by Michael Duca

PEORIA AZ–When someone asks how a ball club is going to finish up after observing them in spring training there is a PR director down here who will rename anonymous when asked where do you think players are heading after that roster change out there on the field his standard answer is “who the hell knows.”

You don’t know and I don’t know where teams or players are heading after spring training and no one knows what their goal is after leaving spring training. Everybody knows that the goal is to win the World Series this year and I’m sure that is everybody’s goal. How do you find it and accomplish it? The San Francisco Giants wanted to find out what they had with pitcher Ryan Voglesong and find out what they had with Tim Lincecum.

The decisions about the outfield still need to be sorted out and probably make sure that pitcher Matt Cain is healthy, it appears that Cain is healthy and is experiencing ordinary soreness. He has an unnatural amount of rust in his command still. He has command of his fastball and he’s able to throw it. He’s able to throw it a little bit faster and a little bit more.

I wouldn’t put too much stock in Cain’s terrific start in terms of deciding whether he’s rebounded to his old self or not and he’s been in rehab for the last year so the rust is going to be knocked off over time. I wouldn’t put too much stock in his two or three starts in terms of if he can throw very well he will improve over the course of the season.

Oakland A’s update: What was impressive about the winningest club in baseball this spring was that everytime the Oakland A’s hit something it was very hard. The ball was loud coming off the bat and yes it was in the desert but everybody is hitting in the desert. It’s even louder coming off their bats.

I think A’s general manager Billy Beane and assistant general manager David Forst have done it again. They have gone out and have taken the entire old team and put them in the garbage disposal and decided to start all over again and do this about a sixth time. Beane and Forst have done a tremendous job.

The Seattle Mariners are a very good team their pitching staff has thrown something that has not convinced me they don’t have the starting pitching as solid as they’d like it to be. The M’s lost pitcher Luke Gregerson they also lost pitcher Brian Matusz because he got sent down and rightfully so.

Matusz was getting lit up like the Rockefeller Center at Christmas for the first half of spring. Matusz’s mechanics was just awful when you watched him. Everything was going wrong, the M’s are hoping they bring him back and put him together at the minor league level. The M’s have to win the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings that your leading and the reliever has to shut the door.

Michael Duca does Giants and A’s commentary each week on http://www.sportsradioservice.com listen to his podcast below’