Winning streak

Didn't want to jinx it before yesterday's game, but the Giants have won three straight, which officially means that they're on a winning streak. The points are well made about Bochy's missteps, but it doesn't make a big difference when your pitching staff gives up 3 runs in 29 innings. Lincecum, Sanchez and Correia, as well as the pen have consistently delivered. Looming larger, they've been sitting down 1 batter per inning by the strikeout, (10 Ks in 6 IP for Sanchez) and walking very few. The Giants defense cannot be relied upon to win games, and the offense cannot make up for runs allowed as the result of errors or situational hitting RBIs that come as the result of walks.

Potential Pyrrhic Win

The San Jose Mercury News reports:

"In Tim Lincecum's first game of the season, the Giants made a very questionable gamble with their slight-framed, fireballing right-hander. They heated him up for 28 pitches in the fourth inning, and after a rain delay of one hour, 14 minutes, they sent him back to the mound to start the fifth."

The only caveat to the move, and I'm not enough of a medical expert to say whether this matters, but it is at least worth taking under consideration, is that Lincecum has never iced his arm... in his life. Seriously. For some bizarre reason the kid grew up not icing, heating or massaging his arm. In an anecdotal sense this makes his arm "nails," as Lenny Dykstra would say, but I don't know what that means regarding the elasticity of his elbow, shoulder and scapular joints and tendons.

Seeing Merkin Valdez pitch well to start the game was a definite good sign for the season. Maybe the one time top prospect can turn into a fourth or fifth starter over the next few years. Stay posted.

The city and team, neither electrified or Diesel'd

Herb Caen said of the mood in San Francisco, on opening day of 1995: "I wouldn't say the whole town was electrified, or even Diesel'd, but all you had to say was ``How about that?'' and people knew what you meant."

The Giants went 67-77 in that strike distorted year, and based on Vegas predictions, that's about how many wins they should end up with this season, albeit in 18 more games. Even with the losses, that team as one of the G-men's most entertaining units, as it was a transitional point between our '93 club that broke our hearts, and the '97 team that went to the playoffs. We still had Robby Thompson up the middle and Matt Williams at the corner and we still believed in Shawn Estes and William Van Landingham. Bonds stole 31 bases.

They were built to lose, and they finished fourth, but every day Williams would barehand a ball, and with his sidearmed flick, fire it to first to catch a speedy runner, or Thompson, in his last full season, standing impossibly deep in the box, his heels almost at the third base dugout, would reach out and poke one over the green chain link at the 'Stick, you'd be listening to the call on the radio, or watching from the dollar seats, and you'd turn to your friend and say, "how about that?"

2008's team doesn't have a prayer to make the playoffs, or even a puncher's chance at a winning record, but there will be plenty of moments from men like Cain, Lincecum, Lowry, Sanchez and the gods willing Zito, worth remembering or putting in your pocket so as to say, years from now, it was in a 4-0 ballgame that Sanchez became Sanchez, and I could see it then.

It takes no creativity to follow a winner. You almost have to lie to yourself to believe you're rebuilding when you might be sinking.

And that's fun.