[quote]SmilingPolitely wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:
[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:
[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
[quote]strungoutboy21 wrote:
Padres will be last again like everyone predicted last year. They’re a lot worse than the Diamondbacks.[/quote]
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That doesn’t make sense since they got second. Be thankful they choked away the end of the season or your Giants wouldn’t have won the World Series. Not saying the Giants didn’t deserve it, but you gotta give credit to the Pads.[/quote]
Us Giants fans don’t have to give shit to the Padres. Sure, they played well over the course of the year, but the bottom line is that a LOT of things went right for them. Not that the Giants didn’t have some luck as well, but the Padres of last year and the Padres of this year are totally different teams.
First of all, no Adrian Gonzalez. And I doubt that their big offseason pickup, Orlando Hudson, will have any larger impact on the offense than Will Venable or Chase Headley. Their biggest weakness got a LOT weaker.
Their pitching was great, but let’s examine that a little closer. Are Clayton Richard and Mat Latos legit? I suppose so, but the reality is that they have no track record beyond last year and they folded down the stretch, especially Latos. Yeah, I know. He’d never pitched that deep into a season or thrown that many innings. Well, the same thing could be said about Madison Bumgarner except that he got better and better as the season wore on and saved his best for his last start of the year in the Series against the best offensive team the Giants faced all year. I don’t think that Latos or Richard are one-hit wonders by any means, but Padres fans should be concerned that Latos is getting fucking shelled in Spring Training right now.
As far as how Bumgarner and Posey will respond this year, well I picked Posey for MVP and it won’t surprise me at all if Bumgarner wins 15+ games this year. It would be one thing if these two were Cody Ross-type players who exploded on the national stage after wallowing in anonymity for years. But Posey and Bumgarner are 1st-round picks with amazing track records at every level (including their relatively short length of time in the bigs) that backs up their high talent level and high expectations. Of course they’ll need to make adjustments to continue thriving, but there’s nothing in their track record to suggest that they can’t do so; they’ve done it at every level so far and I think the reality is that the league had better start adjusting to THEM.[/quote]
Ha agreed, the only thing I’ll be thankful for in regards to the Padres is that the Giants won’t have to worry about them since they’re a pretty pathetic looking squad.
I really don’t see people “adjusting” to Posey, he hits for a great average and is fine with any pitch. The “adjusting” argument might work for pure power hitters like Stanton, but not with great all around hitters like Posey.[/quote]
You can’t ever say a divisional opponent will be a piece of cake. Divisional opponents know each other well. Padres have always hit Cain and Lincecum very well. They always have a problem with Sanchez.
I never said the Giants have to give shit to the Padres. You guys just act like you dominated last year when it wasn’t so. Are you trying to make me hate you guys more than the Dodgers. Enough with the arrogance.[/quote]
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Matt Cain has a lifetime ERA of 2.92 against the Padres and they’ve managed to put together a .197 batting avg against him in that span. I can’t find Lincecum’s stats against them, but other than a couple starts last year, he’s dominated them as well.
Look, here’s why WestCoast and I get all bitter when people diss the 2010 Giants: we’re Giants fans. We’ve seen them get swept in the World Series by the cross-town rivals, we’ve seen them blow the 2002 World Series, we’ve seen the accomplishments of probably the best player we’ll ever watch in a Giants uniform get tainted by steroids, they had NEVER won a Series while in SF even though their main rival, the Dodgers, have won aomething like 6 or 7 since moving out West and the motherfucking A’s even have four under their belt.
When the Giants won it all last year, on the backs of a bunch of guys that most people outside of the Bay Area had never heard of before the last postseason (aside from their starting staff) it was an amazing experience for us Giants fans. Not only because they won, but because that team was the anti-thesis of the teams we’d been watching for years, teams loaded with unexciting veterans with little to no personality, weighed down by the colossal presence of Bonds who, while always being a fan favorite in the Bay Area, had pretty much worn out his welcome by the time he left. Before Cain and Lincecum came up, you know who the best home-grown talent to come through the Giants system was? Pedro Fucking Feliz.
So if Giants fans could have chosen exactly how their first championship in SF were to play out, this is EXACTLY how most fans would have wanted it to happen. Homegrown talent on both sides of the ball, an exciting team with a lot of great personalities and BALLPLAYERS who are the opposite of jerks like Bonds or Kent or even Robb Nen, and a somewhat unexpected run to the title. Except that us Giants fans watched them all year and we knew that they were better than most people, especially those on the East Coast, thought they were. I don’t think that the Series title really surprised that many Giants fans, especially myself or WestCoast.
And here we are, in our one moment of glory in the last 56 years and it’s sullied by the fact that most people discount their run as the result of luck. In effect, it’s a slap in the face to us Giants fans to hear that bullshit, especially all the stuff about Cody Ross getting lucky. Did he get hot at the right time? Sure, but the guy’s a pretty good ballplayer in his own right. It’s not like Jim Leyritz’s eyes-closed, hope-I-get-lucky swing against Wohlers back in the 1996 Series. So that’s why when I hear a guy like Rajraj, who probably all of ten games by the Giants last year before the postseason, or any other person who lives on the East Coast and probably never saw them play except for their matchups against the NL East, minimize their accomplishments by chalking it up to sheer luck we Giants fans get defensive. That’s all. We’re not arrogant, but our faith in the ability of the team, especially the offense (which I think is going to surprise a lot of people this year) makes us seem so when compared to others who barely watched their games this year and fail to comprehend how the Giants did it in the first place.
edit: on top of all that, we’ve gotta listen to everyone suck the Phillies starters’ cocks, even though the Giants easily have better staff top to bottom than the Phillies do AND the Giants roughed up Halladay twice last year, including Game 1 of the NLCS, Lincecum’s faced Oswalt something like 5 or 6 times in his career already and he’s outdueled him every time, and they beat the supposedly unhittable Cliff Lee twice in the Series.[/quote]
You guys are the reigning champions. That means you have 29 other teams looking to bring you down. If you can’t handle the heat get the fuck out of the kitchen.
Stop your fucking whining. Make it back to the World Series this year and then we’ll talk.
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Sorry again, I was again distracted by the comfiness of my San Francisco Giants World Series Champions sweatshirt. What was your point?
We’re the champs, win a World Series this year and then we’ll talk.