Your 2016 Playoffs: Rooting Against Order

When I remember, I rank the playoff teams in order of who to root most to win it all.  Of course, the Giants are the one up top, but how do the other teams rank, should the horrible happen and the Giants not win it all this season?  I decided to include the teams that lost the Wild Card games too.

ogc thoughts

Here is my order, while many teams we don't really have anything against, there are some who Giants fans have some ire with:

1. Nationals - The Giants don't have much against the Nats.  They gave us a nice reliever in exchange for Livan Hernandez.  And Dusty is their manager, so why not give him a bone, 2002 is no longer bothering me now that we got 2010, 2012, 2014.   We also got Felipe Alou from them, where he established himself as a manager, returning him to his Giants heritage.   We did trade Speier for Foli when they were the Expos, and that hurt some.  But they have never won, and missed their best chance because of the strike in 1994.  
2. Cubs - Well, if we can't win it all, part of me would wish them well, especially since they haven't won since 1908, which I can sympathize with, especially all the close calls and long time in between good times.  Plus we crushed them in 1989.  But they crippled us last season with the sweep, killing our chances in an odd year, and nearly cost us this season with some comebacks.  And they are getting all the love from the media this year, getting the SI cover shot and prediction (which usually is a jinx anyway).
3. Rangers - We beat them in 2010 for our first title in SF.  They also have a long history of never winning in their franchise as well.
4. Indians - We beat them long ago in humiliating fashion in 1954, but that's not as recent as the Rangers.  And they haven't won in a long time as well.  But they do have a bad mascot that they should probably change or work with Native Americans to make it more acceptable.  
5. Orioles - We stole Jon Miller from them, so there's that.  Plus, we're the true Orange & Black.  And I never cared for their owner.  
6. Blue Jays - They gave Melky Cabrera a two year contract even after he cheated so badly, rewarding him.
7. Mets - That hideous playoff series we lost to them in 2000 will also stick in this Giants fan's craw.   So this Wild Card was a nice payback, which the Giants have been doing in each playoff cycle this decade.  They did buy King Kong Kingman off us, instead of giving us prospects, but did give Willie Mays another chance to make the World Series (unfortunately, he was a shadow of his former self).  
8. Red Sox - They are a contender for Team of the 2010 Decade, which the Giants hold pretty securely right now with 3 titles, but if they win, they will have 2, just one behind.  Part of me feel sorry for them for signing Pablo, but that's on them 
9. Dodgers - Of course, they are last, they're the Bridegrooms.  Part of me want the Giants to face them in the NLCS, just so we can beat them, but they have not been able to get past the first round in recent memory, for while they have been able to come up big during the season, they haven't been able to in the playoffs.  And that's OK by me, any time they get kicked out of the playoffs is great, whether by the Giants or any other team.  

Go Giants!  
Go Team of the 2010 Decade!!!

2016 Draft: Giants Make Up For Loss of First Round Pick

This is probably the first draft in a decade where I didn't prepare by capturing mock drafts, know exactly when I need to start monitoring the draft, and follow along in some way, whether radio, internet, social media, or some combination.  Part of it was the loss of the first round pick for signing Samardzija.  Part of it was just a lot of overtime for work.  Part of it was feeling pretty good about our crop of prospects.   Mostly, I guess it was too much a combination of life intruding on my blog life, just didn't really have time for it this year.

The MLB has their usual list, available here.  Tops picks are (links are to the MLB videos):

• Round 2:  Bryan Reynolds, CF
• Round 3:  Heath Quinn, RF
• Round 4:  Matt Krook, LHP
• Round 5:  Ryan Howard, SS

ogc thoughts

The feelings about the draft is that the Giants had as good a draft as they could had they not lost their first round pick.  Out of the BA 500, the Giants ended up picking up 15 of them; if split among the 30 teams, the average would be 16-17.  However, the Giants ended up selecting 4 of the top 90 (average 30), so they got quality in the draft, they only lost out at the far end.  In fact, the 15 were selected from the Top 411, albeit skewing to the two ends (four of them in the 400's).

This is another sign of a John Barr draft.  Reynolds we got with the 59th pick.  But he was 31st in the BA 500, and they had him 17th in the March BA 100, and 11th in the BA 100 College in January.  MLB had him 23rd in their Top 200.  Krook was only 87th in the BA 500  (similarly, 92nd per MLB Top 20;  he was the 125th pick overall), but 18th in the March BA 100, and 9th in the BA 100 College in January.  That's similar to Crawford, who was a Top 10 in the pre-season but fell a lot because he didn't perform as expected in his junior year.   And we basically picked up two of them with Reynolds and Krook. 

Thoughts on Krook and Reynolds

Now, I have a few ideas on what Krook did (or didn't do) to fall so much.  Part of it was that he is getting over the TJS surgery that he had two years ago, this is his first season back.  Mostly, though, he has huge issues with command, which would be a deadly issue (see Crick) if he can never figure it out.  I guess it was bad enough that teams just didn't want to deal with it.  But he was good enough as a high schooler to be drafted 35th overall (I actually remember his name!) and most pre-season rankings put him high up in talent, so clearly the Giants are hoping to help him back to health and get his command straightened out.  The Giants can't fix everyone, but they at least have some experience and success.    Excellent pick.

Reynolds also had issues, though he was still highly regarded when the draft happened, as the BA 500 had him 31st, and he made it into a number of the mock drafts which covered the first 34 picks, covering the first round and the supplemental first round picks.  The scuttlebutt I got from reading is that his problems with striking out spooked a lot of teams (or really, all the teams other than the Giants) as he fell deep into the second round, meaning most teams passed on him at least twice already before the Giants picked him.  But he did things the Giants like a lot (Cape Cod; collegiate national team; led Vanderbilt offensively to World Series), and while he didn't have any standout tool, is good in a number of areas.  And if they get him to hit reduce his strikeouts, he'll be a very solid player, which is all we need when we have players like Posey, Belt, Crawford, Panik, and Duffy in the lineup.  Another excellent pick.  

Slot Thoughts

The Giants bonus pool was just short of $3.495M, and with the 5% max overslot allowed, that is nearly $175K that the Giants can go over.  They have already signed Quinn for slot, and Krook for slightly over, at exactly $500K.   They signed both Howard and Barengar to much lower deals, most likely negotiated beforehand, and together the Giants saved nearly $146K against the bonus slots that they can now spend on getting Reynolds and other draftees like Brusa, Heyward, Williams.   Altogether, the Giants currently have almost $390K to play with in terms of overslot bonuses.

A good chunk will probably go to Reynolds.  His pick is slotted for $1.090M.  Had he been selected 31st, as per his BA 500 ranking, he would have been slotted for almost $2M.  Depending on how important it is to him to get what he might have gotten (or even what he thinks he should have gotten; remember, that is how we got Lincecum, he thought he was worth $1M but the Indians only went to $400K in the draft before us getting him).   

Not sure how it will go with signing Reynolds.  Thus far, both Quinn and Krook took roughly slot to sign, they did not insist on what might have been (Krook got a little bump up, people just love round significant numbers).  The counter to that is that while Mac Williamson was a huge overdraft, he held out for slot, and eventually the Giants yielded (they were probably hoping to save money on him in order to sign one of the 30's round draftees, which seem to be their M.O. under the current draft rules).  I'm only pretty sure that the Giants will sign him, because they haven't missed on anyone in the first ten rounds in a long time (can't remember the last one not to sign), just not sure to what.  Anyone have any thoughts?

I'm probably going to write up Reynolds and Krook when I get the chance to, but, again, been busy, so it'll be a while.  Plus, may as well wait for Reynolds to sign before spending the time writing him up.  I might get to Quinn at some point, but I'm leaning towards the two above because both were ranked highly at some point, whereas Quinn has been no higher than 48th in any of the lists I found him in.