The Giants Start the Season Right
We spent the past few months obsessing over the Giants' offseason moves and the past few weeks wondering if all of our worst fears about the team's collective age were coming true. We spent Tuesday afternoon at opening day at the ballpark and, looking down on the diamond as the Giants soundly beat the hated Dodgers 4-2, we came to this simple conclusion: the 2005 Giants are a really good team and we're really looking forward to watching them play for the next six or, hopefully, seven months. Sure, they're going to miss Barry Bonds, BALCO scandal and all, while he's out recuperating from his third minor knee surgery of the past three months (and if he's out for much more than the fifteen days he's slated to be on the disabled list, they're going to struggle mightily stay in the NL West race), but Brian Sabean has built a team that's so solid on the mound, at the plate, and in the field that they can withstand the absence of even the best player in the game, at least for a while. And yesterday's game displayed that perfectly. With the perfect weather, beautiful park, and great baseball, Giants fans couldn't have asked for too much more from the team (and they had a lovely time booing Jeff Kent all day long).
On the mound, ace Jason Schmidt overcame his shaky first and second inning performance, including a homerun hit by Dodgers leadoff man Cesar Izturis, who hit only four homeruns all of last year, and delivered seven strong innings allowing only two runs and striking out nine. Scott Eyre pitched a scoreless eighth and new closer Armando Benitez pitched a strong ninth for his first of many saves as a Giant.
At the plate, Edgardo Alfonzo led the team with three hits, including a two-run homer in the fourth. New shortstop Omar Vizquel added two hits and a stolen base--hopefully a sign of good things to come for the notoriously sluggish Giants--and the rest of the team contributed five hits, for an impressive total of ten on the day. While it's true that two of the Giants' runs were unearned products of Dodger errors, the Giants had baserunners out there all day and put themselves in position to take advantage of their opponents' mistakes, a singular trait of good teams.
And in the field, the Giants played good, fundamental errorless ball and showed a few flashes of defensive brilliance, particularly on a beautiful 4-6-3 double play in the ninth when Vizquel took a flip from Ray Durham and, leaping over the hard-sliding Jeff Kent (Booooo!), fired to Snow to get the speedy Milton Bradley at first.
So here's hoping the Giants continue the trends they started yesterday: good pitching, good hitting, good defense, and making the Dodgers look silly. And let's hope they do it tonight, 'cause we're going again. (And you should too, especially if you like fireworks. First pitch is at 7:05, the fireworks are after the game. Broadcast is on ESPN2 and KNBR)