Your San Francisco Giants Put a Fork In It
And with that, we bid adieu to the Giants' season as baseball has moved to the playoffs and everyone's favorite drama, Waiting For the Sox/Yanks. Which means it's time for Your San Francisco Giants Season Replay, a season which we think can be summed up thusly: you know, it could have been worse.
First, let's get to the damning evidence as it were. Record? 75 & 83, the worst record under the Sabaen era and third place in the craptastic NL Worst. That 75 & 83 record, by the way, marks the Gigantes as having the 10th worst record in MLB. On the other hand, somehow, inexplicably, amazingly, the Giants managed to make things somewhat interesting, to tease the faithful with the far-away, once thought of as impossible dream of somehow maybe getting into the playoffs. In fact, about a week ago, people were even almost giddy about it as they went into San Diego for a four game series only four back. Sure, they needed to run the table to make the playoffs, but nobody confused the 2005 Padres with the '27 Yankees, or even the '98 Padres, or hell, even the SFist softball team. But after one of those epic, operatic, nail-biter of a victory that makes us thank the Good Lord for bequething us baseball and giving us a strong heart, the Giants turned around and blew it all in one of those epic, operatic, hairball coughups that makes you curse the Not-So-Good Lord for bequething us baseball and giving us a heart doomed to another batch of TUMS.
Image that sums up the Giants' season from SFGate
Which, in a way, kind of described the season. The Giants hung around just enough to threaten to make things interesting but consistently failed to actually arrive at making things interesting. But you could also look at the glass as being half full and thank your lucky stars for giving us a reason to pay attention to the Giants in the midst of the glories of a new TV season and nice weather.
After all, at one point, this season was looking like it was headed to be much worse than it turned out to be. Like a 100-90 loss, field the Fresno Giants, we know how it feels to be a Pirates fan season. By now, we could recite all the problems that befell the Giants this season like some sort of mantra-- Bonds' bad knee, Benitez' bad groin, Schmidt's bad whatever-the-hell was bothering him-- yet, the team refused to go down easy. In fact, we have grudging admiration for the team, and by extension Felipe and Sabes, because while most teams would have thrown the white flag and gotten all zen about the losses, the Giants still played and played to win. Sure, even when they give it their 110%, they lost most of the time, but they rarely lost in that ugly kind of way where the team rolls over, bitches at everyone, whines about conspiracies, and quits on their coach. You know, like the Raiders.
So yes, the Giants got themselves into probably the weakest pennant chase in the history of pennant chases and yes, the resulting chase turned out to be nothing but one big anti-climax, but maybe we should even be thankful for the anti-climax. Because, as the Betting Fool pointed out, the Giants' fall from pennant race grace could have been worse. Because it could have ended with Steve Finley hitting a grand slam, or Jose Cruz Jr. dropping an easy fly ball, or Sean Estes (the original Brett Tomko) choke jobbing on the mound, or Tommy Lasorda dancing in the dugout as Salmon Torres looks on in tears, or Dusty Baker handing a game ball to Russ Ortiz as the stupid friggin Rally Monkey lurks in the shadows about to release it's mojo.
Yep, it could have definitely been worse. And for that, maybe we should be thankful.
Anyways, here is the SFist 2005 Giants Awards
MVP (non-pitcher division): Randy Winn. You know those lame parties where nobody is having any fun and all of a sudden somebody shows up and starts pouring the Jager and organizing the flip cup games and all of a sudden the party gets pretty fun? That was Winn this season. And also maybe the biggest question going into the next season: was Winn’s performance this year a sign of things to come or one of those Spin Doctor's having a huge hit single type flukes?
MVP (pitching division): Most people would go with Scott Eyre here for his appearing in every game, every practice, every inter-squad pickup game, and several little league games too this season, but we think this award should go to Tyler Walker. Why? Because Walker was everything the Giants were this season: a mediocre talent thrown into an unknown role due to their being nobody else and performing well enough to make things not as bad as they were. Kind of like in every sci-fi show there’s an episode where the ship gets all banged up and nearly destroyed and any method of fixing the ship has long been deemed not workable and somehow they patch the ship up using bubblegum and duct tape so the life support systems can stay online enough for the ship to dock into some bay so everyone can live til the next episode? That was Walker. He was the Giants' Scotty. And we loved Scotty (R.I.P).