FanPost

What Should the Giants Do About Their Offense?


The Giants starting pitching has been obscene so far in September, and their bullpen has been just as good. Overall the Giants have posted a 1.66 ERA so far this month, but have gone just 11-6. Now mind you, 11-6 is not a bad record over a 17 game stretch, but when your pitching dominates the way the Giants has you expect a little more. In three of those six losses, the Giants failed to score a run, two of which they lost 1-0, and one of those was a 1-hitter.

With Andres Torres out, the Giants don't have a ton of options and all of their options include damaging the pride and/or hurting the feelings of at least one of their players, something Bork has been loathe to do thus far.

From my vantage point the two best things that Bochy can do are:

1. Do not let Aaron Rowand set foot on the field before the 7th inning and only then with at least a two run lead. At this point, I'd rather see MadBum coming up to the plate than Rowand, hell I'd rather see Vrooom get playing time than Rowand-2. If he's had a hit this month, I sure didn't see it. Piss-poor contract aside, Rowand has been awful, even by 4th or 5th outfielder standards. So far this year baseball-reference has him at a -0.2 WAR, that's right a negative WAR. Unless it's for defensive purposes and MadBum has already hit, he should be the absolute last position player in to the game. Sadly, while Bork has moved in this direction, I still see Rowand starting every 2-3 days until Torres returns.

2. Sandoval should be getting about as much playing time as Rowand. While Sandoval hasn't been as bad as Rowand--has anyone?--he hasn't been very good. I know that there has been a lot of debate about what to do with Sandoval, but his defense is a liability so if he's not hitting he needs to sit. While the Giants failed to score even a single run Friday, Sandoval's defense still could have cost them the game. After failing to get to a groundball that looked like it was hit by Bea Arthur and bounced approximately four katrillion times before making it to left field, he botched a sure-fire double play when he hit Posey at Dr. Scholl's level with his throw. I realize that Renteria doesn't represent a huge upgrade over Sandoval offensively, but he is an upgrade. However the real factor is that if you're not going to score many runs, you need to do an even better job of stopping the other team from scoring and the defensive upgrade with Uribe at 3rd is sizable to say the least.

With regards to the other white elephant in the room, I don't think there's anyway you can bench Guillen now, even though he has all of the defensive tools of the Michelangelo's David out in right. However, the moment the Giants get the lead, Schierholz should immediately be inserted, even if it's in the first inning. Guillen is just that bad on defense. However, whatever happened to Ishikawa? It's not like he stopped hitting and lost playing time, the moment Guillen cools off, Bork should seriously consider inserting Ishi at 1st and moving Huff back to right.

So what does everyone else think? Or is there anything the Giants can do, except start hitting?

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