.

Somebody not in uniform was heard to comment, “Unbelievable.”

As if anything in baseball really is.

The Yankees and Cubs play 18 innings in one of those absurd ESPN Sunday night games that ended at 1:05 a.m. in Chicago, the Yankees then flying to Cincinnati, arriving at 5 a.m. and playing that night. The A’s win consecutive games in the final inning by a home run.

Yonder Alonso hit a couple home runs Tuesday night for Oakland. Maybe he’s on his way to becoming a star. Maybe he’s on his way to another team. With the A’s, one never knows.

The often-repeated theory held here is that with cars, wine or ballplayers one gets what he or she pays for. Sometimes you get a kid before he’s eligible for the big contract or vino the critics haven’t reviewed, but that’s not the norm.

So if the A’s, with their 2017 payroll of some $75 million — it’s still higher than those of the Rays, Padres and Brewers — are doing as well or as poorly as might be imagined, the Giants and their $170 million payroll are a disaster. Well, they’d be a disaster no matter how much money they earned.

Nostalgia is big at the Coliseum, as it should be. There’s Rickey Henderson Field, a wise public relations idea — and in the pre-game home clubhouse, there’s Rickey his ownself, chattering, laughing, lending as much credibility and direction as possible.

The wall of the walkway through which the athletes pass on their way to the clubhouse is lined with photos of everyone who played for the A’s, even if as brief as a season, elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, Dennis Eckersley, Reggie Jackson and, of course, Henderson.

Past and present mingle beneath the framework of a stadium that management hopes to replace with a new ballpark. On the waterfront, perhaps. Or on the very site of the Coliseum. But definitely in Oakland.

The questions of when and where have persisted virtually from the time the A’s arrived in 1968. That was 10 years after the Giants, who — and isn’t this ironic, now having become established at AT&T Park? — moved to a ballpark accurately described as the worst in America, Candlestick Park.

The A’s were going to Denver. The A’s were going to Las Vegas. The A’s were going to San Jose. But they’re still in Oakland and seemingly will be for a long while.

Wonderful.

Bochy on consecutive 2-1 games: ‘That’s who we are’

By Art Spander

SAN FRANCISCO — That’s who they are. Bruce Bochy said it about the Giants. He didn’t mean losing to the Dodgers, as they did, 2-1, Tuesday night. He meant pitching well and fielding well and having chances to win, unlike those three games at the end of last week against the Rockies in Denver.

The Giants, built on pitching, desperate for hitting, lacked both in those games, losing them 12-3 and 8-0, respectively. That can happen at Coors Field, said Bochy.

But it didn’t happen for the Giants, just against them, against a staff that is supposedly among the best in baseball but last in the National League with an earned run average above 5. After two beautifully pitched games at AT&T Park against L.A., a 2-1 win followed by a 2-1 defeat, their ERA is still is up there at 4.39.

You allow only three runs total in two games, win or loss, and you can’t be displeased. Bochy wasn’t. The way Matt Cain pitched Monday, then Ty Blach — the spot starter, filling in for Madison Bumgarner — pitched Tuesday, had Bochy believing once again.

Had he been on the mound, and not on the disabled list — you do know about that dirt bike accident, of course — Bumgarner couldn’t have pitched much better or had much less offensive support than Blach. Then again, the guy starting and starring for the Dodgers, Clayton Kershaw, is a Cy Young Award winner.

“All we ask,” said Bochy, “is our starters give us a chance to win.” Blach, a lefty like Bumgarner — and Kershaw — certainly did that. He also doubled to lead off the third, then after a couple of strikeouts scored the game’s first run on Buster Posey’s single. That the Dodgers, quality team that they are, responded with two runs in the top of the fourth, showed why L.A. is the favorite in National League West.

In this agonizing season of injuries and inconsistency —  on Tuesday night, Brandon Crawford strained his right groin rounding first base after a single in the eighth — the Giants are trying to stay close and relevant. And, reminded Bochy, play their style of baseball, keeping in the game, as they did against the Dodgers, as they didn’t do against the Rockies.

They brought up the kid everyone thinks will be the star of the future, the next Buster Posey, infielder Christian Arroyo — only a few days after the front office said he would stay in the minors for a while. On Tuesday, Arroyo, 21, got his first major league hit, off the brilliant Kershaw, no less. His family was in the stands.

An omen for the Giants? Could be. As the injury to Crawford could be. Posey was out with a possible concussion. Cain pulled a hamstring. Bumgarner tumbling on his pitching arm and destined to miss two months. So much pain, and very little gain.

Crawford was to travel Wednesday to southern California to attend family services for his sister-in-law, who died last week. He would be on bereavement leave for three days. Bochy hoped Crawford would get an MRI before departing, but Crawford didn’t think it would be possible given time constraints.

“I’ve never had anything like this before,” said Crawford about the injury, “so I can’t tell you how bad it is.”

The other day, after losing four in a row, one to Kansas City and then the three to Colorado, the question was how bad the Giants might be. In the clubhouse Sunday, Bochy, invariably upbeat, sighed, “We’re not very good.” Then, maybe realizing how that sounded in just the third week of the season, added, “Right now.”

The two games at home against the Dodgers proved an antidote, a reassurance. “Ty did a real nice job,” he said of Blach. “He had his pitches going. It was a hard-fought, well-pitched game by both guys.

“This is our type of game. Two to one, close games, that’s who we are.”

SportsXchange: Athletics defeat Rangers behind Triggs

By Art Spander
SportsXchange

OAKLAND, Calif  — The Texas Rangers had their ace, and for five innings Yu Darvish pitched exactly as everyone, including his manager, knew he could. The problem for the Rangers is they were facing X-factor, Andrew Triggs, who nobody suspected would win this pitchers' duel. 

Triggs was up and back last season, a reliever who couldn't quite stay on the Oakland Athletics' roster. Then, the decision was made to make him a starter. So far, the decision has been brilliant.

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2017 SportsXchange

SportsXchange: Dueling skids on line as Rangers visit A's

By Art Spander
SportsXchange

OAKLAND — Fans know the operative term when teams start poorly, to wit, "It's early." 

Literally yes, only two weeks into a major league season that extends six months. Still, early or late, the Oakland Athletics and Texas Rangers, who on Monday night begin a three-game series at the Oakland Coliseum, are going in the wrong direction. 

Read the full story here.

Copyright 2017 SportsXchange

More odd-year agony for the Giants

By Art Spander

It’s an odd year, isn’t it? We should stop there, when it comes to the San Francisco Giants. It isn’t so much that in even years, at least three of them, everything goes right and the Giants win World Series.

It’s that in odd years too much goes wrong.

Buster Posey was run over at home plate in May 2011; he missed the rest of the season. Hunter Pence’s arm was broken by a pitch in spring training 2015; he never was completely healthy throughout the year.

And now, Posey again, in 2017. Hit by a pitch two days ago, the first home game of the season. Put on the disabled list with a concussion.

Odd years aren’t a jinx, they’re a curse. For the Giants, there’s nothing odd about the odd years, there’s something evil. Already they’re in a hole. And they had Buster.

A terrible opening week, losing every game except one. Now they lose Buster, who’s drilled in the head.

The Giants will take no chances with Posey, their main man, their cleanup hitter, their star. Nor should they. After Posey was run over at the plate in 2011, Major League Baseball changed a rule, providing catchers more protection. But that’s on defense.

In the National League, everyone comes to bat, and even wearing a helmet is vulnerable. Posey was unable to duck a Taijuan Walker fastball.

A pitcher’s job is to keep a hitter off balance, to instill fear. He throws inside, usually without any repercussion — or concussion. This inside pitch at 94 mph couldn’t be escaped.

“The fact he is a catcher, taking shots, it doesn’t take a lot,” said Bruce Bochy, the Giants manager, of being properly wary about bringing Posey back too soon.

Bochy knows. He was a catcher. We all know. The year Bochy took control of the Giants, 2007, their catcher the previous season, Mike Matheny, retired because of concussion symptoms, headaches and dizziness. That was a decade ago. Now Matheny is manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.

"This is not a shoulder, a knee or an elbow,” Matheny explained on making the decision to quit playing.

"We're talking about the brain. ... I didn't expect this. I don't think anybody did."

Ten years later we have learned so much more, from studies of NFL players and athletes in other contact sports. Talking about the brain? All those stories of chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Catchers are jarred by foul tips off their mask, dangerous for a man recovering from a head injury.

“You get hit in the head,” said Bochy, “it doesn’t take a lot.”

So Posey is out a week. At least. Are the Giants so quickly out of contention?

“I think we’re better able to withstand this short-term,” said Bobby Evans, the Giants' general manager. “We’re going to exercise caution.”

Nothing is more important than a person’s health. Whether it’s Buster Posey, an MVP, or a lesser player, the responsibility is to the individual. The Giants, a caring organization, will err on the safe side.

“I don’t anticipate it being a long time,” Posey said. “That’s based on how I feel.”

Also how the medical people feel. Football players, in the vernacular, would talk about “having their bell rung.” Trainers would show a hand and ask how many fingers were being held up. A correct answer would get the player back into the game.

Then two days later, the man would complain about headaches, about reacting slowly. Now the majority of sports have developed what is called concussion protocol, applied before an athlete can be cleared.

“Obviously,” Posey admitted, “we’ve seen some guys with lingering effects. Again, I feel pretty good.”

Pretty good, however, isn’t good enough.

“I think it was a smart move,” Posey conceded about being placed on the DL, “especially being a catcher and having the one (Monday), and you never know if you’ll get some more.”

In this odd year, the Giants — struggling, without Buster Posey for even a few days — don’t need any more.

S.F. Examiner: Opening Day reminder of last season’s woes

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

PHOENIX — Somewhere beyond the usual platitudes and justifications, the expected words that it was only one game and yes, baseball can be bewilderingly strange, is the unavoidable fact the Giants started the 2017 season exactly the way they ended the 2016 season: With a massive bullpen failure.

Say what you want, and what manager Bruce Bochy said Sunday was true to his character, that the Giants should have scored more, that the Arizona Diamondbacks had some good fortune — “seeing-eye hits,” is the phrase — and that a couple of calls by the umpires could have, more specifically, should have gone the other way.

Read the full story here.

©2017 The San Francisco Examiner

Newsday (N.Y.): Indians’ Terry Francona is managing a powerhouse

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

MESA, Ariz. — It’s 45 miles from the Cleveland Indians’ spring training complex in Goodyear, Arizona, to Hohokam Stadium, where the Oakland A’s play, the longest distance between sites in the Cactus League.

“And we had to do it twice in one week,” Indians manager Terry Francona said.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2017 Newsday. All rights reserved.

Newsday (N.Y.): Chicago White Sox may not be good, but they’ll be interesting

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The Chicago White Sox have two young pitchers who have thrown baseballs at least 100 mph, one of whom, Lucas Giolito, is the son of a Hollywood actress.

The White Sox have a Cuban infielder, Yoan Moncada, described as the No. 1 prospect in the game.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2017 Newsday. All rights reserved.

S.F. Examiner: Questions for Giants as they drop eight

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Eight in a row for the Giants, the wrong way. True, they don’t count, but going a week without a win, even in the exhibition season brings back haunting memories of the second half of the 2016 regular season, when those losses did count, when San Francisco plunged from first place.

Madison Bumgarner pitched beautifully on a 72-degree Sunday afternoon, and that is what we should take from yet another Cactus League defeat for the Giants, this one to the Kansas City Royals, 4-3.

Read the full story here.

©2017 The San Francisco Examiner

Newsday (N.Y.): Winning a World Series hasn't changed the Cubs' Joe Maddon

By Art Spander
Special to Newsday

MESA, Ariz. — This is familiar territory to Joe Maddon. Not being manager of a World Series champion — “Kind of nice,” he understated — but Arizona, where he spent much of his career as part of the Angels’ organization.

For 30 years he was a part of the Angels, from playing for them in the minors to being a scout and a coach and on occasion an interim manager.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2017 Newsday. All rights reserved.

S.F. Examiner: Graveman tops Samardzija in Bay Bridge Series warmup

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Exhibition games are baseball in reverse. “You get the starters their work,” said Bob Melvin, the A’s manager, “and then it’s time for the young guys to finish and get the win.”

Which is exactly what happened Monday for Oakland. Against the Giants

Read the full story here.

©2017 The San Francisco Examiner