Last season I kept telling whoever would listen that the SF Giants season was going to hinge on one player in light of the Buster Posey injury. My proclamation was that as he goes the Giants will go. They needed to fill the formula of having at least 3 hot bats leading the team to make a play-off run like they did in 2010. I was under the belief that with the pitching staff that the Giants were rolling out it was just going to take one spark and that spark needed to come from rookie 1B/LF Brandon Belt. The Giants needed that one push to get them in the play-offs, and we all know that had they gotten there anything could've happened, like in 2010.
So what happened?
It's easy to simply look at Brandon Belt and say I was right. He never lived up to expectations, he under performed and therefore the Giants went no where. His stats definitely would back that up; 9 HR, 18 RBI, .225 AVG, .306 OBP and 57 SO. Not a threatening line to say the least and definitely not a player sparking or leading a team to the play-offs.
So why would I hinge so much on one player? Especially a rookie? And, especially on a defending champion team? The answer is more simple than it may seem; there was no where else to look. Pablo Sandoval was essentially filling the Posey void in the line-up and later in the year Beltran was the gap filler for the void Huff had left (even though Huff hadn't gone anywhere and was actually still in the starting line-up). That left a need for one more bat, one more player to give the Giants a play-off birth. In 2010 it came from a multitude of players (I.e. Uribe, Renteria, Ross) but in 2011 we were waiting around for a third bat to emerge and it never did. Belt made the most sense because his ceiling is so high as a prospect; projected to be a power hitting first baseman who can hit for avg, run the bases and field at a gold glove level.
The problem was consistency, not just from Belt but from the Giants brass as well. Belt was sent back down to the minors 137 times (or so it felt like it), he was pulled back up to the big leagues only to ride the bench a lot and pinch hit occasionally, or enter as a defensive substitution. This inconsistency lead to a small sample size at the plate and early on that sample was not impressive. Consider this though; Belt only played in 63 games with 187 at-bats, hardly enough of a sample to know what he really can do on the big league level.
So why say that Belt is going to be the key once again this season for the Giants? Well, let's look. If we're sticking to the unwritten rule that you need 3 big bats to be a play-off team then we're back to square 2. Posey fills the Posey role (from 2010) and Sandoval fills the Huff role (from 2010 that, as of now, Beltran has vacated). So we need that third guy. I know that the Giants brass is hoping for a resurgence from Huff, and to be fair his career has a pattern of up-year, down-year, up-year, down-year and he's definitely coming off a "down-year," but there are no guarantees there. We could still get Beltran, sign a different free-agent or make another trade, or we can clench our fist tight, squint our eyes and pray hard that Melky will be all he can be. Or, we can put some faith into our best prospect and give him some consistent playing time and see what he can do. Down the stretch last year, when the Giants were already out of it, Belt started to come around in the power department hitting 4 HR's in last 11 games. If he can translate that power into a full season and sprinkle in all the other attributes he possesses then the Giants will have a YOUNG 3 headed monster in their line-up for opposing pitchers to deal with.
I know many are going to be worried about Posey's ankle and Pablo's weight (he's already packed on a ton of weight, just look at U.S. all star Taiwan pictures; not good) but I'm going to keep a close eye on our Belt and see where he can help lead us next year. If he pans out then we should be able to make a solid play-off run. Once in the play-offs nobody will want to face the Giants pitching, and if Belt, Posey, and Sandoval are hitting on the same cylinders then nobody will want to face our line-up either.
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