If The Season Ended Today

After the misery of the last couple of years, it's a good time to be a San Francisco Giants fan again. The club mortgaged its future in the last few years of Barry Bonds' reign to try to win with veterans, which left the cupboard bare when he stopped playing two years ago. The minor league rosters had been stripped of talent in trades for experienced big leaguers, and the young players left behind were not ready to play in the bigs. Unfortunately, they had to.

Last year was the first in a while that showed some promise and hope that the callow youth would soon start to live up to their potential. The organization had begun to draft well again (losing seasons bring high draft picks, which can make anyone look like a genius unless you are managing my fantasy baseball team). One home grown product was little Tim Lincecum, who shocked baseball by winning the Cy Young award last season. Now an earlier draft pick, Matt Cain, is a leading early candidate (along with Lincecum again) for an All-Star game birth and Cy Young award after his complete game to complete a weekend sweep of the Oakland A's. The game featured an inside the park home run from young Nate Schierholtz, topping off a weekend that saw a complete game shutout from Lincecum, local boy Randy Johnson's 301st career win and a reunion of the 1989 pennant-winning team.

Because they are not either the Red Sox or the Yankees, they get absolutely no national media attention, but the scrappy, previously weak-hitting Giants are making things happen way out west. Not only do they have a dominant pitching rotation of three Cy Young winners (including a rejuvenated Barry Zito, whose enormous free agent contract and poor performance has been a constant source of irritation to fans until recently), but they are achieving real results. As the season approaches the halfway mark, the Giants, shockingly, lead the wild card race. If the Giants' bats stay lively and the pitching holds form, the rest of the country might get a chance to meet the most fun young hitter nobody outside of the Bay Area nobody has heard of, Pablo Sandoval, and a quartet of aces no team will want to face in a short playoff series.

Yes, it's early to talk playoffs, but after several years of wandering in the desert, a little irrational enthusiasm won't hurt anyone.