(Disclaimer: My Giants-game viewing this season has, with a couple of exceptions, been limited to watching 11 of their 13 losses. My perspective might be a bit jaded.)

    Yesterday's news made us feel tingly inside. The first comment below the WSJ.com story about Manny was, "Let's go Giants!"

    I watched a good part of last night's Satan-Nats game to see how our foes would respond to the shock. The first inning scared me--six runs for Satan. Surely the game was over, I thought, and I left to do something else for the night. The Nats, I told myself, would start hacking away and think about tomorrow. After all, that's what our Giants would do.

   How wrong I was. Not only did the Nats' pitcher calm down and play well, but the Nats managed to come back. When I checked the score in the 8th inning, Satan's lead was two runs. The Nats' announcers talked about how the Nats "never give up" and applauded their hitting coach Rick Eckstein.

    The Nats took pitches. They. Took. Pitches. The first two batters in the 8th were 7 and 8 in the batting order. It's not like they were looking for walks, either. The Nats got behind in the count and came back, again and again. I was ecstatic. Satan's home win streak over.

    Then I was sad. Could the bottom of the Giants' batting order do that? Of course not. I realize Grant has discussed this at length. But to see a 7-18 team come back from six runs down to the Great Satan deflated me. (Even after blowing a huge lead, Satan almost came back from four down to make a game of it--also something the Giants can't do.)

  Why don't Kruk and Kuip ever talk about the Giants' hitting coach Lansford? We see Righetti every game, but I don't recall ever seeing the camera pan to Lansford. I don't need to remind anyone of this, but the Giants' on-base percentage is .305 -- only the D'Backs are worse in the majors. I'm not saying Lansford needs to go, but can someone important please start criticizing him a lot?

    One person who does need to go, and pronto: Ishikawa (.246 OBP, 0-for-13 in the past week). Convert Schierholtz to 1st base, I don’t care

    I hope I'm wrong about the Giants. Maybe I just need to stop watching their games and Bengie will always hit two homers a game and they'll keep winning. Or maybe we can hire this guy.