GIANT THREATS

By ROSS NEWHAN

Sept. 19, 2000 12 AM PT

Maybe the manager is part mountain man, having simply traded the horse for a custom motorcycle.

“I like to hunt and fish as if I can’t go to the store and buy my food,” Dusty Baker was saying in San Diego on the weekend as his San Francisco Giants continued their march toward a National League West title. “A hungry man will do a lot better work than the man who has plenty.”

Baker doesn’t have to worry about his blue-collar Giants, who went home Sunday with the best record in baseball, a 9 1/2-game lead in the West and a hunger that won’t be satiated simply by getting to the playoffs.

“That was ‘97,” pitcher Shawn Estes said. “We were just happy to get to the playoffs then, but we don’t want to be known as that kind of team now. We want to be known as a team driven to get to the World Series and to win it.”

Can they?

Well, said Baker, “In my mind, we still haven’t played our total game where everybody is hot at the same time. Maybe that never happens, but then maybe we’re getting close. I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but I see the playoffs being more wide open than they’ve been in years, and I think we can play with anybody. This is the deepest, most consistent and most well-rounded pitching we’ve ever had, and [the playoffs] almost always come down to who’s getting the best pitching, the most two-out hits.”

The Giants are second in the league in pitching, second in hitting, second in fielding. They have nine players with 10 or more home runs, five starting pitchers with 10 or more wins.

Their hunger and adrenaline are stoked by a packed PacBell Park for every home game--”the town is buzzing like I’ve never seen it,” Baker said--and their resolve is such that they were undeterred by a seven-game losing streak in April, an eight-game losing streak in May and the nine games by which they trailed Arizona on May 28. Or as Baker said: “They never panicked, and that was huge.”

Said a National League scout, doing advance work for the playoffs: “What I like best about the Giants is that they are a team. That’s t-e-a-m. They do all the little things, and they don’t beat themselves.”

At a blistering 67-34 since that last nine-game deficit, the Giants went home Sunday night needing six wins for 95, which would give them an average of 90 over the last four years, the first time in more than 35 years they have sustained that level.

In a transient era of big payrolls, the Giants have sustained their core with a payroll that has been the division’s lowest--a core in which Barry Bonds may be the only recognized superstar but a core whose talent has long been underestimated in a rush to credit Baker’s magic and mirrors for those 90 annual wins.

Talk about hunger and motivation.

“Everywhere we go people say we’re a bunch of overachievers,” first baseman J.T. Snow said. “It’s time for people to acknowledge that the Giants have a bunch of good players.

“Dusty is the captain of the ship. He keeps it on course. He makes it fun to come to the park. But there’s only so much a manager can do, only so many strings he can pull. It all comes down to the players, and we have to be doing something right. Look at our record over the last four years. We’re not puppets.”

No, more of a t-e-a-m.

“There’s Barry, of course, but we basically have a bunch of guys who don’t draw much attention to themselves,” Snow said. “We’ve been together for three or four years now and know what’s expected, what the other guy can do. Everybody fits the puzzle. I’ve never been on a team with better chemistry or has done a better job of staying on an even keel. It’s been the same team with the same approach and preparation from Game 1.”

Hurt by injuries, the Giants finished 12 games behind Arizona last year but made no significant forays into the trade or free-agent markets--or, at least, none considered significant at the time.

“We were one of the few teams that didn’t make changes,” Baker said. “We liked what we had. Sometimes the best trades are the ones you don’t make. The key for us was health.”

Could closer Robb Nen come back from major elbow surgery? Could right fielder Ellis Burks keep his knees sound? Could Estes overcome a series of arm ailments to regain his 19-win form of ‘97?

The answers have been resounding. Nen has 37 saves and says he has never thrown the ball better over a longer period. Burks is batting .356 with 23 homers and 88 runs batted in. Estes is 15-4 as ace of a rotation in which Livan Hernandez also has 15 wins, Russ Ortiz has 12, Mark Gardner 11 and Kirk Rueter 10, the foundation of a pitching staff whose earned-run average in 42 games since the All-Star break is barely over 3.00, the best in baseball.

Estes, Nen and Burks were critical to the Giants’ success, of course, but there were other pivotal developments: catcher Bobby Estalella came from Philadelphia in a sleeper of a winter trade to provide stability behind the plate and has combined with veteran Doug Mirabelli to drive in almost 75 runs; Dominican right-hander Felix Rodriguez matured into an invaluable setup man, and a rebuilt and bargain bench that includes home-grown Armando Rios, Felipe Crespo, Calvin Murray and Ramon Martinez has been dynamite.

Then there are Bonds and second baseman Jeff Kent, who will be hard to separate in voting for the NL’s most valuable player award.

Bonds may hit 50 homers for the first time in his career, while Kent has been the team’s leading run producer and, on Sunday, with his 474th RBI since 1997, passed Rogers Hornsby for the highest four-year total by a second baseman, an obscure but long-held record that Kent dismissed.

“I guess I’ll go home and celebrate with a bottle of champagne,” he said facetiously. “Maybe I’ll have two. I mean, it’s Rogers, not Roger, isn’t it?”

All of the Giants are about to shower in champagne. Baker suggests this is his best team since ‘93, when the Giants won 103 games and finished second to then-Western rival Atlanta. They are doing it in ’00 with a $55-million payroll that is about $45 million less than the Dodgers’, for instance, and about $15 million less than the Diamondbacks’.

Assistant General Manager Ned Colletti acknowledged that the new park has significantly improved the revenue stream, but “we still can’t afford the $5-million mistake. We can’t afford a player with a history of injuries or a guy who could be a problem in the clubhouse. We have to follow a diligent and careful process. Fortunately, our situation is unique in the game. Players like our city, organization, manager and the opportunity to compete every year, so that in some cases they might be willing to sign a contract that the market would consider under value.”

Although the average major league salary is almost $2 million, the Giants have 12 players earning less than $1 million. However, it will be hard keeping the 2001 payroll under the budgeted $65 million because the Giants are already committed to paying 11 players $43 million next year, including Nen, Ortiz, Rueter, Hernandez and center fielder Marvin Benard, who have all signed multiyear extensions since the start of spring training.

“We’ve tried to stay ahead of the market,” Colletti said. “We’ve tried to be early rather than late in highlighting the players we want to retain, and we’d like to keep this whole group together as we go forward. Most of the pitching is not even in its prime yet, and most of the position players are in their early 30s or younger.”

Of course, there’s a very key member of the current group who hasn’t received an extension and will be widely coveted if he isn’t compensated.

That’s Baker, who is being paid a division-low $700,000, wisely put the Giants’ spring offer of two years at $2.4 million on hold and figures to be in position to demand a Joe Torre-comparable package of $3 million per year.

Baker is a Bay Area icon and it would be as tough for him to leave as it would be for the Giants to lose him.

Where is this cycle-driving mountain man going to find better fishing and hunting?

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

MEASURING UP

BEST RECORDS IN BASEBALL

San Francisco: 89-60, .597

Chicago White Sox: 88-61, .591

Atlanta: 89-61, .593

St. Louis: 89-61, .593

New York Yankees: 85-63, .574

Note: Records through Monday, statistics through Sunday

GIANTS’ RANK IN TEAM CATEGORIES