Of Samardzija, Mays and strawberries in the wintertime

By Art Spander

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Baseball still gets down to one person throwing a ball — pitching — and another trying to hit it. As it has been for 150 years. Before analytics and metrics.

When scouts saw a kid who could do it all and told management, “Sign him.”

A kid like Joe DiMaggio. Or Stan Musial. Or the man who was holding court in the Giants spring clubhouse, Willie Mays.

In an hour or so, Jeff Samardzija would make his first start of the exhibition season, work what he thought was effectively, at least to a point of self-satisfaction, an inning and third, allowing four runs Tuesday in a game that San Francisco would win, 14-12, over the Diamondbacks.

Then Samardzija would head to his locker, at the opposite end of the clubhouse from the table where Mays sits anytime he chooses, and Samardzija would lament the trend to replacing pitchers by the book, not on how they were performing, and the obsession in the sport on items such as launch angle and spin rate.

Whatever angle Mays launched balls at during a Hall of Fame career never will be known. But he hit 660 home runs, and missed two full seasons, 1952 and ’53, when he was in the Army — “I probably would have hit 40 each year,” he said unpretentiously. He also played home games for 23-plus seasons at cold, windy Candlestick Park.    

Oh, was he special. From the start. “We got to take care of this kid,” Garry Schumacher, the publicist of the New York Giants, said in the 1950s. “We got to make sure he gets in no trouble because this is the guy — well, I'm not saying he's gonna win pennants by himself, but he's the guy who'll have us all eating strawberries in the wintertime.”

At this moment, at his table, the top autographed by Mays — “They sell it for charity,” he pointed out — Willie was eating a taco and, between bites, asking for a Coke.

“No Cokes,” he was told. “They want the players to cut down on sugar.” So Mays settled for water.

Willie will be 87 in May. His vision is limited. “I’m not supposed to drive at night,” he said to a journalist who also has eye problems. “But I feel good.”

It has been said one of the joys of baseball is that it enables different generations to talk to each other. A grandfather and his grandson, separated by 50 or so years, may have little in common. Except baseball. The game is timeless.   

Three strikes and Mays was out. Three strikes and Buster Posey’s out. Batters still are thrown out by a step. “Ninety feet between bases is the closest man has come to perfection,” wrote the great journalist Red Smith.

The closest any ballplayer has come to perfection is Mays. We know he could hit. He could run, steal any time wanted, third base as well as second. Defense? The late San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer Bob Stevens said of a Mays triple, “The only man who could have caught it, hit it.”

On Tuesday, writers were hitting it off with Mays when rookie pitcher Tyler Beede, the Giants’ first pick in the 2014 draft, sat down next to Mays. They were separated by some 62 years — Beede is 24 — but instantly they began a conversation.

“Where you from?” Mays asked Beede, a star at Vanderbilt, who is from Chattanooga.

“You play golf? Mays asked. Beede said he did. “Twelve handicap,” he added.

Mays laughed. “Got to watch you 12-handicap guys. Pitchers, they’re always playing golf. They have the time between starts.”

Willie was a golfer until he no longer could see where his shots landed. He started the game at San Francisco’s Lake Merced Golf Club, struggled for a while — “I can’t believe I can’t hit a ball that’s just sitting there, not moving,” he said when learning — but became accomplished.

Then Pablo Sandoval dropped by, almost literally, practically sitting in Mays' lap and wrapping Willie in a bear hug. “I need some money, I’m broke,” said Pablo. The two laughed.

Willie is rich. In memories and friends.

A’s Melvin: ‘We feel like it’s trending back up’

By Art Spander

MESA, Ariz. — The wall where players enter the clubhouse is lined with history, at least with posters of those who made history for the Oakland Athletics — Rickey Henderson, Dennis Eckersley, Catfish, Reggie, Rollie, and with those players who really who needs last names?

Oh, the glory days when the A’s were on top, not just on top of the Giants but all of baseball.

These, however, are the frustrating days, the days when every good player on the A’s — and they’ve had a ton — leaves, when Josh Donaldson, Yoenis Cespedes, Josh Reddick and Sonny Gray go to another team because Oakland cannot afford to keep them.

Bob Melvin has been through this from top to bottom as the A’s manager since June 2011, six and two-thirds seasons heading into 2018. Time flies, until the roster flies apart.

“The first three (seasons) went a lot quicker than the last three; we were, much more successful then,” said Melvin, confirming the obvious. “For us it’s difficult to trend up all the time when we have to get rid of some players.

“So the trend line went down. We feel like it’s trending back up. We like the younger group we have here right now. We’re excited about it. So after three difficult years, I’m looking forward to being with this group for a while — and hopefully it’s longer than one more year.”

Melvin, “Bo Mel” as we came to know him, the Menlo-Atherton High kid, the Cal guy, was sitting Sunday in the dugout at Hohokam Stadium, the Athletics’ spring home, a few minutes after Oakland and Kansas City played to one of those exhibition anomalies, a tie, 4-4 in this case. Hey, the Royals had to motor 45 miles west to Surprise, and the game already was only four minutes short of three hours. So, adios.

Which too often is what the A’s have said, figuratively, of course, to their stars. Now they have another group with potential to make it big, to make the A’s very good. One of those players, 6-foot-7 lefthander, A.J. Puk, pitched the first two innings. Didn’t allow anyone to reach base. Did allow Melvin to dream.

“What we saw last year,” said Melvin of Puk in spring 2017, the pitcher’s second season of pro ball, “today was even a better mix of pitches.”

Puk has added a two-seam fastball. Of the six batters he faced, four grounded out and one struck out. He threw only 20 pitches.

"Great command, great poise, throwing strikes, easy innings,” said Melvin, a former catcher. "I told (pitching coach Scott Emerson), 'Why are you taking him out?' He was only going to pitch two regardless, so off to a really good start.”

Puk is 22, from Iowa (yes, so was Bob Feller, but please, no comparisons) and went to the University of Florida. He’s learning. He’s improving. The A’s very well also might be improving. But then a key player is dispatched. Whoosh, gone.

“That’s one of the chief complaints,” Melvin conceded of the turnover of personnel. “Hopefully that all changes with the new ballpark. I know we’re still counting on that but just haven’t found a site yet.”

This is 50 years for the A’s in Oakland, and for almost the entire half-century, since they moved here from Kansas City before the 1968 season, since they won three World Series in a row in 1972-74, since they had their decent stadium, the Oakland Coliseum, horribly transformed for a football team now preparing to desert, there hung the question whether the team would belong to Oakland.

They were going to move to Portland. To Sacramento. To Las Vegas. To San Jose. They were as restless as a willow in a windstorm, to steal from Oscar Hammerstein.

Tarps covered seats, and in some years, such as 2016 when almost nobody in the infield could play defense properly, fans covered their eyes.

Spring training is for optimists. Every team is undefeated. Bob Melvin and the A’s have gone through good times and bad times. Maybe this time won’t be better, but the suspicion is it won’t be worse.

Newsday (N.Y.): Shohei Ohtani’s mound debut for Angels somewhat underwhelming

By Art Spander
Special for Newsday

TEMPE, Ariz. — The long-awaited debut in a major league uniform of Shohei Ohtani, nicknamed the “Babe Ruth of Japan” because of his skills as both a pitcher and a batter in that nation, might have been less than what was imagined but perhaps was what should have been expected.

Ohtani, who signed with the Los Angeles Angels in December — forgoing a chance to join the Yankees — was the starting pitcher in Saturday’s Cactus League game against the Milwaukee Brewers and worked 1 1⁄3 innings. He threw 31 pitches, gave up two hits and two runs (one unearned), struck out one, walked one and threw a wild pitch. One of the hits was a double, the other a home run.

Read the full story here.

Copyright © 2018 Newsday. All rights reserved. 

Giants’ Cactus League opener: Good pitch, no field

By Art Spander

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Once again, you’re reminded that exhibition baseball games don’t mean a thing. Except to the people playing them. Or, in the case of the Giants in the Cactus League opener of 2018, misplaying them.

As you know, and other teams — heh, heh — are gleefully aware, the Giants may not be able to hit, but as indicated Friday, they can pitch. The assumption was that they also could field. Sorry.

Which is a perfect description of San Francisco’s imperfection at times when the Milwaukee Brewers were at the plate. “I thought the pitching was good,” said manager Bruce Bochy, “but we got a little sloppy there in the middle of the game.”

Sloppy as in six errors. Sloppy as in, can’t anyone catch and throw? Final scores don’t mean much in exhibition games — the Brewers won this one, 6-5. Individual performances mean a great deal. Oops.

“We shot ourselves in the foot,” was the Bochy description.

It was cartoon ball, movie comic ball. It was the kind of ball that destroys the sort of pitching produced by the Giants, particularly Ty Blach, who didn’t allow a run the first two innings and Andrew Suarez, who didn’t allow a run the next two.

“Blach, Suarez, I thought they threw great,” said Bochy. He was in the dugout after the game, bundled but wearing Maui Jim sunglasses, maybe wishing he was somewhere else, like the Gulf Coast, where it was sunny and bright and 81 degrees, In greater Phoenix, it was dark and gloomy and, ahem, 60 degrees.

“They were sweating bullets in Florida,” he said wistfully after watching a few minutes of Tiger Woods at the Honda Classic long before the baseball game.

“When Blach missed,” said Bochy returning to the subject at hand, “he just missed. He was right on, a very impressive outing for Ty and for Suarez.

Pitching invariably is ahead of hitting early in spring training — or that’s what we’ve been taught over the decades. Yet, the theory didn’t seem to have an effect on Nick Hundley or our old pal, Pablo Sandoval. In the second, Hundley hit a homer to left, the Giants' first run, and in the sixth Sandoval, swinging left-handed, hit one to right that nearly cleared the fence behind the fence. In other words, it was way out there, maybe 450 feet.

“I was focused,” said Sandoval. “I worked in the winter.”

Pablo is a link to the Giants’ three World Series titles. He caught the ball that was the ultimate out against Kansas City in 2014. Someone wondered if the new kids, the rookies, the hopefuls, asked him about those good not-so-old days.

“Yeah,” said Sandoval. “I tell them that we are better when we have fun, when we play together and not try to do everything individually but play as a team. We had great communication.

“We have an opportunity. The pitching here is great. We have to stick to our game, focus on the little things and get better every day.”

The monster home run in the first game of the spring was reassurance. “You can face your teammates,” said Sandoval. “Otherwise they’re going to be on you all spring.”

Bochy said again Sandoval will be used as a backup at first (where he played Friday) and third and as a pinch hitter. “That was a pretty good swing by Pablo, wasn’t it?” said Bochy. “A lot of good things happened.”

Excluding the errors, certainly, inexcusable for any major league team and especially one that last season was outscored by 137 runs. When you’re scraping for runs, you better scrape up ground balls or you’ll be the worst team in the division.

Oh, right. That’s what the Giants were.

A chill in the Giants camp

By Art Spander

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — “Frost,” the sign read. “Stay off grass.” No one-liners, please, even if the warning is so very Nor Cal. Besides, this was after the Giants had worked out Wednesday in weather chilly enough to keep observers bundled, but not chilly enough to keep young ballplayers from working out.

There’s a new field at the Giants' complex, with two infields. Not exactly as impressive as, say, the White Sox and Dodgers' facility 15 miles west at Glendale, where each team has a dozen diamonds apiece. But the Giants have civilization, which counts for something.

Not as much as some power hitting and relief pitching, of course. This spring training of 2018 is one of problems and questions. For the first time in years, San Francisco enters — let’s say it — as an also-ran, a team theoretically without hope.

The Giants bottomed out in 2017. A chill. A fall from the heights. Three World Series championships in five years, certainly. But that was then. Now is a muddle.

Will Evan Longoria and Andrew McCutcheon make that much of a difference? The Dodgers and Diamondbacks are locks, aren’t they, and the Rockies should make the postseason. The Padres were seven games in front of San Francisco and just signed Eric Hosmer for millions.

It is a sobering reminder that last season the Giants not only didn’t win four out of every 10 games, they finished 40 games behind the dreaded Dodgers. That seems impossible. It wasn’t.

Maybe it’s the temperature, the high down here just 61 degrees. Maybe it’s the reality. But for the Giants, the usual optimism of spring training seems absent. How do you pick up 20 games on the Dodgers, never mind 40? And how do you feel good wearing parkas in Arizona?

Giants manager Bruce Bochy spent a good part of Wednesday on that new back field, watching prospects such as Andres Blanco and Chase D’Arnaud. “I need to put the face with the name,” said Bochy, ”although I know them all. They have it a little tougher.”

He meant tougher than the veterans, who are not to be rushed. The Giants’ exhibition season opens Friday, split squad against Milwaukee, and Buster Posey will be watching, not playing, and probably a game or two after that. Posey is approaching 31. Catchers wear down.

Pablo Sandoval already is 31 and, at times, being dropped by Boston and then returning to the Giants in July 2017, already looked worn down. He hit .225 with five home runs in 47 games with San Francisco.

Bochy said Sandoval, with a history of being overweight, is in good shape. He’ll be used at third base and first base, backing up, and at times as a bullpen catcher. Where the Panda will not be used is in the outfield.

“We were playing one of those postseason games in Taiwan, a lot of major leaguers,” said Bochy. “I put Pablo in left field. There’s a line drive in the gap. He looks to his left at the center fielder, a speed guy (it was Curtis Granderson), as if, ‘That’s your ball.’

“But everything that’s happened to Pablo over the years hasn’t fazed him.”

What happened last season certainly fazed the Giants and their fans. The AT&T Park sellout streak ended at 530 games. Madison Bumgarner fell off a dirt bike and missed a couple of months. It was as if the baseball gods were making San Francisco pay for the glory of earlier years.

When Bumgarner went down, Ty Blach stepped up. And Blach will start the Cactus League opener on Friday. The usual contention is that exhibition games don’t mean anything, that pitchers are working to get in shape.

But for a team built on pitching, a team coming off a rotten year, these exhibition games over the next month could mean a great deal. They could make everyone, players and fans, believe.

“My job,” said Bochy, “is to get these guys ready for opening day.” Being ready does count. Being successful counts much more.