a700hitter

Jones would get at least 20 games at 1B, more if Napoli has injury problems. He'd probably get about 50-60 games in the OF.

The flip flopping back and forth happens to me too, because I want to have hope.

He plays 1B/OF

That's Teddy Ballgame.

Garrett Jones is a major league player, and not a bad one. He does some things exceptionally well. At this point, there are valid concerns that Iggy will never be a full time starting SS. Bogaerts is rapidly closing Iggy's window of opportunity.

That's what I am seeing -- a 4th place or last place team. Which makes me question why they have spent so much money, getting back to a $170 million payroll. Does the FO really think this will be a competitive team? I could have finished last with a much lower payroll. It remind me of a story told by Ralph Kiner. He had led the league in HRs and he asked Branch Rickey for a raise. The Pirates had finished in last place. Rickey refused to give Kiner a raise telling him that he had finished in last with Kiner and he was pretty sure that he could finish last without him.

Hey I get what you are saying. As I said in an earlier post, I never believed that a catcher had a big impact on a pitcher's performance. However, the numbers that others have posted in this regard (Salty vs. other catchers) have been eye-opening. I am still skeptical that the bad pitching in 2012 is Salty's fault. Being that our staff is basically the same as last year except with the subtraction of Beckett and addition of Dempster, I am sort of hoping that it was Salty's fault, because we might trade him. If it wasn't Salty's fault, whether he stays or gets traded, I don't think we can expect a big improvement from our starters, because it is the same crew of pitchers.

I assume that this means Hill will be going elsewhere.

Overall, the pitching numbers with Salty behind the plate were far worse than the numbers with the other catchers in 2011 and 2012. Edit: BTW, even your cherry- picked numbers are higher than they were with other catchers in 2011. Buchholz's 2011 numbers don't prove much either way since he pitched only 81 innings that season.

Yes.

If you were a Cubs fan, that would make some sense. There are a lot of fans, especially around my age, that root for that combo. In the 60's, the only fans of the Pats were their family members. They didn't stop being a joke for about 20 years. By then, man thousands of New Englanders had already formed an allegiance to the Giants.

Tell us a little about yourself in the Introduce Yourself thread.

I am not a Pats fan, but I like them because they regularly beat the Jets like a drum, and as a Giants fan, I really like to see the Jets get their lumps. How about I'll tell you who I like. That's the way things usually work.

If you didn't read it, you shouldn't have responded.

I like Brady. I'm not a Pats fan. I'm a Giants fan, so I have no axe to grind with Brady, but he is not better than Unitas, on the all time great scale. None of today 's QBs match Johnny U as an all-time great. The rules are different today-- mamby pamby compared to the era of Unitas.

Uh the award for best pitcher is named after him.

By the end of his career he will not even be as good as Aaron Rodgers and maybe even Drew Bree's. I guess they plus Peyton are all all- time greats playing at the same time. I am sorry, but I am not buying it. The rules of the game are skewed in favor of chucking the ball today. That is why the stats are so gaudy.

Brady ahead oh Johnny U who revolutionized the QB position, is just absurd.

1,815 hits at home 1,815 hits on the road.

In 22 major league seasons, he never struck out 50 times in any season, yet he hit 475 HRs in his career. That is pretty remarkable.

They could live with Salty if he wasn't so horrible at handling the pitching staff. I never wanted to believe that catchers make that much of a difference to pitchers, but the numbers on Salty are consistently and extremely bad.

I think at the time Stan the Man died he owned every NL hitting record. Joe Garagiola used to tell some great stories about Stan the Man. When asked about hitting the spitter, Stan the Man replied, "I just hit the dry side". The author of the last biography of Musial said that he had been a fan of Musial during his playing days, but when he wrote the book he expected to lose some of his admiration for him. With all of the other subjects of his books he had always learned about the non public side which usually wasn't very flattering. His admiration for his subjects always decreased while researching them. Musial was the only subject that he came to admire more after researching him. He said in his book that he had a lot of difficulty finding anyone who had anything negative to say about Musial. One of the few people with which he had a disagreement late in life was Garagiola. The disagreement was over a business venture. It think he has the distinction of being the only player to be inducted into the Hall of Fame of an opposing team. The Brooklyn Dodgers inducted him into their Hall of Fame. That's the kind of people that Brooklyn Dodger fans were. If you beat them, but we're great they would acknowledge you as long as you were not a Giant.

Different game back then, and Graham was the best of that age. It wasn't debatable.