Game of the weak.

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It’s hard to believe, but after writing close to 400,000 words about bad Giants teams over the past few years, I was starting to get a little burned out on Giants baseball. This marginal prospect almost excites me…this veteran might be tradable…this reliever has a good arm, but he can’t seem to get outs…this starting pitcher needs to find his consistency…. It’s been the same stupid script for years, and it always ends in this tangy concoction of forced indifference, depression, and rage. Then the offseason comes, a few stupid moves get made, and the cycle starts over. At least Bill Murray was able to learn how to play the piano when he was stuck in his time loop.

Last night, Comcast Sports Net Bay Area Net Sportsnet replayed the broadcast of the division clincher from 2000. While it might seem like this kind of nostalgia would be a twist of the knife, it was actually comforting. I was at the game, and I remember Luis Gonzalez’s body language when the Giants took the lead in the bottom of the eighth. He wanted to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. The crowd was absolutely geeked, waiting for the last out and a division title. The Pac Bell crowd was always underrated due to the overblown "crab cakes ‘n’ chardonnay" stereotype. The 5,000 fans from Candlestick were still there, but they were just reinforced with 35,000 additional fans. Even if 15% of those additional fans were cell-phone yabbering weenies, the crowd was still a boisterous, knowledgeable bunch.

The game was a reminder that the focus doesn’t always need to be championship, championship, championship. Which is convenient, as the Giants generally don’t win those. But a good team that doesn’t win it all still keeps you entertained for 162 games before breaking your heart in the last five or seven. I miss that. We were spoiled. It was a good run.

Everything could go wrong with this current bunch, sure. Pablo Sandoval could fade just as quickly as he emerged. Travis Ishikawa’s great minor league season could be an echo of the great-yet-overdue minor league triumphs of Todd Linden and Calvin Murray. Emmanuel Burriss might not sustain a decent on-base percentage. Barry Zito might not join The New Traveling Wilburys, and he might not have to leave the team to go on a 43-city tour.

But I can kind of visualize how the team can start giving us wire-to-wire excitement again. The organizational veteranophilia that was killing a lot of us really did go away after the trade deadline. Jose Castillo was dumped, Omar Vizquel was benched, and a care package of prospects came up and actually played. Buster Posey is signed and doing well, and the organization has two of the best pitching prospects in baseball again. The Giants aren’t going to have the best record in the majors any time soon, but I can see how this bunch could give us a poor man’s 1986 in the next couple of years.

And for some reason, the memory of a Bonds-driven juggernaut combined with the news that the Giants are finally going to handle Burriss in a normal way to make me feel less burned out about Giants baseball. The light at the end of the tunnel might be coming from Tommy Lasorda’s tanning booth in hell, but at least I’m in a better frame of mind at the end of this season than I was last season.

Poll

Wait, did the "tanning booth from hell"-line even make sense?

• Yep.
• Nope.
• Seriously, if you're going to start worrying about if your jokes make sense, you're just going to get burned out again. That would be a lot of worrying.

  184 votes | Results

When Joe Lefebvre was fired last year, most of us yawned. The offense was bad, sure, but how much of that was Lefebvre’s fault, and how much of that was the fault of the octogenarians in the lineup? I had my own problems with Lefebvre –a painful and deep-rooted phobia of silent letters, for one – but I had no idea if he was part of the problem with the wretched offense.

Carney Lansford was the replacement. As a major league hitter, Lansford wasn’t easy to label. He wasn’t a walking machine, but he generally exhibited good plate discipline. He wasn’t a slugger, but he hit enough homers to keep pitchers honest. Somewhere along the way, he found time to steal over 200 bases for his career. There was no reason to believe he would preach an especially aggressive approach, nor was there a reason to believer he would preach an especially patient approach. When he was hired, Lansford indicated that the Giants would focus on "selfless baseball", but that was the company line at the time. You couldn’t really expect him to say, "Small ball? What kind of 19th-century crap is that? We’re swinging for the fences, even if the count is 0-2."

At first glance, it would seem like Lansford has failed with whatever it was he was trying to do. The Giants probably aren’t going to break 100 home runs, and the team is dead last in runs scored. But how many players have really flopped this year? Brian Bocock, Omar Vizquel, John Bowker, Jose Castillo, and Eugenio Velez come to mind. Ted Williams wouldn’t have been able to help Bocock, and Vizquel was almost as bad last year with Lefebvre. Bowker came straight up from AA after his first good professional season, and even that breakout came with an iffy B/KK ratio. Jose Castillo has been frustrating organizations for several years now, and in April and May, Eugenio Velez was swinging like a boneless lemur. On which of these players are you prepared to judge a hitting coach?

A note of support for Lansford’s work: Fred Lewis has shown flashes of power, even if he’s called out on strikes far too often. Manny Burriss is making pitchers throw him strikes, driving the ball all over the field. Other than Vizquel, the veterans have either kept pace or improved over last year’s performance

Rebuttal to the note of support: The team is almost last in the world in taking walks. That has to be the most measurable aspect of a hitting coach’s influence. You can cherry pick players to make it seem like the team is doing okay, but it isn’t. The team can’t score, and a lot of that has to do with an impatient approach.

Rebuttal to the rebuttal: This team would struggle to hit 100 home runs if they were allowed to use aluminum bats. Of course they don’t take a lot of walks. If a pitcher falls behind to anyone in this lineup, that pitcher will challenge.

At the risk of sitting on the fence until I get splinters, I’ll have to put a big "incomplete" next to Carney Lansford right now. Things could have been worse – there was a chance this offense was going to be once-in-a-generation awful. Things aren’t good, brother, but they aren’t apocalyptic, either. There’s a chance that next year’s lineup will feature Pablo Sandoval, Manny Burriss, Travis Ishikawa, and other youngsters, so a column like this might have some more substance at the end of 2009.

Open hitting coach thread...

Poll

Carney?

• I approve
• I disapprove
• Smell like cabbage...small hands

  332 votes | Results

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Zito, at Coors Field, to prevent an 0-6 road trip.

It's like we're playing a game of Clue in the seventh circle of hell.

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June/July: "Randy Winn has two hits in his past 80 at-bats. His shattered maple bats will one day impale an orphan. No one is going to want his contract."

August: "Randy Winn has 53 hits in his last 52 at-bats. He's hitting .306/.361/.433 with 25 steals in 27 attempts for the season. He plays a great right field, can play a good center, and teams will be lining up to acquire him this offseason."

Has it already been a week since our last Randy Winn trade post? Man, it feels like it's been over eight days, at least. The streakiest player in baseball is usually good for a different opinion piece every time, though. This week's thesis:

Randy Winn should be a sought-after player after the season ends. When the only option for a comparable player on the free-agent market is Bobby Abreu for three or four years and several millions, the $8.25M owed to Randy Winn starts to seem like a bargain. And even though the Giants have Nate Schierholtz waiting for at-bats, the Giants certainly don't have to give Winn away for a clump of mascot fur. They can afford to hold out for a real return.

I think this was the "May thesis", too. The "July thesis" -- you can make a pretty good broth from mascot fur -- might resurface in September.

Teams with at least one less-than-ideal outfield spot:

The best part of Winn for a lot of these teams: no commitment. Some of the better free-agent outfield free agents this offseason are Manny Ramirez, Bobby Abreu, Pat Burrell, and Adam Dunn. Next year's list includes Jason Bay, Carl Crawford, Matt Holliday, Rick Ankiel, and Vladimir Guerrero. The better long-term solutions seem to reside with the latter bunch.

If I were running a competitive team like, say, the Phillies, and I were faced with a defecting Pat Burrell, a wretched Geoff Jenkins, and a thin system at the upper levels, I would definitely explore a relatively cheap solution like Winn. Trade a prospect for him, get a year of above-average production, and collect a draft pick after the year is up. But what do the Giants consider a clump of mascot fur, and what do they consider a fair return? The Phillies are a good test franchise for a question like this. They have an upper-minors shortstop prospect performing well in the Eastern League (Jason Donald), a guy who is doing well but is a little too old for Rookie ball, and the usual assortment of interesting arms.

Maybe the Phillies laugh if the Giants ask for Donald. Maybe the Giants turn their nose up at anything less than an established prospect, as there's a good chance that Winn will garner a supplemental pick in the 2010 draft. This dance applies to every team that would be interested in Winn, and this leads to our comment starter....

Comment starter: What should the Giants expect back for Winn, and what will they expect?

Alternate comment starter: They're so not even looking to trade Winn, and I'm just belching into the breeze, aren't I?

Ah, there's nothing like Coors Field after getting swept. Is that optimism? *sniff sniff* Hope? *sniff sniff* Aqua Velva? *sniff sniff* Napalm in the morning?

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