Opening Day - A Tale of Two Ball Clubs

 The Giants are just a couple hours away from their home opener, and the weather in San Francisco is shitty.  Not one of those atmospheric rivers or bomb cyclones that the Weather PR people keep touting, but a dreary, heavy, cold mist that is refusing to let up.  It might let up by game time, but there isn't forecast to be any sun today.  Maybe tomorrow.

Two ball clubs will be at Oracle Park, and that's just in the 3rd base dugout.  The Giants have played 6 games.  In the 3 losses, they have scored 3 runs, total, on 11 hits and hit 1 homer run.  Our ace, Logan Webb, has an 0 - 2 record, he's pitched 11 innings, struck out 16 (which is pretty good) and given up 8 earned runs (which is less so).  He's only walked 2 people.  Jeremy Affeldt says that he has become a known-enough quantity that he needs to switch up his pitch selection a bit to keep hitters off guard.

The other Giants have won 3 games, they have scored 35 runs (31 before the position players, Matt Beaty and Hanser Alberto, started pitching at the end of Thursday's game.  Remember that for trivia challenges.  They have 48 hits (4 of those were off of Alberto) and 14 home runs (1 Alberto's).  The Giants have 15 home runs total, I believe that is a MLB-leading stat.  Jakob Junis is among the league leaders with 2 wins, he isn't a starter, but followed Alex Cobb and Alex Wood.  That's a lot of hits and home runs!  The obvious conclusion is that the Giants have plenty of power, even without Judge or Correa.  Shawn Estes was opining after the game Thursday that the Giants having a bunch of guys up and down the line-up who can hit 20 - 30+ home runs is not sustainable.  From every position?  Probably he's right.  But it strikes me that equally unsustainable, if not more so, is one 40+ home run hitter.  The point of getting Judge or Correa was to put butts in seats (and, admittedly, to provide a scare factor that has been missing since Bonds was around).  Neither of those guys would fill more than one position.  Too, Mitch Haniger has yet to take the field.

It's early.  I wonder where Mark is.  I bet he's skiing.  Fucker.  Davis, Lamont, Villar, Conforto, Sabol, Yaz, Flores, and Crawford have all looked pretty good at the plate so far.  At least Disco, Cobb, Junis, and Hjelle have looked pretty solid, and Webb looks good, he just hasn't been successful.  If our relief can hold up, and we can avoid injuries, and get a bit more from our starters, we might be OK.  It's the Home Opener!