After five seasons of being one of the top teams in the League every year, the Mechanics suffered a surprising setback in 2010 as a very poor end to the season left them out of the playoffs for the first time in their history.

     Whatever the reason for this tough finish, the Mechanics are certainly not a team whose players will allow them to stagnate, and they certainly will be looking to reverse the troubles of 2010 from the very start.  They come into 2011 equipped with a team of veterans, many of whom have been with them since near the beginning of the League.  But as usual, having a nice core of strong players and a nice batch of strong up and comers, will give them a good deal of flexibilty with many powerful lineups at disposal.  In particular, newly crowned, IM Daniel Naroditsky, who recently scored his first GM-norm is likely to be a very strong weapon as should be the still improving NM Yian Liou. 

     But as teams often do, they have added two new up and comers at the bottom with the youngest master in history, NM Samuel Sevian, being a part of this year's campaign as well as, Uyanga Byambaa, whose marked improvement in the last year should provide the Mechanics the ability to also be one of the few teams to have a powerful triple GM lineup at their disposal.  Having so many weapons, it seems very probable that San Francisco will quickly reverse the trend of their 2010 late season collapse.