It's April 8th. The Giants are bad. We have six more months of nothing to dissect. The Mercury News tried to make us feel worse, but this team is like a morphine injection right to the spine. There's a little pain, but it's fading.
So, quick! Before the pain moves from dull ache to complete numbness! We have to get our last jabs of incredulous pessimism in! In July, I'll be posting something about how Fred Lewis's .269/.340/.412 line is the best on the team, and how he might be playing himself into a starting job for 2009. You'll put up a fanpost in August with a title of, "John Bowker: 1B of the future?" We'll all start to root around for optimism, looking under the movie theater seat during Leonard Part 6 and trying to find a Junior Mint that hasn't been stepped on, or at least, still has most of the chocolate shell. Who cares if the chocolate has a thumbprint on it? You can't taste a thumbprint. Usually.
But we still have time to be absolutely stunned by how awful this team is. Here's a list of NL teams. The players to the right of the teams are hitters who are better suited to be a cleanup hitter than is Bengie Molina:
Atlanta - McCann, Teixeira, Jones, Johnson, Francoeur
Philadelphia - Howard, Utley, Rollins, Burrell, Jenkins
Mets - Delgado, Wright, Alou, Beltran
Washington - Johnson, Zimmerman, Milledge, Young
Milwaukee - Fielder, Weeks, Hall, Hardy, Braun, Hart
St. Louis - Pujols, Glaus, Ankiel, Duncan
Cubs - Soto, Lee, Ramirez, Soriano, Fukudome
Cincinnati - Encarnacion, Dunn, Griffey, Votto, Arroyo
Pittsburgh - LaRoche, Doumit, Bay, Nady
Houston - Berkman, Wigginton, Tejada, Lee, Pence
Arizona - Jackson, Reynolds, Byrnes, Young, Upton, Owings
San Diego - Gonzalez, Kouzmanoff, Greene, Hairston
Los Angeles - Martin, Loney, Kent, Jones, Kemp
Every team in the National League has at least four offensive players the Giants could use as their cleanup hitter. I probably forgot a bunch, and maybe I stretched it with hitters like Kelly Johnson. Still, it's worth noting that during every game this season, we'll be facing a team with a #7 hitter that could bat cleanup for us. Every team, including the ones that usually get lumped in with the Giants, like the Pirates and Marlins. They can't even sniff this kind of offensive ineptitude. Please.
So today is open fun fact day. Did you know that ___? For example: Did you know that the Giants only have two players with more than one RBI? Did you know that 55 players have as many or more home runs than does the entire Giants team? Open fun fact day. Get digging. Think of a column Jayson Stark might write the day after he was dumped on his wedding day.