The Giants offense looked bad Monday night -- again -- but there was the saving grace of having the Cubs offense looke equally bad, thanks to Tim Lincecum. Plus both looked marvelous compared to Aramis Ramirez's stylin' admiration of his, uh, double.
The Giants haven't won since the All-Star break, which is good is some ways. After Monday's loss in Chicago, the team is 38-52, seven games out ... of fourth place.
Yeah, it's a bad team, and it seems that there will be no deceptive winning streak to let the front office try to con fans into believing that there's a chance for the postseason, opening the door to trading a young pitcher for yet another out-making machine.
Making outs is something the Giants are good at. On the rubber, yay. At the plate, it's painful. Here are the OBAs of the batters with the most plate appearances for the Giants, at least those not named Bonds: Winn .332, Feliz .276, Vizquel .287, Durham .321, Molina .294, Aurilia .286, Klesko .374, Roberts .310.
Those are on-base percentages, not batting averages. Just for comparison, the OBA for the entire NL is .329. That includes pitchers. Congratulations, Ryan Klesko.
It's not entirely bleak. We still have Lincecum, Cain and Lowry to watch. (Lincecum makes me giggle at times, when he makes big leaguers look plain overmatched.) Omar Vizquel in the field is flat-out amazing, still. (Sunday he made a bare-handed grab to start a 6-4-3 double play. At the park, my section was agog, but we were never treated to a replay on the giant screen in center. I know they have the technology to replay these things, since later in the game we got to watch a gigantic Dave Roberts settle under a routine fly ball again, in case we missed it the first time.)
And there's Barry. He's struggling, to be sure, and I wonder how much of it is a mind trick. Take Sunday's game against the Dodgers. He looked bad all game, then came up with two outs in the ninth with the Giants down by two. The Dodgers swung the infield around and pulled the left fielder near Alameda, basically gifting Bonds a free single, just hit it somewhere to the left of the pitching mound. Barry declined. At that point, only one thing mattered -- don't make an out, extend the game. Well, unless you're up there just playing for yourself, that is.
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