Bits and Pieces

It's been quite the regular season for the Giants.

It seems that we have rearranged the roster a little bit. It's like in the beginning of a school year when you walk into a new classroom. A couple of the people know each other, and they're chatting away about their summers, and baseball stats, and how difficult it was to get up that morning. Then there are the new kids mixed in with the kids you've seen scuffling in the hallways between passing period.

The first day is always a little bit awkward.

By the end of the year though, there is no such thing as awkward. In the past, by the end of the year, everyone was practically sitting on top of each other; I mean, we had inside jokes. We were a tight knit dysfunctional family.

Point it, I felt like the Giants were like that. The Giants came together in bits and pieces.

Our outfield, except for Torres, is pretty much bits and pieces. We got Huff this year, and Posey behind the plate. We had to say goodbye to Molina though. We got some hard throwers in the bullpen. We had the guys who were there before, Zito and Wilson (B-WEEZY!).

Throughout the year we managed to add Guillen and Burrell and Ross and Fontenot. I looked at the team at the end, well, today, guess it's not the end for us, and I compared it to the team in the beginning.

The Giants are one helluva team.

There's a lot of personality going on there. No matter how they came together, they did, and I can hardly imagine the team without all those guys...even if the outfield is a little crowded.

"'I guess I get the last laugh,' Ross said, smiling. "When you hear that your old team just let you go, it's not a very good feeling. [But] this is what you dream of.'
'It doesn't matter, all the personal stats, the grand slams, the amazing catches. None of that compares to being a team and winning.'"

- Cody Ross to Los Angeles Times

In the end, we pieced it together. We worked it out. Bochy played with the line-up, and with all the new guys, there were a lot of things we could do. ...explore new frontiers...!

Just kidding.

These guys aren't just cast-offs. They WERE cast-offs, but now they're a part of our team. We couldn't be happier to have them here with us in San Francisco.

The regular season has been a rollercoaster.

It was from the start, back when we still had Todd Wellemeyer on our starting rotation. We had a tough first half in my opinion. We still had a phenomenal pitching staff, but we were somewhere lost in the land of inconsistent numbers. Sometime between all that, Aubrey Huff started putting together some mind-blowing numbers and we also called up Buster Posey from the minors, and he came out there and blew everyone away. He's a rookie? Hell yeah he's a rookie. Madison Bumgarner joined the pitching rotation.

Then our pitchers took some kind of mental-vacation because they were all GONE. Our starters were gone and our bullpen was gone too. Then September started, and they all began to come back, and our offense started to look alive. We played as a team, and that's what got us to the post season and carried us through a strong-ass September.

It's not bits and pieces anymore -- you can't even tell where the pieces are glued together anymore.

The Giants are going to the play-offs,

and they're going not as individual players who play well, but as one of the best teams in major league baseball.

Three days until it all starts, but until then, I think I'll just celebrate. It's October, and we're still playing ball, somehow I knew we would be.