Is Brandon Belt going to get hit by a bus? Is Hunter Pence going to tear his ACL doing yoga?
What hammer is going to drop next for the San Francisco Giants?
Friday, more scary news dropped out of thin air, in what has been a chilling first month of baseball for the black and orange.
Madison Bumgarner was hospitalized after a dirt bike accident in Denver. He sprained his AC joint in his left shoulder and bruised his ribs — Giants players said they all feel lucky it wasn’t worse. Ken Rosenthal is reporting Bumgarner is expected to miss 6-8 weeks. This is a major blow, but it certainly ain’t the first dose of bad news this month, in what’s turning out to be one of the most cursed years in San Francisco Giants history.
1. Buster Posey was beaned in the head.
2. Bruce Bochy underwent his third heart procedure, missing the Kansas City road trip.
3. Brandon Crawford’s sister-in-law passed away suddenly.
4. Jarrett Parker fractured his collarbone in a gruesome collision with the left field wall.
Some teams don’t go through this amount of trauma in two or three seasons combined — let alone the span of three weeks. This is black-cat, Friday the 13th, horror movie type of stuff. These outlandish scenarios happen in baseball movies like Rookie of the Year, not in real life.
As pointed out by our Brian Murphy, there have been other dark omens this month, too. The Giants are 0-4 in Bumgarner starts, Mark Melancon blew his first save, the team is tied for last place with the San Diego Padres. There was even a grease fire that broke out in center field. As am I’m writing this, Melvin Upton is now having hand surgery after being hit by a pitch. What did they do to piss off the baseball gods?
When it rains it pours, and right now the Giants are getting drenched. Their top ace will likely miss two months, their manager’s long term health and status with the team is emerging to the forefront, KNBR broadcaster Dave Flemming pointed out San Francisco is getting virtually zero production from three positions on the baseball field, Johnny Cueto can opt-out next season. Somebody send the front office a life raft.
There are still 130 games left in the season. Losing Bumgarner is devastating, but it’s not the end of the world. The Giants can turn themselves around…potentially.
With that being said, April 2017 has been an eerie reminder that championship windows rarely are open for an entire decade. The Giants cashed in from 2010-2014 with three Market Street parades. Even with the Warriors running the NBA, the 49ers’ history, the Giants have widely established themselves as the toast of the town — as what real championship teams look like. I don’t want to be the guy ringing the alarm bell, but every ancient empire and every sports dynasty ends one day.
In a short span of a month, the mindset from Giants fans has gone from, ‘Let’s win another World Series,’ to ‘I hope we can still make the playoffs.’ The odds are completely stacked against this team. And the clock is ticking. This is not a young baseball team like the Washington Nationals. The Giants are in win-now mode. Because of the expectations this ball club has established in town, any season that doesn’t produce at least a trip to the NLCS should be considered a disappointment.
This is a talented baseball team, but not talented enough to keep overcoming these circumstances. Especially with no production in left and center field. Especially if Cueto or another major arm goes down.
Should they turn things around, this would be very San Francisco Giants of them. Nobody realistically should be saying that the season is over. Bochy’s guys normally thrive when the odds are stacked against them. We could be laughing about this April come July if the team is sitting in first place at the All-Star break. Epiphanies can be had in baseball. The Giants have had them before.
Attitude really matters in baseball more than any other sport. If the Giants react negatively to the stormy skies hovering around them, you’ll see slumping on the field. Hopefully Posey and some other veterans can rally the team together. There could be stories that come out later in the season that say this tumultuous April is the reason the team came together.
Until then, let’s just make it out of this month alive.