Photo credit: @SportsTechie17

By Jeremy Harness

The Giants are used to going into seasons with great expectations. Winning rings will do that for you.

However, this ain’t one of those years.

With new general manager Farhan Zaidi trying to figure out how to get rid of the bad contracts handed out by his immediate predecessor while also pondering how to get this floundering team back on track, the Giants are clearly in a rebuilding mode this season.

To add to the drama was the extremely-unfortunate incident that involved team CEO-president Larry Baer, who earlier this month was caught on video angrily grabbing a cell phone from his wife’s hands and subsequently knocking her to the ground.

The Giants have since suspended Baer without pay until July 1.

What makes this really sad, particularly for Giants fans, is the fact that 2019 will mark manager Bruce Bochy’s last season as a major-league skipper.

Meanwhile, the other teams in the National League West have improved, particularly the San Diego Padres, especially with their offseason acquisition of highly-coveted free-agent infielder Manny Machado, who helped the Dodgers make a run to the World Series a season ago.

San Diego also has a highly-touted rookie in Fernando Tatis, Jr., who officially made the team out of spring training.

The Colorado Rockies made sure to lock up their star player in Nolan Arenado, who just so happens to be a notorious Giant-killer, and he will team up with budding stars Trevor Story and Charlie Blackmon and the rest of a Colorado team that made a serious run at the playoffs in 2018.

Here’s what all of this means: Expect the Giants to take a beating at the hands of their own division – a division that they themselves overcame to win three World Series rings in five seasons not too long ago – in a way that is similar to the beatdown that Muhammad Ali took at the hands of Larry Holmes toward the end of his great boxing career.