San Francisco Giants

With Game 1 of their National League Division Series matchup against the Cincinnati Reds coming on Saturday, the NL West champion San Francisco Giants have announced their 25-man roster, according to the San Jose Mercury News' Alex Pavlovic. 

The San Francisco Giants have been known for their pitching for a long time. But this year, the staff has regressed a bit.

All five pitchers have gone through rough patches this year, some longer than others. Even Matt Cain, he of the perfect game, 15-5 record and 2.86 ERA, has had his struggles. Madison Bumgarner has too, and Tim Lincecum has had a rough year overall.

Barry Zito has given the San Francisco Giants fans nothing short of 126 million reasons to hate him.

As excited as the Giants' organization and fanbase had been to get the former Cy Young Award winner (can you believe he used to be that good?), San Francisco quickly came to despise the pitcher who all but robbed the bank of one of baseball’s most storied franchises.

Buster Posey has been a grinder for the San Francisco Giants this season, and a player who deserves the National League MVP Award.

Since he broke into the big leagues in 2010, where he batted .305/.357/.505 and ran away with the Rookie of the Year Award, Posey has been an instrumental part of the Giants lineup.

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article arguing that San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy was wrong to play catcher Hector Sanchez over Brandon Belt. I based my argument on Belt's superior minor and major league statistics as well his higher prospect pedigree, according to publications like Baseball America and prospect experts like Keith Law of ESPN.

Five years ago on Aug. 7, Barry Bonds hit home run No. 756 for his career, taking over baseball's all-time home run record from Hank Aaron. 

According to Andrew Baggerly of CSN Bay Area, Pablo Sandoval will return to the San Francisco Giants' infield sometime in the middle of next week.

Bruce Bochy said trainers tell him Pablo Sandoval is a week away from activation. He's eligible Thursday.

June 13 was a perfect night for Matt Cain and the San Francisco Giants.

Cain tossed the first perfect game in team history, retiring all 27 Houston Astros hitters in order and striking out 14 of them. Giants fans went ballistic when first baseman Brandon Belt caught the final out, and it marked yet another special moment in Giants history.

However, there haven't been any special moments for Cain since the perfect game.

Leadership is a very difficult thing to write about because it cannot be measured or quantified.

That doesn't mean that it isn't significant, or that it doesn't exist.

When the San Francisco Giants acquired Hunter Pence just before this year's trade deadline, they took the first step toward repeating a horrible mistake. The second step of that process is already looking likely: there's talk of signing Pence to a long-term deal.