Monday, August 9, 2010

Needed Perspective Courtesy of the Braves


The San Francisco Giants were among the hottest teams in baseball in July winning over 70% of there games and at one point winning 21 of 26 games. Then they strolled into the sauna that is Atlanta.

They faired better then this guy at the World Sauna Championships but the Braves showed the team that they are not a juggernaut that will win every series.

With Buster Posey cooled off the offense looked much more ordinary against the very good Braves pitching staff and the Giants pitchers just didn't have enough magic to steal wins in every game where the offense only could muster a couple of runs.

During the July hot streak the Giants would have some how managed to win 3 of out 4 instead of losing that many but luck has a way of balancing out for everybody except the damn Padres. The Giants are still in a good position just two games out of first and leading the NL wildcard race but they certainly have been humbled and made us all re-examine our expectations.

That being said the Giants are still near there high water mark in games above .500 at 14 and extrapolating their current trend gets them to 89 wins. Here is the latest graph for games above .500 with a linear trendline that I used to extrapolate the rest of the season:

To get to the 92 wins that will most likely assure them of a playoff spot they need to go 29 and 21 over the last 50 games which will be difficult but not impossible.

The Giants are a good team but as we saw this weekend they are certainly flawed and that will make it close down to the end.

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