Sizzling start

After a winter of upheaval, NL champ Giants set early pace

It was going to happen sooner or later. The pitching would go, or the hitting, or both, and the San Francisco Giants' dream of a first week would end. That's how it always goes.

Tuesday night, it went. For the first time this season, the Giants looked like everyone else in baseball. After a week of perfection, the Giants were plunked. Their record-setting streak, 7-0, the best start ever in San Francisco, came to an end when the Padres beat them 9-4. Not even Barry Bonds could make a difference. Felipe Alou's magic touch simply wasn't.

So now what? What next for a team that no one could have predicted would start this way?

When the Giants, just eight outs from a World Series-clinching win, blew a five-run lead in Game 6 last October, you could almost hear people begin to wonder. When they rolled over for the Anaheim Angels in Game 7 a night later, the wondering became downright deafening.

Then came their offseason, a winter of uncommon squirreliness, especially for a Series team. Dusty Baker, the man who held the fractious squad together, left to manage the Cubs. Slugging second baseman Jeff Kent, one of the cogs that helped the Giants get to the Series (and, along the way, helped to fracture it), took off for more money in Houston.

Pitcher Russ Ortiz was traded to the Braves. Two-thirds of the starting outfield bolted. Third baseman David Bell signed with the Phillies.

The Giants, clearly, were a mess. They could have gone either way. Still might, in fact.

But if the first week of the season means anything -- and, with this team, we're thinking it does -- the Giants will not crumble any time soon. That's the thing about good starts. The good of a good start is that it has a way of lasting awhile, long after the good start has stopped.

It says here, in the Complete Baseball Record Book, that a team starting the season with at least eight straight wins never fails to at least crack .500. Most of the 12 National League teams that have started 8-0 have done a lot better than that. A few have made it to the World Series.

Granted, the Giants fell a little short of that mark, going 7-0. And, as we all know, hot starts aren't everything. The Indians won 11 of their first 12 last season. Then they lost 15 of their next 17. They ended up losing 88 games.

More often than not, though, a good start can make a huge difference. Just ask Syracuse. Ask Kansas.

The Giants, after the pain of the Series loss and that bumpy offseason, were supposed to start slowly. They were supposed to take some time to get to know one another.

This start has shown that the Giants' newcomers don't need the time.

Leadoff man Ray Durham, for instance, has a couple of home runs in his first week with the Giants. Jose Cruz Jr. launched two homers in the first three pitches he saw at his Pac Bell Park debut Monday, smacked another Tuesday night and now has five in the team's eight games. He's hitting .371.

Former Met Edgardo Alfonzo, a professional hitter if ever there was one, is poised to provide the critical protection in the lineup that Bonds and the Giants so badly need. And then there's newcomer Marquis Grissom, though he, like Bonds, has yet to get really untracked.

Alou, the new 67-year-old manager, is the one who must blend the new pieces with Bonds and shortstop Rich Aurilia and catcher Benito Santiago and the rest. He's the one who is expected to keep this start going and get the Giants back to the Series.

A baseball man all his life, Alou is noted for his touch with players and for his ability to bring a team together. Yet even Alou makes mistakes. Like a lot of observers, he figured this year's Giants would be less longball-oriented than last year's team. With 18 homers in the first eight games, the most in the NL, Alou, too, is starting to think a little differently.

"Right now, for the time being," he told reporters the other day, "we are a power-hitting team."

Good pitching has helped the Giants in their start, too. Starters Kirk Rueter and Jason Schmidt are tooling along with sub-1.00 ERAs. Schmidt has 14 strikeouts in 13 1/3 innings. Tim Worrell already has three saves.

The Giants are up 3 1/2 games on the Dodgers and five on the Diamondbacks after Tuesday's loss, and those are the two teams that figure to be the real competition in the NL West.

You could argue, too, that San Francisco still hasn't played its best. Bonds, who won the first batting title of his career last season, is barely hitting yet (.217, though he popped his third homer Tuesday). Grissom's hitting a mere .188, Alfonzo only .200.

But let's not fool ourselves. J.T. Snow is batting .391 through this zippy start. That's not going to keep up. Cruz is at .371. That's going to come down. And, really, the defending NL champs have had a breeze of a schedule. All of their games have been against San Diego and Milwaukee. They're a combined 5-11.

Still, a good start is a good start. And the longer it lasts, the more it becomes more than a good start. If the Giants can stay relatively hot, the start will become a few months of solid play and then a half-season and, before anyone knows it, the Giants may find themselves as World Series contenders again.

There were some, though not many, who figured that the Giants had a good enough chance to return to the Series after their winter of upheaval -- if they found their stride quickly enough.

With this start, that now seems more possible than ever.

John Donovan is a senior writer for SI.com.

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