To the Editors:
Being an avid follower of the San Francisco Giants, I was a bit confused to find that D.J. Gelner included them in his list of the National League's losers of the off-season (The Dartmouth, Feb. 23). Does he know something I don't? And how the hell could he list the Los Angeles Dodgers as winners? Needless to say, I was quite curious to know why he held this opinion.
I was disappointed, however, at the lack of anything resembling reason in Gelner's assessment of the Giants' off-season. First of all, he only has three complaints about the Giants as they enter spring training: 1) J.T. Snow may hit second, 2) they have a questionable rotation behind Cy Young-winner Jason Schmidt and 3) Barry Bonds will be distracted by personal issues involving the legal situation of his trainer.
Now, if we travel back just one year, what do we find? We find a Giants team for which J.T. Snow took the majority of his at-bats in the 2-hole (sporting a stellar .413 on-base percentage in that spot), a team for which 80 of its 161 games were started by either rookie or second year pitchers and a team for which Barry Bonds twice spent time on the bereavement list dealing with the death of his father. We also find that the Giants won 100 games, and its division by over 15 games. Now, it seems that all three of Gelner's "reasons" for the Giants' poor off-season standing were present throughout last season. And last season went rather well for the most part, despite the unfortunate first-round playoff loss to the eventual World Series champions ,the Florida Marlins.
It is obvious that Gelner has his head stuck in one of the few remaining snow banks around campus. Maybe if he thought to remove it, he would realize that the Giants have cut their payroll by $10 to 15 million this off-season without sacrificing their ability to be competitive, and possibly frontrunners, in the unspectacular NL West. If anything, he could have pointed out the real question marks for the Giants this coming year, which are NeifiPerez at shortstop and Robb Nen coming back from something close to 34 shoulder surgeries over the past 16 months. Yet, such reason is nowhere to be found. I mean, honestly, the Dodgers?
