Line-up Disorder Syndrome (LDS) is a tragic breakdown of the neurons in that area of the brain used exclusively by Major League Baseball managers to create their everyday line-ups. This dreaded disorder can also strike General Managers who meddle in their manager’s day-to-day line-up and fielding position decisions.

There are many who believe LDS has infested the San Francisco Giants front office for the past three years, and the raw scientific statistics certainly seem to back that up. But it’s only now, as people have become more comfortable talking about LDS, that we can try and do something about it.

How does LDS happen? Medical researchers, wearing long white lab coats and appearing to be busy working in what looks like a large laboratory, believe the actual electrons that help baseball managers create effective batting line-ups and fielding assignments somehow short-circuit. The results are line-ups consisting of overpriced older veteran players who are slow and past their prime; line-ups filled with competent and moderately talented players who can’t possibly win, but at least won’t embarrass the manager and the front office; or line-up slots given to mediocre players who the manager wants to make feel good for some reason.

Medical science does not know why this tragic disorder occurs, or how to stop it, but Line-up Disorder Syndrome can lead to some horrifying sights: Edgar Renteria attempting to shape-shift his posterior as he goes for a routine ground ball to his right; Bengie Molina having the time to plan even the smallest details of his upcoming retirement as he runs to first base on a routine ground ball; Travis Ishikawa determined to make contact with those pesky breaking balls bouncing a foot in front of the plate.

Perhaps the two worst line-up episodes in 2010 were 1) batting Bengie Molina in the clean-up spot in May when his resume was perhaps the exact opposite of what a clean-up hitter should be; and, 2) continuing to lead off with Aaron Rowand in May as he was doing his best to fight through one of the worst slumps in his career.

Any number of things can be done to combat LDS, but I'd rather not watch Ryan Seacrest host a third rate TV fundraiser on the Farm Implement Channel. Instead, I decided to donate my personal time and limited expertise to devise and present several Giants line-up templates that are simple and easy to use, as we wait to see if science or Line-up Disorder Syndrome wins this battle.

Buster Posey played his first 2010 regular season game as a San Francisco Giant on Saturday May 29th, and helped lead his run-starved team in a 12-1 destructo-derby over the Arizona Diamondbacks. Posey hit three singles, including a two-out run-scoring hit in the 1st inning and a bases loaded hit in the 7th.

Posey, who is destined to be the Giants starting catcher, batted 6th in the line-up and played first base. The AT&T Park home crowd gave Posey a standing ovation as he left the on-deck circle and approached home plate for his first at bat.

As I wrote in my March 26, 2010 blog, when the Giants indicated Posey would stick with the team out of Spring Training, "watching Buster Posey play at the Major League level will be a treat, and we may look back at Opening Day 2010 as the start of an extraordinary career in the history of the San Francisco Giants." But Giant fans had to wait another two months to see if the Buster Posey era would make franchise history.

Hitting phenom Buster Posey has been recalled by the San Francisco Giants from their Triple A affiliate in Fresno. As of Friday May 28th, Posey was hitting .349 with a .442 OBP and a .995 OPS, playing catcher and some first base for the Fresno Grizzlies. During 2010 Spring Training, Posey hit .315 with a .351 OBP, but was not chosen to go north with the big league team.   

A shortstop and catcher at Florida State, Posey was the first draft pick by the Giants in the first round of the 2008 Rule 4 Draft.

The Giants appeared to be doing their best to keep Posey in the minors through the month of June, which would have made him ineligible to be Super Two arbitration eligible under Major League Baseball rules. If Posey sticks with the Giants the remainder of 2010 (all of 2011 and 2012), and he continues to hit as he has done in the minors, the Giants are potentially looking at a $4-5 million arbitration with him in 2013.

Posey will certainly play a great deal at first base, with first baseman Aubrey Huff likely moving to left field on a permanent basis. Posey will also catch when Bengie Molina is rested. Whether the Giants will eventually send down back-up catcher Eli Whiteside or back-up first baseman Travis Ishikawa remains to be seen. Whiteside has been a big contributor to the Giants as Jonathan Sanchez's personal catcher, and is batting .286. Ishikawa is batting .200 and has not been an offensive factor this year or during the 2009 season.

In 2010, the San Francisco Giants are 25th of 30 MLB teams with 192 runs scored. National League Western Division rival Arizona is 6th of 30 teams with 247 runs scored; the Dodgers are 8th with 237 runs scored.

For the past four years, the Giants have had outstanding pitching but little run production and no power. In 2008, the Giants were 29th out of 30 MLB teams with 640 runs scored; in 2009 the team scored 657 runs to finish 26th of 30 teams.

Buster Posey will have to play with high expectations that his bat will jumpstart the Giants offense and that he can quickly develop into a Major League catcher. The Giants are currently 25-22 in third place in the NL West, two and a half games behind the San Diego Padres.

A local San Francisco sports talk-show host recently offered a dissertation about the large number of talk show callers who call in just to rant about, and criticize, their favorite Major League Baseball team. Unrelenting negative anger seems to be the default mode for a large number of sports fans, and certainly for the overwhelming majority of sports talk-show callers. For baseball bloggers, constant, impatient rage appears to be a primary demand in the job description.

It may be as American as chicken enchiladas and hummus, but it does gets old.

The team is crap, the manager sucks, the players have no talent and are overpaid, the owners and the general manager have their heads up their rear ends, and the locker room attendants can’t properly fold the towels. And why doesn’t the team just trade Aaron Rowand for Miguel Cabrera, I mean what’s up with that?

In one sense, it’s the negative yin to the non-stop positive yang we get from team broadcasters and local beat writers who are generally paid to spin positives, or at least to not scare the fans too far away from the land of “everything’s OK with the team, now just relax and purchase additional products and services from our sponsors.”

But sometimes fan anger and negativity never seems to let up and the media has to wrestle with that-- especially radio. I admire, in particular, the skill of radio sports talk show hosts who expertly work through what can seem like endless, repetitive team-dumping to try and make their programs interesting and informative. The San Francisco market is fortunate to have a talented group of radio and TV broadcasters and commentators, and newspaper writers, who actually add to the understanding and appreciation of Major League Baseball. Year after year, it’s a media paradise for serious baseball fans.

As a sports blogger and writer, my passion is discussing and analyzing the current MLB season, and discovering new insights about the teams and the game. I may be a tragically addicted longtime San Francisco Giants fan, but there’s a raft of great stories to be told about every Major League team; even the Cleveland Indians.

I love the game, respect team management and the players, and value the history of the game; but I also feel a responsibility to be critical. Not critical in the sense of throwing endless f-bombs, but to evaluate the management and direction of MLB ballclubs, and to be as thoughtful and as interesting as I can possibly be while doing it. With, hopefully, a big emphasis on the “interesting” part.

A foundering MLB franchise is easy to recognize because the team’s management will invariably self-identify in the media. Beyond the obvious indicators of wins, losses, and player stats, certain words and phrases start appearing in the sports media indicating there is confusion, uncertainly, and lack of direction in the management of a specific baseball franchise.

For example, the San Francisco Giants 2010 media hyped catch-phrase, “It’s magic inside”, succinctly sums up the team’s approach to the serious business of baseball. If it doesn’t happen by magic, it’s probably not going to happen at all.

When you hear the phrase, “we’ve got to get at-bats for Juan Uribe (or Nate Schierholtz, or Andres Torres, etc.)”, it’s an expression of desperation and offensive crisis. “You have to” means you don’t really want to but you have no choice. It means you’ve run out of choices and are grabbing at something, anything, to jumpstart your ball club’s offense. “We’ve got to get at-bats for…” is not an endorsement of a good hitter, it’s code for “we have no good hitters”.

Has Yankee Manager Joe Girardi ever said, “Somehow, we’ve got to get at-bats for Robinson Cano”, or has Detroit’s Jim Leyland plaintively whined, “We need to find a way to get Brandon Inge into this line-up”? Either a player is producing, and is part of a team’s everyday line-up, or they aren’t producing and they’re out.

The real problem? There’s nothing to jumpstart in the San Francisco Giants everyday line-up; this is predominantly an assembly of fringe and older players who occasionally rise above offensive mediocrity. The 2010 version of the Giants has regressed into the offensely-challenged 2009, 2008, and 2007 versions of the Giants.

There is a variation on this that applies to the Giants super prospect Buster Posey. Here’s the often repeated party line we've heard about Posey the first two months of the 2010 season: "there’s no place to put Posey" in the current Giants line-up. In other words, the current line-up is so tight, so locked in, we just can’t find a spot for a batter hitting .327, with 28 runs scored, 28 RBIs, a .422 OBS and .929 OPS as of May 24, 2010.

In reality, there are at least six spots in the line-up Posey could be dropped into, but the team is locked into a number of very smelly contracts, and the idea of sitting underperforming players like Edgar Renteria ($9 million), Aaron Rowand ($12 million), or Bengie Molina ($4.5 million) would make the team’s front office look bad; $25.5 million bad.

An anecdotal reference to an individual player’s recent performance is another type of managerial comment that describes orange and black chaos. When it was suggested several weeks ago that Andres Torres should replace Aaron Rowand at the lead-off spot in the order, Manager Bruce Bochy told the media he was going in that direction until Rowand had a three hit game, so he held off. Which is like saying, despite this player’s overwhelming poor body of work, I’m betting that three hit game now means he is magically going to do well leading off.

After the Giants scored only one run in the first two games of a recent three games series with the Oakland As, Bochy finally moved Torres to the lead-off spot and batted Rowand 6th. After that final game, on Sunday May 23rd, in which the Giants were shut out for the second day in a row, Bochy continued the magic with this anecdotal-based remark: "Well, we didn't get a run today, so I can't say the lineup change worked."

About three weeks ago, Bochy told a beat writer he would not move Nat Schierholtz out of the #8 slot in the batting order because he was essentially afraid of jinxing Schierholtz, who was hitting .360 at the time. How did that bit of magic work out? Schierholtz never did get moved up to the 4th or 5th slot in the line-up to produce runs, and as of May 24th, he is batting .298 with 7 RBIs.

This kind of management-by-what-just-happened suggests the front office is operating a $483 million business based on the last shiny thing that happens to pass in front of their eyes. The more ancedotal-based decisions you make, the farther you get from being able to successfully deal with complex problems via thoughtful and creative solutions.

When the Giants replaced Aubrey Huff in the clean-up spot and made Bengie Molina the #4 batter in late April, Molina had a total of 8 RBIs. The magic here was the hope the new clean-up hitter would start driving in runs. As of May 24, 2010, Molina was out of the clean-up slot and had a total of 10 RBIs.

The team continues to run Todd Wellemeyer out as the fifth starter in the rotation, despite his 2-4 record, 5.71 ERA, and 60 walks+hits in 41 innings pitched. But Wellemeyer’s 2-1 record at AT&T Park persuaded the Giants to schedule a “cross-your-fingers” home start for Wellemeyer on Tuesday May 25th against the Washington Nationals, with little thought about what happens next. And, as an extra magical bonus, Wellemeyer’s start disrupts Tim Lincecum’s regular schedule, giving him six days rest instead of his usual five (which the team spins as “giving Timmy an extra day’s rest”).

Welcome to the 2010 San Francisco Giants— where the team’s media catch phrase rings appropriately true: there’s truly magic inside. Magic in lieu of having comprehensive goals, magic instead of long-term planning, and magic as opposed to rational, information-based decision-making.

Now let me reach into my hat and pull out a run for our next game…

 Baseball headlines from newspapers around the Nation:
  

NEW YORK YANKEES PURCHASE NATIONAL LEAGUE CENTRAL DIVISION
“We’re Always Looking to Improve Our Club,” Stated Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman

BASEBALL COMMISSIONER BUD SELIG TO EXPAND NUMBER OF MLB WILD CARD TEAMS
“Basically, Every Team Except Pittsburgh and Kansas City Will Make the Playoffs Each Year,” Affirmed Selig.

FLORIDA MARLINS TO CHANGE NAME WHEN NEW STADIUM OPENS IN 2012
Team Will Be Called the “Los Angeles Marlins of Miami” to Cash In On Name Recognition Merchandizing Associated With Nation’s Second Largest City

CLEVELAND INDIANS WILL GO TO 200 GAME SEASON IN 2011
Commissioner Explains That “Numerous” American League Teams Have Demanded More Regulation Games Against the Hapless AL Central Franchise

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES HIRE BLACKWATER TO RUN CITIZENS BANK PARK STADIUM SECURITY
New Blackwater On Field Supervisor, Dick Cheney, Promises Use of  Predator Drones

Usually go round and round, except when they start to come off. The San Francisco Giants’ bus is starting to wobble, and without panicking or jumping to baseless conclusions, it is legitimate to start asking what is going on with this team.

Normally, the end of May is a good time to step back and see where the season is at; one third of the games are in the books, and those uncertain early season trends around the Majors start to look and feel more real. Come August, those realities take on the look of history etched in reinforced concrete (unless you’re the Mets).

We are about two and a half weeks and some 18 or so games away from that one-third-of-the-way reality check, but we’d better take a look at the Giants right now because they are a couple of losing series away from starting to disappear into the netherworld of the National League West.

Here are some numbers, a managerial critique, and some other stuff I’m sure the Giants’ front office will be happy to take full responsibility for:

The Numbers
SF Giants runs scored - out of 30 MLB teams
2007 – 29th (683 runs)
2008 – 29th (640 runs)
2009 – 26th (657 runs)
2010 – 21st (144 runs)

So far in May, the Giants have scored 3.55 runs per game. They’re at 4.36 for the year, so that May number reflects a serious downward trend from their early season offensive successes. The team is reverting to its clichéd profile of great pitching, little run production, and no power.

The Manager
>During the 4th inning of the Wednesday May 12th game against the San Diego Padres, the Pads were up with two out and a runner at second base. With first base open, Bruce Bochy inexplicably chose to pitch to the number eight batter, Jerry Hairston, Jr., who promptly hit a double to score the runner. Two innings later, the same scenario; but this time Bochy walked the number eight batter with two out and a runner at second. The pitcher then struck out to end the inning.

>As Pablo Sandoval goes through the worst batting slump of his young career, Bochy repeatedly told reporters prior to last Sunday’s game with the Mets he was going sit Sandoval down to give him time to regroup. But Bochy never sat Pablo down, and in the following four games Sandoval went 2 for 16.

>During the 5th inning of the first game with San Diego on Monday, Pitching Coach Dave Righetti went to the mound to talk to pitcher Barry Zito. Right after Righetti returned to the dugout, Bochy decided to take Zito out of the game and he headed out to the mound to remove him— but you can’t visit the mound twice during the same at bat, and Bochy had to turn back. Zito was then removed between innings.
     
>On April 30th, Manager Bochy moved catcher Bengie Molina from the sixth spot in the line-up to the clean-up spot (dropping former #4 batter Aubrey Huff to 5th). Molina batted fourth the previous two years in a line-up that was one of the worst run producing units in the Majors. And while Molina is a superb clutch hitter and a Mount Rushmore-like personality in the club house, his low on base percentage (.285 in 2009) and lack of any speed essentially clogs up the Giants’ hitting attack in mid-line-up every game.

>The pitching management has at times been abysmal. Tim Lincecum was taken out of the April 28th game in the 8th inning leading the Phillies 4-1 with 11 strikeouts after throwing only 106 pitches. Brian Wilson, who's job is to close out games in the 9th inning, was put into the game with one out in the 8th and the Giants proceeded to lose.

Sergio Romo probably needs some time out of the 8th inning set-up man role after giving up three late inning home runs so far this year (Romo gave up one home run all last year), but Bochy is determined to keep Romo in that role. The team continues to pitch Todd Wellemeyer in the fifth spot in the rotation despite his 1-3 record. And Wellemeyer could actually help this team from the bullpen.

Bruce Bochy is a steady, reliable Major League manager who will get steady, average results. But in the past two years this team has not been average, it has been unique and dynamic. Giant pitching is among the best in the game, and the elements of a viable offense finally seem within reach, but the team shows signs of regressing with every passing week.

The tipping point: this team has passed Bochy by, and his skills no longer match what the team is capable of achieving in 2010. On the field, there is confusion and a conservative approach to every aspect of the game where there should be flexibility, creativity and leadership.

The Front Office
Each of the past four years, the Giants front office has attempted to patch together just enough offense, crossing their fingers that, a) mediocre players who used to be good; b) older players; and, c) good players recovering from injuries, might somehow produce enough runs for a winning season. Needless to say, that strategy has been a dismal failure:
2007 – last place, 91 losses
2008 – 4th place, 90 losses
2009 – 3rd place, 74 losses

Oddly enough, in the midst of this penny-pinching approach, the team still managed to enter into an amazing number of really terrible contracts, Edgar Renteria’s two-year $19 million 2009-10 deal being a standout. In 2009 alone, the Giants paid Dave Roberts $6.5 million, Randy Winn $8.25 million, and Randy Johnson $8 million— that’s over $31 million for four marginal players (at that point in their careers) on a third place team. The previous two years featured an even worse line-up of bad contracts with marginal players.

The 2010 line-up has also featured several players who simply do not belong at the Major League level right now. Eugenio Velez was just sent down to Triple A, but Travis Ishikawa remains on the twenty-five man roster, while hitting phenom Buster Posey bats .355 with a 1.026 OPS at Fresno.

And then there is medical-gate. In the past ten months, the Giants have had to deal with unexpected medical issues sidelining newly signed players. The most recent problem involves left fielder Mark DeRosa, who the Giants signed as a high profile free agent for two years at $12 million. DeRosa recently called last year's surgery on his left wrist “a total failure”; he may have to have additional surgery and miss much of the 2010 season.

Second baseman Freddie Sanchez, who the Giants also signed for two years at $12 million, has yet to play a game in 2010 (although he’s due to be activated in a few weeks). His torn shoulder labrum was supposedly repaired in the off-season, except that Sanchez apparently had additional surgery and didn’t inform the Giants. (You may recall the Giants traded their second best pitching prospect, Tim Alderson, to the Pirates to rent Sanchez for the last two months of 2009.) Who is utilmately responsible for making sure these big contract players are healthy and able to play?

For the San Francisco Giants, the lack of power on the field has been evenly matched by a lack of power from management. Ownership has not provided coherent direction and leadership for this franchise over the past four years. Amazingly, the abundance of talent and grit on this 2010 team still may be enough to break through this year and drive hard enough to take first place in the NL West.

But no doubt it’s going to be a very wild ride on a very wobbly bus.

All that was missing in the three game set between the Giants and Mets were laser-shooting robotic killing machines roaming at will around the Mets’ Citi Field. All three of these road games had the look of an out of control Ridley Scott film (the ones where the studio gives him too much money): high tech chaos, frightening visions of futuristic anarchy, and an alarming lack of any real authority in the land.

Now…   let’s play ball!

Before I get sidetracked, let’s briefly discuss the new Mets baseball stadium, Citi Field. Completed in 2009, Citi Field is located in Flushing, which I‘m guessing is the city’s historic plumbing district. The new stadium is remarkable in ways you really don't want things like stadiums, meat, and medical procedures to be remarkable.

In the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, ugly muti-storied concrete bunkers were used in most American cities for Major League baseball and Aerosmith concerts. Then, starting in 1992 with the wonderful Camden Yards in Baltimore, baseball-only cathedrals began replacing the old concrete cereal bowls, bringing players and fans back to the architectural roots of the game. Often, the new ballparks were seamlessly grafted into the urban landscape, one more beautiful brick building on a city boulevard full of brick buildings. Inexplicably, the designers of Citi Park (apparently budget cuts forced the use of the less expensive “i”) decided to do the exact opposite with the new Mets stadium.

Here’s what they did: located the $610 million Mets ball yard in the middle of a sea of parking lots. Really. No integration with the local Queens neighborhood, just an edifice completely surrounded by acres of concrete. Don’t get me wrong, the edifice itself is pretty nice, with its front façade replica of old Ebbets Field and the soaring Jackie Robinson Rotunda entry area. But, just about the time you’re remembering that Ebbets Field was the Dodgers’ ballpark, and just as you finally get past the endless nightmare of parking lots, you come face to face with the worst urban blight possible— blocks of cheesy car repair shops, used car lots, and oily junkyards.
As I said…. let’s, uh, play ball.

On the field, the Met's front office has brilliantly reflected the surrounding neighborhood by allowing environment-threatening amounts of garbage to blow all around the infield and outfield during games. Throughout the Sunday May 9th game with the Giants, the scene was ridiculous— food wrappers, plastic bags, cups, napkins, and newspapers everywhere. It was embarrassing watching the players on both teams trying to catch used cheeseburger wrappers and stuff them in their back pockets. Citi Dumpster Park, yo.

Back to the game. Wind blown fly balls dropping everywhere like fresh pigeon poo; the hurricane-like weather worse than the nastiest windy day at Candlestick Park; pitchers walking batters like they had base-on-balls incentive clauses in their contracts; and umpires Paul Schrieber, Rob Drake, Hunter Wendelstedt, and Angel Hernandez making more bad calls than Morgan Stanley. Oh, and throw in the soothing sounds of jet planes constantly landing at nearby La Guardia Airport and the scene is complete.

For the Giants, leaving New York City was the end of a bad dream, but it's the beginning of their next big test in the race for the National League West: five games with the surprising San Diego Padres in the next eight days. The Padres swept a three game series from the Giants in San Diego in late April; if the Padres truly aren’t for real, now is the time to prove it.

Baseball headlines from newspapers around the Nation:
  

PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES LEGENDARY PITCHER ROBIN ROBERTS DIES AT 83
Lack of Pitch Counts in the 1950s Finally Catches Up to Hall of Fame Hurler 

ALEX RODRIGUEZ WALKS ACROSS FAMILY DINNER TABLE TO GET SALT
Parents Upset Yankee Third Baseman Didn’t Follow Revered Tradition of Walking Around Table

SF GIANTS AGREE TO HIRE BARRY BONDS TO COACHING POSITION
Bonds Will Become a “Roving Instructor”, Allowing the Former Home Run King to Coach Players While Continuing to Stay One Step Ahead of Federal Authorities

PHILADELPHIA POLICE ASKS U.S. PERMISSION TO USE GUANTANAMO FACILITY TO HOUSE UNRULY PHILLIES FANS
City of Brotherly Love Taxpayers Will Save Money By Avoiding Costly Trials, Due Process

COLORADO ROCKIES TO MAKE FURTHER CHANGES IN BASEBALL STORAGE AT MILE HIGH STADIUM
Balls Will First Be Held In Sub Zero Freezers, Then Prepared With a Simple Mint Sauce and Truffle Glaze Prior to Each Game

The San Francisco Giants have placed shortstop Edgar Renteria on the 15 day disabled list with a right groin injury. To replace him, the team called up Ryan Rohlinger from Triple A Fresno. Rohlinger is hitting .333, with a .442 OBP, and .948 OPS. He has primarily been a third baseman, but has recently been playing some shortstop for Fresno.

The Giants also optioned outfielder Eugenio Velez to Triple A Fresno and brought up veteran reliever Denny Bautista. Since 2004, Bautista has played for the Baltimore Orioles, Kansas City, the Colorado Rockies, and the Detroit Tigers. Bautista was 1-1, with a 2.19 ERA and a 0.89 WHIP at Fresno. Velez has had a number of defensive problems in the outfield, and was batting .186 with the Giants. 

Due to the lack of days off in their upcoming schedule, the Giants will again use Todd Wellemeyer as a fifth starter, and needed Bautista to fill the long reliever role.

The Giants went to 11 pitchers several weeks ago when the schedule allowed Wellemeyer to go to the bullpen, and reliever Waldis Joaquin was sent down to Fresno to get more work. Giant starters have routinely pitched in to the 7th and 8th inning so far in 2010, and Joaquin was simply not getting enough innings. Bautista brings the Giants back up to 12 pitchers on the 25 man roster.

Giants Manager Bruce Bochy has told SF Chronicle sports writer Henry Schulman that even when second baseman Freddie Sanchez returns to the line-up in several weeks, hot hitting Juan Uribe will remain in the everyday line-up. That will mean a lot of juggling between Sanchez, Uribe, Pablo Sandoval, and Renteria (when he returns). It will also likely mean that second baseman Matt Downs and/or Rohlinger will be heading back to Fresno when Freddie Sanchez returns.