This page shows the over/unders for the 2008 season.  According to Vegas, the bums are favored in the NL West followed by Arizona, San Diego, and Colorado.  It's all pretty close though.

The teams that are supposed to be worse than the Giants are Washington, Pittsburgh, Florida, and Baltimore.  I was surprised by Minnesota at 72.5 (79 wins - Johan/Hunter/Garza + Delmon/Liriano/random parts = 7 wins worse?) and Tampa Bay at 73.5 (their bullpen can't be as bad as last year, can it?).

As for the Giants, well, that sounds about right.  I'm going to take the over because it's still spring training and my adopted son Denker is going to slug .600 for no good reason.

So there's some good news and some bad news from USS Mariner's organizational rankings of all 30 MLB teams.

Bad news: The Giants ranked a straight "F"

Good news: They are the highest ranked of the 4 "F" teams!

Okay, so that's not good news at all.  Here's a quote from the author (in the comments) about why the Giants are so low:

"Brian Sabean is like a less talented Pat Gillick. He only really knows how to do one thing - acquire major league veterans at high prices, attempting to win every year while burning the franchise to the ground in the process. Only, he's not good at it, so his teams don't win and they have just ashes remaining."

I guess I'm not the biggest Sabean critic, but reading something like that from a knowledgeable and probably objective source is disheartening.  Is it fair to rate the Giants an "F"?  Drafting Cain and lucking in Lincecum has to count for something, right?

So I think everyone is a little curious what is going to happen when Barry and Co. go on the road this week to LA and SD.  Everyone would like Bonds to break the record at home, sure, but it's unlikely that the Giants will be able to keep him out of more than 2 of the 6 games without other teams (Arizona and wild card teams, specifically) complaining.

Personally, I think Bonds should bat leadoff and become a singles hitter.  Realistically, that would never happen, but I think it'd be fun to watch.  Anyway, I'm going to leave it up to a poll.

Poll

What should Bonds do this week?

6%

Sit out the whole road trip, screw the other teams

6 votes

50%

Play it normally, if he sets the record on the road, so be it

46 votes

14%

Play, but don't try to hit home runs (can he even do that?)

13 votes

29%

Strangle Matt Morris and get suspended

27 votes

92 votes | Poll has closed

Okay, so the loss wasn't entirely Benitez's fault, and he had some bad luck, but did he have to go and talk about his "job" again?  He must know how much we hate that.  From the AP recap :

"I'm doing my job, I got three groundballs and what happened?" Benitez asked. "We had an opportunity to win the game. How many times we got somebody on base and nobody moved him? Somebody had to pay and the person that paid was me. He hit a good pitch, a slider away, and a sinker."

Ugh.  There go any good vibes we had going.

Can't find a real article on it, but there're some short tidbits on rotowire:

http://www.rotowire.com/baseball/latestnews.htm

The bullpen could use a fresh arm, so here's hoping that Munter has that old magic back!

At this point, it looks like there is no room for Lincecum in the rotation.  Zito and Cain are not going anywhere, and it'd take multiple bad starts by Lowry, Morris, or Ortiz, who are all pitching well at this point, before Tim gets a chance to crack the rotation.

This article , however, implies that Tim will be up pretty soon, and Sabean says something along the lines of "bringing up Lincecum to bolster a sagging late-inning relief crew".  Now, this is just personal preference, but I don't want Tim to pitch in the bullpen, ever.  He's just too good, and you want your best pitchers pitching in the rotation.  The only solution I can think of is a 6-man rotation.

I'm not sure how feasible it is, and I haven't really looked into the last time a major league team had a 6-man rotation for an extended period of time, but is it worth a try?  It could help out the bullpen indirectly, because the rotation might be allowed to work deeper into games, because of the extra day of rest.  I'm thinking kind of like the Japanese League, where they have 6-man rotations and their pitchers seem to throw deeper into games.

The worst part about this idea is how it'll affect Cain, namely that he won't pitch as many games, and the way he's pitching, we want him out there as often as possible.  But, on the flip side, the fewer innings the bullpen pitches, the better.  Is this an idea worth looking at, or no?

Looks like the Marlins are out of the Benitez race, as they get Julio from the Diamondbacks for Petit.  I'm not entirely sure how this affects the D-backs.  At best it gives them a slightly better 5th starter while losing a reliever who saved some games last year.

In other news, the Dodgers get Brady Clark from the Brewers for Elmer Dessens.  This is as a replacement for Jason Repko, who got injured.

This blog does an in-depth analysis of runs scored and run allowed for each team based on PECOTA and comes up with projected final record for the 2007 season.

http://thadblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/early-mlb-projections.html

Obviously it has some flaws and takes some liberties, but the most important thing about it is it shows just how terrible the Dodgers will be next year.  And that's always a nice thing to think about.

So rotoworld.com has this list of predictions regarding all of the top free agents this offseason:

http://www.rotoworld.com/content/features/column.aspx?sport=MLB&columnid=2&articleid=26761

They have the Giants getting:
Bengie Molina (Blue Jays) - Prediction: Giants - one year, $4 million
Sean Casey (Tigers) - Prediction: Giants - two years, $13 million
Ronnie Belliard (Cardinals) - Prediction: Giants - two years, $8.5 million
Pedro Feliz (Giants) - Prediction: Giants - three years, $18 million
Barry Bonds (Giants) - Prediction: Giants - one year, $10 million
Jose Guillen (Nationals) - Prediction: Giants - one year, $5 million
Jeff Suppan (Cardinals) - Prediction: Giants - four years, $36 million
Danys Baez (Braves) - Prediction: Giants - three years, $12 million

Obviously this is just rampant speculation on their part, with little real insider knowledge, but would you be happy with this potential lineup/pitching staff?  If they really did make all these moves, getting mostly veterans with short-term deals to patch their numerous holes, would the Giants be competitive?  Or more importantly, is it prudent to continue to put off the rebuilding process with these types of deals?