Justin Turner returned to action tonight and thanks to his mighty efforts the Dodgers lost a game to the woeful Florida Marlins, 4-2. It wasn't Turner's fault, of course. Nothing ever is, because he makes basically no mistakes. But the rest of the Dodgers got not a single hit with runners in scoring position. They did, however, give up a run to Florida when Logan Forsythe, playing his "natural position" of 2nd base threw a ball in the dirt. And then JT Chargois, pictured here in his native South
gave up two completely needless runs, sealing the Dodgers' fate. Yasiel Puig and Cody Bellinger hit solo home runs and were immediately benched by Dave Roberts for "lack of hustle."
This is essentially the team that came within one game of winning the World Series. They have now lost eight of nine to the Padres, Marlins, and Reds. I'm guessing Justin Turner wishes he were still on the disabled list.
Dear Mr. Lovullo. Can I call you Torey? That sounds a little
too personal. Skipper? Nah, too Gilligan’s Island. Let’s stick with Mr.
Lovullo.
Mr. Lovullo, it’s time. Your professional baseball club,
once the darling of the National League (all of ten days ago!), has dropped six
straight. While the pitching is holding up, your hitters have gone on their own
“three-hour tour.” They have scratched across a measly 12 runs over this losing
streak and hit a downright depressing .200. Thanks to the good graces of the
rest of the pitiful NL West teams, your club is still grasping to a 1½ game
lead.
While I understand you are the reigning Manager of the Year
and have been around your players day-in and day-out for nearly four
months now, I think it’s time that I, a totally unqualified fan and sometimes
scribe, step in and tell you how to do your job. Because, quite frankly, you
guys should be running away with this division and you’re not, so I
must know better than you. Plus, I’ve seen Bull Durham a couple of times.
The problem is, you have somehow drifted into the vortex of
a baseball equivalent of a Sebastian Junger book: while cruising out to feast
on struggling NL West teams including FOUR series against the downtrodden
Dodgers, you find yourself caught in the storm's eye of key injuries, a worn out
and over stressed bullpen and your MVP stuck in the worst hitting slump of his
life. It may appear you are about to be swallowed up by a massive black wave,
but there is hope.
First, treat the bullpen to some ice cream. It has become
wholly evident that the releif corps are beginning to buckle under the obscene
expectations and minuscule run support, and we all know that ice cream makes everything
so much better. And two of Phoenix’s finest, Melt and Novel, are within a Gr:d Bike ride of Chase Field.
Second, it’s time to hand Paul Goldschmidt over to Mark
Grace for one of Gracie’s classic Slumpbusters.
And this needs to be an epic Slumpbuster as Goldy is no typical player and this
is no typical slump. This one needs to be real sloppy so that it will at least
make a semi-interesting retrospective story during the Diamondbacks’ 50th
anniversary season, unlike this mildly amusing anecdote about Randy Johnson’s
base running snafu. Besides, how could you ever not trust Mark
Grace?
Speaking of Goldschmidt,
it’s time to drop him out of the number three slot until he can prove the old
swing is back. Granted, it’s tough to make this change now with the club’s sole
consistent offensive threat, AJ Pollock, going
down with a strained thumb (thereby also losing the gold glove in Chase
Field’s immense center field), but Goldy is more a liability than a threat
right now. My expert opinion for you is to move David Peralta to the three spot,
put either Ketel Marte or Jerrod Dyson at leadoff and then figure out how to disguise
Zack Greinke, the team’s second biggest offensive weapon, as Steven Souza, Jr.
and have him hit cleanup. Goldy can hide out as the number five hitter until he
gets things right again.
Lastly, I think you need to up your wrist watch game. Mr.
Lovullo, you have been sporting that same chunky black Casio since high school,
I bet. You are a Big League manager, for crying out loud! Now, I’m not
suggesting an Apple watch, as those have been banned and are for bench coaches.
But slide strap on a nice Shinola
or RGM,
something made in the States, and realize there’s a giant
freaking clock high above center field if you really need to know what time it
is. It’s…ahem…time to move on up in the world and dress the part.
That’s it. If you make these easy to implement moves I guarantee
you will return to the winning ways that made you the top team in the NL. My
track record speaks for itself. Happy sailing, Skipper!
I suppose you could put together a spectacular "lowlight" reel for the first quarter of the Dodgers' turd of a season, featuring relief pitchers giving up mammoth go-ahead home runs, batters looking at called third strikes down the middle, Justin Turner getting hit on the hand, a foul river of effluvia bursting all over the field during the last preseason game at Dodger Stadium, all narrated by Orel Hersheiser's droning voice about how "these hitters just need to get hot and get in a rhythm." It has been, from day one, an endless disaster.
But, first and foremost, when this kind of season happens, you need to fire the manager. On Saturday night, the Dodgers were beating the seemingly lowly Reds 3-1. They had two runners on in the bottom of the 5th, with a chance to blow a game open for once. Dave Roberts chose to bat the pitcher, Ross Stripling, who'd been throwing great that night. Fine. Then Stripling struck out.
In the top of the inning, Stripling struck out the first batter he faced. Then Roberts decided to bring in a lefty to face a righty or a righty to face a lefty, it doesn't matter. What matters is that he let a pitcher, who was doing fine, bat in the bottom of the inning, blew a chance to score, and then almost immediately yanked the pitcher in the top of the inning. The "relief" pitcher, J.T. Chargois, gave up a single, botched a double-play ball back to the box, and gave up a three-run homer. Roberts STILL left him in after that, and then Chargois gave up back-to-back doubles, and the Dodgers were down 5-3, which ended up being the final score because the team is incapable now of scoring more than three runs. Good job, manager.
The Reds had the worst pitching staff in baseball coming into the weekend at Dodger Stadium. The Dodgers scored three runs three times and one run one time, and ended up getting swept. Now, the Dodgers will not fire Roberts, because nothing is more important to the Dodgers than public relations, and it's bad public relations to fire a manager, even though he literally just bungled away a midseason game to the worst team in the National League. Except that the Reds are no longer the worst team in the National League. The Dodgers are. I thought this was supposed to be fun, baseball!
In 1983, The St. Louis Cardinals finished 79-83 the year after winning the World Series. They started out the season horribly and never recovered. That is the only antecedent I can think of for the Dodgers circling the drain and washing out to sea in mid-May. At this point, 79 wins would be a happy ending.
Something is amiss in the grand warehouse in downtown
Phoenix, and we’re not talking unbalanced pH in the swimming pool. Perennial
MVP candidate and America’s first baseman, Paul Goldschmidt, is in the midst of
his worst season of his career. His locked-in eye, plate discipline and smooth
swing have been locked up in some attic room at Chase Field and poor Goldy
looks like a terrified lost child at the dish with each passing at-bat.
Nonetheless, the Arizona Diamondbacks have managed to
soldier on behind stellar pitching and AJ Pollock’s superstar rise. But when
you combine Goldy’s disappearing act with injuries to Jake Lamb and Steven
Souza, Jr., the Diamondback’s punch and run production has been MIA, especially
over the past two weeks.
Goldschmidt has long been a wonder. Few hitters across the
league showed the control and discipline of Goldy. That discipline may be what
makes him a tad bland to fans outside of the Grand Canyon State, but
Diamondbacks fans are more than understanding and appreciative of the gift they
have. Goldschmidt is one of those 5-tool guys. Hits for average – check. Hits
for power – check. Good speed – check. Amazing glove – check. Good arm – well,
he plays first, so who knows, but you can replace that with clubhouse leader,
so check.
His defense and leadership are still superlative.
Goldschmidt never makes a mistake in the field, like ever. There’s a whole bunch
of defensive and sabermetric ratings I could reference, but I have no idea what
any of those things mean. I do know that in seven seasons as the starting first
baseman, he has committed a total of 33 errors and has won five gold gloves.
That’s good, right?
Some point out to how Goldy turns the batter behind him into
an instant all-star. AJ Pollock this year, JD Martinez last year, some guy who
didn’t have initials for his first name the year before that, and so on and so
forth. NL pitchers would do everything in their power to avoid Goldy like the
swine flu. He has been at the top for walks and intentional walks since he
arrived.
Saying something mean about Paul Goldschmidt is about as hard as you'd think. pic.twitter.com/TK3bTKXnuk
Until this year. Just a smidge over a month in and
Goldschmidt can’t strike out enough. In 155 games played last season, Goldy
struck out 147 times. In his entire career he’s only had one season where he
struck out more than the games he played.
Through 36 games this year he’s struck out 46 times. Yuck.
When he is making contact, it’s usually of the infield
dribbler or infield pop-up variety. Until last night, he had not driven in a
run in 21 at-bats. He’s hitting a ghastly .227. He’s a horror movie of a
hitter, a zombie in the batter’s box. He’s swinging at pitches in the dirt and
pitchers know it. He’s become a liability as the number three hitter.
So, what do you do with this guy right now? Sit him down to
figure things out? You lose that Gold Glove. Move him down the lineup? Perhaps,
especially considering how hot Pollock and Daniel Descalso have been. Somehow,
Goldy needs a shock to the system to get back on track.
Ultimately, the Paul Goldschmidt AND the Diamondbacks have
to hope he can find his swing again soon, even if he has to look for it, and
perhaps some bats, in the cellar.
Today's his birthday; he would have been 58. Here's one stat that boggles my mind. The guy played for the Padres for 20 years and only struck out 434 times, an average of (does math) 21.7 strikeouts per season. We're into the second week of May, and how many players reached that number last month? Go ahead and Google it. I'll bet there's a few.
Something else: the pitcher he faced the most? Greg Maddux; 107 at-bats. My old roommate used to say that Maddux wasn't a pitcher, he was a "goddamn surgeon". 8th on the all-time career wins list. The only pitcher to ever notch over 300 wins AND over 3,000 strikeouts AND give up less than 1,000 walks over a career. Tony owned him. He batted .415 against Maddux. Maddux never struck him out.
Something else: after his rookie year, his batting average never dipped below .300. His last two seasons, he hit .323 and .324 respectively. (The lifetime average, of course, is what defines him. .338, the best since Ted Williams.)
Something else: 5 Gold Gloves.
Something else: Tony was always a Padre, but before he was a Padre, he was an Aztec - played hoops as well as baseball for San Diego State - and then after he was a Padre he went back to being an Aztec, as head coach of the SDSU baseball team. This mattered, I think. Back in the very late 80's, when I was at San Diego State, living in the old red brick dorms on the west side of campus, the ones with the parking that backed up against Smith Field's outfield wall, you'd be walking back home from class and during the offseason you'd frequently see him there, heading to the field for some BP. "Hey Tony!", you'd say, and every time - every single time - you'd get a wave and a "Hey fellas! How's it goin'?" back, in that Urkel-y voice that didn't really fit the man, but somehow absolutely did.
Something else: he was never "Gwynn" to us. When you said 'Tony' back in the day everyone knew who you were talking about.
The Diamondbacks have been on an historic pace. They equaled
an 111
year-old record, someone
actually took a ride in the reincarnated bullpen cart and yesterday rookie
call-up Matt Cook…errr…Koch became the first pitcher to made consecutive starts against the two teams in
last season’s World Series since 1947. Sure, that last item
is totally consequential yet simultaneously inconsequential, but hey, history.
Oh yeah, they took two of three against the Houston Astros,
too.
Yet, just four days ago it was beginning to appear as if the
good times train was screeching to a horrendous halt. After dropping the
Dodgers’ injury depleted AA-call up squad in the first two games of a four-game
set, their bats fell deathly silent to allow the Rancho Cucamonga
Quakes a couple of sympathy wins, ending the series streak. They managed to
then follow that up with a colossal 8-0 tail whipping in the series opener to
the Astros. Three straight losses. Surely, this was it.
While the baseball gods appeared to be sending reality
crashing down upon the desert, those pesky Colorado Rockies just keep hanging
around. Just like last season, the Rockies continue to be the cockroaches of
the NL West, always creeping in the shadows. You know they’re there and you
even see them from time to time but they mostly hang in the shadows, just out
of some real threat until
they crawl into your ear while you sleep and cause 9 days of endless torture.
I mean, look at Charlie
Blackmon or Jon Gray –
those are some skeezy looking dudes.
Thank Rita of Cascia,
this Diamondbacks pitching staff remains unconscious, second in league ERA
behind Houston. Much is being made locally about this rag-tag group of
relatively unknowns who can’t be touched. The human emoji, Brad Boxburger, has
become a shutdown closer, with The Beard playing the ultimate wing man except
he probably ends up with all the ladies when its actually time to go home. Pat
Corbin remains the hottest start nobody outside of Phoenix has heard of and
Zack Greinke just keeps on keepin’ on. And there’s a bunch of other guys like
Yoshi, the Sheriff, the other Zack, de la Rosa, TJ and some other dudes.
Oh yeah, AJ Pollock continues his tear and has become the
Diamondbacks biggest re-signing priority, displacing Paul Goldschmidt who is
still trying to get his mojo back from Dr. Evil.
And, oh yeah, the Diamondbacks still have yet to lose a
series this season.
I spent the weekend pondering what to say about the Dodgers' magical Friday night in Mexico, where four pitchers combined to no-hit the Padres, only the 12th time in the history of baseball that a combined no-hitter has occurred. Unassisted triple plays are more common. People not getting the runs after eating a Dodger Dog is (barely) more common. Common is more common.
But then that moment passed and the media lickspittling about the magical "Dodger pitching tradition" passed with it. The bullpen shanked away a small lead on Saturday, and then yesterday, the Dodgers went 0-55 with runners in scoring position and got shut out by a 22-year-old Padres rookie.
Meanwhile, fate continued to take a meat cleaver to the Dodgers' hopes, landing Clayton Kershaw on the disabled list alongside Justin Turner, Corey Seager, Yasiel Puig, Logan Forsythe, and Hyun-Jin Ryu. That grim roll call, alongside the fact that nearly every player on the team has missed games because of e-coli poisoning this season, leads me to think that the Dodgers share a doctor with Donald Trump.
All this forces pretentious discussions of the Dodgers' "depth." President of Team Operations And Cost Cutting Andrew Friedman was on the broadcast the other night, blathering about how the team's depth is its "26th Man," as though no other team has a functional minor-league system. It's true that the minors have brought up Walker Buehler and Alex Verdugo, the only two players on the team with a discernible pulse, but the magical depth also led us to a lineup yesterday that had Austin Barnes batting 5th, Kyle Farmer batting 6th, and a mysterious fellow named Tim Locastro hitting 8th. "These guys just need a win to get their confidence going to get some momentum," Orel blathered from the broadcast booth, ignoring one obvious factor:
These Dodgers suck.
Fate, incompetent conditioning, and poor management have conspired to rob this team of a chance for a return trip to the World Series. The players will either be undergoing endless surgery or will be padding around their mansions in their stocking-feet come October. It's been a long time since Dodger fans have been forced to root for "guys who don't have a prayer in the long run," but that time has, at last, arrived. Last place is a real possibility. A 70-win season is also a real possibility.
We may have "depth", but we haven't begun to see the bottom.
Being a fan of a middling team is like being a fan of the Star Trek movie franchise. Hopes are raised - ohhh! I've heard great things about this Tom Hardy kid! He might be the compelling villain that the ST:TNG movies have lacked! A worthy foil for Patrick Stewart! And then you get Star Trek: Nemesis.
Fans of the Star Trek movies approach them knowing that for every KHAAAN...
...there is a KHAAAAAAAHHHHHHH.
You have to love the Star Trek movies as an idea, a concept, not as an actual franchise capable of consistent quality. So it is with the Padres.
TFW you see the hashtag #NotMyKhan is trending
Last night in San Francisco, we got the Good Padres - the Ricardo Montalban version, if you will. There was fine pitching from Tyson Ross, who over six innings threw nine strikeouts, gave up four hits, and allowed one run. There were a couple of NOICE (as the Millenials say) defensive plays, one from Manny Margot...
Brad Hand came in for the save, and the Padres tied up this series 1-1. It should be noted that the Padres have a number of pretty good players - Christian Villanueva, for example, is one home run shy of leading the National League, Ross and Richard have done solid work on the mound, and there's some speed and skill in the outfield. When we launched this blog, I predicted a .500 finish for this team. If the Padres are the MLB equivalent of Star Trek movies, I stand by that.
When I headed off last Tuesday on a business trip where I wasn't going to be watching much baseball, the Dodgers were 11-10. They had two games ahead of them against the Marlins, and four against the Giants, supposedly inferior teams. It looked like they were about to ride a massive hot streak and become the team they were supposed to become at the beginning of the season. Now I realize that 11-10 was the season's high point. They lost five of six of those games. In two of them, the bullpen gave up a late lead, and in one of them, Clayton Kershaw walked a half-dozen and got shelled.
Meanwhile, Yasiel Puig went on the disabled list. Dave Roberts benched Cody Bellinger, his best player, for not trying to stretch a double into a triple in a game the Dodgers trailed by four runs. And then, yesterday, it was announced that Corey Seager is going to have elbow surgery and will miss the rest of the season. Last year, the Dodgers were the best team in the National League. This year, they're a cursed and unwatchable disaster, a deeply-dispirited bunch that other teams want to see on their schedule. Everything has gone wrong. Upper management clearly didn't see fit to address this team's flaws in the offseason. The roster isn't "deep," it is terrible. Max Muncy and Austin Barnes don't comprise the recipe for a World Series infield. Kershaw looks more than mortal. Kenley Jansen is serving up meatballs. Hyun-Jin Ryu has been the team's best pitcher, and he's only been above average. Dave Roberts has been making poor decision after poor decision. He deploys the wrong pitchers at the wrong time. And his benching of Bellinger was the definition of scapegoating. Cody responded to that benching by playing a terrible game last night in Arizona. We haven't even begun to see "lack of hustle" yet. Wait until late July and the Dodgers are 17 games under .500. Every other team's fans are always so happy when the Dodgers suck. This season is going to bring them joy unseen in 20 years.
The Arizona Diamondbacks are a MASH unit. A front running,
series-winning, grit it out MASH unit.
Two weeks ago, key injuries were limited to Steven Souza Jr.
and Jake Lamb. Then Taijuan Walker went down with a popped UCL and got lined up
for Tommy John. Yesterday, Robbie
Ray came up lame with a strained oblique (whatever that is). And tonight,
the damned Doyers tried to take out all of their frustrations by way of
throwing pitches and elbows and other things at any Diamondback they came
across, specifically David Peralta,
Jerrod Dyson and Nick Ahmed.
Sure, perhaps things are not as tragic as the LA list oftheir Walking Dead: Justin Turner, Yasiel Puig, Rich Hill, Corey Seager (since
when does a shortstop go for Tommy John?!), but it’s not that far off.
Nonetheless, the Diamondbacks matched the National League record of consecutive
series wins to start a season, matching the mark set by the 1907 Cubs, a team that went on to win 107 games and the franchise's first World Series.
This team, with two starting pitchers out and their two
power hitters down, has matched a record that has stood for 111 years. Damn.
So, one month into the season the Arizona Diamondbacks have
20 wins, a 5½ game lead and a Dodger team fading into oblivion. Souza is
perhaps a week away, Lamb not far behind and Shelby Miller is looking on track
to return to the rotation in June. And Paul Goldschmidt still looks a little
lost.
I'll preface this by saying that Padres rookie pitcher Eric Lauer objectively does not suck. During his final year at Kent State, he led all NCAA pitchers in 2016 with an ERA of .69 and spent just one season in the minors before getting called up to the Padres. He made his MLB debut against the Rockies last night. Which...admittedly did not go well.
"Whether or not it is unclear to you," Max Ehrmann wrote in his Desiderata, the one that graces coffee mugs and adorns the cubicles of entry-level account coordinators across the U.S., "the Universe is unfolding as it should." Surely that sentiment prompted Lauer as he watched this waking nightmare unfold:
Look: if this happened to you in your Major League debut, knowing that you're going to make the next day's highlight reels for all of the wrong reasons...well, sometimes all you can do is laugh. And hey, at least this happened:
Last year at this point in the season, the Dodgers were under .500, struggling nastily with a declining Adrian Gonzalez in the cleanup spot.
Chris Taylor hadn't yet appeared, so the Dodgers were batting Logan Forsythe leadoff, with zero results. But then the real savior arrived in the form of Cody Bellinger, who proceeded to come up from the minors and hit 39 homers in 120 games. The reason it wasn't more homers, and more games, is that the Dodgers stuck him in the outfield for Gonzalez could get some "veteran at-bats," and then Bellinger got hurt.
Well, now Bellinger and his smooth swings, smooth slide, and long legs have been firmly planted at first, where they'll remain for at least a decade.
Yet the Dodgers still played poopily the first two weeks of the season. Of late, there've been signs of emergence, as they've entered what some call the "soft part" of the schedule and I call playing the Padres and a half-strength Nationals team. Well, this week the schedule got softer than a poached egg at the Ritz-Carlton. The Marlins, coached by former Dodger manager and conventional wisdom machine Don Mattingly arrived, with a group of male humans.
To face this almost-team, the Dodgers called up 23-year-old phenom Walker Buehler from the minors. Here is a video of him dancing and singing in the offseason during a parade in Chicago.
But in addition to being a sweet-ass lip-syncer, Buehler also has a shredding fastball and an 85 MPH curve. He gave up four hits, a couple of walks, and no runs in five innings. As a lesser baseball blog pointed out, “Buehler threw eight pitches 99 MPH or faster tonight. That’s more than 16 teams have thrown ALL YEAR.”
The Dodgers have won seven of eight and are over .500 for the first time this season, with the next six games against the Marlins and the Giants. Only five months to catch up with Arizona. Can we do it? I think we can, I think we can. The rotation is hardly where the Dodgers need the most help, but even if Buehler doesn't stick around this time, the team just got a whole lot better with him in the dugout and on the mound. He replaced Wilmer Font, the worst pitcher in all of baseball, who has been designated for assignment.
I hope the Font finds an excellent second career. Here he is on the way out of Dodger Stadium. Then, because I can't figure out the formatting on this stupid system, he's followed by a sweet-ass play from my best friend Kiké Hernandez, who should play every position every day.
The bloom is
off the rose. The compost is beginning to stink. Happy Earth Day. The long haul
of Major League Baseball’s season has officially arrived.
Opening day is
a celebration where all is new and baseball is at its most exciting until the
post-season rolls around – some six months later. Some of that even carries
into the first few series where walk-offs are celebrated with scrums on the
infield and dugout-emptying brawls seem edgy, not tired.
Every win
matters. The rhythm of the season, or at least the perceived rhythm, is set.
And then the final
week of April arrives. Your team has had at least one run through the big division
rival and key injuries are starting to take hold. The play-by-play guys start
sharing anecdotes about their pets instead of actual baseball.
This was never
more evident than today’s series and home stand closer where the Arizona
Diamondbacks beat the hapless and uninspired San Diego Padres to win their
seventh of seven series to open the season. This feat was repeated endlessly by
the D-Backs voices, belonging to Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly, ad nauseum. Apparently,
this is the first time it’s been done since the San Francisco Giants did it in
2003, which seems strange that that’s actually 15 years ago now. Those Giants
did go on to win the NL West that year, so that’s something, I guess.
Patrick
Corbin threw another fine game, pushing his record to 4-0 and his ERA down
to 1.89. But this kind of thing is now ho-hum because all we really heard about
was the make-believe pitch from the Padres’ young starter, Joey Lucchesi, who
sounds like he just rolled in from the set of Jersey Shore and sports the
cheesy facial hair to match. He allegedly has developed some new thing called
the “Churve,”
a sort of change-up curve ball that took the D-Backs all of one time through
the lineup to figure out. By the bottom of the 4th, the churve was
getting launched all over Chase Field, staking the Snakes with all the runs
they would need.
Honestly,
Berthiaume and Brenly must be so bored themselves already that they just couldn’t
stop saying the word “churve.” The only thing that took them out of that zone
was when they had to promote the special Dog Days
of Summer ticket offer for all the desert dwelling dog owners who feel
having dog shit at the ball game is that one thing missing from the experience.
They then carried on a near full-inning conversation about if Berthiaume’s dog
can speak or not. Riveting stuff.
This kind of
thing is not unique to the Diamondbacks. ESPN is already providing insights in
the context of “the course of the long baseball season” and making items like the
Giants’ Brandon Belt’s record-setting 21-pitch at-bat their top headline. Pardon me while do not care.
The only true
antidote to surviving the marathon is to actually get to the yard to watch
games in person instead of on TV (or the internet). Of course, this realization kicks in
just as the D-Backs head out of town for the next week and summer begins to
descend on the Valley of the Sun. Yay, us!
This was never
more evident than today’s series and home stand closer where the Arizona
Diamondbacks beat the hapless and uninspired San Diego Padres to win their
seventh of seven series to open the season. This feat was repeated endlessly by
the D-Backs voices, belonging to Steve Berthiaume and Bob Brenly, ad nauseum. Apparently,
this is the first time it’s been done since the San Francisco Giants did it in
2003, which seems strange that that’s actually 15 years ago now. Those Giants
did go on to win the NL West that year, so that’s something, I guess.
