Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Is the Baby Giraffe Experiment Over?

PETA stand down.. I refer to the Giants' own Brandon Belt and a nickname that seems to fit better and better. He's tall, gangly and doesn't seem to have enough power to stand on his own feet for more than a few minutes.

I hate to pounce on the guy who scored the game tying run today on a sacrifice fly (and yes the Giants do lead the NL in THAT category), but how long do the Giants leave him with the big club and watch him lose confidence every day.

Belt has had over 100 at bats so far this year and he has 9, count em... nine extra base hits with a fat zero under home runs.  Tonight, you saw him make ill advised swings and provide no drive behind them flying out harmlessly, but getting deep enough once to get his sac fly.

All his fly balls of late have been opposite field, meaning his timing is off and he cannot seem to get around a major league fastball.  But what is even more troubling is that to compensate, you can see that instead of reacting to pitches, Belt has begun to guess.  As we've seen all year long, he doesn't guess right very often.

The point is, we have been waiting on this guy to become the Giants' 1st baseman of the future and right now he looks like he doesn't deserve to be in a major league uniform.  When will the Giants say, enough is enough? Go back down to Fresno and see if you can get your confidence back.

The problem with that is that the other options at 1st base are much worse.  Brett Pill is hitting a pitiful .208 while Aubrey Huff coming back from his stint on the DL for anxiety has not had a grand total of 2 hits since he came back on May 7th.

So no, the experiment is not over, but not because the Giants are convinced that Brandon Belt will become the 1st baseman of the future, but because as bad as he's doing, he's still our best option.

Laws of the Day

Giants DO lead an offensive category in the National League, with 22 sacrifice flies.  Way to play small ball Boch!

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