Stop Teasing Me

So I watched the Pirates come back against the Giants this past weekend. Now, even when it comes to good teams (last year's version of the Penguins comes to mind), I tend to doubtful cynicism. Perhaps it's my natural temperament, but when it comes to the Pirates, I have to believe my dubiousness is more the result of a decade and a half of ineptitude than anything naturally ingrained in my cynical temperament.

In any case, in four of five games against the Giants, the Pirates resembled an actual MLB baseball team. Seriously, they did. The defending batting champion hit like a defending batting champion, and amazingly enough, the Pirates were able to string together series of hits and score runs. For four games, the pitching did what it needed to do against a Giants lineup (in the Morris start, the bullpen did) that's probably close to the Pirates in terms of comical ineptitude.

So, even as I couldn't believe my eyes as the Pirates mounted a comeback against the Giants, even as I doubted that the team had won 4 games in a row, I realized something very basic, something which baffled the Bucco announcers all weekend when comparing San Francisco statistics to those of Arizona, and here is that basic realization: The Giants are bad. The Giants are very, very bad. Remove Barry Bonds from that lineup, and the Giants are worse than the Pirates. Sure, apparently on a statistical level (see: certain ERA's of young starting pitchers) some things are working appropriately, except for the fact that none of those things that are working are working well enough to win. Look at the Giants' won-loss record. It's putrid. And thus comes the truth.

The Pirates weren't teasing me. They only looked like a MLB team because they were playing a team that, sans Bonds, is, like them, a sad facsimile of a legitimate MLB team and, at best, a AAA plus team masquerading as a MLB team while wearing big league uniforms.