Full-Squad Workout - 2nd Day

Just another gorgeous day at the park. Low 70's and not a cloud in the sky. The Giants pretty much followed the same routine as yesterday. Running/stretching; followed by ground balls to the secondbasemen and shortstops working on turning the DP; followed by pickoff moves involving the entire infield and pitchers; followed again by not one, but two rounds of batting practice. The first round was with "live" pitching and the second with BP pitchers.

The live BP involved Lowry, Benitez, Hennessey, Misch and Munter throwing to 3 groups of batters. Group one was; Bonds, Roberts, Winn and Aurilia. Group two was; Molina, Vizquel, Durham, Feliz and Klesko. Group three was: Linden, Frandsen, Alfonzo and Sweeney. Everyone else must have hit on the practice field. Pretty much gives you an idea of who the starters, 4th outfielder, utility infielder, backup catcher and primary pinch hitters (firstbasemen) are going to be.

Live BP was pretty much the same as yesterday. A little more contact but still no solid contact. Lowry and Benitez were pretty much untouched. Hennessey and Misch gave up a lot more contact than the others and Munter was somewhere in the middle. Still, no one, not even Bonds came close to hitting the warning track. Most of the contact involved weak groundballs or popups. After his first time in the cage I heard Bonds say "Man, I'm tight from yesterday". Bochy continues to work 'em.

Standard BP was a little more exciting. All of the hitters were making better contact than yesterday and there were more HRs. Bonds led all hitters with 6 HRs although his longest drive of the day did not make it out of the park. At Scottsdale Stadium you have to hit it OVER the batters eye in CF to get a HR. I have only seen Bonds (twice) and Kent do that in a game since the stadium was rebuilt in 1992. Today Bonds hit a line drive that bounced off the batters eye about 15 feet up above the 430 foot sign. A hellofa poke. Todd Linden was second with 3 HRs, Ray Durham had 2 and Kevin Frandsen had 1. Bonds had both the most frequent and the loudest contact, while Frandsen probably made solid contact second most frequently and Ray Durham had the second loudest contact. While Linden had the second most HRs, he also mishit the ball a lot more than Durham and Frandsen who were both lining the ball all over the field with Durhams hits carrying farther. I know it's too early to be detailing how hard balls are hit........but I am just trying to describe the action for you.

The number of fans was about half what it was yesterday. That's still a higher number than I am used to seeing. This is only the second year of practicing at the stadium. I think as word gets out about how comfortable it is to actually sit in stadium seating and watch the workouts (at Indian School Park you pretty much had to stand if you wanted to see anything) more and more fans are coming out. The press corp was virtually nonexistent today. Two camera crews from Japan, a couple of photographers and the beat writers from the Bay Area papers were about it. I guess only Barry's FIRST day is important.

Well, I am going to keep it short today. The workout went until 1PM again today and I had some errands to run before returning to the condo. That's why I had a late start with the posting. I tried to post a combination of action and portrait type photos. Since the players are divided between the two fields, I still can't get any good shots of the young players. I will keep trying though.