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

All the hullabaloo over LeBron James’ decision to join the Miami Heat has focused, in my mind, on the heartless and tone-deaf way the decision (or I should say “The Decision”) was presented. Whether James intended to or not, presenting his free agency decision as a 1 hour special on ESPN seemed designed to ensure that a) everyone in Cleveland would hate him as much as humanly possible, and b) the rest of the sports-watching country’s opinion of him would plummet. After all, the last thing anyone in Cleveland wanted was for LeBron to leave the Cavaliers, but it absolutely made it worse when that breakup is broadcast on ESPN for a complete hour. And for those of us with nothing to win or lose from the decision, LeBron putting on a 1 hour special about himself wherein he referred to himself in the 3rd person multiple times does not give us much reason to doubt his ego.

Regardless, the only thing it really crystalized for me was the ability, or inability, of athletes to see just how much they mean to the people they play for. LeBron James grew up in Ohio and was drafted by the Cavaliers, two ingredients that make for an incredible love between a city and an athlete. He left. Dwayne Wade is loved in Miami nearly as much as James was in Cleveland. He stayed. The fact is that sometimes they break your heart, and sometimes they don’t.

I was listening to Bill Simmons’ The B.S. Report Podcast with Miami commentator Dan LeBatard, and they brought up a decent point: athletes don’t think the way fans do. We assume that because we feel the love and loyalty to our fans and our favorite players that they will be reciprocated (not like that). But they don’t think like us, and we can’t understand their reasoning. We attribute values like “loyalty” and “home town love” to them when they do decide to stick with our favorite teams, but the real reasoning is probably something along the lines of “money”, “$$$$$”, “state income tax laws” and “$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$”.

Why am I rambling on about this? Because these situations are fast approaching for my beloved San Francisco Giants. I’d like to believe that Tim Lincecum (or farther down the line, Buster Posey) is more Dwayne Wade and the Twins’ Joe Mauer than he is LeBron James. I’d like to believe that his status in the city of San Francisco will be enough for him to take a drastic pay cut to stay with the Giants compared to a team like the Yankees. But how do I know? Maybe the cheers we shower on him every 5th day don’t mean anything next to the gajillion figure salary the Mets will give him in a few years.

I hope not, but you never know. I would bet that Lincecum doesn’t go on national television to break up with the Giants, but if he wins another couple Cy Youngs everything is off the table.

Go Giants!

Here’s an idea: There was one guy in the administration who cared passionately about baseball; who seemed to sincerely love the game and revere its greatest players; who had a righteous streak, a strong sense of personal honor, and a tendency to see everything in terms of right and wrong; and who clearly had the power to make Alberto Gonzalez jump. This person also cared enough about the problem of steroid abuse to have mentioned it—and been ridiculed as a result—just a year earlier, in his 2004 State of the Union address. I wonder if George W. Bush was the one who blocked McGwire’s immunity deal and, in doing so, consigned McGwire to the ignominy he is just now beginning to try and overcome?

Wow. Could Dubya have been the one who put McGwire in this situation? It’s a fascinating story – if true. But it also (again, if true) illustrates something I’ve always thought about George W. Bush: his actions, at least with the passage of time, come to seem incredibly short-sighted. As a baseball fan who was transfixed, enchanted, and inspired by McGwire and Sosa’s race, I absolutely understand the desire to punish McGwire for tarnishing not just the single season home-run record that all of us as baseball fans cherished, but also the feeling that we all felt while watching the Summer of 1998. But seriously, the guy wanted to come clean. How can you not see that Mark McGwire telling a Congressional Panel that, “yes, I did steroids. It was a mistake. I did it because I thought it would keep me healthy for an entire season” would ultimately benefit the game of baseball in one of its darkest moments? Especially after we know the result of McGwire’s ultimate testimony – it was a P.R. disaster for the man and the sport that both are only now coming out of.

Regardless, we don’t know if this story is true. Even if it is, this is not one of Bush’s biggest mistakes – this is about sports after all. But if you really cared about baseball, as we all know Bush did, I can’t understand making that decision.