Your San Francisco Giants 2006 Season Preview
We couldn't help but notice that this year's Giants slogan is "Your San Francisco Giants," something that has been our tagline since SFist was just a mere toddler in Baby Gap swaddling. We're sure that royalty check will show up to SFist's HQ any day now. As for ourselves, we tried to come up with a pithy little phrase to describe this year's Gigantes and after months and months of debate (actually, more like a few minutes of thought before writing this) decided that this year's team could be summed up best by the phrase "yes, but..."
Here's how this phrase works in terms of this year's team: you say "the Giants starting rotation could be one of the best in the NL. Schmidt is healthy, Morris is a stud, Lowry was coming on at the end of last year, Matt Cain is a star in the making, and Jamey Wright has really good stats at the home ball park." And here's where the "yes, but..." comes in-- "yes, but Schmidt is fragile and couldn't find any sort of mojo last year, Morris hasn't quite recovered yet from his shoulder surgery, Lowry has never put it together for a full season, Cain is still a kid, and Jamey Wright is Jamey Wright."
Or, you could go this way: you say "Armando Benitez is finally healthy so the bullpen should be settled down this year." To which the response would be "yes, but Benitez got shelled in spring training, is starting the season on the DL, and even when he's healthy, he's still shaky." Or try this: "with the addition of Steve Finley, the Giants have a great bench and a great fourth outfielder to fill in whenever one of the old guys gets old." And the response? "yes, but Finley sucked last year and he's 41 so last year could be more like a trend than an aberration."
See how this works?
And, of course, there's the biggest "yes, but..." of them all: one Barry Lamar Bonds. Nobody has any idea of what to expect of the big fella. Seriously, we tried to think of any athlete who had more swirling around them and more pressure on their back and couldn't really come up with any. Kobe after the rape trial and his banishing of Shaq? Muhammad Ali after getting his heavyweight belt stripped from him? Napoleon after his exile to Elba? We really don't know. It's unprecedented the drama following the big dude.
From just an athletic standpoint, you have a 41-year-old man with thrice-operated upon knees and a bad elbow returning to play baseball after missing pretty much an entire season. Everyone is kind of expecting Barry to Barry, but will he? Will he be rusty? Will he get inured again? How many games can he play? Will he even be able to field the ball? Barry's meter has gone past E years ago, how much can we expect of him?
And none of that includes all of the other plots, subplots, themes, and meta-themes running through his season. You have, of course, him chasing baseball history. While under a cloud of steroid suspicion. While being investigated by both baseball and the federal government. And if that isn't enough, there's also the reality show he's doing. Barry's not just bringing the circus with him, but Barnum & Bailey with him.
Barry could both crumble under all the pressure and the wears of tears of his career and not do a damn thing this season or he could hit like 60 home runs and lead the Giants to the Series just as one big, huge FU to everyone and neither of them would surprise anyone.
So where does this leave your 2006 Giants? On paper, this is one of the best teams in the National League even without Bonds. But that paper is a little crinkly and old looking and has "Limp Bizkit rulez" written on it's edges. If you put this lineup together, say, five years ago, you got a Championship level team. This year? We dunno, we have no clue and neither do you. They could suck, they could kickass, they could (probably) be somewhere in between. But because we're the pessimistic sort and because all of the variables have variables upon variables upon them, we just have a bad feeling about this season. All we know is it's going to be one hell of a ride, somewhere between a reality show train wreck, Shakespearean tragedy, and inspirational feel-good sports movie. How the Giants do will be determined by which one it most closely resembles.