Author Archives: John Cannon

If The NCAA Can Get Replay Right, How Hard Can it Be? MLB, Pay Attention!

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Published on October 24, 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

Baseball’s refusal to take instant replay seriously has evolved from a minor nuisance to a full-blown disaster over the past several years, and it reared its ugly head again in Game 3 of the World Series. Well, actually, it sent a little warning shot in Game 2, as well.

The Game 2 play I’m referring to was the ball hit by Adrian Beltre in the ninth inning that looked from every replay angle like it changed direction after hitting his foot, before caroming out to shortstop. The ball was ruled a fair ball, and Beltre was an easy out at first base. Fox’s new  “TSA Scan-Cam,” as I like to call it, showed a small white dot on Beltre’s toe, in case the physical reality of a ball hit down and to the left that suddenly went to the shortstop wasn’t enough evidence of the ball’s foul-ness. Readers of a certain age will recall the Warren Commission report on the JFK assassination as using similar logic to that of the umpires on Thursday night.

That play was fairly quickly forgotten, because, after all, the best Beltre could have gotten out of the situation was another pitch to hit from the Cardinals’ flame-throwing closer, so you can’t make a concrete case that the call changed the outcome of the game.
Besides, on Saturday night the umpiring crew, allegedly selected on merit these days, presented proponents of instant replay with some real honest-to-goodness ammunition. They blew a call that prolonged an inning that produced four St. Louis runs, an excellent head start in a game the Cards wound up winning 16-7.  Many baseball experts have attempted to make the point that the call didn’t cost the Rangers the game, but I don’t see how you can definitively say that. Get that call right, and there are two outs with nobody on, which the percentages tell you is a big difference from one on, one out.

Rangers pitcher Matt Harrison, who had been pretty effective so far, got the next batter to top a ball toward first. With two out, that’s an easy play to second or first, but Mike Napoli tried to get the runner at home and threw it away, allowing two runs to score. Harrison, who should have been on the bench watching his team hit, then allowed a single and a ground-ball out (the fourth out of the inning, by my count, but only the second official one), and was removed by Ron Washington.

So not only did the Cardinals get four gift runs from the blown call, but they got the Rangers’ starter out of the game, and there’s no way to know how that impacted the outcome. This was not just any game, it was Texas’ first home game, and the game after the Rangers had wrestled home-field advantage away from St. Louis. They had it, if not taken away from them, made a much more difficult task than it would have been had MLB had any kind of decent instant replay system.

We know these things have happened in baseball for years, and one of the most ironic things about Game 3 was that the beneficiary was the St. Louis Cardinals, the team that got the worst hose job of all time in 1985. They were in the process of putting away the Kansas City Royals in Game 6 when Don Denkinger went to sleep on a play at first base, opening the door for a Royals rally that not only won that game but carried right through Game 7.

Back in 1985, however, instant replay was still considered a technological marvel, and we all had kind of a Star Trek “don’t change the course of history” attitude toward it. There was the “human error has always been part of the game” argument, which is one of the dumbest things anyone has ever said. The NFL was still years away from getting its act together, and I don’t remember anyone suggesting that baseball should start using replays to get calls right.

But time marches on, and the NFL, college football, the NHL and the NBA have incorporated some form of instant replay. The best MLB has been able to do is to look at replays to determine whether home runs were actually home runs, which comes into play a handful of times per year. Other fair/foul calls and outs on the bases have been distinctly excluded from review, leaving the umpires to just “do their best,” which has never really been good enough.

The folly that is MLB’s stance on replay was made clear just about two hours after the blown World Series call. Wisconsin and Michigan State had played 59 minutes and 56 seconds of inspired football with tons at stake for both schools. Wisconsin was playing to remain undefeated and a candidate for a BCS championship game berth, and Michigan State was playing to stay in the hunt for the Big 10 Championship and a trip to the Rose Bowl.

With :04 on the clock and the score tied, Michigan State launched a Hail Mary pass that wound up in the hands of one of their receivers on the 2 yard line. He immediately put his head down and tried to get in the end zone, but was thrown back by two defenders. The referees called him down on the 1, and the game was going to overtime. Except that every play in every college game is reviewed by a replay official, and after a very short period of time the announcement came that the call had been overturned and it was indeed a touchdown.

In real time, it looked like the refs had gotten it right, but the first look at a goal-line replay showed that the ball had broken the plane of the goal line ever so briefly. If the Badgers had gone on to win in OT it would have been a faulty verdict, and should they have played for the BCS championship the whole season would have been a sham. Because of instant replay, that won’t happen.

There’s no way that college football can do this and Major League Baseball can’t. I could go on and on about the reasons they’ve given in the past, but the debate is over.  Human error on the part of the players we can’t fix, but we can help those human umpires, and we need to.

Al Davis’ Passing Means I’m Free to Root for the Raiders Again!

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Warning: This column will be seen by some as politically incorrect. Anyone sensitive to references to people no longer living that are not 100% gush may want to move to the next link.

I didn’t like Al Davis. There, I said it. Like anyone else who’s been paying attention the past 40 or so years, I understand and respect his impact on the game and the society around the game, but as a human being, the man had flaws like everyone else. Actually, like his talents, even his flaws were bigger than most people’s

First, here’s a little background about me, just for context sake. I grew up in San Francisco, rooting in equal measure for the 49ers, Raiders, Giants, A’s and Warriors. (Sorry, Seals, I tried, but you weren’t on TV enough for me to grasp your game). I felt that all of those teams were “mine,” and felt the joy of victory and pain of defeat as each of them moved through the highs and lows of the 70’s and 80’s. There were some great days, of course, but the worst was “Black Saturday,” the day the Raiders lost on the Immaculate Reception and the 49ers blew a 3-score lead to the Cowboys on the very same afternoon.

Unfortunately, my love for the Raiders was not enough to keep them in Oakland. Al Davis moved the team to Los Angeles. I was angry, and unlike many Raider fans, I never got over it. When he brought the team back, it was even worse, like having someone you used to love deeply move back to town and act like they never tore your heart out.

Over the past several years, I have enjoyed how the team devolved into a dysfunctional mess. To me it was obvious that Davis was way past his “sell by” date as a general manager, and his press conferences each time he hired a new coach proved my point.  The highlight was the “Lane Kiffin Period,” as I like to call it, and if there were ever two people in football who deserved each other more, I don’t know about it. My opinion is that Al Davis was keeping that team from succeeding, just as surely has he had made it succeed 20 years earlier.

This season, however, started off a little differently. I’ve followed Hue Jackson’s career since he was an assistant coach at UOP in the mid-80’s, and while I was glad to see him get the opportunity to be an NFL head coach, I felt that his tenure would be marred by the usual series of strange decisions and events that torpedoed Cable, Kiffin, Callahan, and every other head coach since Tom Flores. The first few games of the season looked very familiar. Underperforming team, blow a big lead in Buffalo, piling up penalties, you know the drill.

Then Al Davis passed away. Let’s look at what’s happened since: Big win on the road in Houston.  Withstood the loss of the starting QB and beat Cleveland. A blockbuster deal, one that Al Davis would not have made, to fill that QB hole.  They’re playing exciting football, and making exciting moves to try to win this season. What’s not to like?

The Raiders also are working behind the scenes in the NFL to try to get the league to tone down the violent image it conveys to TV audiences. They have begged/cajoled/pressured the TV networks to show families at their games having a good time, not just the psychos in the “Black Hole.”   In my opinion, the NFL’s decision to jettison Hank Williams, Jr. from the Monday Night telecast was more about the “rowdy friends” image from which they’re trying to move away than anything he said about the president. I give Amy Trask and the Raiders some credit for that.

The irony is that I’ve spent the last ten years in the belief that Al Davis was holding back the Raiders. If I was right, they need to win now to prove it. That’s not the best reason ever to root for a football team, but it’s good enough for me. I’m on board the Silver and Black bandwagon from this point forward. One thing, though: I’m going to need a bigger seat than I had back in 1981, so scoot over, wouldja?

Harbaugh-Smith Relationship has Precedents

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Published October 6, 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

Sports fans in the Bay Area have been fascinated by the Jim Harbaugh-Alex Smith relationship since the day the new 49ers coach was hired.

One of his first actions was to announce that Smith would return as QB, much to the disappointment of The Faithful.

After watching Smith struggle for six years, fans were  convinced that he just couldn’t play in the NFL, and the talk shows were full of anger and frustration at the thought of watching No. 11 fling the ball all over Candlestick Park for another season. People just couldn’t imagine that the new coach, a former QB himself, couldn’t see the disaster right around the corner!

Now, with the 49ers at 3-1, with Smith’s performances ranging from “not horrible” to “pretty damn good,” 49er fans are starting to come around to the notion that Harbaugh may have known what he was doing.

You don’t have to look very far to see examples of QB-coach relationships in similar circumstances that worked out pretty well. One took place in Oakland, where Jim Plunkett, who had suffered through 10 nondescript seasons, hooked up with Tom Flores, a former QB himself, and the two combined for two Super Bowl championships.

Had there been a sports talk radio community in those days, it would have been very interesting how the Plunkett signing would have played on the air.

I had the opportunity to talk to a QB who had an experience like this. Sonny Jurgensen is a Hall of Famer, but looking at his career stats you have to feel for the guy.

He led the Eagles to a 10-4 record in his first year as an NFL starter (he was 27, by the way, that’s how it worked then), then suffered through eight non-winning seasons with Philly and Washington. He had good stats, mostly because his teams were always behind, but had played for a succession of coaches who didn’t “get” the passing game. One of those coaches, ironically, was one of the greatest QBs ever, Otto Graham.

That all changed in 1969. The legendary Vince Lombardi, who had retired from Green Bay after the 1967 season, was ready to go back to coaching. The Redskins hired him, and Jurgensen told me, “People know Lombardi for the Packer Sweep, and the defense, and the toughness, but what I learned was that he really was a master of offensive football. I had open receivers all over the field for the first time in my career. It was like the sun came out.”

Jurgensen led the league in attempts, completions, and passing yards. The Redskins went 7-5-2, their first winning season since 1955. Unfortunately, Lombardi was stricken with cancer, and died before the ‘Skins could build on his success. After one year with an interim coach, George Allen was hired and his defensive mindset propelled the Redskins to Super Bowl VII, but Jurgensen’s days of leading the NFL in passing were over.

Steve Young is another player who spent a couple of years in the USFL, played in the NFL for a terrible team, then came to the 49ers, where the QB position was the center of the universe.

He made a very interesting comment about Harbaugh and Smith on KNBR the week before the season’s first game. He was asked point-blank whether he could see Alex Smith hoisting the Super Bowl trophy, in a 49ers uniform. Young paused for about five seconds, and then said “I can.” He went on to explain that as a guy who played several years for coaches who didn’t understand the QB position and didn’t know how to call plays, he knows personally the difference when you get to a situation where the coach and the system are conducive to quarterback play.

Calling plays in the NFL is a lot harder than it looks from your couch, and anyone who has watched the 49ers for any of the past six seasons knows that with very few exceptions that has been a very weak point for this team. Fans have been very critical of the offensive coordinators over the years, but at the same time they have held Smith ultimately responsible for the team’s failure to move the football.

Young’s primary concern for Harbaugh and Smith this season was that because the fans had seen six years of futility from Smith there was no margin for a slow start. He felt that if the Niners got off to an 0-2 start, the crescendo of boos from the stands would be impossible to ignore, and with only a rookie behind Smith, Harbaugh, despite his own job stability, would be off to a very rocky start with the fans.

Fortunately, that isn’t what happened. In fact you could argue that the opposite has taken place, and Smith has shown enough development in the first four games that even if he has a rough game or even two, he and his new coach will have at least a few weeks to try to work out the kinks.

So next time you see Alex Smith trying to explain what’s different about playing for Jim Harbaugh, understand that what he’s trying to say is, “It’s like the sun came out.”

Criticism of Harbaugh comes from outside

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Published September 21, 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

After the 49ers collapse against the Dallas Cowboys, the focus of the talk shows was not the failure of the offense, the defense, or even the special teams. It was Jim Harbaugh’s non-declination of a penalty that has the 49er Faithful’s golden knickers in a knot.

This having happened several days ago, I’m going to assume you know what I’m talking about, and get right to my point. It seems that there’s a clear line separating the people who think Harbaugh did exactly the right thing, and the people who think he’s a pantywaist softy who was playing not to lose.

The difference? The people who have played the game are with Harbaugh on this, and the ones who have watched it all their lives are against him.

At this point, we need some disclaimers. I’m a line-crosser on this, in that I am a non-player, but I’m in Harbaugh’s camp on this decision.  I don’t always defer to the guys inside the lines on these matters (see my column last week on wasted timeouts), but I usually do, and in this case, I don’t think there’s even a question.

I understand the impulse. We’re pretty used to second-guessing the 49ers’ head coaches around here, because it’s been a really, really long time since we’ve had one that knew more than we do. We were all raised on Bill Walsh and the West Coast Offense, so the Mike Nolan/Mike Singletary years were pretty tough to stomach.  But folks, it’s time to back off.

Jim Harbaugh grew up in the game. Everybody knows by now; his father’s a coach, his brothers are coaches, he played for years in the NFL and has now paid his dues coaching at two levels in college. He completely transformed Stanford in four years. It’s going to take him some time to get the players he wants around him, and get rid of the ones he doesn’t, but he’s going to do it, and in the meantime he’s going to try to win every game he can.

So the notion that he was “playing not to lose,” which is what I heard a lot of on the radio the last two days, is ridiculous!

Harbaugh’s detractors seem to zero in on two specific reasons that they think the coach made the wrong move: 1) declining the penalty would have allowed the 49ers to kill some clock and 2) the three points he was taking off the board would have been readily available should he have needed them later.

Here’s why they’re wrong on both counts: 1) the Cowboys owned the line of scrimmage at that point, and even handoffs to Frank Gore were getting dangerous. Taking a knee isn’t a great strategy with 11:16 left in the game, so the 49ers were going to have to run some plays. Assuming they gained nothing, which seems to be okay with most of these people, they then line up for a 40-yard field goal, which, according to them, is automatic. 2) No 40-yard field goal, especially at Candlestick on a late afternoon, is automatic. Take that FG off the board, and the TD the Cowboys got could have been the tying score, and the FG that sent the game to OT could have won it.

People who have spent their lives inside the lines on the field know that nothing is automatic. Ask Roger Craig if “running some clock” is automatic. His fumble against the Giants in the 1990 NFC Championship game kept the 49ers out of their third straight Super Bowl. While you’re at it, ask any placekicker in the history of the game how “automatic” a 40-yarder at Candlestick is, and be prepared for some derisive laughter.

I’m not saying that Jim Harbaugh is perfect. He did let his quarterback burn the final timeout of the first half on a 3rd-and-19, thereby removing any chance of challenging a referee’s call, but the declined penalty? It’s time to let that one go, folks.

 

Why are five yards worth one timeout?

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Published September 15th, 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

I’ve been watching sports pretty carefully for quite a few years, and while I would never claim to know everything about every sport, I have a pretty good understanding of the basics. Football teams throughout professional and college football have been making the same mistake over and over again, and I’ve decided it’s time that I help them out a little bit.

My mission here is to reduce the number of timeouts that are wasted by quarterbacks as the play clock runs down. On the surface, it seems like a good decision. I mean, nobody likes penalties, and if you can avoid them, why not do it?

Well, here’s why not. Let’s start with some math:

Average number of yards per team, per game, in the NFL last year: 336. Number of timeouts per team, per game, in any NFL game: 6

Okay, now to make the math a little easier, let’s say you’re not an average NFL team, let’s say you’re below average, and you gain 300 yards per game. A five-yard penalty represents 1/60th of your total yardage. Any one of your timeouts represents 1/6th of your allotment, unless it’s the second half, in which case it’s 1/3rd, unless you only have two or one, in which case it’s even more.

So you’re taking a precious commodity, something you have 6 or less of, and spending it to save yourself 1/60th of the yardage you can expect to gain in the game. Does that make any sense at all? If you’re an average team, or a good one, 5 yards represents even a smaller percentage of your average output.

Now, before you all lose your mind; please understand that I know there are times when it makes sense to do this. 3rd-and-1 in the fourth quarter, for instance. Sometimes your field position might dictate that you really couldn’t stand to lose the five yards, perhaps because it would move you out of field goal range. I can think of several more instances where it would pay to spend that timeout, and I’ll list a few later in the column.

My point, however, is that no QB seems to give it that much thought. Can you remember a time in the past few years when you saw a QB look up at the play clock, see it running down and just take the five-yard hit? I sure can’t! It’s reflexive now, and not just in the pros. The colleges have caught the bug, too, and now their stadiums have the play clock on display so they can waste perfectly good timeouts to save five yards.

Here’s a real-life example of what I’m talking about. Monday night, in the 3rd quarter, the Raiders burned a timeout facing 3rd-and-8. What are the percentages of making a 3rd-and-8?  About 35%. They actually did convert that play for a first down, and later in the same drive they burned their second timeout on 3rd-and-16! What’s the percentage of making 3rd-and-16? Are you kidding me?

So it’s like the Raiders made a bad bet, got lucky, and then they made one that was ten times worse. They threw incomplete on the 3rd-and 16, and wound up having to punt after burning two timeouts on the “drive.” It didn’t cost them the game, but it sure could have!

So did ESPN’s analysts say this when they were calling those timeouts? Nope. Did the Raiders’ announcers talk about it? Nope. Oh, you may hear a broadcaster lament the “clock management.” The 49ers have been raked over the coals over the past couple of years for not getting their plays in on time, but the issue is always with the sideline getting the play to the QB. The lost timeout is just considered the cost of mismanaging the clock, as if the option of taking the penalty doesn’t exist.

How important are timeouts? I guess I need to point this out, because people seem to have forgotten. You can survive on offense without timeouts in a catch-up situation, because there are several ways to stop the clock. On defense, however, you’re dead in the water without timeouts. If you’re down by two scores late in the game, and you get one back, you need your timeouts to have any chance to get the ball back. If you don’t have three timeouts, or at least two and the 2:00 warning, you pretty much need to recover an onside kick to win that game, and once again we’re talking about a very low percentage play.

Even in the first half, timeouts are important. They can be the difference between getting a field goal team on the field at the end of the half and not being able to do so. Let’s not forget that if you don’t have any timeouts, you can’t challenge a referee’s call, even if it’s obvious to everyone in the stadium that it would be overturned.

So I thought, in order to help out, I would lay out a few tips on when to take the timeout and when not to:

Don’t take the timeout if:

It’s first down; It’s second down and more than two; It’s third down and more than five; It’s the first quarter, or the first drive of the third quarter; You’re inside your own 40; It’s your last one of the half or game.

Always take the timeout if:

It’s third or fourth down and the five yards would move you out of field goal range; It’s third and less than five; It’s second and one or two; You’re behind by more than three TD’s anytime in the game, or two TD’s in the second half.

The bottom line here is that at any particular point in the game, the timeout may be more valuable, or the yardage could be more valuable. Many factor too into that, and I think coaches have just bailed out on the whole question by telling their QB’s to just call the timeout every time. I also think there’s an opportunity for teams with the patience to teach the QB just a few guidelines to go by (perhaps mine would be a good start), and let them make that decision when the time comes. I think they’ll be grateful to have those timeouts in their pockets when the game is on the line.

Agree, disagree? I’d love to hear what you think on this topic.

Giants Show Repeating is Harder Than it Looks

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Published September 7, 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

I think I’m going to surprise you with my next statement. Outside of the New York Yankees, only one Major League Baseball Team has repeated as World Series Champions since the Reds did it in 1975-76. I’ll give you the rest of the column to come up with the team that did it, and I’ll bet some of you can’t.

This topic is of particular interest these days in the Bay Area, as it becomes increasingly clear that barring two very unlikely events (A D-Backs’ collapse and a Giants’ hot streak), the local lads will be added to the long and distinguished list of World Series Champions who came up short in their bid to repeat.

So what’s so hard about repeating? You’ve got great players, obviously, with the playoff experience you need and the confidence to know they can do it. That’s what the announcers always talk about when they break down a series. The team that’s “been there before” is always given an edge over a team without that experience.

Well, maybe that experience isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and in fact, maybe it should be looked at as a detriment! Is it possible that players who haven’t won a World Series have a fire in their bellies that goes out once they win one? That no matter how much they all talk about how much they want to defend that title, it’s just not quite as important as winning it the first time?

I think the Giants, while not a classic example of this theory, have shown some signs of it. Last year, they had less playoff experience than the Phillies, and it didn’t matter at all. Cliff Lee’s experience was supposed to give him the edge over Lincecum in the World Series, and it didn’t matter at all.

This year, the experience hasn’t helped them. When Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada were jettisoned from the club last week, several anonymous players told the media that their demands for playing time in the face of overwhelming evidence that they weren’t getting the job done was wearing on their teammates and the coaches.

I’m sure there are others in that locker room whose playing time was impacted by the arrival of Carlos Beltran and the other trade deadline acquisitions who have not been able to keep their frustrations to themselves, but let’s zero in on Rowand right now. Here’s a guy making a very high salary, with two World Series rings, and a long succession of terrible at-bats this season. You’d think a guy like that would be able to say to himself, “Aaron, let’s be a team guy, work real hard to get on track, and make the most of whatever opportunities come our way, and help this ballclub try to get back to the World Series.”

But he couldn’t do it … even though he did it LAST YEAR, and it worked out perfectly, except for one thing. His ego, without which he never would have made the major leagues, could not take another year of being a reserve on a good team. I think if the Giants had traded him to Houston for Jeff Keppinger he would have been very happy if it meant he would get to play every day.

I’m not saying it makes him a bad guy, either. I’m saying it shows how hard it is to get 25 guys “pulling on the same rope.” I think it also illustrates how masterful Bruce Bochy was last year at getting so many players to accept lesser roles than they were accustomed to. I think what we learned is that players will do that once, but they won’t do it year after year, even in a case like Rowand’s where he’s made much more money than his production would have indicated.

You can almost understand a player’s desire to be selfish if he’s early in his career and he hasn’t had that big payday yet, but Rowand and Tejada are not that guy. They are, however, players getting toward the end of the line, and in Rowand’s case, another ring was not going to change his life. He’s trying to squeeze as many at-bats out of his remaining days in the majors as he can, and I don’t blame him, but nobody forced him to sign that contract. That’s the one thing that kept him on the bench for the Giants this year rather than playing for another team, nothing else.

The Yankees have had two things going for them that helped them solve this problem: 1) Their owner never accepted not winning the World Series as a successful outcome of a season and 2) That owner would back up that stance with the money to bring in a couple (or a few) hungry veterans who wanted to get their championship ring before the clock ran out on their careers, and they would accept any role on the team to get it. It’s unbelievable that they won three titles in a row, and came within a whisker of adding a fourth in 2001.

So what team is the only one besides the Yankees to repeat since 1974? How about the Toronto Blue Jays in 1992 and 1993?  There weren’t very many players who were integral to both teams, just Joe Carter, Roberto Alomar, Devon White, Tony Fernandez and John Olerud. On the other hand, here’s a list of players who were on one or the other team, but not both: Rickey Henderson, Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, Candy Maldonado, Dave Stewart, Tom Henke, Jimmy Key, and David Cone. Jack Morris was on both teams, and had a great 1992 season, but was 7-12 in 1993 and didn’t pitch in postseason.

So my theory is that the simple fact that the Giants won a championship last year made it harder for essentially the same club to come back and win it this year. Add in injuries to Posey, both Sanchezes, Sandoval, Wilson and about ten other guys, sign one aging veteran who turns out to be terrible, make a deadline deal that kills whatever chemistry you still had, and it’s amazing that they’re as close to the D-Backs as they are. If only those players weren’t so darn human!

Giants fans quick to boo, quick to forget 2010?

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Published August 29 2011 at CSNBayArea.com

Since the beginning of August, the experience of being a Giants fan has changed pretty dramatically. It’s understandable that there’s some angst out there, and frustration, and even desperation regarding the chances to make the postseason.

What’s surprising to me is the anger! Listen to the talk shows, read the #sfgiants posts on Twitter, check the comments here on the CSN Bay Area site and those of the local papers, and you’re bombarded with angry fans who sound like 5-year-olds who’ve had their favorite toy taken away. Oh, wait, do 5-year-olds swear? OK, 15-year-olds, then.

You’d think that the Giants were the Yankees, a perennial contender and occasional champion, who had disappointed their spoiled fans by daring to miss the postseason. Is it possible that Giants fans have gotten this spoiled this quickly? With one measly championship?

Let’s review. In 2010, the Giants were the feel-good story of the young century, finally delivering a World Series championship to their faithful fans who had patiently waited over 50 years for it. They did so with some spectacular pitchers and despite a lineup of statistically ordinary players, including a guy, Cody Ross, whom they claimed on waivers just to keep him from San Diego.

During the offseason, management was in a tough spot. The players who had brought this championship needed to be rewarded, of course, but the fact remained that they were still relatively ordinary players. Now we’ve found out that without the fairy dust that was apparently being sprinkled around last year they’ve become even more ordinary.

August is drawing to a close, and the fans have every right to be disappointed. But let’s take a step back. No Buster Posey. No Freddy Sanchez. No Jonathan Sanchez, for all practical purposes. No Barry Zito for the most part, although for three weeks he looked like he was going to help. Practically no production from Andres Torres. Miguel Tejada has done the impossible; disappoint despite extremely low expectations. Ross was hurt in spring training and has never recovered. Aubrey Huff must be the least productive starting first baseman in either league.

I could address the offense, and it’s tempting, but I’m kind of in a hurry to get to this next part. For the last two weeks, in the most desperate time for this desperate team, they’ve been without Brian Wilson and Sergio Romo, their best two relievers. Don’t get me wrong, this is a fine bullpen, but you take the top two guys out of any team’s ‘pen and make them play for a few weeks like that, it’s not going to be pretty.

Sunday’s loss to the Astros was the third time in the past two weeks that Romo and Wilson were unavailable and the bullpen gave up the go-ahead run, and it actually happened twice in that game. What would the situation look like if the Giants had won one or two of those games, let alone all three?

So, I get the disappointment. It’s obviously much more fun when your team wins all the games, or even just all the close games. But I don’t think Giants fans have any right to be angry. It may feel good to dump on Ross, but believe me, if the Giants felt like they had a better option, he’d be in there! This was a team that started off weak on offense, and then was decimated by injuries. Have people forgotten that they put six players on the DL during one 10-game road trip, and had five more miss games for minor injuries?

You hear a lot of resentment about Giants fans. They’re called front-runners, bandwagoners and worse. One of the reasons is the perception that they all just showed up last year in September, and rode the wave through the playoffs. Now, I know that’s not true. The Giants’ attendance has been excellent ever since they moved to AT&T Park, despite some pretty bleak seasons over the past few years. But when you hear fans booing a team that won the World Series last year and is only a handful of games out of first place, it’s hard to argue with their critics.

So man up, Giants fans (including the many women who follow this team). Nobody promised you a World Series championship every year. I expect to have to explain that to my 7-year-old daughters, to whom history extends back one year, but I would think that grown-ups would have a better attitude about this. Root for your team, be bummed out if they don’t make the playoffs, and thrilled if they do. After all, as we all learned last year, victory is much sweeter when it’s unexpected.

Cannon: Faith, Beltran and Giants’ struggles

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Published August 23, 2011 on CSNBayArea.com

It’s been almost a month since Giants GM Brian Sabean started making changes to the roster, and the results, obviously, have been disappointing. The Giants, who won series after series over the first four months of the season, have won exactly one in the past four weeks.

It’s tempting to pin all of this misery on the incredible sequence of bad luck the team has run into lately, but I think that’s letting Sabean off the hook. He took a team that had only one thing going for it, and in shaking up his lineup, he destroyed that one thing: faith.

Faith was the team’s ace in the hole. It was winning games simply on the belief that it would; that someone would step up and get the two-out hit they needed to break a tie in the late innings. It wasn’t always a hit, either. Can you think of another team that won games on a pop fly lost in the sun and a bases-loaded balk in the same month? It was crazy!
It’s easy to understand Sabean’s desire to make changes. This team was, on paper, one of the worst offensive (most offensive?) teams in the major leagues. In fact, had the games been played on paper, you could be assured that the Giants would have been well below .500 at the end of July. Since the games are played on grass, not paper, and by human beings, not statistics, faith was a factor, and it carried the Giants to a four-game lead in the NL West.

That’s when Sabean started to talk about his desire to get some better sticks, and most of the baseball “experts” agreed that he had to. Here’s the problem, though. This isn’t Strat-o-Matic. You can’t just drop a new guy into the lineup of a Major League team and have him perform exactly the same way he would have with his previous team. And what about his new teammates? Starters become bench players, bench players get sent to the minors, and the team’s whole dynamic changes.

You may offer up Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn as examples of just the opposite; players who were acquired by their new teams at the same time the Giants picked up Carlos Beltran, and they clicked immediately and started making contributions. I would counter that argument by pointing out that the Phillies and Braves were teams which were offensively competent without those new players, and the pressure on them wasn’t nearly as great as it was (and remains) on Beltran. If you’re a team that is more reliant on talent than chemistry, you can add and subtract players without derailing your mojo. When you’re the Giants, mojo is not to be tampered with.

When Sabean went shopping, it was a reality sandwich for the whole team. It was like Wile E. Coyote suddenly looked down and realized that he had run off the cliff. Yes, Sabean got his man, but it seems like everyone else on the team (except Pablo Sandoval) has taken a step backward since Beltran showed up.

The interesting thing is that it’s not just the hitters who have been affected by this new, uncool vibe. Doubt has crept into the pitchers, too, who have had collectively their worst month of the season. Even manager Bruce Bochy, the man who has pushed all the right buttons since Aug. 1 of last year, doesn’t seem to have the same magic touch. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with him giving his No. 15 to Beltran, but why would a manager who won the World Series last year and sits in first place with two months to go tempt fate by changing his number?

So what’s my point? Good question. I suppose I just wanted to get on the record what a special experience it was watching the Giants play the first four months of this season. The past four weeks have been excruciating, but it doesn’t erase the memories of Crawford’s grand slam, Nate Schierholtz’s catch in L.A., Chris Stewart dropping a squeeze bunt in the top of the 11th and starting a 2-5-4 DP in the bottom to save the day. I mean, really? Chris Stewart?

Vogey making the All-Star team, countless innings of scoreless long relief, and Brian Wilson shutting door after door all made the Giants must-see TV. I understand why Sabean didn’t feel like he could leave that team alone and still have a chance to compete in October, but I wish he had.

I guess fans need to have a little faith.