Monday, April 12, 2010

Panda Power, Son of Zeus lift G-men!

Well, the Giants are 5-1. I absolutely hate some of what I’ve seen, but it’s hard to argue with the results to date. And with Pittsburgh – a poor team that seems to have the Giants number – coming in starting tonight, they G-men are poised to get off to a very strong start.

Over a 162-game slate you gotta figure teams are gonna run hot and cold. A good opening week could be the start of great things, and it could just as easily be an aberration. A prime example of the dynamics of a small sample size is Pablo Sandoval.

“Legend tells of a legendary warrior whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend"

You gotta love this guy. In one game he goes from “What’s wrong with Sandoval?” to status as a minor deity. Coming up just a two-bagger short of the cycle, he almost single handedly powered Sunday’s soggy comeback, and in true Kung Fu Panda fashion he used his power, his legs, and his rather ample backside to accomplish the feat.

"I'm not a big fat panda. I'm THE big fat panda....Skadoosh!"

Of course, it also doesn’t hurt when the Fabulous Five can be singularly personified by a scrawny little runt who looks like he’d have been perfectly at home in the Haight circa 1968. But in the case of Tim Lincecum, maybe we’re talking about the wrong movie – perhaps Clash of the Titans is more appropriate since clearly Zeus reached down from Olympus and turned this kid’s arm into a thunderbolt.

After a 4-hour plus delay, it’s hard to fault Timmy for the two-run jack by McCann. More than once we’ve seen starting hurlers unable to go after a big delay. They become nervous wrecks. They warm up, get tight, and leave their game in the tunnel. This kid takes a nap. So maybe he was still a bit groggy when he served up the gopher ball. But what happened after was vintage Lincecum. He got mad.

Now Timmy hasn’t proven to be prone to outbursts of anger. He doesn’t stomp and scream, but enemy hitters certainly know when he’s unhappy – because he tends to make their lives miserable. For the 20th time in his short Big League career he fanned at least 10 – the most by any hurler over that span. And although he gave up his first home round-tripper since late 2008, no one in the visiting dugout could claim they got the best of the kid. He was nails.

As for Panda, he was in the middle of everything. From taking a ball over the arcade to taking a throw off his backside to allow Huff home with the eventual game-winner, he was in the midst of everything. Not a bad way to spend a day -- even if MLB Extra Innings screwed us out-of-market fans out of the game due to weather.

Games like this are why the Giants can be exciting and maddening at the same time. The young talent fueled the win. There appear to be more kids waiting in the wings. It leaves me wondering why the Giants don’t just get the old guys out of the way and see what the kids can do. I mean, wouldn’t you rather have Posey than Whiteside? Crawford than Renteria? Noonan or Downs as opposed to Uribe or Sanchez? Rowand or Ford? Marginal vets aren’t the only reason the Giants have lost in the past, but they sure as heck aren’t a long-term solution.

It’s fair to say that most championship teams don’t get to the Promised Land by riding the center lane. They either fast track it and buy a title (as Arizona did and the Yankees still do), or they build from within as (shudder) the Dodgers did for years. The Giants seen to be caught somewhere in between.

There was a line written several years ago that claimed the worst thing a team could be was mediocre – not good enough to be a contender by not bad enough to be loveable. That’s where the Giants have been for half a decade. You look at the parts and think: if they only had another stick, or they only had a closer, or……..

The Giants are a team at a crossroads. They have young talent. The question is: Do they trust them?

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