Giants Go Ahead and Pack it in for the Season

Shed a tear for this beautiful man.

About 30 minutes before game time last night, I suddenly realized, "Oh yeah, I need to do a write-up about Monday's game." Then it dawned on me that I'd have to write about Tim Lincecum having perhaps the worst start of his career while the Giants were two-hit by a less-than-replacement pitcher with an ERA of over 6.00. So I went back to whatever I was doing instead (nothing).

Last night, the Giants unloaded the big guns for two entire runs. Sadly, the Cubs scored five. The Giants actually had ten hits, but on three (THREE!) separate occasions, Carlos Beltran stranded them to end the inning. Carlos Beltran doesn't want to be on this team, and that kind of hurts, but you can't really blame him. He thought he was going to the playoffs. Shame about that.

The Diamondbacks are six games in first place, and have a three game series with the Giants this weekend. It's not quite the end of the road for the Giants just yet, but it likely will be come Monday. Sometime between Saturday night and the beginning of the game yesterday, I resigned myself to acknowledging that the Giants aren't going to make the playoffs, and that it's been one hell of a season, and that I still love these guys and stranger things have happened, and that 2012 can only get better by default. It helped last night's game go down a lot smoother. I'll still be watching, cheering, recapping, tweeting, and grumbling about things, but the sense of "WE CAN DO THIS" is winding down. They can't do this, actually. Not these guys. The Diamondbacks are unstoppable, or at least they're unstoppable until the first round of playoffs, when they get unscrupulously manhandled by the Braves, Brewers, or Phillies.

Next year, fellas. Next year.