The need to communicate has been relentless with the Yankee series, and a breather is definitely in order. Instead, we get a four-game series with the Giants! Oxygen - I need oxygen.

The pitching rotation gods have spared the Dodgers from seeing Jason Schmidt in this series - a considerable break. Instead, the Dodgers offer the pitcher with the better ERA in the first three games, starting tonight with Odalis Perez (2.88) vs. Kirk Reuter (5.03).

I still think the Giants are a mirage, because despite a Barry Bonds-led offense, they continued to be outscored on the season (341-352). Nevertheless, the Dodgers need a series split to leave San Francisco in first place.

In fact, thanks to Bonds, the Dodgers are facing a better offense this week than they did this past weekend. The team EQAs:

.271 New York Yankees
.272 Los Angeles Dodgers
.276 San Francisco Giants

Barry Bonds is at .472, with the next-best Giant hitters, Michael Tucker and Marquis Grissom, at .302 and .292.

Bonds is slugging .789, which means that he gets almost as many bases per at-bat swinging (0.789) as he does walking (1.000). However, another way to look at it to notice that Bonds has 26 singles and 27 extra-base hits in 147 at-bats, which means that when he swings the bat:

64 percent of the time he swings he gets zero bases
18 percent of the time he swings he gets one base
18 percent of the time he swings he gets more than one base

In other words, with four out of every five swings of the bat, Bonds gets one base or fewer.

Better folk than me have analyzed this situation, but yes, you can get away with pitching to Bonds, and no, that doesn't mean that you will.

Comparison No. 1: Marquis Grissom (243 AB, 48 singles, 26 extra-base hits)

70 percent of the time he swings he gets zero bases
20 percent of the time he swings he gets one base
11 percent of the time he swings he gets more than one base.

Comparison No. 2: Shawn Green (243 AB, 40 singles, 23 extra-base hits)

74 percent of the time he swings he gets zero bases
16 percent of the time he swings he gets one base
9 percent of the time he swings he gets more than one base.

The difference between Barry Bonds and Shawn Green, if one can over-simplify for a moment, is that in one out of every 10 swings, Bonds gets an extra-base hit when Green makes an out.

Baseball is quite a game, isn't it?

(Do I need to say that this is an Open Chat for tonight's game - or would that have been implicit?)