And So It Ends

On a crappy September night in Arizona, the Giants' defense of their title finally bit the dust. It didn't end with a flourish or, as the old adage claims, a bang. It was the proverbial whimper. And it was a fitting end -- an offense that couldn get a clutch hit all year managed just one run on 10 hits, a frisbee slider didn't break, and the Giants are champs no more.

It was the typical Giants loss. They scored early and tried to make one run stand up. They again expected the pitchers to be perfect, and nearly perfect wasn't good enough.

This has been a extremely disappointing year, largely because the Giants' failure was both forseeable and preventable. And the blame for this disaster should lie firmly at the feet of management.

Neukom is out on favor of Larry Baer, whom I like a lot. Unfortunately it appears his first act is to ensure that the Dimwit Duo of Sabean and Bochy remains to torment us even further. They are both cause and symptom, and the Giants are forever doomed if they do not change their ways.

There are a number of turning points in the season. You can talk about injuries, bad luck, etc., but despite all of the Pollyanna hopefullness this is a team that went into the season with the proverbial two strikes" against it, and kept swinging at sliders in the dirt. Yet when you look back at all of the "ifs" and "whats", you can find three distinct instances when management screwed the pooch.

The first failure came in the off-season, when the Giants made no significant upgrade to a team that was offensively challenged despite seeing a number of players having career years. Did they really believe a full season of Cody Ross was going to make a difference? Instead of help we got Miguel Tejada.

Failure number two came on the day Buster Posey went down. This was the centerpiece of a still-challenged lineup. The Giants' response this loss? Crickets. They whistled in the dark and claimed their catching situation was okay. Hmmn. The number-four hitter goes down, replaced by two guys who couldn't hit an old lady in a crosswalk, and the team doesn't need to make a move? When the guys replacing your big stick bat eighth only because tradition puts the pitcher ninth, you're losing offense. Nice non-move Sabean.

And still this team had a shot. It was smoke and mirrors, but at one point they were 16 games over .500. Even then Sabean publicly admitted that the team wasn't as good as its record. The wall had to come, and it did. The Giants gambled that one bat, the overhyped Carlos Beltran, would be enough. Had he been added to a healthy Posey in April, and had the Giants actually obtained a real shortstop instead of an aging malcontent whose range consisted of a step and a dive, they might have had a chance. In this case it was too little and much too late.

The Giants needed more help. They got Orlando Cabrerra: Tejada without the attitude. Yep, the Giants exchanged one aging shortstop on the decline for another, and that was supposed to be the winning ticket.

The final Epic Fail came on the field. Despite their best efforts to bury themselves, the Giants came into a late August homestand -- their longest of the year -- just a game out of first. They were looking forward to nine stright games against teams with losing records prior to Arizona's arrival. And they soiled the sheets in unbeleivable fashion. When it was over they'd gone 5-7, the D-Backs were rolling, and before the smoke cleared the Giants were looking a a nine-game hole.

What really killed  me was the Houston series on the homestand, when the Giants were twice done in by Henry Sosa  and Matt Downs, two "failed" Giants prospects. The Giants dealt them for vets, and when it game time for the showdown, the kids won.

That's a theme for the current front office. Young talent is just a baraining chip. Yeah, the kid may hit .300 but he's not proven. Better to take a known quantity, even if he hits .230. No gambles here. If your name is Brandon Belt, Brett Pill, Brandon Crawford, Hector Sancez, etc., get your suitcase ready. There is no place for you in San Francisco, not when there's a 36-year-old, .220-hitting middle infielder on the market.

Yes, they had that late run where they hit the ball for a week and a half. Jeez, six months of baseball and we got 10 days of offense. Glorious. But they reverted to form, losing three of four when it mattered most, and the season was history. Not even the thought of Tejada and Aaron Rowand being picked up while hitchhiking by Rutger Hauer can take away the sting.

Looking back at the full season, the perfect mascot for this team would be Randy Winn. The Giants failed to learn from that awful experience and paid a record payroll in 2011 to players like Aubrey Huff, Cody Ross, Andres Torres and Mike Fontenot; men who got paid like they'd perform every day like they did last September. But that's not who they are. The Giants paid off on career years, and, predictably, got a lousy return on the investment.

The 2010 Giants got hot at the right time, and a tremendous pitching staff made it stand up. But you cannot build a team like that. The Giants seem to beleive that "good enough" on the offensive side is sufficient. They stubbornly rely on arms. Hey, Philly can pitch too. So can the Brewers and Tigers and Rays and Red Sox. You know what else they can do? Hit. The Giants can't.

Those teams don't rely on one facet of the game. Their goal isn't to squeak by every night. They want to bludgeon you, to leave no dought which team is superior. They can have one aspect of the game stumble and still find a way to win. The Giants? If the pitching hits a bump in the road, they're screwed. If fact, as Cain and Lincecum repeatedly proved this year, even if the pitchers hold up their end it's no guarantee of success.

So, how to fix it?

The first move is gonna be painful. The Giants ate Rowand's idiotic deal, now they need to be willing to do the same for Zito and Huff. In fact, there are a number of Giants that need not return. Also say goodbye to the following: Whiteside, Keppinger, Cabrerra, DeRosa, Ross, Torres, J. Sanchez, Edlefsen, Ramirez and Mota. Bury Stewart and Pill in Fresno as insurance.

The Giants will undoubtedly tell us that the key factor was health, all they have to do is wait for guys to return and they'll be fine. I'm telling you now, they won't. Not as constructed.

There's good young talent, and it needs to play, but even if Freddy Sanchez and Buster Posey return, the Giants lack two fundamental elements of an offense. There's no one at the top of the order to lite the fuse, and no one to be the bomb.

The offseason search has to be for a leadoff man and a clean-up hitter, and the Giants have to be willing to break the bank to do so. Fans came out and supported the Giants all season, selling out every home game to date. They did so and received bad baseball. Last year was torture? This year was death by slow poison. In 2012, they owe us.

There are three big prizes on the free agent market: Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder and Jose Reyes. Two of them need to end up in San Francisco.

Don't give me the song and dance about Posey hiting fourth. He's got a chance to be a three, and Sandoval is a born five. But the last "Holy Crap! Don't let that guy beat us!" bat the Giants possessed is awating sentencing. That's gotta change.

No matter how good he pitchers are, the Giants have to score runs. During the last Colorado series there was a great stat: the Giants weere 63-19 when they scored three runs or more. Really? It was friggin' September. They'd played 150 games! So while that was a nice little factoid, the unrlying truth was that they'd failed to score three runs close to 70 times!

We saw this after 2002. The Giants brought in a bunch of spare parts and caught lightning in a bottle. Thus inspied, the front office decided that was the way to build a team, and by 2005 they were a laughing stock. They need to change tactics or it'll happen again.

The Giants have good pitching, better than most. With an average offense they'd be a dominant team. But competitive guys want to win, and if the front office doesn't give them the tools to do so, it'll be far too easy to jump ship when teams like the Yankees and Red Sox start circling Lincecum and Cain waiving big checks combined with bushels of run support.

Giants, the future is now. You're at a turning point. You can can bite the bullet, trim the fat, rebuild the offense and save your pitchers from a mental breakdown, or you can slide into oblivion: a one-hit wonder the likes of Ah-Ha and Dexy's Midnight Runners.

So, what's it gonna be? 

Suicide is Painless

Someone please explain this to me. The Giants' roster looks like the manifest at a M*A*S*H unit, Tim Lincecum is proving to be (shudder) mortal, the offense could be the subject of a Leonard Nimoy documentary -- and the Giants are in first place?


The Lucious Stacy Keibler

What's next? I guess Dick Cheney will sprout a consience, Sarah Palin will grow a brain, and Stacy Keibler will show up at my doorstep in noting but a mylar thong wanting to show me how fake her version of "wrestling" really is. It's that kind of year.

To be sure, it hasn't been pretty. But as the Wild and Wacky West starts to sort itself out, one thing is clear. Despite all of the their faults (and they are legion) the Giants are the class of the bunch. The numbers don't lie. The Giants are ten games above .500 (39-29) for the first time this year -- up a two and a half games on the upstart D-backs and leaving the rest of a surprisingly-mediocre division in the relative dust.

Friends, the NL West blows. Arizona can't be for real (the Snakes rolled off a 22-8 stretch heading into this week's early showdown with the G-men). No one else is above break even with the Rockies, The Hated Dodgers and the Padres sinking into the primodial ooze -- just where they belong.

Mat Latos can bite me.

Gotta hand it those Showtime cameras: this is reality TV at its finest. Ot maybe it's more like the Lifetime Movie Network, with each made-for-TV drama trolling out the malady of the week.

The Anti-Zito: Ryan Vogelsong

I hadn't even heard of a hammte bone before this year. I looked it up and believe "hammate" is the past tense of something you do along with a side of poached eggs. The Giants don't need a trainer. The need to put Hawkeye Pierce and Henry Blake on payroll.

We're 40 percent of the way through the season (41.9753086 percent for those of you still ticked that NUMB3ERS was cancelled), and it's been a crappy 40 percent. Posey? Gone. Sanchez? Gone (again). Panda? Gone and back (finally). Whiteside? Here (dammit!). So the Giants have had to find new heroes. Come on. Who among you still thought Chris Stewart was Martha's kid? And isn't a Vogelsong some sort of yodel?



Brandon Belt with two good wrists

The list of injuried is amazing. All of the following have spent part of the campaign on the DL: Wilson, Ross, Sandoval, Torres, DeRosa, Fontenot, Zito, Casilla, Sanchez and, of course, Posey.

No one was immune. Brandon Belt started the season with the big boys, got demoted, and came back just in time to join the parade due to a broken wrist. It seems every injury the Giants avoided last year has been cashed in for 2011 and now they're drawing credit for 2012. The Giants are trying to fill from within, but for every Brandon Crawford who looks like he'll stick there is a Connor Gillespie or Manny Burris who just looks lost. Jeez, Brian Sabean actually thought Bill Hall would help. Panic!

Speaking of lost. With all of the injuries, what are the chances that any or all of the unholy Tejada / Rowand / Burrell triumvarate will step in front of a speeding BART train? Oh God, hear my plea. Can we please jettison this ballast and find more PT for Schierholtz and Crawford -- guys who actually have a chance to be good in this millenium?

I think that's the most amazng part. The big guns are either injured or underperforrming (that's you, Aubrey Huff), the offense has seen more dry patches than a psoryasis ward during a heat wave, those three heroes are actually in the line-up at times, and the Giants are winning? Holy Blank, Batman! Is the rest of the division really that bad? Uh, yeah.

The Giants rank 25th overal in team batting and 29th in runs scored. They don't work pitchers or bludgeon anyone (they rank 24th in both team OBP and slugging.) Were it not for their 3.27 team ERA (fourth in all of baseball) they'd likely be making plans for winter already. So, what exactly is it they do well?

Apparently, just win. Al Davis would be proud (if he remembers what winning lools like).

They just keep finding ways to beat you. This is a team that until last night had been outscored for the season (the total is now a robust 241-240 in favor) but excells in the one-run decision. Twenty eight times they've been in a nail-biter -- 19 of those went in the win column. All of that can't be attributed to the fact that the Zito-tross has been out for five weeks. Or can it?

This is "Team Torture," the same organization that drove us insane last year and had us looking for paint chips to gnaw on all the way to the title. It's no different in 2011. The Giants seem destined to play squeaker after squeaker -- and maybe that's the key. In close games, one mistake can beat you. A bad hop, a pitch that just misses the target, an ill advised swing at a pitch in the dirt (Rowand!) --- each can spell disaster. It's enough to get a mere mortal a terminal case of the yips. These guys seem to actually prefer it.

I'm starting to fall into the believer category. I thought last year was a wonderful miracle, never to be repeated. Now I watch Giants games and start to wonder, "how are they gonna save this one?"

Granted, there's still work to be done. Whiteside has made it clear that he's not an every day backstop. Heck, even with Posey gone (damn you, Scott Cousins!) it's obvious that he's not even the best catcher on the roster. He's lazy behind the dish -- good for at least one passed ball a game plus the wild pitch or two that a real catcher would save his hurler.



Nate the Great

 The problem is this: there's no catcher they can go get. No one who might be reasonably available is a substantial upgrade. The kind of blockbuster deal needed to bring an impact player back is folly -- you don't mortgage the family farm for a guy who will be replaced by Posey next year. All the Giants really can  (and should) do is hand the reigns to Stewart. Until / unless he falters, Whiteside is kinda like a mother-in-law. The less you see of him, the better.

I'd like some of the younger talent to get a chance. Scheirholtz looks better each time he goes out there, and despite middling numbers he seems to be in the middle of things every time something good happens. Plus, a Ross-Torres-Nate outfield will do a lot more for the pitching and defense than the Wild Kingdon alignment (a gazelle and two water buffalo) that started the season.

Rowand hits lefties but is now strictly a platoon player and isn't worth the $12 million a year he commands. Burrell, well, when did he become Pedro Feliz? He strikes out more than the fat guy at the Playboy Mansion and hits only when the Giants are up five or down five. His solo shot against Cincy was his first in nearly two months, and it came with the Giants down 10-0.

The Professor: Brandon Crawford

Crawford will hit as well as Tejada and has a potential to get better. His glove is substantially better, and a team that needs to win close games can't be giving away outs. Crawford has something Tejada only vaguely remembers: range. Crawford can move. Tejada's range consists of a step and a dive.

Belt will be back soon, and he was raking it in Fresno before his recall. If he can continue at the ML level, he may sent Huff (and his .220 average) to the pine. Would that be a sad day? Maybe.

Huff was a catalyst on last year's title team so there will be sentiment for him. But time marches on. The 2010 Giants were an older team. The change is coming - and there are kids who appear to be ready.

And Zito? He's set to return when the Giants play a twin bill at the end of the month. Why? The Giants don't need six starters, and Vogelsong isn't going anywhere.


Jonathan Sanchez


So where do you put BZ? He's untradable -- the Giants still owe him more then $60 million. Sending him to the pen potentially weakens the team's strength. The only rotation spot he might take is Jonathan Sanchez's (you had to know I'd get to that stiff sooner or later), who is one of the best hurlers in baseball based on numbers but a cross between Freddie Krueger and Michael Myers if you actually have to watch him pitch.

My choice would be to trade Sanchez for a  bat. Any bat. Louisville Slugger model RD492 will do just fine, but I  won't be picky. I don't even need anyone to swing it -- just the bat. I've grown so sick of this mental midget's act that I can't even watch when he pitches. The box score will be the same: five to seven strikeouts, a like number of walks, a hit batter or two, one full-blow pout on the mound, and 100-plus pitches thrown before Bochy yanks him at the end of five frames. Deal him to someone who still gets his info from The Sporting News and hasn't discovered the modern wonder that is video.

This is the wonder that is baseball. The Giants are imperfect. In fact, it's team that's easy to poke holes in. They're easy to make jokes about. They're easy to dismiss. The only this you really can't do easily with this team is beat them.

May that continue though October.
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Giants Baseball: Still Torture

The adage is that a baseball season is a marathon as opposed to a sprint, but it's not hard to make a few basic assumptions based on the first week-plus. As the Giants stumble out of the gate in defense of their crown, we find that 2011 is shaping up to be a lot like 2010.

A 4-5 start through the first three series isn't cause to scream for wholesale changes -- we'll leave that to the psychotics in Boston. Even the fact that the Giants opened 2-4 within the division is cause for concern but not panic. But the manner in which the Giants are performing is enough to make me start investigating black market sources of discount Paxil.

Julie Michaels (sans rally thong, damn!)

It's evident what we have to look forward to: the Giants will always be in the battle, and it'll never be comfortable. Losses will be excruciating and the victories only slightly less so.

This is the quintisential nails-on-a-chalkboard team. Every game is a grind as you bite your fingernails to the quick while looking for some kind of distraction -- like maybe root canal. The offense has all the artistic merit of Road House, but just like that celluoloid train wreck you can't seem to pry your eyes away.

At least Road House had Julie Michaels in spandex. We get Aubrey Huff in the rally thong.

When I was a boy (like I'm an armadillo now?) I was told not to play with electrical sockets. I didn't listen, I got zapped, and it hurt. In fact, it hurt so badly I had to go back and do it again to make sure it really did hurt as much as I remembered (it did). That's what it's like to be a fan of these Giants. Wanna light up your life? Wet your hands and plug in the toaster, then pick yourself up off the floor and do it another 161 times.

Nothing is going to be easy.

There were plenty of reasons to go into this season full of confidence. But despite all of the offensive potential, nothing is going to change the fact that Brian Sabean is fully-committed to this being a pitching-first franchise. By design there aren't going to be many 10-0 laughers, and the margin for error is as thin as the current talent line-up on American Idol. Yet, it is strangely compelling theater -- like the season was directed by David Lynch.

Opening the season at Chavez Latrine was a treat, even more so when the Giants dropped three of four. What was most galling is that they didn't look ready to perform. Sloppy play was a key element in all three losses, and the only victory came when Matt Cain looked like, well, Matt Cain against a Hated Dodgers line-up pulled from the third week of spring training.



Son of Zeus

Things weren't much better in San Diego as the Giants split a pair, unless you count the 13-strikeout performance of a 5-9, 173-pound pitching Messiah with lightning in his arm and more Adonis DNA than a batallion of Charlie Sheens (too much?). Nah. Tim Lincecum was that good.

Jonathan Sanchez and Barry Zito, not so much. Strikes gentlemen. You can't defend a walk. And the bullpen? Yikes! Thank God the return home featured Ryan Franklin throwing up on his shoes and Colby Rasmus getting the yips on a Tejada fly ball, because that's the difference between 4-5 and a mass leap from the Golden Gate Bridge.

It's early, and there's plenty of reasons for optimism. The Wild Kingdom outfiled (a gazelle and two water buffaloes) is largely the product of injuries. The returns of Cody Ross and Andres Torres should make the pitching better, as would any line-up move that keeps Huff from imitating a crash test dummy in right.



This won't look good on SportsCenter

Posey and Huff haven't yet found their swings, but you have to believe those two are going to hit. The Giants will score. Not a lot, but some. It'll be up to the pitchers to make it stand up.

The rematch with LA starts tonight. Jonathan Broxton will be in uniform, so hope for a quick turnaround springs eternal. The Giants remain mired in last place, but at this juncture that's still only two and a half games out. Plenty of baseball left.

So please pass the novacain: only 153 games to go.
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