Giants win series over D-gers; Ricky Ledee must have bled D-ger Blue last season
If only Ricky Ledee had done half of what he has done for the D-gers this year for the Giants last year, the Giants might have made the playoffs in 2004. Oh well, at least we won the series from the D-gers and came close to sweeping.
I get a little chuckle from the articles popping up in the newspapers saying either the Giants are done or alternately the Giants aren't going to do much this year. Well, duh! Take away the best player, best pitcher, and closer off any team for any period of time and, yeah, you could pretty much say that that team is not going to do much or could be done, and especially so when the best player and closer will probably miss the vast majority of the season.
But that's not the story to me. The story is the Giants are still competing for the pennant in spite of all that has happened, including throwing in losing your second best player for two weeks as well and having two pitchers they were going to rely on pitching lost for most or all of the season. Of course, it helps that no team is running away with the division like the White Sox but this was expected in the pre-season, that most of the other NL West teams had flaws serious enough to prevent them from competing with the re-loaded Giants for the pennant. It took losing Bonds and Benitez (plus essentially half the rotation) to bring the Giants down to the other teams' level.
And things are looking up. Feliz for all his faults has been good enough as a replacement for Bonds in the lineup that the Giants have been competitive and probably is ready to start another streak. Hennessey and Fassero have been great as fill-in starters. Tomko, Lowry, and Schmidt appear to have gotten over their early season pitching funk and Rueter has been a rock in the rotation, as he once was for so many years, not outstanding but dependable and pitching well. The bullpen has been steady for a while, yesterday notwithstanding. Durham appears to be back and Alfonzo and Vizquel are heating up again, as well as Alou.
The team seems to be reaching the point of health and performance where, like last season right around this time, the team starts rattling off a huge win streak, like the Yankees just did, and put themselves back at the top of the division instead of the bottom. I think now is the time to be looking up, not looking down.
I get a little chuckle from the articles popping up in the newspapers saying either the Giants are done or alternately the Giants aren't going to do much this year. Well, duh! Take away the best player, best pitcher, and closer off any team for any period of time and, yeah, you could pretty much say that that team is not going to do much or could be done, and especially so when the best player and closer will probably miss the vast majority of the season.
But that's not the story to me. The story is the Giants are still competing for the pennant in spite of all that has happened, including throwing in losing your second best player for two weeks as well and having two pitchers they were going to rely on pitching lost for most or all of the season. Of course, it helps that no team is running away with the division like the White Sox but this was expected in the pre-season, that most of the other NL West teams had flaws serious enough to prevent them from competing with the re-loaded Giants for the pennant. It took losing Bonds and Benitez (plus essentially half the rotation) to bring the Giants down to the other teams' level.
And things are looking up. Feliz for all his faults has been good enough as a replacement for Bonds in the lineup that the Giants have been competitive and probably is ready to start another streak. Hennessey and Fassero have been great as fill-in starters. Tomko, Lowry, and Schmidt appear to have gotten over their early season pitching funk and Rueter has been a rock in the rotation, as he once was for so many years, not outstanding but dependable and pitching well. The bullpen has been steady for a while, yesterday notwithstanding. Durham appears to be back and Alfonzo and Vizquel are heating up again, as well as Alou.
The team seems to be reaching the point of health and performance where, like last season right around this time, the team starts rattling off a huge win streak, like the Yankees just did, and put themselves back at the top of the division instead of the bottom. I think now is the time to be looking up, not looking down.
posted by obsessivegiantscompulsive at 5/27/2005 12:00:00 PM
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