Should the Giants even try to win a game this year?

When Bryan took over the site, he did the only rational thing he could and retired his character of ultra-pessimistic Bryan Murphy. After all, it’s impossible to keep that going in any kind of entertaining way for multiple posts per day over the course of a year. And considering that reality last year ended up being worse than his predictions, the bit stopped being parody and was basically just depressing reality.

But that doesn’t mean that I can’t bring the ol’ Eeyore out of retirement for one last case. Just a little unfinished business for this grizzled veteran detective who, after facing off with the villain suspiciously early in the movie, will certainly retire home to his wife and child, completely uninjured in any way and extremely not dead.

And so I present to you: Should the Giants even try to win a game this year?

No, they shouldn’t try

Look, this team was already going to be a mess before the year started. With no depth in the infield, a starting rotation that gets real iffy real fast, and a bullpen that makes Vulcans panic, a lot of things were going to have to not go wrong in order for the Giants to contend. And this is baseball, where things are always guaranteed to go wrong. So once the Jeff Samardzija injury hit, we all went “Uh oh,” thinking that was it, and then it got much, much worse. Madison Bumgarner ran afoul of that line drive, and now Mark Melancon will start the year on the DL, and the season hasn’t even started yet. More things will go wrong in the season. It’ll be bad. So you know what? It’s time. Call it.

RIP 2018 Giants.

“But why not try to win a single game this year?” you might be asking, your large, plaintive eyes desperately seeking some tiny shred of hope. There are two answers to that. The first is that there are a lot of teams tanking this year, and if you half-ass your tank, you’ll end up with, like, the 5th pick in the draft or the 10th pick in the draft or something. How could you possibly find a franchise player there?

But more importantly than that is the fact that the Giants have spent a year and a half embarrassing themselves by trying and failing to play good baseball. Take it away, Homer!

So why should they keep trying? Why should this team perpetually embarrass themselves by doing their best on the field and coming up short every time? Why should they tell the world, “This is everything we have to offer,” only to see the world absentmindedly swat them away like they’re 25 flies? Who actually gains from that facade?

No, like Ferris Bueller said, the only winning move is not to play. This doesn’t mean they should forfeit every game, but they don’t have to put their all into it. The rest of the league is so much better than the Giants that, if we’re being honest, there will be no way anyone will be able to tell the difference between them giving 40% and them giving 100%. It’s time to give in. It’s time to give up. It’s time to stop trying.

Of course they should try

Jesus, that was exhausting.

Do you have any idea how tough it is to write 400 words of insipid drivel about how much my favorite baseball team sucks and shouldn’t exist? I thought it would be simple and it took me two days. I really didn’t understand Bryan’s commitment to keeping up this bit for years. It’s impressive.

Obviously, the Giants should try very hard. Sports is an inherently meaningless exercise and the pleasure we get out of watching it relies on the meaning it has to the players involved; if they don’t care, then we don’t have any reason to either, and the whole thing becomes empty.

But of course, I didn’t really need to answer the question. The question was just a vehicle for jokes, and the jokes are made. The bit relies on you, the reader, recognizing the question as ludicrous and not worth engaging with. I probably spent too much effort answering it in two sentences, if we’re being honest here.

Today is Opening Day, and even if the Giants don’t end up having a great year, it’s still the end of a long, baseball-less drought, which is a wonderful thing. And even though the prospects for the season don’t look especially rosy right now, you don’t give up without even trying. Because that’s a weenie move, and like someone once said:

And you’re no weenie. Bryan is, but you’re not.