Saturday, May 21, 2005

Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of rum -- make that two bottles, please

The Giants' ship is sinking in mid-May.

A split with the Astros, a team with a poor record, then losing two of three to the Rockies, a team with a poor record...

And now they've lost the opener in a three game set against the Athletics, a team with a poor record.

Now remember, the Giants m.o. from early on was to beat up on the poor teams (Rockies, Pirates), but then get beat up on by the better teams.

That all changed with their second series against the Pirates, where Pittsburgh took two of three on the road vs. los Gigantes, and honestly the team has been struggling since that point.

If we combine the Giants opponents record over the last 11 games, it's a scintillating 62-98 (Pirates, Astros, Rockies, Athletics), for a .389 winning percentage. The Giants record over the last 11 games? It's 5-7, for a .417 winning percentage.

If you want to contend, you don't go 5-7 against teams with a combined .389 winning percentage. It's that simple.

To be even more grim, the Giants won't be coming out of this funk anytime soon, because the leaks are everywhere; starting pitching, offense, bullpen, you name it. A team can slump if only one of those things has a bad stretch, but for the Giants, all of those areas are having problems recently. Unless they have an epiphany, all three areas aren't going to get fixed at once.

Jason Schmidt will be coming back soon, but that's the only help the Giants are going to get. Playing .500 ball when Schmidt comes back would be reason for optimism, but playing .400 ball when he comes back makes it less of an impact -- Schmidt can't turn the team around only playing once every 5 days.

Today, Jeff Fassero goes back out there. Call me evil, but a tiny little part of me wants him to get bombed so that Sabean would be more inclined to call up one of those minor-league arms I mentioned a few days ago...

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