The Crazy Crab Tells the Truth

Hank Schulman recently sat down with Brian Sabean to discuss how things have gone so far this season. Not much really came out of that interview so I, the crazy crab will fill in and give the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Giants fans do not deserve nor should they have to put up with the sugar coating and dancing around the issues that Brian Sabean does during these interviews.

Q: What has surprised you during the first part of the season, positively and negatively?

What a Difference a Weekend Makes

On Thursday night of last week I was in the dumps. The Giants had been swept by the first place Padres and look awfull during the whole series with all of the breaks falling the other way.

Almost the exact opposite happened against the Astro's who mustbe glad to not be seeing us again until June. Except for the first game of the series the Giants got just enough to win the games with Brian Wilson closing the door in heart attack fashion.

The Padres after the sweep went on and got swept by the suddenly hot Dodgers which brought the Giants back to within a game and a half of first place.

Things looked bad and I was in the dumps and even with things going the teams way I can't help but feel irrational pessimism. Petco is still a park where the Giants lose when they throw one hitters, it is still a place where David Eckstein is as scary of a hitter as Barry Bonds in his prime and the Padres pitching staff is full of Cy Young canidates. There is nothing to like, I want to say that the sweep is a mirage, that Houston sucks and we would suck if we didn't sweep them but gosh darn it I keep wanting to believe.

However I will not be sucked in again. This is a team that will do somethings to build your confidence in them and then blow it all up over the next couple fo days. It is enticing to think that maybe the Padres confidence is shaken but that wasn't the case for the Giants and Astros, so I see no reason to think that the same can't and won't happen for San Deigo. I am not even going to turn on the games (I say this but I am always sucked in to atleast listening) becuase it takes years off of my life. The games will be close and the Giants will lose and if I don't prepare myself the irrational pessimism will only grow.

Matchups:

We have a replay of two of the 3 matchups Matt Cain against Clayton Richard and Jonathan Sanchez against almost perfect Mat Latos. The only way we win these games is if we get two perfect games in a row anything short and the baseball god will smite the team and grant the bums of San Deigo some victories.

Predictions:

I will be annoyed by every single batter in the Padres lineup. The Giants will get lots of opportunities to score runs but fail to get a hit/walk/balk/error or anything that can bring people in. The Padres pitchers will look super human against the Giants lineup as they slice the team up like a Friday night pizza.

The Padres will do just enough and have things break in their favor to win both games 2 to 1 tonight and 0 to -1 on Tuesday.

Prepare for torture.

Phillies Coming to Town, Hide the Woman and Children this is Going to be Trouble

The Phillies are coming to town and I feel like it could very well be trouble for the offensively challenged Giants. The Giants won the series against the Cardinals while scoring only 6 runs. The teams run per game has crashed back down to earth after the fast start and unless some guys start to get hot it is not likely to return to that level.

Another big change from early in the season is that the offense has struggled to put together strings of hits. This team isn’t going to win a lot games with the long ball and will rely on stringing together 3-4 hits to score some runs. As we saw in the Cardinals game on Sunday the team had 9 hits and 3 extra base hits but failed to put them together to score any runs.

They did not follow through on their winning formula (good pitching and timely hitting) at all and it showed with them getting blanked. This will not cut it as the Phillies lineup will be a hard one to keep from scoring runs even with the Giants pitching staff and if they want to have a chance we will need to get those hits together and not spread out.