What a roller coaster ride this season has been for the defending World Series Champions. First couple months of the season, the SF Giants were Kings of winning close games. Their stellar pitching from last year (3.36 ERA in 2010), hard as it may be to believe has been even better this year (3.13 ERA till end of August 2011). That was followed by an average month of July and then an abysmal August; a month that had futility of historic proportions.So, why the hiccup? Why are their playoff hopes as defending Champions hanging off a cliff entering the last month of the regular season? The short and easy answer: abysmally weak offense.
Digging a little deeper though, I think the reason for their downfall could be a mixture of three different (yet related) factors:
1. Injuries
Yes. Every team is affected by injuries some time or the other and it is lame, borderline hypocritical and totally unfair to other teams that also have injury issues.
But as the cliche goes, IT IS WHAT IT IS! Its no secret that the Giants offense has been too top heavy with Buster Posey, Aubrey Huff and Freddy Sanchez (and Pablo Sandoval this season) as the core, surrounded by streaky role players. If you lose two of the three most important guys from last year, it's definitely a deep hole to recover from. Not to mention that the other one has been in a season long "slump".
