Giants Looking for Answers at the Plate

The Giants just got swept at home by the first place Padres, and it was ugly on so many levels.  The Giants scratched out only one hit and lost 1-0, wasting a masterful performance by Jonathan Sanchez, who allowed one run over eight innings.  Sanchez is now 2-3 with a 2.66 ERA.

I’d feel sorrier for Sanchez if the Royals’ Zack Greinke wasn’t 1-4 with a 2.73 ERA.  Things can always be worse, I guess.

I saw what I thought was an amusing twitter post by Andrew Baggarly of the San Jose Mercury News about how GM Brian Sabean, manager Bruce Bochy and hitting coach Hensley “Bam Bam” Muelens met after the game to discuss “options.”  What I find amusing is that the real cause of the Giants’ failure to hit — Sabean’s insistence on paying too much money for over-the-hill injury-prone veterans like Mark DeRosa, Aubrey Huff and Freddie Sanchez — was almost certainly not discussed.  Instead, there were probably a lot of veiled and not-so-veiled references to Hensley Muelens’ job security.  That’s baseball.

Aubrey Huff has actually hit pretty well so far, but the point remains just as valid.  If you give relatively big money to three players like Mark DeRosa, Aubrey Huff and Freddie Sanchez, you are going to have substantial injury problems from at least one of them, almost as surely as night follows day.

After blowing a big series like this to the Padres, (who BTW seem to be a team much more of the type the Giants need to be to make the post-season, i.e. a team that relies on pitching and scratch out just enough runs to win; the Friars can steal a base, score runners from third with less than two outs, and get a timely hit, all skills the Giants have yet to show this season) the Giants management may well decide that it’s a good time to shake things up in some way.

Unfortunately, the team doesn’t have a lot of options, mainly for the reasons described above.  The team can’t will the geezers to get young again.  At the margins, the Gints could put Mark DeRosa on the DL and call up Buster Posey or Joe Borchard.  The problem with calling up Posey, who now has a 1.026 OPS at AAA Fresno, is that what the Giants really need is a leftfielder who can hit.

The Giants could, in theory, call up Posey, play him at first and move Aubrey Huff to left field.  Huff has played roughly 240 games in the corner outfield positions in his major league career, which is almost certainly 240 more games than Posey has played in the outfield as a professional.  Unfortunately, Huff hasn’t played even one game in the outfield since 2006, which suggests he may not be able to play out there at all anymore.

The Gints could also demote John Bowker and call up Joe Borchard or Posey.  Bowker has had limited playing time this year, but that’s mainly because he’s played so poorly.

After today’s 0-for-3, Bowker is hitting .207 with a .622 OPS.  Meanwhile, down in Fresno outfielder Borchard is hitting .360 with a 1.o87 OPS.  The switch seems like a no-brainer based on these numbers.

Bowker has one minor league option left, so sending Bowker down for some consistent at-bats and calling up Borchard to see if he can continue his hot hitting in San Francisco makes a lot of sense.  I still like Bowker as a player, but he’s running out of chances to establish himself as a major league player before he hits age 27.