Photo du Jour 516
Welcome Back! Um, Why Are You at Work Today?
Tiger Woods In "Serious" Condition After Car Crash
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Photos from Black Friday
Builder of Oakland's Fox Theater Once Imprisoned For 'White Slavery'
How bad are things for the Giants? Well, the best thing that happened to them over the past week was they got rained out. Why was it a good thing? Because it meant that Sunday was a double header and since it's so hard to win both games of a double header, it increased the odds that the Giants might actually win. Yep, it's been that bad of a week for Your San Francisco Giants. Since we last posted, the Giants won one game. Just one. For those keeping score at home, the Giants put together an eight-game losing streak (their longest since 2000) before finally winning the first game of Sunday's double header against the Mets. They then went out and promptly got shellacked in the night game.
The Giants lost every conceivable way possible-- bad hitting, bad pitching, and bad base running. To add insult to injury, they lost two games against the Phillies on bad calls. Oh, their shiny new relief pitcher, LaTroy Hawkins? Got shelled. Maybe even more troublesome is that Jason Schmidt is not only not getting better, but getting worse. Either something's wrong with him, he's afraid of having something wrong with him, or he came down with a case of the dreaded Steve Blass Disease, where a once unhittable pitcher suddenly turns into a batting practice pitcher. How much did they stink up the joint last week? They screwed up the paperwork and botched Marquis Grissom's return to active play. At least a pornographic video on tolerance wasn't released to the press.
Jim Brower shockingly gives up a home run in a photo by AP
On the Internets, Giants' bloggers are debating whether to wave the white flag of surrender quietly or with full honors. And everyone, and we mean everyone, seems to be in Brian Sabean's grill. There are definitely things Sabean can be accused of that he deserves -- the lack of a decent farm system or decent player development -- but we just don't see how this season is his fault. Going into this season, it was apparent the Giants were built around three players-- Bonds, Schmidt, and Benitez. That's not a bad threesome to build a team around as all three are (were) three of the best in their position, Bonds quite possibly maybe the greatest ever. But Bonds reinjured his knee then got a staph infection, Benitez tore his groin, and Schmidt just lost it. All of those things were more bad luck than Sabean making bad decisions. For all the fretting about signing veteran free agents, it's not the free agents who are causing the problems, it's the ones that weren't supposed to be a problem who are problems. Indeed, Alou and Matheny have been fine and Vizquel has been fantastic. But as we said, they're not the problems.
With the exception of maybe the Yankees, the Red Sox, the Braves, and maybe the Cardinals, no other team in baseball could survive the same run of bad luck as the Giants have. And it's not quite clear even they could. Just look at the Angels -- they lost Vlad (who we think Sabean should have gone after) and they're closer for just a few weeks and they fell out of first place. The Braves have their ace and big boppers, but a bad bullpen has them in third place. The Sox lost their ace and have a shaky bullpen and they're putzing around in second. And we'd like to see what the Cardinals would do if they lost Pujols, Isringhausen, and Mulder all at the same time. They might not stink on ice as much as the Giants do now, but they wouldn't be running away with the division. If anything, this year is becoming just One of Those Years. And frankly, after the run of good luck we've had with the team, we were probably about due.
The good news for Giants fans is that the Powers That Be have the God-awful Royals and the merely meh Indians coming into town in the name of interleague play. The bad news is that the Royals and the Indians are coming into town. Can you say yawn? And, in a crazy way, Giants fans have the A's to look to. Because if they can come back and get back into it, so can the Giants. And yes, it is a pretty bleak time when one has to look at the A's for inspiration.
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That "they're" should be a "their".