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Giants hoping for some home healing

The 2015 season started just like the 2014 postseason ended, with Madison Bumgarner leading the squad over Arizona. However, since that opening day win, the Giants are just 2-4, and are hoping that coming home will cure some of their woes.

One of the issues that have haunted this team early have been nagging injuries. On the plus side, they did finally get Brandon Belt back for the first time since opening day on Sunday, however Casey McGehee went down with a knee strain on Saturday, so the Giants still won't be at full strength for Monday's opener. What the Giants need to do on this homestand is get their guys back. Hopefully Belt is back for good now, and McGehee's knee bruise will keep him down no more than another game or two, but there hasn't been much chatter on Hunter Pence, who was striving to be ready by the end of the team's first homestand, but that doesn't appear likely at this point. At the very least though, they should have their opening day lineup back in-tact at least within a few days. That is, of course, if they avoid anyone else going down which at this point, nothing would surprise me.

Aoki .400/.455/.467 Wk. 1
Now, in terms of assessing the team's performance after that first road trip, obviously things could have gone better than 3-4, but based on how poorly the team's starting pitching continues to look, they're lucky it's not worse. 2 of those losses were 1-run games too, which easily could have gone the other way and had them at 5-2 coming into Monday's home opener, but that's baseball. The bats looked pretty good in Arizona, but definitely cooled off in San Diego, where they only scraped together 7 runs over the 4-game set. Getting on the board early needs to be a priority for them to take some pressure off the starters right now. Unfortunately, not too many guys are swinging a hot bat right now and one of the guys that was off to a nice start, McGehee, won't be out there today. Nori Aoki (.400) has been a stud in the leadoff spot and Buster Posey and Angel Pagan are each north of .290, but everyone else in that lineup is down around .200. I'd like to see Joe Panik get hot again, as he's been quiet since his 3-hit opener, plus Brandon Belt needs to make his presence felt ASAP. Without Pence out there, the Giants middle part of their order is much less imposing, so each of those guys need to step it up until Hunter gets back.

I think coming home will be a nice boost for the club. They are facing a team off to a great start in Colorado, but Chris Heston is coming off a brilliant outing in Arizona and I think he's ready for his Home Opening assignment and hopefully those bats can get a shot in the arm back in front of their home crowd. I know things haven't started out terrifically, and people were plenty skeptical of the team coming in already, but all it's gonna take is them pitching up to their capabilities and getting a few more guys going in that lineup for them to shift this thing into the proper direction. Again, a few different bounces this last week and we're looking at a 5-2 start.

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