I've been remiss about blogging -- a lot has been going on, both in baseball and in the real world, so I hope you'll forgive me.
My Giants have seen injury, panic and stupidity take two pitchers, a veteran first baseman, and one of our big hitters in the last few weeks. Brian Wilson went out for the season with a shoulder injury that required surgery. So much for our closer. That sent Bochy into baseball nerd-mode at the end of every game, closing out games by committee. Pitchers were brought in to face one batter, and then pulled for another bullpenner to face the next two or three. That really hasn't worked out so well, as the team went on a losing streak at home.
Two weeks ago, Aubrey Huff, like Wilson, a goofball veteran of the 2010 World Series team famous for his "rally thong," left the team during a road trip to New York. He just got on a plane and left, first saying it was a family emergency, and then later admitting that he was having a panic attack. Old baseball guys call minor panic attacks "the yips" and that's what they were calling this at first. But the more information that came out about this the more serious it looked. The Saturday game was rained out and rescheduled for a double-header the next day, and Aubrey, stuck in his hotel room, freaked out. His words, not mine.
Huff described a full-on eight-hour panic attack, with shallow breathing, heart racing, claustrophobia, the works. Not knowing what was happening, he just got on a plane home to Florida, and that was where it cleared up after a while. He started seeing a shrink and I guess that helped because he came back to the team this past Monday, and pinch-hit for Zito against the Dodgers. He swung at the first pitch, popped up, and was out.
And that would be enough for the Giants but we don't do anything little, including fail. Pablo Sandoval broke his hamate bone in one of his hands during an at-bat against the Brewers. If you were paying attention last year, you'd know that Sandoval broke the same bone in the opposite hand this time last year and it required surgery and it took him out of the season for six weeks, a total of 41 games. Same thing this year as well. We won't see the Panda again until mid-June if we're lucky, and who knows how well he'll hit by then. He had a few homers and was hitting in the mid-300s when this happened, a significant chunk of our offense.
And, finally, yesterday ESPN reported that one of the guys we relied upon to take over for the injured Brian Wilson, Guillermo Mota, another 2010 veteran bullpenner, got himself suspended for 100 games for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. Of all the things a player can do to screw up a career, this is the least understandable. Mota doesn't pitch often enough or long enough to justify this crap. And the Giants have a long, sordid history with drug use on the team. One of the great pleasures of 2010 as a fan was that we won the World Series without Barry Bonds, and none of the players looked particularly juiced. Mota's suspension should be treated by the team as grounds for dismissal, or at least bump him down to the minors and let him rot. He isn't worth the p.r. problem.
The rest of baseball is going strong. Tonight, Josh Hamilton, the troubled outfielder for the Texas Rangers, became one of only sixteen players ever to hit four home runs in a single game. That's the hitting equivalent of a perfect game or a no-hitter. Two-homer games are special. Three-homer games are outrageous. A four-homer game is historic. It was so special, that Hamilton drew a standing ovation from the crowd -- in Baltimore.
