One week ago, the Giants appeared to be on the verge of being the first team eliminated from playoff contention.
Barry Zito and Matt Cain were both winless, the Giants were floundering at the bottom of a weak division at 3-7, and the team appeared headed nowhere fast.
Fast forward to today.
While Cain is still winless, Zito has picked up his second win, Barry Bonds is crushing homers at a regular pace, and most importantly, the Giants are riding a five game win steak, and have pushed above the .500 mark.
I'm more than happy to see the Gigantes coming around. Most experts predicted the Giants to have a poor season, but I was more optimistic. Hopefully this turnaround is a sign of better things to come for the boys by the bay.
I would certainly liked to have seen more of the Giants, however. Due to a screw up at my cable company, the games were not available on Extra Innings until Wednesday. Seems they had already allotted the channels to...get this...hockey playoffs. Hockey??? There are few things I'd rather see than a hockey game. Okay, maybe a soccer game. Or Nascar. But beyond that, there isn't much. Saturday, I cringed when I saw the start time...1:00 p.m. Pacific. I knew that the Fox Channel would only be showing the Yankees/Red Sox game, because, after all, those are the only baseball teams that exist. (more about the Red Sox later). For some unkown reason, the Sunday game wasn't carried on Extra Innings, either. That being said...I STILL am glad to have the Extra Innings option...because MLB.TV, quite frankly, bites the big one.
PART TWO
A week ago, even though they hadn't played many games due to weather, the Seattle Mariners looked, surprisingly to me at least, respectable.
My apologies for the above formatting issues, but the gist is this: Mariner starting pitching sucks. The injury to Hernandez is indeed unfortunate, and Washburn was at least semi-respectable, but the newcomers? Well, they're just not getting the job done. And I can't say I'm surprised, in spite of what the illustrious Mr. Bavasi wanted us to believe before the season started.
In our latest "Meet the Mariners" segment, we asked Mr. Bavasi, "what did you do before you went into baseball?"
Okay...that explains a lot.
In the series against the Angels, Richie Sexson is 0-11. But in all fairness...will SOMEONE please explain to the umpires that when you are 6' 8", your knees are higher than most other players, and what is above the knees to David Eckstein may not be a strike to Richie? It gets old watching him get called out on strikes that are clearly out of HIS strike zone.
IN OTHER NEWS:
I fully expected to see Santa Claus throw out the first pitch in this game.
I guess what it does show is that Dan "Action Dan" Harrington has been ahead of his time all these years:
One final thought: My wife verbalized something yesterday that I had been thinking. She said, "What is with A-Rod and all these homers? Is he on something?" She said it tongue in cheek, but it was a valid point. If Barry Bonds was on a tear like A-Rods (which I will grudgingly agree is nothing short of phenomenal), everyone would be pointing fingers and blaming 'roids, even though testing would have busted him long ago. But with A-Rod, everything is clean right???
And to think that Giants hater Dayn Perry had the Giants ranked 28th this week in his power rankings, he's never given them any respect, he must be a Dodger fan. Well, they are 9-8 as of today, their starting 5 as a whole is as good as any in baseball, and they will be contending for the NL West crown come September. The only thing I don't like about the Giants is the $30 they now charge for parking. $30?? Ugh!
Last edited by mattsuzuki16 on April 22nd at 6:20 PM.
The Giants are hot, 30 dollars for parking it was 20 last year, Bonds is hitting real good and the starting pitching could be a big surprise, and I think the Giants can do some damage if the Dodgers get some bad breaks!
A-Rod on steroids? Never! Love the pic with the fan kicking back with the card collection. That's hilarious. McGuire was personable, Bonds walks with a chip on his shoulder and as long as I can remember, always has. You'd think that someone could act like they enjoy playing the game and be nice to the fans.
The Giants are playing better...and Zito is looking like a much better investment than Jason Schmidt. Although it did cost them some extra $$$...appears to be worth it.
Good to see Barry finally get healthy. They are doing a good job of keeping him rested...hopefully that will be enough to get him through the entire season. Looks like the Barry we all know...
That 2-7 start had me a little worried about the Giants. Of course, it was so early, but the offense looked absolutely pathetic and the bullpen was pretty scary as well.
However, since then, the offense has done just enough (due, in large part, to Barry's hot streak) and the starting pitching has been nothing short of phenomenal. Heck, even Benitez has been considerably less horrific than usual!
Getting back to .500 so soon was a very good sign. Now, that they're 10-8 they look like they're really starting to put things together. I'd just like to see more consistency from the offense, less reliance on homers and more focus on stringing hits together up and down the order.
You might be a bit premature on countin' anybody out of the playoffs just yet.... the season is just gettin' started.... and it's still gotta go all 162 games....
Any blog w/ D. Harrington reference, gets my vote for BOTD!!!
Let me know when the new Hi-Def TV gets installed.... I'll bring the chips.... Corn and Poker...
Thanks, chux...I'll let you know! Maybe I'll save the televised coverage of a local poker tourney. It's definitely the WORST poker coverage I've ever seen...
Hello...I am an educator and musician living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Baseball and poker are my interests here...beyond that, about all I follow is Gonzaga Basketball and whatever tidbits I can pick up to avoid getting totally crushed in my football pool.
