Is San Francisco In Trouble?
San Francisco waited until late July to jumpstart its drive to a World Series title last year, so I suppose we shouldn't make too much of the Giants' not playing very well in early May. But San Fran is floating along at .500 and even after Tim Lincecum's brilliant outing in New York last night, is still four games back of Colorado in the NL West. With the Rockies coming into town this weekend, now is a good time to make a stand and push back the other direction.
The Giants are supposed to be built on great pitching and just enough offense to get by. Both areas need to be better. The pitching isn't bad--seventh in the National League in ERA, but it needs to be elite if the team is return to the playoffs. The primary culprit in the rotation is Madison Bumgarner, although his recent starts suggest the young lefty may be turning things around. I also look at Matt Cain as someone who needs to step it up. His ERA is 3.28 and I hate putting unreasonable expectations on players, but for Frisco to be championship-caliber, Cain needs to be up there with Lincecum as a Cy Young candidate. Right now, he's "merely" a good solid starter. In that, he is a microcosm of where this staff is at right now. It's doing pretty well, but it needs to stand up and carry a team.
Offensively, San Francisco has been nothing short of woeful. Only San Diego has scored fewer runs among National League teams. The burden of this has to be placed on the shoulders of Aubrey Huff, Miguel Tejada and Freddy Sanchez, all of whom have done absolutely nothing with the bat to date. In the cases of Huff and Tejada in particular, we have to ask whether age has finally called an end to their productive years. Tejada has been in decline for several years, but has always shown an ability to flash and tease. Those days look to be over.
Buster Posey is another one off to a slow start. And while Pat Burrell hasn't been terrible, he's a far cry from what he was for this team a year ago. The same goes for Aaron Rowand, who got his centerfield job when Andres Torres went to the disabled list with an Achilles problem.
The big disappointments have come at the corner infield spots. San Fran hoped rookie Brandon Belt would be ready to handle the first base job, but a poor start punched his ticket back to Triple A. Over at third, Pablo Sandoval came out blazing, the one player in the everyday lineup, who was hitting. Now a broken hand has him out up to six weeks.
Nothing's going right for the Giant bats right now. The positive is that things have to improve. If nothing else, Posey should hit better, Burrell is likely to improve and eventually Sandoval will be back. They won't ever be great offensively, but that wasn't necessary last year and won't be this year, as the pitching is very likely to end up back towards the top of the National League.
So is San Francisco in trouble? I don't know that it's panic time, but it is appropriate to be concerned. You don't want to let Colorado run and hide in the NL West and reduce yourself to the wild-card fight this early in the season. Grabbing two of the three from the front-running Rockies this weekend is the way to stop the bleeding and buy a little time for the offense to get its act together.
Image from usatoday.com
*I talk baseball on Prime Sports Network every Wednesday at 4 PM ET with Greg DePalma. Scroll halfway down the page for the link to archived podcasts which are posted every Wednesday evening.
Dan Flaherty is the editor of the Sports Notebook Family, published through the Real Clear Sports Blog Network, offering daily commentary on baseball .
