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Giants Must Right Ship At Home

I know we're not even to June yet, and the year is still very young, but the way the Giants have played over the last 7-10 days has raised some red flags. They've lost 6 of their last 7 games and have lost some ground on the rest of the division.

The tail-spin strangely coincided with the return of Freddy Sanchez, which is a surprise because so many people were hoping he would give the offense a shot in the arm. The Giants have lost all five games that they've played with Sanchez in the lineup, and have scored just 9 runs in that span (7 of those came in 1 game though). Not placing the blame on Sanchez at all, but he hasn't really done his part since his return, and, as I mentioned in the last post, he doesn't have a bunch of room for error. The Giants' second basemen collected just 1 hit over the weekend series in Oakland and has been a big part of the black hole that is the top of the Giants batting order. Aaron Rowand has been hideous since returning from the DL as well, and it's caused Bruce Bochy to finally move him out of the leadoff spot in favor of Andres Torres. It's not just Rowand and Sanchez though. Pablo Sandoval has continued to struggle and isn't playing nearly up to his capability. As a matter of fact, the only guys who can say they are doing their part offensively at the moment are Aubrey Huff and Andres Torres and it's not like those 2 are tearing the cover off the ball either. Coming into the year, the Giants were a team that would have to do the little things like move runners over, hit the sacrifice fly and get bunts down, and their struggling to do even that. I have no problem with lineup overhauls in situations like this and I hope Bruce Bochy is thinking along the same lines.

Things really hit rock bottom this weekend I think though. I mean, the A's have some decent arms and all, but there is no excuse for scoring just 1 run in a 3-game set, I don't care who the opposing team is throwing at you. Two more brilliant starting performances, one by Jonathan Sanchez and one by Matt Cain, ended up in losses because of the piss-poor fundamental baseball. Cain went 8 strong on Saturday, allowing just 6 baserunners all day and dropping his era back into the 2's, but his record fell to 2-4. Sanchez now has the same record as Cain after his 7 inning, 2-hit outing on Sunday afternoon. If they keep this up, all the Giants starters are going to have losing records despite ridiculous era's by the end of the year, and regardless of what the pitchers say, it's going to start taking a toll on them sooner or later. I mean, how many 8 inning shutouts does it take to get a win? I think now is the time to roll with Buster Posey. The Giants need an offensive boost, and Posey has the potential to be so much more than that for them right now. With Mark DeRosa still out, Posey has a spot in the lineup where he could play everyday and the situation now just seems right at the moment. There are just too many factors that support calling up Buster right now, on May 25th 2010. Now is the time for Buster Posey to come and attempt to save the day.

Up Next: Speaking of call-ups, the spotlight will be on Todd Wellemeyer tonight as he goes against the Washington Nationals and former Giant Livan Hernandez. It could be Wellemeyer's last chance to prove his value to the Giants rotation, as there has been plenty of talk of replacing him with Fresno's Eric Hacker. Something tells me that if Wellemeyer causes the Giants to continue their losing streak tonight, we won't be seeing him starting again here anytime soon! We here at the Giants Baseball Blog also would like to advise our readers to use gottapark.com to make parking at Giants games easy!

Comments

hitnrun said…
Trevor, Sabean wants to lose some more games before he admits that it may be time to bring up Posey. I doubt that Fred Sanchez's return has anything to do with the losing streak, as this has been a total lineup collapse, and it looks like the "offensive" lineup was again greatly over-estimated. I also would have not left Wellemeyer in the rotation, but if they continue to lose, the starters will not matter anyway, as they are all getting no run support.
5:41 PM
Schruender said…
Sanchez finally turned it on last night. I think Posey is up by the end of the weekend!
4:02 PM
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