Friday, February 16, 2007

Second Day of Pitchers & Catchers



Another beautiful day at the ballpark. About 70 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. More of the same today; running, stretching and pickoff drills. Bochy continues to be very hands on and once again ran the pickoff drills today.

The team is running MUCH more than they have in past years. I arrived at about 9 am and they were already running. They ran an additional half hour to 45 minutes before stretching out and beginning drills. They are also not stopping between the different running/agility drills so they are huffing and puffing pretty good by the time they finish. Maybe that's why they look like they are in such good shape this year. Maybe they got advance word that Bochy's Spring Training would involve more endurance work than they are used to.

The pitchers were finished even earlier than they were yesterday. By 11:10 am, most of the pitchers were headed to the dugout and were done for the day.

I saw a few position players for the first time today. Dan Ortmeier, Kevin Frandsen and Jason Ellison were there today along with 2 other players I could not identify. Early arriving position players wear workout clothes and won't wear uniforms until Monday when they are actually supposed to report. They worked out in the batting cages (which I can't see) and played catch in the outfield. I tried to take photos of them using a combination of both my 12X optical zoom and my 3X digital zoom, but the photos came out blurry. It's hard to get a decent photo at 30X zoom without a tripod.

After the pitchers were done, I stuck around and watched catchers Justin Knoedler, Eliezer Alfonzo and Benjie Molina take batting practice. Molina & Alfonzo did not have their timing down at all. Alfonzo hit the warning track a couple of times and the wall once. Molina never came close to the warning track. Both of them hit a lot of weak ground balls.......as you would expect at this point. Knoedler however, looked like he has been hitting a lot more before Spring Training started. He was hitting line shots all over the field including many to the warning track. He also took five out of the park including three that completely cleared the visitor's bullpen in LF and one that clanged off of the light standard in straight-away LF. I think Knoedler wants to make an impression after being removed from the 40-man roster when Zito was signed.

That's about it for today. I tried to be a little less verbose and let the photos do the talking for me.......but I don't think I succeeded. Oh well.......I get started talking baseball and it's hard to stop.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh Thank you Hank. It's ALMOST like being there. Next year....

Robbgin

Anonymous said...

Any chance of a shot of Joey Martinez?
Nearest Norwich

Anonymous said...

Hey hey,

First off, I have to say I'm insanely jealous of how fortunate you are to be in Scottsdale right now for Spring Training. With that said, I also love what you're doing here.

I run a blog over at Most Valuable Network called Giants Cove and was wondering if you would be interesting in exchanging links and posting one to Giants Cove on your mainpage. The Cove can be found at http://mvn.com/mlb-giants

Keep up the good work--And wow...Lincecum really does look TINY

Giantfan9 said...

Sorry....I have no idea who Joey Martinez is. Never heard of him.....and he is not on the Giants' 40-Man roster or Non-roster invitee list.

Anonymous said...

Hey, just a suggestion. Digital zoom in a camera just destroys the pictures. Basically it's the same thing as cropping it and enlarging it in your computer. Set your camera for optical zoom only and crop and enlarge in your computer, it will turn out better results than you even have.

Great shots though, can't wait to see more.

Anonymous said...

more important question about Benitez. Why the heck doesn't he use that silver glove he has in all these pictures?

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for the pictures and the reports.....please keep it coming.

Sincerely,
A jealous Giants fan freezing in Chicago!

Anonymous said...

Sweeeet, Thx GF9

And feel free to be verbose when you have it in you... Makes our day that much brighter =)

Merk