Around the Melky Way

I hate to add to the deluge of phallus stroking over Melky Cabrera, so I won't. But I had to give this post a catchy title with a milk pun so it would get mad hits on Google. I'm also loathe to talk about Brandon Belt because it's like beating a dead baby giraffe. And I'd rather not ponder what we're going to get from Timmy in a little less than an hour.

But I feel like this moment in the Giants' season is screaming out for something, a defining moment. I've seen teams like this before. We all have. They meddle around the .500 mark for a month or two before catching their stride and riding a summertime wave into the postseason... or falling off the deep end entirely, the dog days of summer slowly, agonizingly ripping away every last shred of our pride.

April Showers Post Mortem

Reading through the fairly standard What-Have-We-Learned-After-One-Month blogs and off day stories, I was struck by this note in @stewardsfolly's Sunday postgamer:

OK, so April wound up 12-10. Not bad, considering an 0-3 start, a struggling ace, a lost closer, a projected starting second baseman who never played and Aubrey Huff’s ineffectual start and subsequent anxiety issues.

Makes you think, don't it? Wasn't this year supposed to be easier?

Hadn't Los Gigantes kicked the injury bug that plagued them throughout 2011 after successfully avoiding major trips to the trainer's table in the Year of Glory 2010?

Wasn't Aubrey Huff supposed to rebound with his typically inflated even-year production after stealing the Rally Thong back from the Hall of Fame?

Didn't Dave Groeschner find a magic potion to heal Freddy Sanchez of his San-Francisco-itis once and for all?

Catching up.

As I've said before, the hardest part of being a part-time blogger is keeping on a schedule, especially if you spread your passion across a wide swath of industries, hobbies, and pastimes. Which I do. But that's really another way of saying I'm lazy. I have no problem admitting that sometimes baseball is the furthest thing from my mind, and sometimes I don't feel like I have anything to add to the conversation.

So if you're looking for a daily dish, go to the big boys like MCC or BASG. Me, I don't really do this for page views. You won't see any Google ads on this Google site. I come here to vent, to let loose, to get a healthy dose of catharsis. If somebody actually reads what I write and likes what they read, that's just the all-natural whipped cream on top of my gelato.

With that disclaimer out of the way, let's dig into some recent news and notes before we dig into our turducken...