Guess Who's Back

Excuse me for the call back to our favorite Caucasian rapper this side of Vanilla Ice (who indeed is back in his own, peculiar way), but after a hiatus, I am back.

Three games into the regular season.

But I implore you to look to the due diligence of our glorious inaugural year here at Orange Black and Blue, and be assured that that level of output will once again commence. Particularly with a 2009 club that is immensely more likeable than some of the clowns that made up last year's opening day roster.

And, more pragmatically, we're putting the finishing touches on a massive site upgrade. So please stay tuned and be assured that we'll be around, better than ever, in short order.

As if you needed any more reason to be happy now that the good guys have won two more games against the Brew Crew than they did in all of 2008.

(And don't forget to wish Dr. Spaceman luck for his first start tonight!)

Comment! So how freaking exciting is it that I'm back?

Slop Hackers R Us

Jon Heyman reports that the Giants have have inked infielder Juan Uribe to a minor league deal.

I honestly could not envision a player that would shorten Brian Sabean's trouser legs more than Uribe. He's versatile, having played extensively at short, third and second, and has a career .295 OBP. And, boy, does he like striking out.

Truth be told, it's hard to work up too much frustration over a low-impact signing that essentially serves as insurance at any of the infield spots, all of which remain in flux, with the exception of shortstop. Also bear in mind that it appears Sabes has learned from his laughably tragic mistake of not addressing the backup shortstop position that led to Brian Bocock, 2008 San Francisco Giants Opening Day starter.

Note that the San Francisco 49ers franchise is an entirely different matter: I haven't been this worked up since Scott Spezio. But that's neither here nor there.

Yeah, But Can He Bat Cleanup?

While the Giants front office hasn't been exactly hitting on all cylinders in recent years, the one thing the team does well is celebrate its past. From Mays Plaza to McCovey Cove, the team cherishes whatever glory it may have once achieved which, for many of you, predate your births.

So it was great to see the Giants bring back Nuschler himself to a front office role. For those of us who came to fan fruition during the Humm-baby years, Will Clark and Matt Williams were synonymous with Giants baseball, and Clark's flair for the dramatic (homering of Nolan Ryan in his first at bat, the 1989 NLCS) captivated me and I'm sure many other young'uns alike.

I always wonder what would have happened if Clark could have stayed healthy and remained with the Giants passed that imperfectly glorious 1993 season. A Bonds-Williams-Clark heart of the order would have been a wonder to see for any extended length of time. It sure would have beat the illustrious stylings of Todd Benzinger.

(Then again, the jerk store would have had nothing on that Giants clubhouse.)

Giants Show Interest in Escuela

Having shored up an already solid rotation, Brian Sabean is moving to address a weak lineup, and has exchanged contract proposals with infielder Chico Escuela, OBnB has learned.

Citing a report in which one of Sabean's colleagues observed that the Giants are "one hitter from being a real good team," the Giants GM indicated he was monitoring the developing Escuela market.

Although his talent is undeniable, Escuela is equally known for his amazingly bizarre antics throughout his career, which has alienated teammates and fans alike. While his behavior has been justified by others as Escuela being naïve and idiosyncratic, he finds his list of suitors dwindling in no small part due to his reputation.

Escuela, however, has won in every stop of his career, and his disarming islander attitude can charm even the most skeptical of fans.

It remains to be seen if the Giants can work out a deal for what might be Escuela's last contract, but it's clear that an Esceula-led Giants squad would be berry, berry interesting to watch.

Who Else's Fifth Starter Has A Cy?

Ring in Boxing Day by celebrating the arrival of Randy Johnson to your San Francisco Giants. The Big Ugly (can I still call him that?) gets $8 million for one year.

The lanky lefty will ensure the Giants rotation is 60% Cy Young winners.

Maybe we can melt a couple down and fashion a Silver Slugger or two.

Fool's Gold Crappy Substitute For Real Kind

As those weirdos across the pond say, Happy Christmas. Accept this early bounty of gifts, in the form of links, from your friends at OBnB. While the Yanks ponder offering a long-term deal to Danny Almonte, us fans of mere mortal (okay, incompetent) franchises are left to review lists of mythical prospects that we may or may not ever actually see on the television.

Okay, so I'm a little bit bitter about the Mark Texeira deal. (So is this guy, and he actually matters.)

The good news is that there are a couple of nice recently published breakdowns of the Giants minor league system.

Alex Eisenberg at Baseball-Intellect has a Giants top 15 prospect list, found here and here, that includes fantastic videos of the team's top prospects.

Meanwhile, the great John Sickels at Minor League Ball released his top 20 Giants prospects list this morning, complete with the snarkiness of SportsNation commenters.

And speaking of SportsNation, the fans continue to rank the prospects at McCovey Chronicles. They're all the way down to 22, but it looks like those crazed McCoven are going to keep voting until they get to J.R. Phillips.

Go ahead and enjoy those. I think I'm going to go start a Manny Ramirez rumor.

(By the way, Giants propagandist Chris Haft posits that the logjam the Teixeira signing creates in the Yanks lineup may bear some dredges in a trade possibility.)

FU Fine Reaction to WBC (and Jeff Passan)

In a column today, Yahoo's Jeff Passan opines that American players simply don't have as much national pride and that is why talented player after talented player is turning down Team USA manager Davey Johnson's desperate recruiting pleas.

Among those expected to decline an invitation is our own Tim Lincecum, otherwise known, quite literally, as The Franchise.

It would seem that Passan's assertion that Lincecum, Cole Hamels, Josh Beckett and other WBC party poopers are just un-American is a bit simplistic. I mean, those guys all seem decent enough, right? Guys who gave it all for championships and are pretty much beyond reproach in the effort department. They don't have a Bondsian, Cobb-esque stigma that would make it seem like they're all about themselves, others be damned.

Well, Jeff has an interesting perspective. Here's another perspective, which I'd like to dub "The Right One." If you were one of the 18 to 24 solid major league pitchers in 2005 and you pitched for your respective country during the '06 WBC, well, chances are you weren't as good in 2006. And, perhaps most importantly, many didn't recover at all.

In a completely unscientific sample, I present...

"Good Pitchers Who Were Not So Good After the 2006 WBC" (Catchy, huh?)

Jake Peavy: Which one of these seasons is not like the other? Peavy remains the poster boy for post-WBC traumatic suck syndrome. His meteoric rise into this generation's Kevin Brown (no knock on your personality, Jake) was severely curtailed by his workload for Team USA in 2006.

Although he pitched over 200 innings in 2006, his ERA shot up from 2.88 in '05 to 4.09 that year, and he pitched with shoulder discomfort the entire season. Peavy's sublime talent and overall build won the war of attrition, eventually, and he came back in 2007 to win the Cy Young. Some, however, weren't as lucky...

Chad Cordero: Cordero was coming off a stellar season as a full-time closer for the Nationals, posting a 1.82 ERA and racking up 47 saves. His 2006 saw that ERA shoot up into the 3s and his decline continued into 2007, when he battled injuries. Cordero tore a labrum in early 2008 after struggling with his velocity, and is currently a a free agent.

Bartolo Colón: Here's a good example of a patriotic foreigner who gave it all for his country. The 2005 Cy Young winner (seriously, look), Colón has been completely awful since his stint for the Dominican Republic. He's compiled a 5.50 ERA in just 194.6 innings combined over the last three seasons after throwing for 200 in seven of the eight seasons prior.

After pitching on an incentive-laden deal with the Red Sox, Colón is hoping to land another Missouri contract for 2009.

Freddy García: García had been prone to lapses in consistency, but overall, was a horse of a pitcher, amassing 200 innings pitched in five of his first six seasons through 2005, to go along with a 3.93 ERA in that timeframe, including a 3.87 in '05 with the White Sox. After? 4.79 in the 289.3 innings he's managed to pitch over the last three campaigns with three different teams while struggling with shoulder injuries.

The 33 year-old García is currently seeking work.

Dontrelle Willis: Permanent WBCitis doesn't just afflict 30 somethings negatively. Coming off a brilliant 2005 in which he finished second in Cy balloting, the 24 year-old Willis manned up for the Jeff Passans of the world and participated in the WBC. The herky-jerky lefty has never been the same.

The Bay Area native is working to get his career back on track with the Tigers after spending a bulk of the season in the minors...

A couple of pitchers from the WBC came back fine, namely Carlos Zambrano and Johan Santana. But the list is no longer than those who regressed considerably from 2005, many (Estaban Loaiza, J.C. Romero, Huston Street) of whom I didn't list above.

As for the notion of mandatory pitch limits in the WBC, I'll leave you this comparison: 65 pitches in Scottsdale against the A's split-squad team in close quarters with the trainers and coaches that know you well is slightly different than the same number of heaves in a high-pressure competition. I'd hope the body of evidence above proves that.

So, sorry, Jeff, Davey Johnson can't have Timmy. And, while I'm at it, he can't have Matt Cain.

None of them, however, are unpatriotic. They're smart.

P.S. We'll gladly donate Randy Winn again.