One Man Gang?

136 games in, and we may get a slice of what the NL West could have been like this season.

Word on the street is that Barry Bonds, who’s been working in a little BP, may be activated from the DL, possibly as early as any day now.  Bonds, of course, has yet to take a swing this season, missing out on what has been a humdinger of a race to win the NL West by default. And without anyone really noticing (myself included), the Giants are suddenly only 5 games behind the Padres, who are rolling along at a blistering .500 pace. With this literally being anybody’s division (mostly in the sense of, who’d go out of their way to claim it?), all of a sudden, the Giants, after spending most of the season as nondescript as possible, could be heading for the playoffs.

And if it happens, it would be hard to imagine Barry not being the guy who got them over the hump.

This is a rare chance to see how valuable a guy truly is. When you can see the before and after effects he has with his team. Pujols, for example, could easily get my vote for MVP this season (if for no other that my brother Brian – bk.mlblogs.com – would kill me if I didn’t). But we never got a real chance to see the shambles the Cards might have been without him. We can speculate that they might have been lousy without their best player. Or maybe think, “Well, the team’s deep, so they’d be good, but not great.” Heck, maybe someone might theorize that the rest of the team would pull together, So Taguchi would play outta his skull and Carpenter would do the rest, therefore the team would be even better without Albert. It’s an absolutely asinine argument, but somebody would spout it. We’d only know for sure, though, the effects of Pujols’ absence if he wasn’t around, and this is what we’ve witnessed all season with Bonds.

Granted, it’s a murky proposition, considering the Giants would have only been so good even if he played all season. They’re not an incredible team either way. But with Bonds around, they may have stood head and shoulders above the rest of the West (Hey, small achievements still count). And if they suddenly become a respectable team, even reasonably competitive, it doesn’t Magnum P.I. to solve the mystery of the improbably playoff bound Giants.

You may not like the guy. Get in line. Frankly, nobody likes the guy. And the Balco stuff will hang over the rest of his legacy. The words “Barry” and “juice” are connected like PB and J. But there ain’t a guy mixed up in any of this mess, Raffy, Giambi, Sosa, maybe even Big Mac, that’s mentioned so often as having the ability to deliver a win on his own. It’s a seriously impressive achievement, when you consider how few, if any, opportunities there are to take over a baseball game. People believe he can do it. Regularly. And if he does it fresh off a rehab stint, he’ll be accomplishing more at 70% than 99% of the league could dream about at 170%.