Yesterday, we tackled the issue of what to expect of this year's team. Today, we'll take a look at whether we should be happy with the expectations of this year's team.

SFist: So, McCovey Chronicles, does all this mean that we should expect a 70-80 win season? Which should put us, well, the same place we've been the past couple of seasons. Is that good or is that bad? Lefty's right in that the West isn't so easy anymore. I won't say which team is looking scary good right now (as I understand it, we're not allowed to mention their name) but let's just say it appears that the student has become the master.

My fear is that as the season progresses, Roberts turns into the kind of guy who plays on four teams in five years, Richie returns to a guy who hits around .260 and Klesko is, well I used to have Klesko on my fantasy baseball team. He was the kind of guy who wouldn't do badly
but wouldn't do that great and you'd go months without remembering he was on your team.

Oh, let's see what else scares me—Bonds starts playing like a 43 year old man with creaky knees and Ray Durham returns to his usual spot on the DL. Also, Lowry still won't get his act together, last season wasn't a fluke for Morris (it seemed to me that he'd pitch really good
up until one inning and then completely cough up a fur ball of an inning), and Bruce Bochy starts wondering why he left the land of fish tacos for the land of garlic fries.

On the other hand, it's definitely better than the Great Niekro Experiment but is it better than having Hillenbrand out there? And yes, taking time away from Petey would be good too. Here's my theory on what happened to him these past couple of years, mainly that Felipe
forgot he could actually put another name on the lineup card at 3b and poor Petey just got plain old tired out there. Maybe a fresh Petey is a not-swinging-at-every-bad-pitch Petey.

Oh, and as for Matt Cain, why do I have bad visions of a sophomore slump? Or, considering the Giants recent history with their young pitching studs, horrible, horrible injuries and a possible trade to the Twins.

So, should we have reason to worry or should we just be happy if we're slightly above .500?