Liotta: Predictions useless about these Giants
By: Tim Liotta
Special to The Examiiner
July 12, 2009
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| Full of surprises: Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum, left, and catcher Bengie Molina have shown fans that first impressions are fairly useless in judging this year’s team. (AP File Photo) |
It’s officially time for Giants fans to throw their hands up and cry “uncle!”
Try to predict anything about this team and a Giants fan will be wrong. We have reached a point in this Giants season beyond the know-it-alls.
Expect them to be buried in April? They reach the end of the month at .500.
Figure them to fade in May? They win five of the last six and finish the month above the .500 mark.
Instead of a swoon in June, the Giants win 17 games, with 12 coming by three runs or more.
While the Mets and Cubs verge on imploding, the Giants are actually improving. And moving into the stratosphere beyond predictions.
Let’s face it: The season has unfolded to this point as nobody could have predicted. Pablo Sandoval more than living up to his billing. Matt Cain re-igniting his stardom. Nate Schierholtz. Juan Uribe, even.
Guys are shaving their heads. Mohawks. It’s actually fun to be around this team.
Nobody may admit it, but AT&T Park looked pretty pathetic the season’s first month or so. There were a lot of empty seats on those cold, spring evenings. Now? This team draws more than 100,000 to a weekend series with the Astros.
Everywhere you look, the Giants give off the feeling the team has a good mojo going. Which brings us to this interesting, unexpected point in this season, a point when this team has reached a fork in its road.
Are the Giants for real or not? Is this team just a nice, cuddly novelty? Or is it a team that has the genuine grit to be a postseason threat?
Do they fade or fly from here? There’s not a baseball mind out there who can honestly tell you. Too many things have gone right already.
The swagger is there. Sandoval and Bengie Molina give this group an element to fear. Lincecum and Cain make the Giants a team nobody wants to play in a short series. Those two make four starts in a series, and the Giants would be honest-to-goodness favorites.
With the trade deadline looming, it’s time for Giants management to make the right move. And based on how this season has played out to here, I wouldn’t want to say what that move is.
The Giants have put themselves in a position where only 20-20 hindsight will tell us if Brian Sabean and the team’s front office makes the right call.
Stand pat, and risk the magic flickering out in August?
Bring in the big hitter everybody has been begging for, and potentially break the spell the team is under?
Either path could be the right one. Or the wrong one.
At this point, if anybody asks you which way the Giants should go, throw up your arms and cry “uncle!”
Tim Liotta is a freelance journalist and regular contributor to The Examiner. E-mail him at tliotta@sfexaminer.com.
