The lineup the Giants will send out against Noah Syndergaard and the Mets. I regret to inform you that this game is not for one or two of the marbles. It is not even for several of them. It’s for all of them.
All of them.
Here’s what the Giants will look like:
- Denard Span - CF
- Brandon Belt - 1B
- Buster Posey - C
- Hunter Pence - RF
- Brandon Crawford - SS
- Angel Pagan - LF
- Joe Panik - 2B
- Conor Gillaspie - 3B
- Madison Bumgarner - P
Does this lineup contain enough even-year nonsense? We investigate:
Point of order: The lineup has Madison Bumgarner in it, and other than Barry Zito’s majestic bunt, and his hit off Justin Verlander, which still makes me laugh when I’m alone at BART stops, the Giants haven’t really utilized pitcher hits as an effective part of their nonsense arsenal.
Point of order: There are just enough players who have alternated between hot and cold this year, from Span to Pagan, that I have no idea what to expect, which is exactly the meditative state even years want you to get into.
Point of order: The lineup does contain a former Giants prospect who left to backpack through Europe for years, playing for various teams and solving crimes until he was ready to return and help the Giants win a World Series. In 2012, it was Ryan Vogelsong. In 2014, it was Travis Ishikawa. In 2016, it will be Conor Gillaspie.
I’m not sure where 2010 fits into this, so I’ll just assume that Pat Burrell is the father of someone who will do it in the future, and that counts somewhere in the cosmic accounting of this all.
It’s a close call. As always, this will all make more sense when it’s over. It seems like everything since 2012 has been an effort to distract us from the fact that the Cardinals blew a 3-1 lead in the NLCS. But we’ll see if we wake up wondering if the nonsense is really gone, or if it’s permeating our nostrils and very essence.