While digging through the fine print of the unwritten rules of being a Giants fan, I noticed this site has met the quota for moping or whining for the month. Exceeded it, in fact. Blown right past it. Losing a series at home against the Pirates will do that.
Winning a series on the road against a division rival makes this an official No Moping Zone, though. No moping. Stop it. Take it outside. Matt Morris pitched a great game in a tough ballpark, against a tough team. Pedro Feliz is hot. After frothing at the mouth about the team's inability to hit mediocre pitching, the Giants start walloping mediocre pitching. This is a time for optimism, to be sure.
First base is still a sinkhole, but...hey! No moping! Things are looking up enough to play a game of "What If?":
What if Matt Morris lived up to expectations? That was a tough stretch of pitching for everyone to endure, but enlightened folks like us should be cognizant of the perils of making assessments based on a small sample. Ten starts isn't really enough time to definitively tell too much about the pitcher. I expected an ERA in the high-3.00/low-4.00 range, and there still a chance he could go on a run to make me look smart...
Ranking on the happy scale if it were to come true: One puppy, and two kittens.
What if Pedro Feliz could maintain a .280/.314/.471 clip for the season? He's been playing some ridiculous defense all season, making just about every easy play as well as the highlight reel plays. But if he could maintain a limited value at the plate, he'd be the least of the Giants problems. I have the feeling if he was an average fielder, but hitting .260/.350/.430, we wouldn't be concerned in the slightest about him. I know that OBP is more important than SLG, but the difference in fielding offsets that in this hypothetical.
Ranking on the happy scale if it were to come true: One puppy watching two kittens wrestle.
What if Eliezer Alfonzo became a productive major league hitter? Not bloody likely, but he's had an impressive start to his big league career. Besides having tested positive for
and, he's already about the same age as Mike Matheny, so the margin of error is thin enough to cut yourself on. But every year some random player comes out of the ether to decide he wants a major league pension, and it's about time the Giants had one. If the team could have a pre-arbitration guy who could catch an adequate game and hit something like .250/.310/.450, that'd be one less thing to worry about in the post-Bonds era.
Again, not likely. But that's not the point of the What If game. Today is all about optimism. What if we just get insanely lucky on all sorts of personnel moves? A fella can dream....
Ranking on the happy scale if it were to come true: Okay, so like the two kittens are taking turns cleaning each other, and the puppy is cold and tired, so he's like trying to snuggle up to one of the kittens. Also, you're rich.
It was another good series on the road, and I'm looking forward to the interleague series. Spirits are high.