Last year at this time the San Francisco Giants were still basking in the glory of their World Series title a few months prior, with Showtime video camera's following the team around to highlight their quirky, contagious personalities for the masses to see.
This year the distractions are gone, and skipper Bruce Bochy is ready to get down to business. He echoed that to his players in a team meeting at their first full squad workout on Friday:
"It's something we talked about," said Bochy, who met with the players for 20 minutes before they took the field for the first full-squad workout of the spring. "We had our distractions last year. They earned that. That goes with winning the World Series. I think we can do a better job with pregame preparation. That was a subject that we covered today."
Bochy said that the meeting consisted of a lot of introductions with all the new faces in the crowd, but also that they talked about being more prepared in all facets of the game:
"We talked about things we wanted to accomplish," he said. "We've got to get better. You look at last season, and I thought about it quite a bit ... Sure, you look at the offense, but there were other facets of the game we've got to get better at. We've got to get away from being too one-dimensional."
They'll have eight more days to work out some kinks before the team's first Cactus League game next Saturday against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
For more on the Giants, please check out McCovey Chronicles.