Brandon Belt Gets His Opportunity
The San Francisco Giants have finally committed to Brandon Belt. Now the team has to figure out how to best use him.
After finishing 29th in runs last season, the Giants were in desperate need of some offense. While Belt’s transition to the majors last year wasn’t all that impressive, his .343/.457/.596 line in the minor leagues proved that he’s more than capable of being an above-average hitter for the Giants. Despite Belt’s eye-popping numbers, manager Bruce Bochy said that the 23-year-old will platoon with Brett Pill to open the season—and move Aubrey Huff to the outfield. Despite the fact that Belt hit .348/.412/.522 against lefties last season — albeit, in just 51 plate appearances — the Giants think he needs more work against same-handed pitchers. Belt, however, did show a platoon split in 2010. Pill, on the other hand, has generally been better versus lefties during his time in the minors. When you consider those stats — and the fact that Belt is on the better half of the platoon — the strategy could actually work in the Giants’ favor.
Unfortunately, this strategy also prevents Belt from facing lefties. If the Giants want him to improve against left-handed pitching, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to hide him from lefties. And for Belt to fulfill his status as a prospect, he can’t be a part-time player. With Buster Posey also slated to get some time at first base, that could cut into Belt’s usage. Belt could play left field at times, but Huff is currently slated to play there.
While it’s imperative that Posey gets as many at bats as possible, Belt has a higher ZiPS projection than both Huff and Pill.
| Player | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brandon Belt | 0.268 | 0.365 | 0.452 | 0.356 |
| Aubrey Huff | 0.261 | 0.329 | 0.422 | 0.325 |
| Brett Pill | 0.267 | 0.298 | 0.412 | 0.306 |
According to ZiPS, Belt should probably replace Huff in left field when Posey starts at first. And based on the poor projection for Pill, Belt should probably be the full-time first baseman, too.
By platooning Belt and Pill, the Giants have decided to make Huff the full-time left fielder. The Giants attempted this last season and got disastrous results. In 86 innings as a right fielder, Huff posted a -9.1 UZR — good for a -125.0 UZR/150, which is almost too improbable to write. Now, no one should draw firm conclusions from a sample size of less than 100 innings in the field, but every bit of evidence suggests he’s been a comically bad outfielder.
The Giants did try Belt in the outfield last season, and while he wasn’t great, he was an improvement from Huff. (Belt had a pulse and generally ran in the same direction as the ball.) From a defensive standpoint, San Francisco is going to give up a lot of runs in left if Huff plays there the entire season — but of course that’s not likely since no manager could stand to watch Huff play the outfield for extended periods and convince himself that this it was a sound plan.
If the Giants want to utilize their best hitters while also employing the best possible defense, they might want to consider playing Huff at first and Belt in left a little more often. But it’s not that easy. Both players are more susceptible to injury in the outfield, and keeping Belt healthy is far more important than keeping Huff healthy. As awful as it sounds, if you’re going to risk the health of one of the two, it should probably be the end-of-his-career veteran in the last year of his contract.
The Giants made the right decision by promoting Belt to the majors, but how he’s used isn’t quite as straightforward. While a Belt-Pill platoon might work, it also prevents Belt from improving against left-handed pitchers. At the same time, playing Belt at first means that the Giants will have to suffer through the Aubrey Huff experience in left field. While the optimal alignment for the Giants might involve Belt playing the outfield, it’s unclear if the team is willing to put him out there, or what the constant position switching might do to his development.
Brandon Belt certainly deserves to be in the majors. How the Giants choose to use him will play a big role in whether they make the playoffs.
Chris is a blogger for CBSSports.com. He has also contributed to Sports on Earth, the 2013 Hard Ball Times Baseball Annual, ESPN, FanGraphs and RotoGraphs. He tries to be funny on twitter @Chris_Cwik.
I love Brandon Belt and I’m excited to see him make the Opening Day Roster, but since when does a great batting line in the PCL prove anything at all about major league performance?
This was my thought as well – his pedigree combined with his minor league numbers suggest he’s capable of being an above-average hitter for the Giants, but they don’t prove anything other than he’s been great in the minors.
He would be far from the first player not to make the leap well, and he’s saddled with the expectation of maintaining the same numbers while switching from the PCL to AT&T Park.
The lion’s share of his minor league numbers were posted in the Cal League and PCL, both pretty extreme hitter friendly environments.
Here’s what I look at with Belt: As overmatched as he was for much of last year, he still hit 9 HR’s which projects to the high 20’s in a full season’s worth of PA’s. 8 of those HR’s came in the last couple of months and his bat did look a lot better in September.
His history does suggest that he is capable of hitting for a higher BA than .200 + change, so as he gets more comfortable and starts to close some of those holes in his swing, he’s likely to produce a solid OBP with 25-35 HR’s. The risk is that he doesn’t close the holes in his swing and MLB pitchers exploit them even more.
Hold on! He has an career minor league OPS over 1.050. He has a minor league BB rate of 18% (or so). The longest time he spent anywhere was at 22 years old in A+ where he posted a 1.121 OPS. He is considered a + defensive 1B (although there are yet metrics to back that up). He was essentially the top hitter in every stop he made so despite playing in the PCL and Cal leagues he exceeded his peers.
At 24 he made his major league debut and people are disappointed because he was ONLY league average.
I think that at 25 (he is actually still just 24), there is really no rational argument that he should be starting over a player who had a .294 wOBA and an 84 wRC+.
Nobody is arguing that he should be up there with Bryce Harper and Mike Trout in terms of hitting prospects or that he can develop into a Pujols type power/speed 1B. But for comparison sake he BB more than twice as much as Lawrie and K at a slightly lower rate than Brett Lawrie in the SAME LEAGUE (PCL).
At no time did Brandon Belt “tear it up” last year. I don’t know what stat you are looking at but he finished with a .225 BA and a .306 OBP. Yes, he did hit for some power in that. Maybe league average is a lot poorer than I think it is, but those do not look like league average numbers to me.
Dr. B, Belt’s wRC+ last year in the majors was 98. So, yeah. Offense was down enough last year that after accounting for park factors, Belt’s .225/.306/.412 line is just about league average.
Most of that offensive value is in the SLG% and 8 of his 9 HR’s occured in the last 2 months of the season. He was terrible before that. I don’t think there is any MLB manager or team that would have kept him in the lineup any longer than the Giants did. Accusations that he was mishandled are really way off base.
Wow. You mean Belt had to adjust and then hit 8 HRs in his last two months!!! Horrible. (SARCASM!!!).
DrBGiantsfan – Belt is better than Huff. In all likelihood, by a large margin (multiple wins over the course of a season). Your arguments are weak. Just admit there is NOTHING that suggests that Belt shouldn’t be starting.
For as “bad” as Belt was in 2011, he was still a league average hitter.
Well, he did do some good things. He may have been a league average hitter by some measures, but by others he was quite a bit below average. Just watching him play, he looked completely lost for long stretches with some atrocious AB’s.
He still has a lot of trouble with hard stuff inside and has to adjust by pulling his arms in. That produces some funny looking swings, but I saw him hit a HR late last year with one of those funny looking swings and he hit a double in the first game of the Bay Bridge Series with a funny looking swing. He’s strong enough to hit the ball a long ways with funny looking swings.
Still, the risk is that he won’t be able to close that hole and MLB pitchers will wear him out with hard stuff inside.
If he was “lost for long stretches” then he must have been tearing it up for long stretches as well to come out as a league average hitter. Also as with his first go in MLB, who wouldnt expect him to struggle a bit at times.
The truth is that in his debut he was jerked around and mismanaged (not a surprise considering who we are dealing with). The Giants have a GAPPING hole in production that 1B, that prevents them from being a better team. They can either repeat what they did last year (jerk around Belt and play a .650 OPS) OR go with the better player and try to win games. It really doesnt seem like a complicated choice to me, but I know that Bochy is befuddled by it.
I don’t see anything in a .225 BA with a .306 OBP that would suggest he “tore it up” for at any time last year.
DrBGiantsfan – You understand how averages work right? If he was “atrocious” for some stretches then he also equally good for some stretches. That is how you get to league average.
Now alternatively, Huff was atrocious for some stretches and NOT equally good for some stretches. And that is why he was worth about 84% of league average. Of course that is just with the bat. When factoring in his defense he loses even more ground to Belt.
Regardless of his actual production (which as it was pointed out was average). Aubrey Huff was the worst everyday 1B in MLB last year, statistically the WORST, and the Giants were fortunate enough to have one of the top 1B prospects in the minors. That prospect was almost universally recognized (outside of the Giants of course) as being ML ready. And he sat, was reassigned or benched every third game. Mismanaged is the only way to describe Belt’s 2011 unless you just write it off as a total lost year
Mark Trumbo. (In terms of power, at least)
Indeed, I guys named Rizzo and Sands come to mind. PCL performance seems to inicate you chew tobacco properly.