Rob Neyer Hates Your Mother, Your Dog, And Your Giants

I know it’s hard to get past the memories of the oh so awesome World Series, but, look back about, oh – two or three weeks before the playoffs began. The Giants were still trailing the Padres and the Rockies were hot on the ass of both teams. Enter ESPN’s Rob Neyer. For whatever reason, Neyer hates the Giants. He says he doesn’t, but, well, that’s about as convincing as a flying pink elephant humping the lawn ornaments across the street in my neighbors yard. I mean, honestly – he picked the Diamondbacks to have a better record than the Giants prior to the season…

Neyer continually bashed the current crop of Giants, first blasting them prior to the playoffs beginning, saying they couldn’t overcome the Padres. Hell, he probably mentioned they couldn’t overcome the Rockies as well and I wouldn’t be shocked if he said the Giants would have fallen to last place by season end, even though that was mathematically impossible. Rob clearly isn’t a big fan of logic.

Anyway, much to Neyer’s chagrin, the Giants do make the playoffs. I’m sure some place he was ramming pins into his Barry Bonds voodoo doll, but I regress. Neyer continued his ugly bias towards the Giants in the NLDS, bashing them throughout until they took the Braves out in four – he surly couldn’t continue the bashing, right? Wrong. Even as the Giants celebrated victory, Neyer continued with his bashing with backhanded compliments such as:

The better team probably won, and there’s something to be said for that. Without two of their best players (Chipper Jones and Martin Prado) missing, the Braves just couldn’t put as much talent on the field as the Giants. Not that talent always determines the outcome. But that’s the smart way to bet.

Neyer continued his ways throughout the postseason, continually spewing reasons as to why the Giants couldn’t advance further. How they were lucky to be where they were and it was only a matter of time – inevitable that they were to be put out to pasture by a real team.

It never happened. And not only did it never happen, the Giants never even faced an elimination game throughout the entire 2010 postseason. Considering all, that’s quite an accomplishment for a team that didn’t even belong in the playoffs.

So enter 2011 – after eating crow and being a-bombed with egg on his face, you’d think Neyer would at least give the Giants a bit of credit…especially given the state of the NL West.

Nope.

There’s going to be a great deal of change in the National League West.I don’t expect the Diamondbacks’ rebuilding efforts to pay off immediately and the Padres are obviously going to miss Adrian Gonzalez terribly, but it’s hard to figure where everyone else ends up.Still, the Giants might surprise a lot of people by dropping from world champions to third place, and perhaps even a not particularly competitive third place. In 2010, almost everything that could have gone well for them did go well, with a number of Giants enjoying surprisingly good seasons. If there’s reason for optimism, it’s tied almost solely to the assumption that Buster Posey and Madison Bumgarner will continue to thrive in their first full seasons. Will that be enough to balance the presumed regressions of Aubrey Huff, Andres Torres and Jonathan Sanchez, along with the departure of Juan Uribe (who’s been replaced by Miguel Tejada)?We’ll know in eight or nine months.— Rob Neyer

And while you were reading that, Rob Neyer most likely just kicked your dog, knocked over your mailbox, and left a big steaming pile of dog crap on your front door.