Irrelevant baseball rant

The Giants lost two consecutive games to the irrelevant Expos, at home, by scores of 7 to 2. What's that about? Last year around this time, when the team was clawing toward first place and, no matter what it did, seemed like it never got closer than 1 1/2 games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks, I went to a game. The Giants performed enough baserunning errors and left enough men on base that they lost the game, and I said to myself, "This team is just a second-place team." This year I said that to myself a month ago; now they're a third-place team, 11 1/2 games back and 4 1/2 games back in the wild card race. (They "won" the wild card race last year and were defeated in the first playoff round by the Mets, so it was all for naught.)

This was supposed to be the make-or-break year. Last year of Jeff Kent's contract, last year of Dusty Baker's. Though Kent has come through with an excellent season, Barry Bonds has been playing hurt for the last six weeks, and is now a liability in left field. Speedsters Kenny Loften, acquired too late in a July trade, and Tom Goodwin, a plucky rookie who would have become the everyday left fielder if not for Bonds' bat, haven't made much of a difference. It doesn't look good for the Giants.