Well the Giants seem to feel they’ve solved their cleanup hitter problem. Leave aside the fact that a guy with a career 0.411 slugging percentage is no kind of solution in this or any day and age, the real question is why the identity of the cleanup hitter for the Giants in 2008 is any sort of issue anyway.
To review, the Giants finished next to last in runs scored in the National League last year and have lost the guy with the 0.480 OBP and 0.576 SLG. Their entire lineup save Ortmeier is 30 years old or older and they play in a terrible hitters park. In short, the odds are very high they’ll finish dead last in runs scored in the NL this year. Who cares who hits fourth?
The shame of it is, the Giants actually have some promising young starting pitching in Cain and Lincecum (and Lowry, Correia and Sanchez aren’t terrible either). But I’m afraid that 7-16 with the 3.65 ERA for Cain in 2007 is going to be the sort of thing we’re going to see a lot of from the Giants in the near and possibly distant future. Their best (and maybe only) high level hitting prospect is a high average, low power, low walk corner outfielder. Hitting help on the farm is a long way away.
Such is the downside to having an offensive force like Barry Bonds for so long. Bonds single handedly turned a below average offense into an above average one for several years when the beginning of the end hit in 2005. Suddenly it appeared to everyone (well everyone not employed by the Giants) that a lineup built around Pedro Feliz and Ray Durham was not going to score a whole bunch of runs. Bonds came back, but instead of being godlike, was simply excellent, and by 2007 excellent wasn’t enough to cover up for the rest of the Giants hitting woes.
The Barry Bonds of 1993-2004 is long gone, and I haven’t a clue what the Giants have planned to fix this offense long term. Short term, the plan of “hit more singles and win 95 games” isn’t likely to work unless Zito, Cain and Lincecum duel one another for the Cy Young award.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Aaron B // Feb 16, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Voros, you’re killing me here. The games haven’t even started for Spring Training yet, and I can already imagine the assortment of bloop singles, sac bunts, weak groundouts, and WTF-Not-even-close strikeouts that are sure to be the main staples of the Giants this season.
The biggest mistake the Giants made this off-season was not sitting on the money they gave to Aaron Rowand. I mean, last place is last place.
2 Edward B // Feb 19, 2008 at 10:56 am
Just like the biggest mistake of the previous offseason was not sitting on the money the gave to Barry Freakin’ Zito.
With Sabean here for a few more years, I don’t see things even having any possibility of starting a turnaround until 5 years. This could easily be 10 years of hard core suck.
Lincy and Cain and pray for an earthquake.
Leave a Comment