San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Sandoval’s prowess calls for double hook
Pablo Sandoval, really? Anyone who said Sandoval was done last year, two years ago, five years ago — heck, in 2010 when he barely played in the Giants’ postseason because he was in such poor shape — shame on you.
The decorated Panda hit three pinch homers in the Braves’ first 13 games, and he needs just one more in the next 5½ months to equal the franchise record.
After Mike Yastrzemski’s gamewinning pinch homer April 5, the Giants’ outfielder said he learned about pinchhitting just by watching Sandoval, his former locker neighbor whose 18 pinch hits in 2019 tied a Giants West Coast record.
Braves shortstop Dansby Swanson said he read the “little article” that featured Yastrzemski’s comments and agreed: “You can learn so much from him without even speaking to him. And then when you speak to him, you learn that much more.”
Sandoval is the exact reason I favor the socalled doublehook designated hitter rule, which will be used in the Atlantic League this season as an experiment. Because I favor the status quo of separate rules in the leagues but realize pitchers and their teams no longer are serious about preparing for atbats, I can live with this compromise: Once the starting pitcher comes out, so does the DH, prompting more lategame strategy and pinchhit scenarios — and managers wanting to keep the starter around longer.
Pinchhitting is cool — from Smoky Burgess to Manny Mota to Lenny Harris to Matt Stairs to Sandoval — and we don’t see enough of it in the American League. Same when the universal DH was in effect last year. The double hook would secure its place in the game and allow for more Sandovaltype performances.
Adjustments are a must to survive in the majors, and Sandoval is the epitome of what it takes to stick around. For Giants fans, including those who might not have believed in him, that has to be a pleasant development. The Padres finally spun a nohitter, in their 8,206th game, thanks to San Diego’s own Joe Musgrove. Meantime, they’ve been victims of 10 nohitters including by the Giants’ Jonathan Sanchez and Tim Lincecum (twice). Imagine Bruce Bochy. All those years in San Diego and no nonos. Comes to San Francisco and manages five of them in a sevenyear span, three against his old team. During Tony La Russa’s first stint in Chicago, none of his pitchers threw a nohitter, so Carlos Rodon’s on Wednesday was the first on La Russa’s watch there and made him the third in history to manage nonos on three teams (A’s, Cardinals, White Sox), along with Whitey Herzog and Fielder Jones. Who threw it for Oakland? Dave Stewart, of course, hours before the Dodgers’ Fernando Valenzuela threw one. La Russa’s favorite? “The best one’s always the last one.” The White Sox have been collecting prospects over the years hoping one day to reach the promised land, and let it be said that four of the nine Chicago players on the field were their firstround draft picks: Rodon (2014), catcher Zack Collins (2016), second baseman Nick Madrigal (2018) and — now the local angle — left fielder Andrew Vaughn, the third overall pick in 2019 out of Cal. The best description I’ve heard to explain Johnny Cueto’s mound shimmies, which sometimes make it appear he’s falling over, came from Mike Krukow on Wednesday’s telecast: “It really is a sobriety test every time he makes a pitch.” When J.D. Martinez slugged three homers and struck out twice last Sunday, it surfaced reminders of Jack Clark, the previous Red Sox slugger with a threehomer, twoK game. Back in July 1991, Clark did it in a wild 1110 win over the A’s, getting to the plate eight times and going 4for7. A month later, Clark visited the Coliseum for one of his most memorable homers (in my book, if not his). Two pitches earlier, Clark tore his right calf muscle, and then kaboom. He took seemingly a minute and a half limping around the bases and walked the final steps. Afterward, Clark had plenty of time to engage in an entertaining interview with columnist Art Spander and other Bay Area scribes who had chronicled his Giants career. Down the hall, La Russa was asked if he had seen a slower home run trot: “Yes, Kirk Gibson.” Hooray for fans of longtime clubhouse managers. Both the Giants’ Mike Murphy and the A’s Steve Vucinich were enthusiastically cheered when introduced before their teams’ respective home openers, and Vucinich, who’s retiring after this (his 54th) season, got a nice hand when his name was called during an interleague game in Arizona.