San Francisco Giants

(I would like to say first that I originally wrote this article for another sports website, so I apologize for the glitches in formatting. The original article is here: http://sportsflecks.com/?p=895)

Tonight the Giants will play the Padres and now they will have Jose Guillen. He was traded from Kansas City today for a player to be named later and cash.

Guillen was designated for assignment by the Royals recently and he is having a great season. 

He is hitting .255 with 16 Home Runs and 62 RBI this season.

He will join a great lineup with the Giants who hope to catch the Padres out west.

This is the lineup I think will be out there for the Giants who are second in runs scored in the NL...

The San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants play the first game of a three-game set that is sure to be an epic battle between two NL West teams.

Both are locked in a battle for the top spot in the division, there's already trash talk going on, and both want a series win in a big way. The winner of this series will definitely be in the driver's seat.

There will be several things to watch for during this series and several keys for each team to come out on top, but here are 10 things to watch for over the next three days.

Before the season started most analysts would have predicted that Lyndsey Lohan would have won an Oscar, before the NL West race would come down to the Giants and the Padres, but here it is—August—and San Francisco and San Diego were all set to square off in an NL West showdown.

It seemed as if Pat Burrell had done it again, but this time, he needed help.

The San Francisco Giants trailed the Chicago Cubs in the finale of a four game series, 3-1.

Pat Burrell led off the bottom of the fourth inning with a home run to left-center field. Pablo Sandoval followed with his first home run in his last 46 games to tie the game.

Sanodoval was happy and relieved that he finally had broken his streak of 178 at bats without a home run.

The San Francisco Giants couldn't have had better timing. They completed a trade for Jose Guillen of the Kansas City Royals, just in time for the first game of a three-game set against the NL West-leading San Diego Padres.

Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports broke the news via Twitter this morning, confirming a report from ESPNDeportes.

The NL West hasn't gone the way most of the "experts" thought it would. The team leading the division, the San Diego Padres, was expected to be the bottom feeder, while the predicted leader, the Los Angeles Dodgers, sits in third place seven games back.

That sets up for a showdown in the bay area this coming weekend between the first place San Diego Padres and the second place San Francisco Giants who are just two and a half games back. The two teams have met eight times this season with the Padres coming out victorious in seven of those games.

Heading into 2010 Pablo Sandoval was a consensus top seven third baseman. That may not mean much, but given the lack of depth at the position, he was the swing point between getting a good option and getting a big risk.

While some of the risks have paid off (i.e. Adrian Beltre), Sandoval’s 2010 has been nothing short of disastrous. Looking at his line thus far will make you cringe if you are one of the unfortunate owners who selected him:

The San Francisco Giants have finally begun to start pulling away from the pack of wolves in the NL West. The Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Dodgers are falling behind in the standings, and it is fast becoming a two-horse race between the Giants and the San Diego Padres.

Yes, it was better than a loss, but it was ugly. Bruce Bochy's statement after the game was an exercise in understatement.

"We left some men on base, but after a tough trip to Atlanta, it's nice to get a win to start this home stand. We grinded hard to win that game."

The San Francisco Giants are a gritty, gutsy team, which just might be enough, but they were extremely fortunate last night against the Chicago Cubs.