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No. 9 San Francisco Giants
2000 Record: 97-65 (1st NL West) The San Francisco Giants finished with the majors best record last season. They may not take that honor this year, but making the playoffs is a possibility thanks to one of baseball's best 1-2 punches. With six more home runs and 29 more steals, Barry Bonds' Hall of Fame career will reach another milestone as he becomes the first 500-500 player in baseball history. Bonds finished as the runner-up in last year's NL MVP voting to teammate Jeff Kent, who has driven in at least 100 runs for four straight seasons. Armondo Rios will be counted on take over right field after Ellis Burks signed with Cleveland over the winter. The Giants were just 24-30 without Burks last season. Defense may be an issue as well with Russ Davis likely making most of the plays at third after Bill Mueller signed with the Cubs. Livan Hernandez, Russ Ortiz, Shawn Estes, Kirk Reuter and Mark Gardner all won at least 11 games last season, and the Giants may get even more from Ortiz and Hernandez this season since both are in the prime of their career. The key may be Estes. Putting the 28-year-old In Focus shows that for each of the past three seasons, his ERA has gone down while his win total has gone up. If Estes can continue this improvement, the Giants rotation may be even better than last season.
If that happens, the Giants may be headed to the playoffs even without Burks. That's why I rank the them as the ninth-best team in baseball.
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