The San Francisco Giants' 2012 Opening Day line-up will reflect three critical franchise mandates: 1) payroll budgetary limitations;  2) management's commitment to keeping the starting pitching core intact; and, 3) improving the offense. Note that "improving the offense" comes in 3rd-- get used to it because that's the way that particular dog will hunt for the next several years.

Effective Major League Baseball franchise management is a strange and complex combination of business savvy, deep experience, and the ability to identify and understand intangibles. Otherwise we could simply take the team's projected $125 million budget, pull out a calculator and skip all the analysis and reckless speculation. And we can't have that.

For the past several years this team has been committed to a model that features strong and deep starting pitching, an above average bullpen core that can be tweaked or reinvented any time between December and August, and just enough offense to compete. Using that template let's look at which position players should be retained for 2012:

Keepers: 2012 positons filled
Pablo Sandoval was the team's offensive foundation in 2011 despite going on the DL April 30th and missing 40 games with a wrist injury. Sandoval led the Giants in RBI (70) and home runs (26), and had a .909 OPS. His range and footwork at 3rd have improved each year and he is just this side of a gold glove.
 
Sandoval's weight issues will always be a shadow looming over his performance at the plate and on the field and he is currently arbitration-eligible for the first time in his career.  

Buster Posey will be behind home plate on Opening Day and should regain both his offensive momentum and his leadership role in the clubhouse. For 2013 there has to be serious discussions around moving Posey to the infield or left field with Aubrey Huff and Freddy Sanchez off the books at the end of the 2012 season.

The 2013 season could bring huge changes to the infield: a Sandoval weight jihad could flip-flop Posey and Sandoval at 1st and 3rd while 2011 #1 draft pick Joe Panik looks to have the chops to take over at second base. There is also a possiblity the catcher position could be filled in-house by minor league propsects Hector Sanchez or Tommy Joseph.

Freddy Sanchez signed a 1 year extention for 2012 at $6 million and will be pegged as the starting second baseman. DL insurance at second has been mandatory throughout Sanchez's injury-filled tenure as a Giant. Jeff Keppinger was hitting .307 when San Francisco picked him up from the Astros in mid-season to take over for Sanchez but his production tailed off and he hit .255 the rest of the year. Keppinger earned $2.3 million in 2011 and that puts him on the bubble in terms of being the Sanchez insurance policy.
 
The Giants have more affordable options in the speedy Emmanuel Burriss ($405K in 2011) or the versatile Mike Fontenot ($1.05 million in 2011), although Keppinger, Burriss and Fontenot are all arbitration-eligible so the price of Sanchez-insurance could increase over last year.  

Aubrey Huff will complete his two year $22 million contract in 2012 which means the Giants will be compelled to play him. If he recaptures his career average RBI production Huff would see time at 1st base and/or left field. Obviously the Giants' take on the status of Brandon Belt will determine where and when Huff plays next season, but his $11 million salary buys Huff the first half of the 2012 season to prove he is back as an RBI producer; if he falters for a second year in a row expect him to be riding the pine by mid-July.

Cody Ross brings a nice combination of speedy defense and extra base hit production to the outfield, but things start to get crowded once you come to grips with the fact that only three players normally play in the outfield, and two sit on the bench.

So here's what should happen:
> The Giants' number 1 priority should be to sign or trade for a starting center fielder/lead-off hitter to replace Andres Torres. Nothing the team does this off-season will improve the offense better. Torres deserves a chance to catch on with another team and find his 2010 mojo.

It is no secret that Oakland A's free agent Coco Crisp would be ideal.
 
> The frosting on the outfield cake would be for the Giants to also sign free agent rightfielder Carlos Beltran to a three year $36 million contract. Beltran brings stability to right field and takes over as the #3 hitter in the batting order. Beltran surrounded by an actual lead-off hitter plus Freddy Sanchez, Pablo Sandoval and Buster Posey looks like a nice recipe for increased run production at a reasonable price.

> That leaves Cody Ross and Nate Schierholtz as the outfield back-ups; Ross can play all three positions, Schierholtz can play right and left. Ross is a starter who can take over every day at any time but his $6.3 million salary in 2011 may be a bigger payday than the Giants want to pay for a back-up outfielder. On the other hand, that $6m would be a great salary savings to swing toward signing Crisp and/or Beltran.

Schierholtz is a career-long back-up, and he should stay a back-up. Because if it comes down to having Brandon Belt play every day or Nate Schierholtz play every day, it's the biggest no-brainer of all time (or second biggest, after that home loan commercial on the radio). Brandon Belt needs to be in the 2012 line-up every day.

Who has to go
We have already identified Andres Torres, whose 2011 performance was one of the reasons the Giants did not make the playoffs.
> Aaron Rowand (the Giants will eat $12 million of his salary in 2012), Miguel Tejada, and (hopefully) Orlando Cabrera are out.
> The wonderful Pat Burrell will not likely come back but he would be a great addition to the Giants' coaching unit.
> With Posey back it appears that either Eli Whiteside or Chris Stewart will be cut. Whiteside has been a rock for the past two years, but Stewart brings an added dimension of defense, and will likely back up Posey.

Who needs a chance to perform
> Brandon Crawford should be given the chance to become the everyday shortstop. Nothing replaces the defensive range and ability he brings to back up the starting and bullpen pitching. Enough of the 35+ year old free agent veterans at short who can't hit or field. Brian I'm begging you, please.

> Mark DeRosa had an injury-filled two year tenure that only allowed glimpses of his offensive abilities. DeRosa brings a lot to the table and I would like to see a one year contract with an option year for 2013.

> Rookie Brett Pill was written off as too old (27) to catch on in the Majors, but he hit .300 in 15 games with 7 XBH, 9 RBI and a .881 OPS. Let's see how far the old rookie can take this.      
      
So what do we have if this all works out the way it should?

2012 SF Giants line-up
1. Coco Crisp CF
2. Freddy Sanchez 2B
3. Carlos Beltran RF
4. Pablo Sandoval 3B
5. Buster Posey C
6. Brandon Belt 1B
7. Aubrey Huff LF
8. Brandon Crawford SS 

Next: Starting and bullpen pitching

Here's the tidy tag line a lot of sports media are spouting to sum up the fall of the 2011 Giants: San Francisco's season ended on May 26th when Buster Posey was lost for the season. After that, it was all downhill.

And here's what actually happened. The 2011 season was a mirror image of the Giants' 2010 championship year when San Francisco stunk the joint up in the first half then proceeded to light the place on fire in the second half.

Despite the terrible offense and the injuries to Posey, Freddy Sanchez, and Pablo Sandoval the Giants rode high throughout the first half of 2011 and the playoffs looked like a lock.

The Giants then nose-dived throughout an ugly August: .235 team BA, .287 team OBP, 2.69 runs scored per game. Give the talented Arizona Diamondbacks full credit for putting together a potent combination of dominant power pitching and power hitting just as the San Francisco Giants started their second half slide.

The next several months will be about the critical changes that need to happen for the San Francisco Giants to get to the post season and into the 2012 World Series. Of the current players, some should stay, some should be escorted out of the building; and several free agent signings and trades should be made.

This is the first of several blogs that will 1) examine why the Giants 2011 season collapsed; 2) discuss which position players should stay or go; and, 3) assess whether the Giants organization is capable of a philosophy change that will rebalance their offense to reinvent this damaged team into a contender by Opening Day 2012.     

First, Let's Conduct a Forensic Autopsy of the 2011 Season [play the "Law and Order" musical "dum-dum" exclamation here] 

1. The loss of catcher Buster Posey did not doom the Giants 2011 season.

Sorry to complicate a convenient and popular story line. When the Florida Marlins sent Buster Posey into rehab on May 26th, the wheels did not come off the bus. In fact, the bus traveled in the fast lane for two months after Posey went down. The San Francisco Giants hit their 2011 high water mark, in the observant words of Giant broadcasters Dave Flemming and Jon Miller, on July 28th when they took 2 out of three from the Phillies at Philadelphia.

On that date the Giants were 61-44 in 1st place in the NL West a full 4 games in front of the Diamondbacks.
But on July 29th the team proceded to:
> get swept in a three game series at Cincinnati;
> come home August 1st and drop 2 of 3 against Arizona, 3 of 4 against Philadelphia, and 2 of 3 against the Pirates.

And so the Giants' Titanic-like 11-18 August was fully underway. This team, already struggling offensively, proceded to go completely under and it's not likely that even a healthy Buster Posey could have turned that ship around all by himself.

2. The lead-off spot in the batting order was an early and ongoing disaster but the Giant's front office never addressed the issue.

Giants lead-off hitters batted .232 in 2011 with a .292 OBP. Andres Torres, who was so spectacular in 2010, hit .221 in 112 games with a .643 OPS and 95 SOs.

Even teams with a solid 3-4-5 middle of the order depend on a lead-off hitter to set the table and cause high jinks on the base paths. Certainly the National League team whose run scoring hovered between 29th and 30th out of 30 MLB teams could not hope to survive without a significant upgrade at the lead-off spot. Only it never happened.

3. The Brandon Belt chronicles.

When rookie first baseman Brandon Belt did not immediately light the National League on fire and the overall offense continued to be sluggish, General Manager Brian Sabean went to his default offensive philosophy: go to veteran hitters because they just might have enough to carry this great pitching staff.

So players like Miguel Tejada, Aaron Rowand, Bill Hall, Orlando Cabrera, Aubrey Huff, and Andres Torres were allowed to amass almost 1,700 at-bats in 2011--nearly 80% of which were unproductive outs. It is amazing that, despite their year-long struggles at the plate, many of these players were still being penciled into the starting line-up through early September.

As for Belt, he was sent up and down from Triple-A Fresno a number of times and, even when he was up with the big team, often sat on the bench. Each time the front office determined Belt needed to make adjustments at the plate he went to Fresno rather than  learning his craft at the big league level.

The question remains: how much would Brandon Belt have contributed to the team's failing offense if the front office had simply kept him up, given him more big league at bats, and worked through his hitting issues with big league coaches?
 
Look at two different approaches taken by the Arizona Diamondbacks and Washington Nationals with their own rookie infielders last season:

Arizona's Paul Goldschmidt started 2010 in Triple A and like Brandon Belt had a mercurial rise through the minor leagues. The D'Backs brought Goldschmidt up on August 1 and stayed with him through several hitting slumps. 

After Danny Espinosa started 2010 in AA, the Nationals brought him up at the September 1, 2010 call-ups; Espinosa hit .214 in 103 ABs. In 2011 Washington committed to Espinosa as their starting second baseman from day one.

2011	AB	R	H	2B	3B	HR	RBI	OPS	AVG
Paul Goldschmidt 1B ARZ	156	28	39	9	1	8	26	.808	.250
Danny Espinosa 2B WAS	573	72	135	29	5	21	66	.737	.236
Brandon Belt 1B SFG	187	21	42	6	1	9	18	.718	.225
Belt projected @ 573 ABs	573	64	129	18	3	28	55	.718	.225

Belt was out for six weeks with a hand injury and would not have played the whole season (and amassed 573 ABs), but this illustrates his potential contributions with the numbers he was producing. Note that Atlanta rookie first baseman Freddie Freeman had 571 ABs in 2011.

It is also reasonable to project that Brandon Belt would have likely increased his OBP and overall hitting with additional and consistant plate experiences. Performing at his 2011 level projected to 573 at bats (Espinosa's number), Belt would have:

> finished 3rd in RBI after Sandoval (70) and Huff (59);
> finished 2nd in hits;
> led the Giants in runs scored;
> led the team in home runs.  

4. Infield defense.

The final contribution to the demise of the 2011 San Francisco Giants was the front office's gross negligence when it came to infield defense.

Much was made of how understanding and patient Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Ryan Vogelsong and Madison Bumgarner were with the team's anemic run support. It started out as a joke among writers and fans, but once the opposing team scored three or four runs in a given game, that game was essentially over. Throughout the year, the Giants' starting pitchers carried the party line and were not critical of the offense.

But what was intolerable was the infield defense behind the starting pitchers. Even though it became clear early on that veteran free agent Miguel Tejada could no longer field his shortstop position, he was trotted out there game after game for months. It wasn't the clumsy errors that hurt, it was the glaring lack of range and a chronic inability to turn the double play that simply killed the starting pitchers.

At mid-season the team brought up rookie shortstop Brandon Crawford who was spectucular on the field but struggled at the plate. The front office responded by signing aging veteran Orlando Cabrera, who made some of the most embarassing errors of the year beside displaying his own diminishing lack of range.

At second base, Bill Hall hit .158 with a .220 OBP before he was injured and later cut. Mike Fontenot hit .227 with a  .304 OBP at second, short and third. The Giants traded for Jeff Keppinger, who brought a .300 Avg from Houston but finished up hitting .255 with a .285 OBP. 

In the desperate season-long search for offense, the Giants' front office was willing to trade infield defense behind their starting pitching for more offense. In the end, they got neither:

Miguel Tejada: .239/.270 OBP
Orlando Cabrera: .222/.241 OBP
Mike Fontenot: .227/.304 OBP

On a team built around outstanding starting and bullpen pitching, Giants management undervalued a key element that allows outstanding pitching to create wins.

Next: Position players-- who should stay, who should go.

As we careen towards October, a lot has been written about the San Francisco Giants' dramatically dwindling window to somehow qualify for the 2011 MLB playoffs. To understand exactly how far under the Porta Potty the Giants are at this moment, let's take a quick look at the math.

The Giants are 84-72 as they begin the last six games of the season, starting with a three game set tonight in Arizona and followed by three at home with the Rockies. They are 6 games behind the the Arizona D'Backs, who have clinched at least a tie for the National League West title. The Giants are in third place for the NL Wild Card title, two games behind St. Louis and four games behind the first place Atlanta Braves.

For the Giants to take either the NL West or NL Wild Card title I have determined that the following three things would have to happen:

1. The Fox News Channel announces its decision to hire Charlie Sheen and Muammar Gaddafi to anchor their gavel-to-gavel coverage of the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

2. The earth shifts slightly on its north/south axis forcing millions of penguins to improperly mate. A new super species of the amusing looking bird would then threaten North America forcing the President to cancel the MLB playoffs. This may give the Giants the time they need to schedule extra batting practice with runners in scoring position.

3. Fox Sports baseball announcer Tim McCarver gets through an entire ball game without saying a variation of the following: "While I agree that Matt Kemp's three run homer looks like it helps the Dodgers, Joe, a much smarter play in this situation would have been to go for the sacrifice bunt...".

In other words, the San Francisco Giants ain't making the 2011 playoffs. From this point on, the view is all Porta Potty all the time.

There are two important things about July 27, 2011. First, the San Francisco Giants were 60-44 and led the NL West by three games; second, the Giants traded their #1 minor league prospect, Zack Wheeler, for Mets slugger Carlos Beltran in an attempt to bring an offensive upgrade to their criminally negligent run scoring.

Problem was, from July 28th through September 10th the Giants proceeded to post a stunning 15-28 win-loss record, plunging them 9.5 games behind the first place D'Backs. Preparations were then made to officially kiss the 2011 playoffs goodbye, which included error-filled listless play in the field, an increasingly mediocre offensive, and a palace purge of Giants Chief Executive Officer Bill Neukom by Giants COO Larry Baer.

Oh, and management replaced all those expensive bottles of Fiji Water in the clubhouse with Trader Joe's delicious brown canal mix.

Then the San Francisco Giants did something. They won eight games in a row, with Madison Bumgarner getting two wins in 8-1 and 9-1 finals. Carlos Beltran went on a 14-30 tear in the last seven games and Pablo Sandoval went on a ginormous rampage that made him NL Player of the Week ending September 18th.

And something else also happened that maybe trumped all the great hitting and pitching. The Giants released Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada, two players who were dead weight on the field and negative weight in the clubhouse. Add to that: defensive shortstop wizard Brandon Crawford finally got playing time over tired veteran Orlando Cabrera. Addition by serious subtraction.

Tonight the Giants start a three game series in LA with the Dodgers. Followed by three games with the D'Backs in Arizona.  San Francisco is 4 games behind the Atlanta Braves in the NL Wild Card, and 5.5 games behind NL West leading Arizona.

What else can happen in the next 9 games? You'd drop your adult beverage if I told you...



            

Make no mistake about it. The the decision by the 32 principal partners who comprise the ownership group of the San Francisco Giants to dump managing general partner Bill Neukom registered pretty close to the 1906 earthquake on the City's Richter scale. Not only is Neukom out as the lead guy in the ownership group, he is also expected to sell his shares of the team to a number of current investors.

We'll have to wait and see if the Giants' principal partners also make Neukom change his name and relocate to a run down trailor park in rural Nevada. 

Bill Neukom's removal was supposed to be made public at the conclusion of the 2011 season sometime before December, the baseball equivalent of making the move in the middle of the night when no one is watching. But when word of Neukom's purge was leaked to Mark Purdy of the San Jose Mercury the Giants' front office went into scramble mode, trying to pass this off as an orderly, planned transition under the silly cover story that Bill Neukom had intended to "retire" this year all along.

Right. And Osama bin Laden passed away after accidently tripping on a rug in his secure compound.   

Simply put, this is an unprecedented palace purge within a Major League franchise that won the World Series a mere 10 and a half months ago. And these type of topplings do not happen unless another guy at the top is making his move; in this case team President and COO Larry Baer now becomes San Francisco's Chief Executive Officer. Think "Godfather III" only with a much better script and no George Hamilton.

During a 47 minute live press conference on CSN Bay Area this morning, Bill Neukom and Larry Baer spent a great deal of time hailing Neukom's achievements leading the Giants. In fact the gathered media was repeatedly reminded of Nukom's wide-ranging accomplishments on behalf of the organization, making one wonder how they could possibly let him slip away.

The chilling reality? Absolutely no denials of reporter Mark Purdy's two key contentions that, 1) Neukom did not effectively communicate with the ownership's Executive Committee in terms of the trades and other payroll decisions made this year (think the Carlos Beltran and Orlando Cabrera trades and eating the remaining $12.5 million of Aaron Rowand's contract); and, 2) that Bill Neukom is being forced out by the ownership's Executive Committee.

What does it all mean? That's up to Larry Baer, who has been part of the Giants' original ownership group since 1993. Either Baer is going to boldly put his mark on this franchise or he is going to slink under the radar and be more of an empowering steward who hopes to simply keep his job longer than three years. Think about it: the Giants will have had three CEO's in one four year period. 

The "Larry Baer era" would have to begin with the graceful removal of General Manager Brian Sabean and his outdated management approach. At a time when many younger GMs freely communicate with each other, with player agents, and with the media, Sabean still runs the baseball operations side of the franchise like the Soviet Union during the cold war.

And Sabean's slow acceptance of the advanced, cutting edge information sabermetrics can provide kept the Giants front office perpetually stuck in a 1990 baseball operations mindset for years. Which may explain why the team ends up with so many high-priced veterans who were productive at some point in the past-- unable to properly assess upcoming talent, Sabean relies on the previously talented.

Brian Sabean has a one year extension through 2012; what happens with that contract will be a big clue about the team's future direction. Another test will be what the Giants do this off-season about their anemic offense. At the end of this season free agents like Albert Pujols will be up for grabs, and somewhere out there are teams who would be willing to trade a quality offensive player for pitcher Matt Cain and his 68-72 record.

The San Francisco Giants saw last weekend's critical three game home series with the NL West leading Arizona Diamondbacks as a way to reanimate their chances of making the 2011 MLB playoffs. No doubt filmmaker George Romero would have been proud-- the reanimated Giants looked remarkably similar to many of the protagonists in Romero's classic films.         

The horror of those three games, along with a three game sequel at San Diego, only underscored the team's well chronicled failings: a viral inability to score runs, the walking dead infield defense, line-ups populated with slow moving non-threatening veterans.

The numbers generated in those two series tell the nightmarish story of how the Giants went from 6 games back on Thursday September 1st to 7 games back on Thursday September 8th. San Francisco is once again in sole possession of 30th place in MLB runs scored-- 483 runs which averages to 3.38 per game.

The Giants actually out-scored the Padres and D'Backs 23 runs to 20, or an average of 3.83 runs per game, but only plated 4 runs in their three losses.

The bullpen was a just little off during the two series, pitching 12.1 innings, with 5 earned runs, a 3.72 ERA, and 17 strikeouts. Highlights included rookie first baseman Brett Pill's smashing debut-- a home run in his first Major League at bat on Tuesday September 6th followed with a 2 for 4 game the next day and another HR. Although Pill's rookie status is undercut by his age (27), you can't argue with a .429 average.

But game management and execution fell short at a time when there is little margin for mistakes. Somehow, and please don't ask me to begin to explain why, center fielder Andres Torres was allowed to be present throughout the first four games, going 0-8 in a start and three other appearances. That brings Torres' season totals to a .222 BA and 87 SOs in 315 ABs.

Just as amazing, shortstop Orlando Cabrera started five of the six games, going 3-18 at the plate with ever-diminishing range and a propensity to make simply awful errors. In the bottom of the 8th inning of Wednesday's tight 2-1 pitching duel, Cabrera dropped a routine pop up allowing the Pad's Will Venable to reach base. Cameron Maybin tripled Venable home and Heath Bell had a comfortable 3-1 cushion to notch his 36th save of the season.

Except for getting one start over the two series, slick fielding rookie Brandon Crawford sat in the dugout warming the pine as Cabrera's batting stats as a San Francisco Giant dipped to .217AVG/.232OBP/.245SLG. Numbers which make merely bad look pretty damn good.

The breathless rush by the ever alert sportstalk radio community and a number of overheated bloggers to be the first to declare the Giants' season dead in the water started about a week ago. And there's certainly cause for concern: with 19 games left for each team, Arizona would have to go 8-11 and San Francisco 15-4 just to get to a 90-72 tie.

While others can't wait to hear the fat lady sing, I'm going old school just this once. Only when the Giants are eliminated from contention via mathematics will you be able to pry that maplewood bat from my cold dead hands...

While it is foolish to announce on September 1st that the Giants' 2011 season is over, that season is officially on life support and the Arizona Diamondbacks are reaching out to pull the plug. There are 25 games left in a season that no longer depends on the San Francisco Giants winning games; now the D'Backs must also lose games.

As it stands today, San Francisco is in 2nd place (72-65) , 6 games behind Arizona in the standings. If Arizona goes 12-13 in their last 25 games to finish at 90-72, the Giants would have to go 18-7 in their last 25 just to tie. That's asking for some serious divine intervention at a time when God is focusing on the NFL and busy trying to distance Himself from several Republican presidential candidates.

Is it possible, has this level of baseball magic ever been done before? Absolutely. The only realistic chance San Francisco has at this point is to slam Arizona in their upcoming 3 game weekend series at AT&T Park, and again when the two teams meet September 23-25 at Arizona. Those remaining six games with the Snakes take on an almost otherworldly importance for the Giants' survival. And they can't just do really well, they have to sweep like they've never swept before.

Listen: even if the Giants take 2 of 3 this weekend at AT&T Park they will still be 5 games out in 2nd place. But if the weekend grudge match goes the other way, the 2010 World Champions would start to spiral fully out of control. The month of September could easily begin to mirror their horrific 11-18 record in August and the surging Dodgers could actually dump the Giants into third place. It's unthinkable, but LA at 65-70 is now only 6 games behind San Francisco.

Back to the most important question about the San Francisco Giants and the last month of the 2011 MLB season. Can this Giants team get it done? Yes, thanks to their amazing pitching; but moves to improve their chances may have been taken several months too late.

The Giants front office just designated Aaron Rowand and Miguel Tejada for assignment, effectively ending their careers in San Francisco. The Giants still owe Rowand $12.5 million in 2012 but thankfully managed to get tied up with Tejada for just one year and $6.5 million. But Rowand should have been cut prior to the start of the season and the Tejada experiment imploded early on yet he was still playing the infield through August.

Even before we see what happens in the next four weeks, and despite the rash of injuries, the Giants front office has a lot to answer for. I will forever honor Brian Sabean as the major architect of the Giants 2010 World Series victory-- it is a lifetime achievement that few can match. But Sabean's 20th century baseball mindset doomed the Giants to four dismal losing seasons from 2005-08, and only four first place finishes (plus 1 wildcard) in his 16 year tenure.

The 2011 season is a perfect illustration of Sabean's liabilities as a GM: a reluctance to bring up talented young players; his reliance on past-their-prime high priced veterans; burdening the team's outstanding young starting pitchers with substandard infield defense; and an old school mistrust and disregard for the high tech statistical revolution that swept through most Major League Baseball front offices ten years ago.

But there will be plenty of time later for whining, post-apocalyptic analysis. Right now it's all about the 2011 San Francisco Giants. It's about the Giants winning ballgames and forcing Arizona into a corner by sweeping the six games remaining between the two teams. It's about doing the nearly impossible and charging headlong on to glory...

Few things are more unoriginal than a baseball blogger publishing his opinion about his team's messed up batting order and making up his own. It is truly the lowest form of blog, as predictable and malodorous as what babies do in their diapers.

Somehow the team manager missed the magnificent combination of players revealed to the blogger at 3 in the morning, making him sit bolt upright in bed and grab for a pen and writing pad. The result is an epiphany of baseball brilliance which must be shared with the world. Funny how it never occurred to the manager, the guy who is supposed to be the baseball expert but seems to somehow just not get it.

Right.

Actually, I didn't wake up in the middle of the night when an awesome Giants' line-up popped into my fertile mind. And no doubt San Francisco Manager Bruce Bochy forgot more about baseball last Tuesday than I could possibly know all year. 

It's just that watching the Giants play the past month has become so damn tedious and depressing. Something radical has to be done before we wake up on Thursday morning September 29th and realize that the Arizona Diamondbacks are scheduled to start the National League Division Series on Saturday October 1, 2011 in Atlanta.

So here is the batting order I would like to see written on the Giants' line-up card presented to the home plate umpire at the start of tonight's game against the Houston Astros at AT&T Park. That would be the 43-88 Houston Astros, the worst team in baseball by a lot who have somehow found a way to win 3 out 4 games from the 2010 World Champions over the last seven days. [Additional note: And the Astros did this after trading away their two best players-- Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn.]

1.	Cody Ross CF	Here are the four highest OBPs among the starters: 1) Sandoval .347; 2) Belt .341; 3) Schierholtz .326; 4) Ross .320. But Sandoval and Belt are two of three players (along with Beltran) who can actually drive in runs, so they cannot lead off. Also, it's time to stop having Schierholtz displace Belt or Ross in the outfield. Despite doing a little better at the plate this year, Schierholtz is what he has been throughout his entire career-- a great 4th outfielder and good late inning PH.
2.	Jeff Keppinger 2B	No question here. Keppinger is one of the three best hitters on this team and he can hit situationally as well or better than anyone else on the roster.
3.	Carlos Beltran RF	Beltran hits third because he needs to have as many at bats as possible between now and the end of September if there is any hope of scoring enough runs to overtake Arizona and win the Division. Period.
4.	Pablo Sanchez 3B	Sanchez is the MVP hero of the 2011 season-- hitting when everyone else was out to lunch and playing inspired defense at third base. He is the heart and soul of the 2011 San Francisco Giants offense.
5.	Brandon Belt LF	Time to move Belt out of the 7th hole and into a position where his extra base hits can drive in runs. Sure he's a rookie and moving him into a more responsible position in the line-up is chancy, but a rookie catcher (for gosh sakes) led the 2010 Giants to a World Championship. Belt's excellent OBP also helps extend innings deeper into the line-up.
6.	Aubrey Huff 1B	Aubrey Huff is having the poorest offensive year of his career, but he is a starting player on this team. If he clicks in and those doubles start bouncing off the walls at AT&T Park, having Sandoval and Belt in front of him could start to pay off.
7.	Catcher	Eli Whiteside and Chris Stewart have ably handled the Giants outstanding pitching staff; anything they can do offensively is an extra added benefit.
8.	Pitcher	The Giants need as many runners on base as possible in front of Keppinger, Beltran, Sandoval and Belt. A "second lead-off" hitter batting 9th is an innovation that managers like Tony LaRussa have used to spark their offense. It's time to step out of the box and get innovative and creative to jumpstart this team's run production. The Giants also have several starting pitchers who can actually put the bat on the ball (Jonathan Sanchez is hitting .207, Ryan Vogelsong .186, and Madison Bumgarner hit .179 in 2010).
9.	Orlando Cabrera SS	There is little left to choose from for the second lead-off hitter in the 9th spot. Bruce Bochy is currently batting Cabrera at leadoff so he should qualify to bat 9th, and that veteran presence could actually pay off in this role.

I had a chance to talk with Butch Stearns of TPN's Sport Buzz this morning, going live at 7:30AM from Canton, Massachusetts just outside Boston. We talked a lot of Giants baseball.

Check out my interview with Butch.
 
We discussed the unprecedented number of player injuries the team has suffered, the Arizona Diamondbacks' losing streak, the race for the NL West flag, Orlando Cabrera not getting it done at the plate or in the field, and rookie Brandon Belt among other subjects. Butch referenced Pablo Sandoval's April 30th broken wrist bone injury that put him on the DL for 40 games, and we concluded with a discussion of Tim Lincecum's role as a team leader.

Look for Sports Buzz, the most comprehensive live streaming sports programing on the net.

There's a viral theory floating in the cloudsphere about the 2011 San Francisco Giants offense. You hear it casually tossed into the sports talk radio stew, that medium where whatever is said the loudest or most frequently happily replaces thoughtful discussion and actual facts. And you can look that up.

The number one myth about the 2011 Giants is that last year, when they won the World Series, a number of hitters had "career years". So what we're seeing in 2011 are those position players reverting back to their usual poor performing selves after playing beyond themselves in 2010.

Certainly Buster Posey is having a worse year, run production-wise, and so is Juan Uribe. Tough for Posey to put the numbers up with him out for the season and all; and Juan Uribe joined in an unholy alliance with the Los Angeles Dodger "organization" at the end of last year. So his dramatic 2011 fall-off goes on the Dodger stat sheets.
 
Of the hitters who remained with San Francisco after the Championship year only one, center fielder/lead-off man Andres Torres, had a "career" year in 2010. And even that is misleading: 2010 was the first time in his career Torres ever played 100+ games (actually 139 games), so there is no real track record to compare.

Check out the numbers on these current Giant hitters who played throughout 2010. Pablo Sandoval had his worst offensive year in 2010; Aubrey Huff did in 2010 what he was brought in to do, which was to knock in about 85 RBI; Cody Ross' 2010 numbers were down compared to his 2009 and 2008 seasons; Aaron Rowand looks like he will never match the numbers he put up in 2008, his first year as a Giant:

           

	2008	2009	2010	2011*
Aubrey Huff       AVG RBI                         OPS	. 304 108   .912	.241 85 .694	.290 86 .891	.248 54 .690
Cody Ross       AVG RBI                         OPS	.260 73 .804	.270 90 .790	.269 65 .735**	.235 41 .701
Aaron Rowand      AVG RBI                          OPS	.271 70 .749	.261 64 .738	.230 34 .659	.238 21 .634
Pablo Sandoval       AVG RBI                        OPS	.345 24 .847***	.330 90 .943	.268 63 .732	.310 50 .877

With the exception of Sandoval, the problem with the 2011 San Francisco Giants offense is that multiple hitters are having an off year at the plate compared to what they did in 2010 and prior seasons. The 2010 Championship year didn't happen because Giant hitters had "career years", it happened because the hitters delivered numbers matching or coming close to their career numbers.

* @ 128 games      ** 120 games w/Florida, 33 games w/Giants      *** rookie year-- 41 games