Tag Archives: Jeremy Affeldt

What is Sergio Romo?

In 2011, Giants fans saw Sergio Romo put up one of the most impressive relief efforts in recent memory. In 2011, the 28th round draft pick pitched in 65 games, allowing just eight earned runs and 34 baserunners in 48 innings. He finished the year with 1.50 ERA and 0.708 WHIP, and even pitched a reliever’s perfect game: between July 6 and August 6, Romo pitched ten perfect innings in a row. Along with his excellent strikeout rate, he almost never surrendered a walk, and his K/BB  was literally off the charts.

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With a Grain of Salt: Reacting to Spring Training, Part 1

On Monday I got to watch my first Spring Training game, between the Giants and the Brewers. I only caught the game partway through, and then stopped to watch a movie about someone pretending to be Shakespeare, or pretending not to be Shakespeare, or something. There was an earl, who was secretly the son of another guy, who may or may not have secretly been the son of someone else, and they all wore those frilly things around their necks.

So I DVRed the game, and started it fresh. Damn, I missed baseball.

Some quick thoughts:

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Lucky Lefties, and Less is More: An Analysis of the Giants Offseason

Ned Flanders is a crafty lefty.

It should surprise no one familiar with this site when I say that we haven’t been blogging much; not counting writing done for other sites, I haven’t written an original article for over seven months. To break my blogging fast, I couldn’t decide if I wanted to recap the offseason, or analyze the contracts to Jeremy Affeldt and Javier Lopez.

I started to do the latter, but five minutes in, I realized they were pretty much the same because, really, there wasn’t much else. A few trades, minor hopeful improvements to the offense, some weight loss, nothing big. What was more surprising were the contracts to lefty relievers Affeldt ($5 million) and Lopez (2 years, $8.5 million).

After the Giants front office had publicly claimed poverty when it came to bolstering the offense, the contracts to the two certainly seemed excessive. But assuming that Brian Sabean doesn’t act completely randomly in a drug-induced vacuum, it’s worth taking a look at the factors that went into this decision.

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