The Chances of Brandon Belt Making the Team Out of Spring Training
There are two things I’m pretty sure that Bochy is thinking (or should be thinking) right now:
1) Aubry Huff can’t play outfield anymore
2) Brandon Belt needs to be hitting every day
I don’t think either of those are too controversial.
Bochy is saying his outfield is set with Melk, Pagan and Nate.
And you have to believe that Huff is going to at least get a month to 6 weeks to start the season and I can’t see him playing any other position than first base.
We really don’t have any 4th or 5th outfielders to speak of so I guess you would have to count Belt as one of those guys. But that just feels *kludgy* to me. I want Brandon Belt playing every day, whether it’s SF or Fresno.
Here’s what the Giants should do: Start Belt in the OF (you might have to move Melk to RF and have Belt play LF) and relegate Nate to the “super-sub* we know him to be coming off the bench. I’m tired of trying to force Nate into a starting role. It’s not his gig. He’s pretty brittle, at least in terms of failing to handle the grind of a starting job. I’m not talking about big injuries and a lot of DL time. It just always seems the he stops hitting and then 6 weeks later he tells us he’s been dealing with a balky knee or neck or whatever. And he has proven countless times that he can come off the bench and do something to win a game for you. But, it looks like we are going to see one more run of Nate starting in right field—at least until he hits .239 or strains a knee or something……..
Send Belt down to Fresno to start the season. Call him up when Huff proves he’s done or Nate injuries himself again. That’s how I’d do it anyway…….
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ST will decide Belt’s position. He does anything in ST he makes the team. Fresno be damned. Giants have to turn the page on Huff if he starts slowly.
Belt in LF, Melky in RF and Nate on the bench and late inning D, I’m good with that. I have a feeling that Huff might be the LF though. Melky takes on the Cody Ross role and shifts to left when Nate’s in. I mentioned before that the Giants are going to have a lot of guys trying for some time at 1B (Belt, Huff, Posey and probably Panda and Pill), someone is going to have to play some OF or we gotta trade one.
by the way, I was asked to join the Baseball Bloggers Alliance and I accepted the invitation—here’s a link to the membership list
http://baseballbloggersalliance.wordpress.com/membership/
I’ll put a link up to their home page— I figured this would be a good way to coordinate with other baseball blogs and they have an actual *Constitution* so you can’t beat that, right? If you click on the link to the home page they gave us a little shout out in their blog post today….
But Flav, will we still be able to cuss, scratch, spit and stuff?
As far as my blog goes? Fuck yeah. This alliance is good for the baseball blog world. If you read their constitution, they only take blogs that stay very active. That’s us for sure. Now, if you all bail to a new blog because of the link I provided then this will turn out to not be a very good idea, lol. But I thought you guys would like all the most active blogs coordinated on to one list. That’s the main reason I joined. Plus, now we can talk shit to the fans of our opponents. Er, I think that might be a constitutional violation, I’ll go check. 🙂
I think Huff will start in LF, Belt at first. They’re giving Nate his 11th shot to win RF, he will fail for the 11th time.
Huff has to be the one with the shortest leash. I think he becomes Burrell, the LF for 7 innings replaced by melk shifting rf to lf and Nate filling in RF. Melk played CF in his Yanks days (tho questions abound as to how well), so he can cover for Pagan as well. I’d leave Belt in there every day, even vs. LHP, and be patient with him. He obviously has the most upside, and if he turns into a middle order force alongside panda and posey, Sf romps router.
Anyone sick of the peyton bs from both sides? I think irsay is just holding off on telling fan base the bad news til the last minute, which is that pm is gonzo. He has to pray health reports are positive enough he can squeeze something out of the short list of teams manning would sign to play for. But he can’t afford to pay both him and luck/rg, and realizes (as Twin said and I disagreed with earlier) talent level needs to be improved everywhere else or they just get their butts kicked again, while manning potentially leads another team to better days and fans call for his head.
I spit in the other blogs general direction.
If Belt and Huff are both in the starting line up don’t you think Huff is better at 1st than in the OF?
Sure, but I think belt would be the better 1b which would be more imp for team D. Plus, I think mentally it’s better for him not be jerked around the diamond and the OF.
I dunno, this is going to be interesting. How would you rank the players involved—Huff Melk pagan nate belt—purely in terms of offense?
I don’t remember disagreeing about Manning but maybe I did. My Manning/Lin/T-Blow tolerence is extremely low. So low I’d talk about Eli Whiteside first…
I meant that I disagreed with you–I said originally colts should keep pm and draft luck as best case scenario, which sounds like it isn’t going to happen.
just popped up a new thread. Or, as CHuck would say……..
***********************NEW THREAD NEW THREAD NEW THREAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*************
I don;t think Huff plays OF at all. Or very little, anyway.
I think Belt needs to play every day as well, but I think Huff can handle left. Bonds could in his last years when he was below average defensively. I think the difference between Huff and Belt playing left is negligible, but Belt is much better than Huff at first defensively.
They also should give Posey one or two starts a week at first, so in a 6 game week, Belt should start at least start 4 games at first and two in left if the bat is needed. Huff should get 4 starts in left.
So if there are 18 starts a week for the OF with Belt getting two and Huff 4, Melky should start 5 games (4 in right and one in CF), Pagan 5 games a week, so that leaves Nate with two starts. If you don’t want to play Belt in left, than nate could get a couple more starts or pill getting one or two…