The baseball year is over for the Giants and the postmortems begin. The wise men in the local press are in print, saying the “Giants are a flawed team” or, in the words of a writer not widely known for his appreciation or basic understanding of the game, “the worst week of baseball ever in these parts.” Let’s try and put things in some reasonable perspective.A beginning point might be the comment that ” the Giants are exposed as a flawed team.” The Giants are a “flawed team” but the five game series just witnessed didn’t “expose” them as such. There was a good reason why, from the very beginning of the year, when the team went 18 and 4, the question was being repeatedly asked “why does this team keep on winning games?” Throughout the entire year the question was asked and never was a truly satisfactory answer given. Writers as far afield as New York were asking the question in mid-year. The self evident answer most frequently given, in one form or another, was that they kept on winning because they were better than the teams they were beating. One has to admit this is not the most insightful answer one could desire, even though it was the answer given here as well as elsewhere.

The fact is that the Giants were a team with what appeared to be obvious weaknesses shortly after spring training ended. They had lost their closer for the year and weren’t sure where to turn. Alfonzo, their hope to replace Kent in the run-producing spot in the lineup, was hitting in the neighborhood of .220 for most of the opening months, the shortstop had his usual fielding handicap, namely a lack of range and, in addition, was hitting no better than should have been
expected of him. Santiago was getting no younger and it was reflected in both his fielding and hitting.

Snow was a first baseman who couldn’t hit a long ball. As the year went on, adversity hit. Durham, one of the few winter acquisitions performing well, went on the DL for an extended period of time. Ainsworth, one of the teams most acclaimed rookie pitchers, was lost for the season due to an injury. Moss, a pitcher picked up in exchange for Ortiz, who was clearly on his way to a twenty win year, after an initial encouraging start, was exposed as a thrower who didn’t know how to pitch. Cruz, for the first month or so of the season, looked as though he was the right fielder the team had been looking for. They soon became disabused of this notion. For the better part of the year Cruz couldn’t buy a base hit but continued to play. For most of this time, the team didn’t have an outfielder to replace him. Some of that time they were playing without a fourth fielder, good or bad, and were using a third baseman with no outfield experience to fill their need. One can continue to go on in this vein. However, the point should be clear. This was never a great baseball team.

The question is repeated. Why did they win 100 games and finish 15 games ahead of the nearest pursuer? In two words one has the answer. Barry Bonds. From the opening day of the season Bonds did what no other 38 year old, or, it could be argued, 28 year old, had ever done. He was the dominant player in every game played in. He made the other teams uneasily aware of his presence, lurking in the dugout, waiting to be called upon to deliver a game winning hit. It affected the way in which the opposition managed their game. It seemed as though Bonds was either hitting or getting prepared to hit, constantly. When they walked him, which they did over and over again. the walks sparked a rally. Or else he hit the walk-off home run.

He was surrounded, it turned out, by players with no tremendous talent but who had, for the most part, been around the block for many years. They were veterans, people such as Grissom, who had as good a year, at age 37, as he had ever had. They had a reserve infielder, Perez, who fielded his shortstop/second base position better than the two players he frequently replaced at those spots. They found a place for Snow to hit, second in the order, which took advantage of his diminishing abilities.

They played smart baseball, fielded better than the other teams. And, they had crafted a bullpen which carried them through the season, a season in which, despite the presence of one of the best starters in the league, Schmidt,they forever seemed on the lookout for a starter who could win. They were fortunate in coming up with one of the most promising young pitchers around, Williams. In most of his starts he pitched well and in some of them he was brilliant. He won important games against good teams, the A’s, Cards and Arizona, when it was still important to beat Arizona.

It all added up to 100 wins and 15 games better than the second place Dodgers. This was the team that went into the first playoff game against Florida.

Before the playoffs began, the critics of the post-season competition, with much of the emphasis being placed on the opening five game series, were out in force. The thrust of the argument revolved around the contention that it was unfair to take a team, the Giants, by way of example, with a great winning record in the one hundred and sixty game regular season, and subject them to the possibility of being eliminated in a ridiculously short five games.

Nowhere in the discussions surrounding this issue does one recall, however, anything being noted by the critics, or the defenders, for that matter, of what may be the most significant factor in drawing conclusions respecting the fairness issue. That factor is, simply put, which is the better team, irrespective of their records in the regular season, going into the postseason.

Let’s look at the Giants-Florida clubs, for instance. Before the start of the five game series, a comparison of the teams should probably have led a knowledgable observer to conclude that Florida was the better team and should win. ( A self-serving caveat; this observer picked the Giants to win in four, a prediction made by a dyed in the wool Giants fan for more years than one wishes to acknowledge, with a reluctance to come out against them). At this stage of the year, with the regular season behind them, irrespective of the win- lose records of the teams, Florida was more attractive. They had a young, aggressive team, with an outfield that was probably the best fielding outfield in the majors, players at all of the other positions who fielded well, having made fewer errors than any other team in the league. They didn’t hit with a great deal of power but they hit well, they were fast on the bases. Their pitching was deep, both starters and bullpen. They were a good ball club. They won the series because they were the better team. It is difficult to find any unfairness in the result. It should be pointed out that the Giants came very close to winning this series. They didn’t disgrace themselves, by any reckoning. They played hard,coming from behind in the fourth game and almost overcoming Florida’s large lead. If they had won, they had Schmidt waiting in the wings.

Having said that, why should the Giants be subjected to the carping criticism which appears in the local press? They had a great year. They went wire to wire with a team that had problems at the beginning of the year, which problems compounded as the year went on. Sabean had rebuilt a team which came a hairs breadth away from winning the World Series last year. He gave the fans a wonderful year of baseball. That they weren’t more successful in the post season is disappointing and sad but it shoudn’t take away from what they accomplished. Winning one hundred games is no mean feat. Giving great pleasure to forty thousand fans at every game and those thousands who watch and listen to the games is a great deal better than having to watch the Dodgers. No apologies are necessary. Relegating them to the “scrap heap”, which is where one of our morning so-called experts placed them, simply reveals the extent of the writer’s failure to understand what this wonderful game is all about.

Wait till next year! Sabean is going to have to do it all over again. Next year they may go all the way. It will be worth waiting for.