Guessing the Giants' September call-ups

"In the land of the bad team, the quasi-prospect is king" - Hammurabi

Wait, maybe that was Roger Angell. Regardless, there are two types of fans right now: the ones thinking about October pennant chances, and the ones thinking about September call-ups. Giants fans are most certainly the latter. So let's speculate.

Bruce Bochy has already said the Giants will call up five or six players when the rosters expand on Sunday. I'm not sure if that includes Angel Pagan or not.

The good news -- kinda -- is the Fresno Grizzlies and Richmond Flying Squirrels are out of their playoff races, so there isn't going to be a problem pilfering the good players from their roster. Of course, if they had a surplus of good players, they'd probably be in the playoff race. Hey, it's like The Gift of the Magi!

Here's the Giants' 40-man roster. Let's go in order and see if we can guess the five or six call-ups.

Pitchers

Jake Dunning - Almost certainly one of the call-ups.

Edwin Escobar - Probably not, though it would be fun to watch him.

George Kontos - Yep.

Dan Runzler - You're never going to believe this, but Runzler has had problems with command all season. So no.

Eric Surkamp - He might be auditioning for next year. Maybe gets a call-up.

Catchers
The Giants don't have catchers other than Hector Sanchez and Buster Posey on the 40-man roster. Huh.

Infielders
Nick Noonan - He'll be up unless Noonan is already on the roster. I am absolutely incapable of keeping track of that guy. He's probably in Olso with V.I.L.E. agents!

Ehire Adrianza - Probably. He's hitting .302/.407/.413 in Triple-A somehow. I'd make a joke about that being sustainable, but he's just 23, and when Brandon Crawford was that age, he was hitting worse in Double-A. I dunno. Probably too soon to write him off.

It's pretty tacky for him to make up a public-relations website to promote himself, though.

How 'bout you prove it on the field, Ehire?

Kids these days.

Angel Villalona - Nope.

Outfielders
Kensuke Tanaka - Wait, he's listed under outfielders? Hee hee. He'll almost certainly be up.

Juan Perez - Yep.

Gary Brown - The most curious decision of all. He'll have to be added to the 40-man roster to prevent another team from taking him in the Rule 5 draft, so that's probably not the biggest obstacle. But the Giants will need to yoink someone from the 40-man to make room for Angel Pagan. Dropping two players from the 40-man might be too much.

I wouldn't mind seeing Brown, though. For entertainment purposes only.

So if we're sticking with Bochy's hint of five or six players, my guess at the September call-ups:

Juan Perez
Kensuke Tanaka
Ehire Adrianza
Eric Surkamp
Jake Dunning
George Kontos

And Nick Noonan if he isn't already in the clubhouse, hiding under a pile of sweatshirts.

Wheeee? Wheeeeeeee. At least the Giants won't have to keep grinding the same bullpen arms day after day. Unless there's a surprise Brown-out, though, this is probably the most underwhelming batch of call-ups since the last one.

Edit: Wait, forgot about Heath Hembree, who isn't on the 40-man roster, but will probably get a look. So put him in place of Surkamp if you think Bochy was being strict with the "six" prediction. But I'll guess that they'll all come up.