The Rivalry is Back

Earlier this week, I wrote about my five keys to victory for the Giants going into this series. I seemed to have forgotten the sixth key: Using obscure baseball rules to exploit the mistakes of inexperienced acting-managers.

I'm not going to dissect what the rule about visiting the mound twice clearly says and if it was applied correctly. There's an endless pile of discussions in the blogosphere. It doesn't get us anywhere. Truth is, even the current crop of MLB executives that are now saying that the umpires were wrong might be wrong themselves. It's all interpretation. It's an endless discussion because there's no consensus on what the rules mean. We are trying to be objective, as fans, and our fanhood is clouding our judgement. I think Mattingly broke the rule, but I probably think that because I've been a Giant fan for 23 years.

None of this is the point. Even if applied correctly, Giants haters are saying Bochy is classless for using a technicality to win a game. I say that Leo Durocher, Alvin Dark, and even Tommy Lasorda are applauding the move and probably would've used the exact same weapon had they had it in their pockets. Because all of these men are part of the history of the rivalry. Giants-Dodgers is the most storied and best rivalry in baseball. It's the oldest, most even, has seen the most ugly incidents and most close pennant races. Yankees-Red Sox is not even close. The Yankees and Red Sox have had better teams for the past 15 years or so. This is constantly confused with being a better rivalry. The history is forgotten. The brilliance of Bochy's using that weapon on the wounded enemy soldier that was Mattingly last night extends beyond the outcome of the game. It brought the history back. It was as if he stood up and said, "This is not just a baseball game, this is Giants-Dodgers. Allow me to show you, Major League Baseball, what this game used to be about."

Bochy's stunt vexed the Dodgers and their fans so much there will sure to be more lusty booing and close pitches during the finale tonight. And an even better outcome: competition will improve. Last night, the Giants did whatever it took to win the game. Tonight and in future games, there will be two teams doing whatever it takes.

But we've already won the series. So there.

Beat LA! Beat LA! Beat LA!

This isn't just a chant post. Although if you want to start a chant in the comments section, be my guest. I think that would be amazing, actually.

I'm excited tonight because my surging Giants will actually be in town today. So before I go find out what hotel they're staying at, call in sick to work, and stalk them, I wanted to go over five keys to what I see as a very important early second-half series.

1. The starters need to keep outdoing each other. According to reports, during the break Bochy told the starters they need to step it up. I call this brilliant managing, because it worked - we're four fifths of the way through the rotation and everyone has turned in a gem. In game one, it's time for the new kid Madison Bumgarner to turn in his. This won't be easy in the unfriendly confines of Chavez Ravine. Use the challenge of trying to top your teammates.

2. Hit better with runners in scoring position. I know the offense has been clicking lately, but this would be a bad time to get lazy. Sunday they were 1-15 with RISP. I don't care if it was against Santana, Bad hitting has a tendency to snowball.

3. Beware of the cornered rabid dog. This is what we're dealing with with the Dodgers. They are slumping and had a tough, tough loss Sunday at St. Louis. They also had a tough series vs. the Yankees last month, and still swept us in our house. We can't assume they will continue to suck now. They will be back home ready to take out their frustrations on us. Nothing less than our A game will be acceptable. By the way, speaking of frustrations...

4. Take out your anger at Cuzzi on the Dodgers. I know it was a horrible call and cost us a win. But in a way, I'm almost glad the Giants lost today. If Ishikawa would have been called safe, they might have been lulled into thinking that they can stink at the plate all afternoon and not worry because they can pull a late inning comeback out of their back pockets. With the loss though, now the Giants know they will have to earn their win.

5. This is more a tip for the fans and the media, I guess, but nonetheless an important one: Shut up about potential deals at the trade deadline. The most important thing right now is what is going on at the field. Musing about what a player might have done who isn't even on the team won't help. Don't do it. The front office will make it's decision and we can dissect it when the time comes. Until then...

BEAT LA! BEAT LA!

The Mid-Season Awards Pt. II

Note: We're actually two days into the second half of the season. Beat me up.

It's day three of the All-Star Break, and time to ask another classic midsummer question:

Am I really watching the ESPY's right now?

It's still time to look back, this time at the Worsts of the first half of 2010. Think of it as the empty portion of the half full glass that is the Giants season so far. I'd love to just waft in the optimism, but hey - do you know what time it is? it's the second half of the season o'clock! Serious time! We've got some serious decisions to make and some serious NL West opponents to consider! Play time is over, and it's time to scold all the bad children.

WORST SURPRISE

Pablo Sandoval

I wish I could pick someone else. If you had taken 2009 me and shown him the team Giants stats for 2010 up to this point, 2009 me would be convinced he were in a Twilight Zone episode about the Giants. Because 2009 me knows Pablo Sandoval is the one player he doesn't have to worry about. 2010 me is considering the benefits of sending him to Fresno for a few weeks. Your starting third baseman isn't supposed to be batting eighth, Fresno is only a few rungs below. What choice do you have when a player apparently has made a deal with the mob to ground softly into 10 double plays per week? I don't know if a trip to the minors will turn him back into the .330/25/90 guy the Giants need right now, but it might help for him to hang out somewhere where he can actually hit the ball hard.

WORST GAME

April 19, 2010 - Dodgers 2, Giants 1

The very next game after my best game pick. Mrs. Orange and I, and some Giant fan friends bravely went into enemy territory for this one, knowing that just the day before we had blanked our foes 9-0, and Zito, who had been walking on water up to that point, was on the mound. I figured we had a great chance, and for seven and two-thirds, Zito looked like a miracle-worker and the Dodgers hitters look silly. When Uribe homered in the sixth, the Dodger fans around me grew into deeper silence as my crew and I held a high-five party in our seats. Our joy was not long, however. Sergio Romo gave up the go ahead two-run homer to Ramirez in the eighth, and it was as if Manny were Dig-Dug with dreadlocks and he had hooked up his inflating plug right into my side and blew my soul to bits. After the 45-minute standing ovation and 68 slow motion replays on the big screen, the formerly silent home fans suddenly became a lot chattier. During Broxton's 1-2-3 ninth to end the game, one fellow in our row was urging Big Jon to hurry so we could begin our journey back to San Francisco...where we actually don't live. My memory of the rest of the afternoon was kind of hazy.

WORST MOVE (COMBO AWARD-PREDICTION)

Deal to be Named Later

This is kind of a cop out, but I'm combining my pick for worst move and my prediction for the second half of the season, in which the Giants give up too much and get too little in return in an effort to complete a big trade before the deadline. I see a different kind of Giants team this year, in which they're trusting their youth to make things happen. But I don't think this new era has blossomed quite enough to prevent Sabean from thinking he can duplicate his Matt Williams-Jeff Kent trick from almost 20 years ago. A trick he has been trying to duplicate just about every season since. I want my Giants of 2010 to be focused inward. A solid lineup with an almost distinct identity is starting to come together, right now. Great things can be happening. Instead of bringing in yet another outsider, why not look at what you've got, celebrate and build around what's good, and fix what's bad? What's a riskier investment of time and effort: breaking things up to bring in a veteran square peg in the hopes that he fits in and makes the rest of the team better, or sending Pablo down for a few weeks in hopes that he gets his groove back?

I hope my prediction is wrong, and the new groovy Giants - who don't actually know that they're not supposed to win series vs. the NL West opponents - finally win that division title. But I do have another prediction, one that I'm more sure of, and that I hope is right:

More Orange Fridays

The Mid-Season Awards

Well, it's the All-Star Break. Baseball's built-in hiatus that gives us fans an opportunity to reflect on the build-up of hopes and expectations of the first half, and prepare for the grind of the second half, where the true identity and destiny of our favorite teams will be discovered. Which can only mean that's it's time to ask that traditional mid-summer question...

Am I really watching The Celebrity/Legends Softball Game right now?

At I Bleed Orange, the All-Star break is also time to recognize the best and worst of a 2010 that thus far has seemed to be made entirely of bests and worsts.

This last weekend, I took a non-Giants-related road trip to the Bay Area, and to my delight was able to listen to KNBR most of the way there and back. On the drive back on Sunday, the first caller on the Post-Game Show claimed that Giants would not only win the pennant this season, but win four World Series titles in the next ten years... and this guy was taken seriously by the host. How I do miss The Sports Leader. My expectations may not be quite that high, but the root-root-root for the home team vibe at KNBR put me in an appreciative mood, so without further ado, here's the bests of the first half of 2010:

BEST SURPRISE:

Aubrey Huff

I thought about giving this award to Barry Zito, since he's strangely been the most consistent guy on the starting staff. Could have easily gone to Andres Torres as well, for the way he took the leadoff role and ran with it like some kind of less conceited version of Rickey Henderson. I was already expecting good things from Torres, however, so I couldn't call him a surprise. For me the biggest surprise is Aubrey Huff, who could have easily become another underperforming aging veteran and most Giants fans wouldn't have even blinked. Instead, Aubrey defied those who scoffed at the deal that brought him here and hit 17 home runs in the first half. Currently tied for eighth in the NL with Ryan Howard and Scott Rolen, sluggers who hit at two of the most hitter-friendly parks in the league. No AT&T Park inhabitant has kept that kind of company in awhile, so for bringing offense back into the conversation, this award goes to you, Aubrey.

BEST GAME:

April 17 - Giants 9, Dodgers 0

No-brainer for me. This game had everything: Offense, a dominant Tim Lincecum (7K's in 6 innings), and silent Dodgers fans on national TV. I was thinking of picking a game with some walk-off jubilation, or maybe a game where most of the offense came from the lineup rather than Lincecum himself (he had three hits and three RBIs), but what put this one over the top is that without this win, the Giants would currently be 0-6 versus the bums and I don't think I could stomach that.


BEST FRONT OFFICE MOVE:

Bengie Molina to Texas for Two Players who Aren't Bengie Molina

Okay, okay. I've got a lot of love for Bengie. He did a great job calling for a young, developing staff until they became a young dominant staff. He was a decent cleanup hitter when we needed one. There were also many stretches in the past couple seasons where he carried the team on his back. I won't forget him for any of that. I also did take his side in thinking that ESPN was unfair to play the Chariots of Fire theme during a slo-mo clip of him trying to score from second. But when you lose a step, you lose a step. And Bengie lost steps on the offensive and defensive side. That, plus his tendency to mope around when he wasn't on the field made it a clear what the Giants had to do. And to the fans' surprise, Sabean did it. Now, not only are we enjoying the fruits of what Buster can do when Buster is free to do what he wants any old time, but Bengie has moved on to a more Bengie-friendly environment. Everyone's happy. Especially me. More like this please, Mr. Sabean.

I'm going to take a cue from the softball legends and run out of gas for the evening. The All-Star break is three days long, right? Terrific. I'll see you after the National League breaks the curse.

Coming Wednesday: The Worsts of the First Half of 2010, and Predictions for the Second Half.

Buyers or Sellers?

Before I get to today's blog, I wanted to say...

Buster Posey is not just the greatest catcher of our generation, but to ever put on a mask. I can't wait to see him hoisting that 2010 World Series MVP trophy in Tim McCarver's smug little face.

Now on to my regularly scheduled pessimistic Giants blog:

I participated in an online poll today asking how high in the standings the Giants would need to be for me to consider them buyers at the trade deadline. Basically, how good do they need be by July 31st to fool me, an innocent fan bystander, into thinking they are good enough to make a playoff run if they found just the right piece.

My initial answer was that tied for first or in the lead in the NL West would be enough for me. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that for them to go looking for a trade is not what these Giants at this time should be doing. And to do so is exactly the kind of short-sighted philosophy upon which Brian Sabean has built his reputation for spinning this organization's wheels for the past six seasons. From Renteria all the way back to Sidney Ponson, almost every move that fans ridicule or hasn't worked out was intended to push them over that offensive hump and into the playoffs finally. When I think of the guys who I'm happy to see in the lineup - Huff, Posey, Sandoval (when he remembers he's good, which he will) Torres, Schierholtz - with the exception of Huff, none of them got here because the front office was trying to make a splash.

Now, I do bleed orange, so of course I would love to see the Giants in the playoffs for the first time in seven years. Maybe Sabean is due to get lucky and trade for someone that contributes and brings them some more consistency. Even in this case, I have to honestly ask myself if this hypothetical team would be good enough to win the West, a division which has been better this season than in recent years, but it still has that mentality of a litter entirely full of runts. Everyone is just scratching to survive. Before the season began, one of the few things that I and the local Dodger fans could agree on was that it going to be a dogfight for the division title, and it still seems that way to me on the cusp of the All-Star Break.

The worse news is that Giants have an absolutely lousy record within the division. They're 1-5 vs. the Dodgers (people down here remind me of that often), and I don't think they've beaten the Padres since their uniforms were orange and brown. In fact the only winning record they have vs. an NL West team is Arizona, a team which, honestly, I thought was disbanded to turn Chase Field into a pool dealership. So even if they are tied for first at the deadline, unless they build up a lead big enough to not have to worry about it, they boys are going to have to win some crucial inter-division series late in the season. In the past, these series have been legendary in their drama, and astronomical in sheer number of remotes thrown at my living room wall. Records go out the window in a Giants-Dodgers September series. That's what it always comes down to in the NL West.

Over the weekend, Pat Burrell told Aubrey Huff that the Giants goal should be to climb one game in the division race per week, that way it's not so overwhelming and stressful. Doesn't exactly sound like a conversation Monte Irvin and Bobby Thomson would have had in 1951. Or the thoughts of a team that can climb 7 games by the trading deadline then climb another seven and stay there by the end of September.

Now, I started writing this post before this Buster Posey led an offensive parade through Dowtown Giantsville. But Giantsville citizens are wise, and know that a grey cloud lurks. A stretch where they only score one run in eight days can be right around the corner. For this reason, I believe if they are to win this division it will be clawing and scratching and sweating. With or without Mr. Magical Trade.