SFGiants Still In the Shadows

        The Giants are at it again. Seems like the AllStar break is their key time to either go on a spurt or fold it in. This year-not even an ‘even’ year- the ‘Jints’ must have decided it’s finally time to give Mgr. Bruce that big send-off instead of playing like one of the worst teams in baseball for the third year in a row.   The Giants have called upon their   remaining ‘core’ players from their World  Series run (2010-2014) to summon up and act on their old mantra, ‘When the going gets tough, The Giants go to the Juice,’ or so it would seem based on   empirical evidence over the past two decades since a guy named Barry Lamar Bonds got it all started in the town that gave us BALCO,  PEDs, Victor Conte and more KNOWN ‘users’ than any team during that time period.
Then, like magic, all of a sudden the Jints started performing back to their early 2016 pace, when they had the best record in the league (the Giants in late June and July have won an incredible 90% of  their games  with approximately the same people they were losing  over 200 games with over the past two and a half seasons – a period during which they had given Bochy an overall losing record in his 13 years as manager (nobody talks about it but he had more losses than wins with the Giants  until this latest, unlikely, crazy streak.)
So, the team that had to resort to no name outfielders (Conor Joe?)  who had never played  a game in the majors to open the season, have run thru a myriad of people to try to fill those spots until finally settling on, not a big trade name, but, as in the World Series years, players with no productive history, other than, perhaps , having a famous last name .  No, it hasn’t been the core guys Posey, Crawford, Belt and Panic but, rather, mid-career outcasts named Dickerson, Donovan, and Yaztrzemski who have come on to do most of the offensive ‘damage ‘ that saw the giants win 25 of their last  30 games. (Then, there are the young pitchers suddenly pitching above their heads that we can discuss in a future update.)
Most teams will make trades for known entities. The Giants, not known as great traders despite their bloated payroll,  will pick up whomever they can – often at the expense of their own  minor leaguer prospects .  Not only that, the Giants will keep around a guy like ‘Panda’ Sandoval that no other team wanted but somehow thrives with the Giants, and, perhaps, plays an even bigger role in the back room shenanigans. (Sandoval was instrumental in the Giants acquiring old buddies