This isn’t a post about gum. Well, I guess it kind of is but I’ll get to that in a minute. Last night the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres renewed acquaintances for the first of nineteen meetings between the two clubs this season. During the offseason, and right up until the day before the season opened, the Padres overhauled their roster. There’s new faces everywhere. Matt Kemp came from LA, they added Wil Myers and Justin Upton. The new catcher is Derek Norris, you may remember him from his days across the bay.
It seems the Padres have gotten tired of Giants fans invading Petco Park and turing it in to “AT&T South”. I didn’t mind, neither did you I’m guessing. They’ve decided to try and win some games for the first time since 2010. That’s what last night felt like, 2010. This first game between the clubs was a nail-biter. The Giants finally won 1-0 in the 12th inning on a Justin Maxwell pinch-hit that drove home Brandon Crawford with the winning run. Continue reading →
Yes, Jerry is a 49er, but we covered him at the AT&T Pro-Am at Pebble Beach this month, so it sort of, by proxy, regionally counts to fit our jersey-number-title-thing that is dying. So, here’s a video of Jerry leading the group “Buster Hug” that we caught on film earlier this month.
The boys are back in Arizona! Timmy reunites with his dad, Pablo is still fat, Cain is throwing wild and free, Ben and Chad review their experience and interviews at Media Day, Bochy’s heart had a scare, Sheilds rejected a larger offer from the Giants, Moncada signed with Boston, and the first radio broadcast of a spring training game is next week, March 3.
Can’t you just smell the fresh cut grass through your media player of choice?
You can follow us on Twitter @TortureCast and like us on Facebook! All of our podcasts and video and audio San Francisco Giants player interviews can be found here or YouTube.com/TortureCast.
Today we were able to snag interviews with eight Giants at Media Day at AT&T Park, including Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Matt Cain, Brandon Crawford, Travis Ishikawa, Joe Panik and Casey McGehee. Some of the players we had exclusive time with, others we shared questions with other reporters.
We’ll also be covering the Giants vs. 49ers charity shootout at Pebble Beach on Tuesday, 2/10!
All 8 interviews are below separately, the first one however, is the master playlist, and here is the playlist directly on YouTube.
We regretfully dedicate the first portion of this episode of TortureCast to the Super Bowl and the bad? call at the 1 yard line. Willie, Chad and Eric catch up on all of the signings by the Giants, including Casey McGehee and Nori Aoki, and reminisce with our man-crush on Michael Morse, who is now a Miami Marlin. We will also be at Media Day on Feb 6 to interview as many Giants as we can, so if you have a question you want us to ask, let us know at torturecast AT gmail DOT com or find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Incredibly, our boys in black and orange have done it for a third time in five years! In a rousing 4-1 NLCS win over the St. Louis Cardinals, the Giants move onto the fall classic to face the young upstart Kansas City Royals beginning Tuesday night. Willie, Ben, Chad and guest Eric Nathanson review the NLCS, including the momentous homeruns hit by Michael Morse and Travis Ishikawa that have left indelible marks in Giants’ lore. In the last half of the podcast, we preview the Royals, their strengths and weaknesses, and how the Giants might exploit them. We also talk about Hunter Pence’s lack of geography knowledge, a horrible ESPN article, our favorite guys and we make series predictions (hint, all 4 of us take the Giants). Tune in for a jam-packed special World Series episode of the TortureCast!
You’ll be conjuring the name “Ishikawa” until the Giants move to London in 2134. (San Jose Mercury News)
Travis Ishikawa.
The guy who wore jeans to the 2010 World Series ring ceremony (in 2011).
The guy who bounced around on the Brewers, Orioles, Yankees, Pirates, and spent most of this year in AAA.
And he’s our starting left fielder in the NLCS?
When did this exactly happen? I know they say “all hands on deck” in the playoffs, but for the Giants, it’s almost as if Bochy asked Sabean, “Hey, got any stale donuts left in the break room? I’m looking for just a morsel to keep me from eating my large cap.” Yet, these seemingly stale morsels: the Paniks, Duffys, Perezes, Ariass (that looks bad there), and of course, the Ishikawas, may not be your first choice for a fresh pastry, but dammit THEY WILL FEED YOU!
And in a pivotal, uncharacteristic moment (for Bochy and this team), Ishikawa misplayed a ball hit to him in left, and as it sailed over his head for an RBI double, you could literally hear the moans escape from AT&T. The redditors and others just screaming, “SEE, I TOLD YOU ISHI CAN’T PLAY OUTFIELD, CLEARLY JUAN PEREZ IS THE ONE AND ONLY GATEKEEPER TO THE WORLD SERIES….DUMB BOCHY!”
No sense screaming about any and all mistakes made in June and July when they were in the trough of the big leagues. Much like the collective screaming of millions of not-Ishikawa-jersey-wearing Giants fans were abated a bit by the fact that Bumgarner minimized the damage to that one run. They were in the game.
Then Panik, who hadn’t homered since he grew pubic hair, yanked one just fair to put the Giants ahead.
Wait, the Giants hit a homerun? Ok, so Crawford and Belt have done it, I guess it’s been long enough. When do we get the run scored via the “ball-stuck-in-Pierzynski’s-orbital-socket,” a misplayed ball by the Cardinals because the ball literally split in two after a broken bat fragment julienned it, or the wild buffalo sacrifice at second base? Apparently that well dried up tonight, and the baseball gods smiled upon the black and orange masses to give us a game for the annals of Giants lore. Not only did Bumgarner give up a homerun to a lefty for the first time since April, but the third string catcher also launched one off of him in the third. It appeared that the devil magic was bubbling from the Cardinals side.
I myself was pessimistic. No matter how many improbable comebacks this team has made, you figure they can’t win EVERY GAME in dramatic fashion…..right?
Enter Michael Morse. After both starters settled down and cruising, the 8th inning came like a well-lubricated freight train. Morse was actually on deck in the 7th to pinch hit for Bum, but since they went so quickly, and with Bum wanting to pitch one more inning, Morse came back out with his neon orange cleats in the 8th against one of the best setup men in the game. Morse has had two ABs all NLCS and hasn’t played beyond that for more than a month. Of course. Because it’s the Giants. Neshek is nasty, but he hung a slider, and Morse jumped on it, tying the game at 8.
Again, where’s the ball off the seagull for a run?
After a 9th inning that left me guzzling Pepto and wailing on my children, (THANK YOU AFFELDT!), the bottom of the 9th unrolled the carpet to Michael Wacha, last year’s NLCS MVP. However, he hadn’t pitched since September 26, and with Rosenthal in the pen, I thought it to be a curious move in such a high leverage situation, both mentally and physically.
After a Sandoval single and Belt walk with one out, it set the stage for either a) a double play, b) a walk-off 3 error Benny Hill title sequence, c) walk off homer.
HAHAHA go the fuck home, you’re drunk, option c).
Oh, and why don’t you replay this 45 times in honor of Ishikawa’s jersey number
The Giants, who scored 10 runs without a hit over their last 5 games, scored all 6 via the long ball tonight.
The Giants really are trolling the baseball world right now.
Brandon Crawford watches his grand slam sail over the right field fence in the 4th inning of the Giants’ 8-0 rout of the Pirates in the NL Wild Card game. (via Justin K. Aller of Getty Images)
The thing about parenthood and modern technology, is that we now have an obligation to put our children first before a Giants playoff game. Clearly parents didn’t do so before the age of the DVR. If I transport myself back to 1989 as a parent, I’m sure I could tell my wife that I couldn’t take our daughter to play rehearsal and our son to the park for some quality outside time because the Giants are playing the Cubs in the NLCS. When she responds, “just record it on the VCR,” I’d cooly respond with, “we only have our wedding tape here…no blanks!” Problem solved.
Well, not so much tonight. Despite the pit of despair that was wallowing in my soul at work as first pitch drew near, I did have fatherly duties to attend to, and my sidekick DVR could just suck up all the inning into its digital innards for viewing later. Of course, this meant that I had to cut myself off from the digital world and disable my MLB At Bat notifications as I ventured out into the natural environment and avoid eye contact from any other parent who might tell me the score.
Mission: success!
So, I finally tuned into the game 90 minutes after first pitch, and although I didn’t get to enjoy Crawford’s grand slam live, it was live to me. Plus, I got to skip any annoying Viagra and insurance commercials to boot. Oh, and I also muted the TV because I couldn’t stand the Kruk (Jon, that is) and company. I watched baseball alone and in complete silence. Wait, is that a scene from “The Fan?”
Alas, I was overjoyed with the progress of the game, and eventually caught up to live when it was 7-0. I listened to Posey’s RBI single in the car as I picked up my daughter, and we both enjoyed a live viewing of the final 3 outs at home before putting the kids to bed.
The moral of the story: have your wife’s homemade shredded chicken tacos before you watch a DVR’d Giants game.
Oh, I forgot to mention that. They were epic, and may now become my rally enchiladas. With Cholula and crema, of course.
As far as the baseball game was concerned, Bumgarner was incredible. Willie, Ben and myself all predicted Giants wins, but with different shades of orange. I predicted a tight 4-3 nailbiter, Ben an extra-inning win, and Willie just about Nostradamus’d it: a 3-hit shout out by Bum. Well, it was a 4-hit shutout.
Aside from Bum’s dominant performance, and maybe it wouldn’t have mattered IF the Giants had faced Cole, but I think that was the key to the Pirates’ chances in this game. I can’t (can) blame Hurdle for using Cole on Sunday, with a chance to win the NL Central, but the Cards had Wainright going later against lowly Arizona, a low probability of the Cards losing that game.
Giants benefited from the NL Central race, IMHO. If the Giants had the same chance to with the West, we might have seen Bum go on Sunday instead of tonight.
And perhaps the result would have been different in that alternate universe.
That’s 8 consecutive playoff victories and 7 consecutive elimination game victories for the Giants. At some point those streaks have to end…
…right?
Or, just perhaps, this even-year-thing has some teeth.
Let’s hope they can earn a split in Washington and close it out at AT&T Park on Tuesday, but that’ll be a tall order against the best starting rotation in the bigs.
What does 2014 have in common with 2010 and 2012? The San Francisco Giants are in the playoffs, of course! Let’s hope the pattern extends itself to a third title. The boys break down the Giants’ wild card chances against the Pittsburgh Pirates for an hour, which is about the same amount of time you’ll be either watching commercials and relieving your bladder during wild card game on Wednesday.
We gloat over our expert prognostication of Giants wins back in March (we picked 89, 89, 88, and the Giants had 88), pick our team MVPs, and give our cliche “3 keys” for a Giants victory against the Buccos. Let’s hope this is the start of a new chapter in Giants’ lore. Who will deliver the next triple-double, stand in the rain, bust out a thong, deliver the clutch HR, or throw a strike that freezes a dominant hitter to clinch a series? We’ll find out if that road indeed lies ahead, Giants fans. Buckle up!
This is our first live call-in streaming show, ever! We apologize that Chad’s voice is a little soft for half the podcast, and we actually dropped the stream about 10 minutes in, causing mass hysteria as people couldn’t listen to us live, but we trudged through and took a couple of calls about the misfortune the Giants have faced over the last 3 games, including the Nats comeback and tonight’s inexplicable loss to the woeful Rockies. We’ll be doing it live from here on out! Don’t forget to call in at 415.799.SFG1 to let us know how sexy you think Crawford’s mane is.
We knew this day would come. We finally hit a uniform number that has never graced the back of a single SF Giant.
We’ll think of it as Xavier Nady minus 1, or Doug Mirabelli plus 1. Not sure what we’ll do about 100+, if we ever get there.
Willie and Chad talk Giants baseball on this off-day that finds the Giants starting a six game road trip to Chicago and Washington, only 3.5 games back of the bums and with a hold on the second wild card spot. Hey, they were further back of the Padres at this point in 2010. Of course, the Dougie was also a popular dance then, so….
We cover the recent series, Morse’s hot bat, Panik’s hustling pinkie, Matt Cain’s season-ending surgery, Belt’s troubling concussion (and Sanchez’s), Susac, Posey, Pablo, perplexing Timmy, the second base curse, Jimmy Rollins, and what kind of player would manifest with Yaseil Puig’s raw talent with Hunter Pence’s love and respect for the game.
Also, next week around 9 pm PDT, Monday, August 25, we’ll be having our first LIVE CALL IN SHOW and will be streaming it LIVE on YouTube.
Mark it on your calendar, and be sure to call us from your phone and we’ll be sure to patch you in, even if you think Michael Morse is a bust this year.
That number is 415-799-SFG1
Again, that number: 415-799-SFG1.
Wait, I only need to repeat it on the podcast, not on this post…
The TortureCast 