With twenty games behind us it’s silly to make grand pronouncements about the state of the team, but I feel confident about a few things:
* The rotation can be as good as advertised. If Barry Zito keeps up his surprisingly useful work and Randy Johnson is just experiencing a blip instead of The End, it might be the best in the league. (The Marlins might disagree.)
* There should be a sign above the bat rack: No Shoes, No Shirt, No Bengie, No Dice. (Starring Khalil Greene!) Learn it. Know it. Live it. We all love the Big Jell-O, but an offense that centers around Molina is not a pony you want to ride cross-country. As long as the Giants hang near respectability and win series against clearly superior teams, the pressure will build to bolster the offense. This is the key decision Brian Sabean will make this year: Go for a big bat? No? Yes? And whom to trade? If the Giants fade in the next two months, the decision will be made for him.
* Edgar Renteria is not toast. He seems to take forever to unload throws when he goes to his backhand or charges in, but he’s not killing the team on D. On offense, he still has enough power to hit a grannie off Jake Peavy and go opposite yard in Chase Field. I’m not greedy. I’ll take .275 / .351 / .435 for a full year.
* As we entered this year, the rallying cry was “As long as they’re fun to watch!” The hard truth is, young players and their bonehead mistakes aren’t always fun to watch, especially on the bases. I’m looking at you, Manny Burriss and Travis “Freeze on a Line Drive” Ishikawa. You don’t like veteran savvy? Then you don’t like the run Renteria scored against L.A. when Bengie grounded out to third. Renteria got such a good jump Casey Blake, although he was playing in, didn’t think he had a play at home. It was the winning run.
* Pablo Sandoval is a much better hitter when he lays off the pitch six inches above his head.
* The post-save gestures, the food neuroses, the facial hair, the dead-animal ‘do, the Zito bromance, the Twitter controversy, the ninjas in his hotel room… by the end of the year, Brian Wilson will be decoding the alien transmissions in his head through a complex system of baseball scorekeeping symbols and re-broadcasting them through his own proprietary Gorkonet protocol.
* Good seats still available! Rubber match in biggest series of the year and The Face of the Franchise on the mound. Instant sell-out, right? Not quite: 37,000 was the official count. Less than 100,000 tickets sold for the Dodger series, right after an exciting winning streak, is an ominous sign no matter how frigid it was in the bleachers. Winning more might help — ask the Marlins, with attendance up 7,000 per game over last year’s average — but until there’s an everyday star, not just one who pitches every fifth day, it’s going to be a tougher sell.
