Friday Baseball Post

Well, I can't watch the ALDS tonight thanks to the rain, so I think I'll just complain about the Giants and first base again. Very longtime readers will remember that I used to be rather interested in the long string of Giants 1Bs who couldn't manage a 100 OPS+. That all ended in 2010, with Aubrey Huff putting up a very nice 141 OPS+ (385/506) for the seasons while playing 100 games at 1B. And a good thing, too, because Travis Ishikawa was the backup, and that's a 93 OPS+.

But that was then, and the 2011 Giants were right back up to their old tricks. Huff fits right in to the history of futility of the last decade, with a putrid 90 OPS+. Hey, it ranks #3 for Giants 1Bs over the last 7 years, tucked neatly between Klesko in 2007 and Snow in 2005.

The real news is that Brandon Belt rallied in the last week to reach 306/412, which baseball-reference scores as a 101 OPS+.  That was his 23 year old season...I guess we can wait and see what the projections look like, but it sure seems to me that if you liked Belt in March, you should like him about as much now. Of course, he may wind up in LF instead of 1B, but that's not exactly a negative, right? But at any rate, it's not so bad at all to enter the Hot Stove season sitting on Belt and his upcoming 24 year old season, Posey (who will be 25) and the Panda -- who is also going to be just 25. Given the pitching staff, it sure doesn't seem that it would be all that hard to put together a 95 win team from that base.

Of course, if Huff winds up the regular 1B, then the odds are good that they can manage to run the sub-100 OPS+ string to 7 of 8 years. And winning 95 with a horrible 1B isn't something I'd want to bet on.

I think I'll start thinking about the postseason by next week.