Oh My Gosh! Bonds undergo surgery again

As reported on KNBR, Barry Bonds' right knee was operated on last night to clean up tears in his menisci. It had been swelling up after exercise - reportedly after he banged his knee against a table on Feb. 4th - so the Doctor went back in to fix things up.

Thank goodness we have Pedro Feliz to play LF while Bonds is out. He won't obviously play at Bonds' level, but at least the power is not totally lost either. The question now is how long Bonds will be out - expect a forecast after a week - and who will take his spot in the roster - presuming he ends up on the DL - when the start of the season begins. It will be his first missed opening day in his career if this does happen.

New Giant Caught Almost Cheating

I just wanted to write a typical newspaper headline to catch eyes. The Chron a few days ago quoted Alou on Benitez's performance: "He threw some nasty stuff today, especially the splitter,'' Alou said. "That's almost cheating when a guy throws that hard and gets that splitter for a strike.'' Sounds good to me, if he can come close to what he did last season for the Marlins, the Giants could run away with the division.

People are starting to predict the NL West division winner. So far BA sees the Padres coming in first and BP sees the Dodgers being the most probable winner. I don't see how any of them can say this. Both the Dodgers and Padres made at best sideway moves - the Giants improved themselves overall. They were all close to each other in 2004 so this should mean the Giants should win.

Yes, there will be declines from some of the vets. But I think overall the Giants have improved themselves. I will go over the Giants changes in a future post in detail but I don't see how these pundits can say this, other than I feel that there is a bias against the Giants at BP - I can't put my finger on it but that is my impression overall from reading their past books and past articles, in particular their Triple Play columns.