FanPost

Giants Home Woes

If we compare the Giants roster at this point last year to now, here are the significant changes:

1. Cueto/Shark/Cain replace Lincecum/Heston/Vogie

2. Span/Pagan/Pence Outfield instead of Pagan/Aoki/Maxwell (Pence was out for a while last year)

3. Duffy at 3B full-time instead of McGehee

4. Bullpen has a less experienced core compared to last year.

Based on those changes, one would expect considerably better results. The record after 35 games last year? It's the same as this year...17-18. Of course, it is a small sample size but certainly very disappointing and worth examining the core issues.

They have lost 3 series on the road so far this year - Mets, Dodgers, Rockies. Aside from a couple of games rendered unwinnable by Peavy's performance, on the whole, not bad. The bigger issue is the performance at home.

We have already had a 3 game stretch against Arizona where they scored 3 runs and a 4 game stretch against Colorado/Toronto where they have scored 3 runs. It doesn't matter what Cain and Peavy do if this supposed "best Giants offense in over a decade" does that against for the most part good but not elite pitching.

If you also consider team BABIP and Hard hit ball percentage rankings, both are in line - Giants rank in the middle on both. So, there doesn't appear to be a bad luck factor at play.

There are two elements that this team needs to improve on in order to reach that 50 win mark at home typically needed to make the playoffs:

1. More team speed - On defense, they need more speed/range in the OF to turn more of those doubles/triples into singles. On offense, they need more speed to be able to take exrtra bases and grind out more infield hits when run scoring is often at a premium.

2. Right handed power - Technically, I should probably call this left field power. It's just not practical to expect to bunch many singles together to score runs against good pitching (especially with all the shifts based on advanced stats). You need to really punish those few mistakes that pitchers make...and if there are a few guys capable of hitting it out to LF, you can hit HRs at AT&T park as many of the visiting sluggers have shown.

Unfortunately, the above elements don't seem to exist in the upper minors of the Giants farm system (and even if they did, the Giants would probably be reluctant to platoon any of their regulars at this point).

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