1. Working? (Ha – that didn’t work)
2. Reading Reddit (this helped for a bit)
3. Searching for optimistic reports about Posey’s injury (didn’t help – there are none)
4. Looking at images like the one below (actually, that kind helped):
5. Thinking about how bad the rest of the NL West is. This gives me (some small measure of) hope.
6. ………..that’s about it. This is not a good situation. Shit.

If you’re here, you’re maniacal about baseball. Sorry. There’s a spectrum that starts with “Doesn’t turn the channel when sports comes on the local evening news” and ends with “Reading a 1,000-word missive on Eli Whiteside at some nerd’s blog.” You’re at the extreme end.

That’s from the awesomest Giants blog McCovey Chronicles. It’s so true. I don’t even have a comeback. I am a huge baseball maniac. At the same time, I kinda like reading about Eli Whiteside. What’s not to like when the dude wears this to a World Championship Parade?

-Grahame

mmmm. Championships...nomnomnom

Yesterday, I posted this delightful item from the LA Weekly Blog on Facebook and Twitter. After all, the Giants are the World Series Champions (which I may end up mentioning in every blog post until at least October 2011), and I am all for reminding Dodger fans of that fact. After fending off some haters with some well timed rebuttals (“Ummm, I think you’re forgetting that the Giants are the defending World Series Champions”), I got into a quick Twitter discussion with a friend about the Giants 2011 chances. It is an interesting thing to think about, as the Giants came out of nowhere and some assholes think that they were kind of fluke. Obviously, I disagree. Come. Let’s discuss.

First, let’s look at the areas where the 2011 Giants will probably be worse than last year’s. Players who had career years last year regressing back to their old form, the loss of key players from the 2010 team, and the wear and tear from a long 2010 postseason.

• On the first count, you have players like Aubrey Huff and Andres Torres, who posted career years – in Torres’ case in his first full MLB year. There is little hope that both players will continue to post the numbers they put up last year, but the hope is that any loss of production will not be too large. The other worry is about Buster Posey. Posey was obviously stellar in his rookie year, but there is always the worry of a sophomore slump.
• There is not much worry about production loss from free agent departures. The only loss from the 2010 team is Juan Uribe. Luckily for the Giants, we got to reap the benefits of Uribe’s production, win a World Series, and then watch and laugh as the hated Dodgers overpayed for Uribe. And the Giants then replaced Uribe with Miguel Tejada, who may not quite match Uribe’s 2010, but he will come close. For cheaper than Uribe.
• Finally, there is the idea that the Giants (especially their young studs) will suffer from the wear and tear of 2010′s long season. As someone who has watched feature after feature about Matt Cain and Brian Wilson’s ridiculous stair-running workouts, read article after article about how Tim Lincecum joined them after his terrible August, and then watched all of the dominate in the 2010 playoffs…well, I just don’t buy it. Wear and tear will not break this team.

Ok! Now, on to the ways that the 2011 Giants have improved. I think these outweigh the negatives…

• First, some of it will be regression to the mean – in the other direction. Giants fans remember Pablo Sandoval’s 2009 season, and also remember a time when it was impossible to imagine the Giants even making the playoffs if Sandoval slumped in 2010. Well, Sandoval sucked in 2010. And the Giants won the World Series. If he even comes close to his 2009 production, he will have made up for most of the loss of production from Huff and Torres.
• We also get a full season of Buster Posey, Pat Burrell, and Cody Ross. I know it seems weird, but Posey wasn’t always our starting catcher. Weird, right? For two months of 2010, we had (wait for it…) Bengie Molina as our catcher. Regardless of a potential Posey sophomore slump, the difference between 2 months of Posey and 2 months of Molina is a LOT more offense. Also, Burrell and Ross are far better than Aaron Rowand and Nate Schierholtz, who patrolled the outfield for the first half of 2010.
• There is no way our starting pitching is worse, barring injury. Let’s take a look at the 2010 starting rotation: A sub-Lincecum-level Lincecum, Zito, Cain, Sanchez, 1/2 of Todd Wellemeyer and 1/2 of Bumgarner. Now, our 2011 rotation: Lincecum, Cain, Sanchex, Bumgarner, and Zito. Barry Zito is our 5th starter – officially. And that half season of Todd Wellemeyer was pretty bad. An extra half season of Bumgarner will be far better. It’s also not hard to imagine a resurgent, Cy Young level performance from Tim Lincecum, who wasn’t nearly as good in 2010 as he was in 08 and 09. He has redoubled his training, added a new top-level pitch (a slider), and showed just how good he can be with two legendary postseason performances (Game 1 NLDS and Game 5 of the WS).

And that’s just the start. Any good stat-head will get you far deeper into the analysis of this coming season. Regardless, I don’t see how the Giants are any worse than last year’s team, and thus I don’t think it’s hard to imagine this team winning 90-100 games. And once they make the playoffs, well…we all know it’s magic inside.

-Grahame

ps: thanks for indulging me with this Giants post