No, we haven't any comments, snide or otherwise, about the pending Presidential, Senate and House election results and the grim political and legal possibilities lying ahead. Yet.
This is about the most local of elections-- one contained solely within these virtual pages, and one that promises not to shove your quality of life more than a millimeter or so off Comfort Central.
In other words, we've updated our "Greatest Players in San Francisco Giants History" page with 2020 data. While several of our favorites had good seasons and the team overall was both fun and frustrating to follow, little progress was made on the historic front. This can be expected from a pandemic-shortened season of only sixty games, of course. As to whether 2020 counts as a "real" season or not, of course it does; don't be silly. You play the game with what you have. And yes, that means the Los Angeles Dodgers are legitimate World Series champions, overcoming their 32-year drought, though it's not like we devoted a whole page or anything to congratulating 'em.
Brandon Belt had a fine year-- 2 WAR in 50 games is MVP-candidate-level play-- and improved his position to 17th overall, tied with Jack Clark. Brandon Crawford, already the top SF shortstop, padded his lead with a good season, certainly an improvement from the previous year. Those two stalwarts are the only current roster members on the all-time list.
We expanded the candidate pool much more so than we normally would, adding 16 players to the mix. Five of them are starting pitchers and six are relievers. Meanwhile, only two players from recent years dropped off the radar-- Dereck Rodriguez and Andrew Suarez. So the total grew from 221 to 235, though we expect relatively few of the 2020 arrivals will last the requisite three years. Let's put it this way-- if more than half of them do, we'll remember 2020 as bringing a bumper crop of new Giants along with the coronavirus, the loss of four legendary Hall of Fame players, and a train wreck of an election.
