I’m not saying it’s not objectively bad that the Giants got hit with a COVID wave that decimated their roster. Would I have enjoyed watching Brandon Belt and Mike Yastrzemski and Dominic Leone and Zack Littell play in baseball games? Yes, that seems like a good time. Would I have also enjoyed watching Joc Pederson, down for a few days with a non-COVID injury? Based on how he was hitting before he got hurt, obviously yes. Did that happen? No, and c’est la vie.
But just because there’s a dark cloud doesn’t mean that we can’t try to find a good thing in it, like a lining made out of some kind of precious metal. Is the current roster significantly worse than the true talent level of the 2022 San Francisco Giants? Of course it is. But why does that have to be a bad thing?
Folks, that just means the bad games don’t count.
I don’t mean in the standings, where yes, those games will count no matter what we say or do here. But in your heart, when you look at the stretch against the A’s, Nationals, and Dodgers where the Giants were under .500 without so many of their best players, you can just say, “Nah, that’s not really them.”
Problem solved! No, not the problem of making the playoffs — MLB solved that one by expanding to 6 teams per league, and if the Giants don’t make it that’ll be their own fault. The problem we solved is the problem of having to be optimistic about a team that just lost more than it won against two teams it should have beaten consistently and a third team that is its main rival, and against whom the Giants are currently being measured.
It’s so easy to just dismiss those results now . Did you see the list of COVID guys? Plus Joc? Joc was so good! And that doesn’t even take into account LaMonte Wade Jr, Evan Longoria, and the ancient Etruscan myth that today we call “Tommy La Stella.” The Giants with those guys are a totally different team. They might have won most of those games they lost. In fact, I’m sure they would have, and that counts more than all the stats and common sense in the world.
We’re keeping the wins, though. The wins still count. They had to go through so much adversity to win those games! The wins really should count double, but we don’t want to be Pollyannas, so we’ll just count them the regular amount and ignore the losses. That’s called centrism, and it’s how things get done.
What good does this do us? Okay, sure, it is now universally agreed that the Giants are a better team than they showed over the last week. Who does this help? What are the effect that I am hoping will come out of this decision?
Respect. I want respect for my favorite baseball team, dammit. When people talk about the Giants, I want them to say that they are good and make excuses for the times that they were bad. Like I do! I want them to be talked about as one of the elite teams and franchises in the league, whether or not it’s true. I want to tell people I’m a Giants fan and for them to feel like they should know something about this year’s Giants, who everyone agrees are good.
None of this actually matters, but it does make baseball a lot more fun. It was fun last year. It would be fun again this year. This is why I am fighting for a world where we pretend that the flaws we’ve seen in the Giants over the last week will vanish, as if by magic. Imagine that world. Then, if you’d like, join me in it.