Brandon Belt Singles Past Straw Men
Last night, in the eleventh inning of a scoreless, priceless piece of pitching between the Giants and Phillies, Brandon Belt came to the plate with one out. The situation was surprising. Here was the left-handed Opening Day first baseman, then platoon caddy backup first baseman, then bench piece — coming in against a left-handed reliever with the game on the line.
The results turned out well for the Baby Giraffe and the Giants — his single started the game-winning rally — but the moment itself brought to mind all the anti-Belt arguments that have been thrown the first baseman’s way over the past two seasons.
In some ways, these reasons given for his lack of playing time represent straw men. We weren’t in the front office, or the dugout, or next to the batting cage, when they were proffered by his coaching staff or front office suit. Each of those arguments was relevant in that eleventh-inning at-bat, however. Unraveling the twine that holds them together seems to produce even more straw men, but the overall picture becomes clear as each single argument gets cloudier.
Is there really any good reason to keep Brandon Belt from regular playing time?
1) Brandon Belt has platoon issues.
Aubrey Huff will be the Giants’ every-day left fielder in 2012, leaving Brandon Belt and Brett Pill to platoon at first base. Belt will face the lion share of right-handers with Pill taking the lefties.
“I don’t want to switch it up,” Bochy said. “I want to stay consistent.” — Nate Stuhlbarg, CSNBayArea.com, April 4, 2012
There was the supposedly lefty part of the first base platoon, striding to the plate against Antonio Bastardo… a lefty in the Phillies’ pen. So it was a strange use for the supposed platoon first baseman.
Do we know that he has platoon issues? Lefties, as a group, fare worse against lefties — across baseball this has been proven true — but Belt doesn’t seem to be any worse in that regard. He only had 126 plate appearances against southpaws in the Minor Leagues, but he proved adequate enough in posting a .395 on-base percentage against them. In the Major Leagues, he’s added 53 more PAs and a .415 OBP. He’s now about 800 plate appearances short of having a good enough sample to use his observed platoon split, and our sample is so small that even estimating his true talent platoon split with our data seems futile.
Here’s where we birth another straw man — perhaps someone has seen something that suggests that he will be worse against lefties in the future. Something in his batting stance perhaps?
2) Brandon Belt won’t adjust his batting stance as the coaching staff has asked him to.
Coaches want Belt to stand more upright to hit down on ball, stand back in box to see balls longer. Watch him hit. You won’t see that….
-— Henry Schulman (@hankschulman) April 9, 2012
Someone said this, it looks like. Maybe it’s not a straw man. But it feels like one.
Once upon a time, Belt was more known for his college pitching at Texas. He hit 14 home runs over 473 at-bats back with the old bats, but there was still something that caught the Giants’ eye. A team renowned for spotting great pitchers (not hitters) picked him, retooled his swing, and set him loose on the Minor Leagues as a first baseman (not a pitcher). After destroying the Eastern League, the patient slugger gave all credit to the organization that gave him a shot.
Brandon Belt: In college I was a lot more squatty — believe it or not. My hands were a lot lower and I was a lot more closed off. So pretty much as soon as I got in the [Giants] organization, they opened me up, they raised my hands, and they got me up out of the crouch just a little bit just so I could stay stacked in my upper body. And so far it’s worked out pretty well for me. — as told to Adam Foster at Project Prospect, November 7, 2010
So this guy now won’t make changes similar to ones he once made? With a starting job on the line? Seems unlikely.
[Some have pointed out that Belt supposedly has a hole in his swing. This was an attempt to address that topic, but here’s another way to talk about it. What hole?]
3) Brandon Belt is too patient of a hitter.
[Belt] also plans to attack strikes, which he did not do consistently last year. Bochy considered Belt too passive at the plate, searching for walks instead of trying to crush pitches over the plate. Belt was the first to agree, saying, “When I’m aggressive, I’m a lot better.” — Henry Schulman, SFGate, February 19, 2012
After he retooled his swing once for the organization, the Giants told him he needed to attack strikes more last offseason. They asked him to play winter ball to that end. This, after a debut season that had him show near-league-average production at 23 years old. He acquiesced, and dominated in Dominican Winter Ball. Once again he showed he was willing to make an adjustment for his team. Wednesday night, he came into the game with the Giants needing a baserunner and saw one pitch from Bastardo — it was a low strike down the middle and he roped it for a single.
As for being too patient… there isn’t a hitter on the Giants this year that is projected to have a better OBP the rest of the season than the .363 that ZiPs has in store for Belt.
We don’t need to re-invent the wheel and provide a link between getting on base and scoring runs. It’s a bit anecdotal, but in this case apropos: The Giants have scored the least runs in the National League since 2007; The Giants have had the second-worst OBP over that same time frame.
Perhaps this team could use a hitter that is too patient?
4) Brandon Belt is unproven, and the Giants need a sure thing.
This one hasn’t been said by anyone in the papers, but it’s possibly lurking behind Belt’s usage. First, he was the platoon outfielder, but after a few oh-fers, he ended up missing time against against right-handed pitchers. But what of his competition? Aubrey Huff is providing a .207/.333/.379 line this year — hence the straw man’s emergence here. Huff must be getting more of the benefit of the doubt because he’s a proven veteran. That’s why Belt’s the rook grabbing some pine, meat.
But we aren’t talking about giving Huff more than 36 PAs to recover. Because Huff has played to a .244/.307/.371 line over his last 615 PAs. Belt has been given 231 PAs over the same time frame and has a .220/.307/.395 line.
He’s already better.
——-
As murky as it is navigating each of these particular proffered reasons for his lack of playing time, it does seem like a clear picture emerges. He may or may not have problems against lefties. He may more may not be able to make adjustments. He may or may not be too patient. But, over the pat year-plus, he’s been better than the alternative, already.
Wednesday night was a strange night for Belt. The platoon first baseman found himself in the game facing a lefty, probably because the Giants had few other options (Manny Burriss?) and were desperate for baserunners. The same Belt that wouldn’t make an adjustment and wouldn’t be aggressive on strikes and had a problem against lefties reached down and pokes a single, right past all those straw men.
Maybe he can continue to do the same if given regular playing time.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
I fucking hope so. I’m all in on him
Paging Alex Anthopolous. I see a market inefficiency for you to exploit, please come join Yunel Escobar, Brett Lawrie and Colby Rasmus on The Outsiders.
Belt for Lind. Scary part is Sabean might take that deal.
The front office (including Sabean) are very committed to Belt, but Bochy is standing in the way (see the Castilla incident in San Diego). I think if it weren’t for Sabean et al, Belt would have not yet been put on the major league roster.
Committed, huh Jack. Who is Bochy’s boss?
I agree Belt should be playing. I agree the only reason he isn’t is prejudice on the part of Bochy and the organization. However, as to argument #4: if Ralph has such-and-such line over 615 PAs, while Fred has an oh-so-slighty-better line during the same time frame over 231 PAs, odds are Ralph’s actually been a bit better. He’s been hitting against everybody, while Fred’s been spotted against guys you figure he’s more able to hit.
Belt has been given some opportunity thus far. And thus far he hasn’t done all that much with it.
If Jack’s observation above is correct, than I apologize to “the organization” and lay the blame entirely on Bochy. And assuming Jack’s much closer to the situation than I am, I’ll go with his perspective.
If Aubrey has 615 way below average for a first baseman at bats, then Brandon, Ralph and Fred are probably all better batters than Aubrey.
I could amend that sentence, yes. More correct: Given their last two years of play, it’s very unlikely that Belt is worse than Huff, and its probable that he’s better. In my defense that doesn’t read as well though.
I agree with the sentiment. I just don’t think the data you cite right there supports it. If you’re only a bit better than me in one third’s worth of more-carefully chosen at bats, I don’t think that’s any evidence at all that you’ve actually performed better than me over that time period. Not even on an at-bat basis, really.
I agree. One AB tells you everything you need to know about a player!
That’s being disingenuous, DRB. Nowhere do I say that the AB tells us everything. I wrote about his career all the way back to college. The AB was just a road into the topic, and I think that’s fairly obvious.
Use your contacts close to Sandy and have him pull the trigger with Sabean again. Maybe he’ll take JayBay.
How clever! Dr. B has come in to show us exactly what a straw man is.
Random irrelevant comment. Always thought your name would sound better as Eno Harris. Eno Sarris just doesn’t roll off the tongue as well. Totally agree on Belt. Just play the guy and see what you have. Phillies have done the same thing with Brown. First it was “he can’t hit lefties”. Then it was “he can’t play defense”. Just play these guys and see what you have. Playing 30 something no upside players just because they are veterans or had 2 good years in the mid 2000’s drives me crazy.
If you say it fast enough and with an accent, he’s an Enosaurus.
See above. A more correct version would be that “Given their last year-plus complete body of work, it’s unlikely Belt is worse, and it’s probable that he’s better.” But you could use the projections as a proxy for this argument, actually.
Oh and EnoSaurus was one of my earlier nicknames, along with Eno the Beano and enis the… never mind.
i was thinking Eno Scabell.
The only mis-handling of Domonic Brown by the Phillies, is the failure to turn his obvious and abundant tools into a modicum of actual defensive capability.
The dude is simply horrific in the OF. Really. Check his stats. He has SSS MLB stats, but they are eerily similar to his minor league defensive stats. And they are uniformly awful.
At this point, he can’t play D. Period.
He’s a DH / emergency only OF at this point. And I fear that’s his defensive ceiling.
And, I’m a Phillies fan, and I LIKE Domonic Brown.
Belt, on the other hand, is an upgrade both offensively and defensively vs Huff. There is no excuse for not plugging him into the lineup everyday. Its a no-brainer.
Dave S, Brown has had some awful stretches in the OF, but he has been mismanaged all to hell; and so far this year, he’s been handling LF pretty well.
Dave, Brown would be an upgrade over Pierre. Looking awkward on D and being a bad defender are two different things. In my mind there’s no way wigginton or Pierre should be getting at bats over Brown. I’d have Galvis at 2nd, Mayberry at 1st, Brown in LF, with Nix sprinkled in.
There’s a story going around Bay Area sports radio – add grain of salt here – that Belt asked Bochy for a day off, a mental health day sort of thing, to get his head straight. Supposedly this occurred this season already. If true, the thinking goes, Belt is soft and Bochy isn’t comfortable with him out there unless and until he toughens up.
Yeah, no idea if true and don’t have a link or a source, but I’ve heard this story repeated more than once on 95.7 the game (yes, I listen to sports radio in the car – my secret shame).
That well-documented anecdote certainly added a lot to our understanding.
I guess I should be listening to all the experts calling in on sports radio rather than looking at stats and reading FanGraphs.
It’s not just sports radio, Bochy said in an interview when he sat Belt down that Belt CAME TO HIM and said he was PRESSING. When a player admits that to you, you need to sit him down a while and let him get his bearings until the manager is satisfied that he is ready.
Just so I don’t create another straw man — it’s been a big day for them — is it your position that because Aubrey Huff is pressing quietly, he’s a better player? Or better person?
When a player comes to you and says, “I’m pressing”, yes you do then give him a break. He’s pretty much asking for one.
Maybe Belt said or did something to piss off Bruce Bochy so he’s in the long-term doghouse. I bet irrational stuff like that happens more than we think.
Stop pointing at me Brendan Ryan, Colby Rasmus, Scott Rolen, and Steve Kline!
You forgot J.D. Drew.
and Tyler Greene….and Mitchell Boggs. It’s best not to be talented or young if you’re going to play anywhere near TLR… If you happen to be young or talented, it’s best to act like you’re less talented than you are or fake an injury and then stage a comeback. Other approaches include acting as though you love animals or acting as though you grew up watching Aaron Miles “play the game the right way.”
From wikipedia: “A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.[1] To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by replacing it with a superficially similar yet unequivalent proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.”
This article is more of a straw man than anything coming from the Giants re: Belt.
At least I was pretty upfront about it you ask me.
Also, you can’t just throw your hands up and say, they know better! We can look at the evidence we have and try to refute possible arguments against his playing time. Yes, that’s a straw man construction, but short of being in the FO, we aren’t going to have the information we need to give this argument the full treatment.
The point is that by saying someone is using a straw man – your saying they are being dishonest.
We may disagree that Huff is the better player, but there is no reason to suggest the Giant’s are being disingeneous with their reasoning.
I think the Giants have been very upfront about this. They said he has a hole in his swing. They said that he’s fighting the changes. They said that he was pressing and that is why he was sat down for a number of games. They said that they love him, and if they didn’t, they wouldn’t keep bringing him back up to the majors to see if he finally got his swing fixed.
No, these aren’t the Giants straw men, they are mine. So normally you’d call it a straw man argument to say, why are they sitting Belt, this must be the reason, let me argue against it. IN some of these cases, Bruce Bochy has said something (the platoon). But I wouldn’t say in the other cases the Giants have been upfront. They’ve been upfront about him needing to change his swing? By (possibly) leaking information about it to Schulman? I don’t see that as the case.
I used straw men — arguments that I put in the Giants’ mouths — so that I could figure out the possible reasons for sitting him.
Isn’t this comment, then, also a straw man?
I agree. What people call a “straw man argument” rarely is. The article should have been, “Reasons the Giants are choosing not to play Belt, and why I question them”. That, and lose the “pr” on “proffer”. It’s a 40% less efficient and 100% more pretentious word.
The Giants haven’t stated all of these reasons. The platoon is the only one they’ve said anything about publicly. So me trying to read the tea leaves could be described as coming up with straw men. So I was upfront about it.
And ‘offer’ is used every day a million times. So every once in a while I proffer.
All lefties fare worse against lefties — across baseball this has been proven true
Brennan Boesch?
You have to wait even longer than 1000 PAs to believe in a reverse platoon split!
Just out of curiousity, hoiw many plate appearances will it take for you to believe it?
LHPvLHB is 1000 PA for reliability. What that means is that you have to regress what you see against 1000 PA of normal platoon splits in order to ‘believe it.’ In other words, the closer you get to 1000 PA, the more you can believe it. 500 PAs against LHP would mean that you could basically believe it at a 50% level. If you follow the link in the article, you can see that this is research-driven, not personal opinion.
Well, he has 1000 plate appearances, and is showing a reverse platoon split, but you want 1000 PAs against lefties, if I understand you correctly. That’s going to take a few more years.
I have little doubt that the overwhelming majority of lefty batters don’t fare as well against lefty pitchers as they do against righties, but you said, “all,” and “all” isn’t the sort of thing you can prove inductively.
If this piece is so thoroughly research driven than opinion driven, how come it is a single hit in a pinch-hit situation that prompted this article?
If research was the true genesis of this article, you would have published this article right after he was benched for pressing because the research has not been much changed over a few games, which we all can agree is extremely small samples.
Why did he have to have a hit like this to generate such an article if it were truly research based?
1) We were talking about reverse platoon splits. That’s been researched. So I gave him the research.
2) I’ve been thinking about the Giants use of Belt all year. I’ve been trying to discuss it with other Giants fans on twitter. These are the arguments that we’ve zeroed in on — only one of which was actually addressed by the Giants publicly in the press. After that one at-bat, which I found interesting because it came in a lefty-on-lefty pinch-hitting appearance, I decided to write about it. Using that at-bat as a device.
I love Belt, and I’m as frustrated as anyone with the way the Giants have jerked him around over the past year. Having said that, this article is missing what is likely the primary reason for why the Giants have had such a quick hook. Several decision-makers in the organization think that Belt has a hole in his swing, and that pitchers have routinely gotten him out on the inside part of the plate (fastballs on the hands, breaking pitches down and in). He did post an above-average whiff rate on low and inside breaking pitches last year, and while I’m too stupid to find current heat maps for him, it seems anecdotally that the problem has continued this year.
None of this supersedes the fact that the Giants should just let him work through it like, say, the Braves have done with Freddie Freeman. But it is at least a legitimate reason for why the team has had some concerns. It’s certainly more realistic than the straw men here, at least one of which (#4) the author made up (somewhat meta-ironically).
I aimed to cover that topic in #2. The adjustment is meant to cover that hole.
But the hole doesn’t show up in his heat map. http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/cache/r61qg2bjucl7kdt8q3qhob9gj3474832WM.png
And Huff’s got holes everywhere. http://www.baseballheatmaps.com/graph/cache/r61qg2bjucl7kdt8q3qhob9gj3333492WM.png
rickeycanstillplay: NO WAY Sabean takes that deal. Lind is too young.
Enos – PHENOMENAL accounting here. My buddy and I familiar had a similar email string going back and forth attempting to understand what exactly the Giants are thinking with regard to Belt. Our conclusion: no effing clue!
Also, I can’t remember who the baseball writer was, but either during the 2010 season or just after it, someone wrote an article on Posey, which mentioned Sandoval, and the point was made that if those two had not gotten off to HOT starts, we may still looking at a post-30 year old veteran platoon at Catcher and we may barely know who Baby Panda is, unless of course he was dealt to another org who better recognizes how to develop positional players into MLB hitters.
Finally, the irony of Bochy’s comments with regard to Schierholz a few weeks ago is still echoing in my head. When Schierholz was hitting well in the 1st half of 2010 and the Giants had no other obvious answer in RF, Nate couldn’t buy regular playing time.
Now that Schierholz is pushing 30 with 4 years of mostly sporadic MLB experience under his ‘belt’, in discussing Belt’s playing time, Bochy stated that he felt it was important to get Schierholz regular AB’s.
This, of course, comes at the expense of Belt getting AB’s because Huff, who for some inexplicable reason must be in the lineup each and every day, slides down to 1B so that Nate can play RF which puts BB on the bench.
We’re talking bizarro land here – especially from an organization that has had so much success in recent years.
You should check the data before writing: Look at Posey’s batting line when Molina was traded. He was bouncing around 700 OPS, above and below. Yet they still traded Molina and installed Posey as the full-time starting catcher then.
I guess you missed it but Schierholtz admitted that his shoulder injury in early 2010 affected his hitting the rest of the season. Plus, he was hot in April, by May he hit .232/.295/.304/.599, starting in 15 of 17 games, before his injury knocked him out for a number of games and after that, he didn’t really start any games after that. He never really hit at all after that either, Bochy would give him spot starts but he was pretty much on the bench, but that was probably tied to him not hitting either.
But they must have liked him, and appear to understand that his performance was hurt by that injury, because they kept him for the next season, and started him again in 2011 at times, and named him as the incumbent starter going into spring training 2012. You don’t do that for someone you don’t really believe in, you would get rid of him, like Lewis, Frandson, and Bowker.
You say you prefer keeping the struggling player starting, so are you saying that the ChiSox keeping Gordon Beckham starting is doing the right thing, for him and the team? Do you think that paid off with Jeff Francoeur? At what point should such a prospect be deemed ready to return to the minors to get some seasoning?
I understand KC’s patience with their young players or the O’s patience with Weiters, but when you are losing and not competitive, you can focus more on developing the prospects in the majors because losing just gives you better draft picks next season. It is not so good to give a prospect so much rope when you are defending your World Series championship.
There you go again with all your meticulous facts. What do facts have to do with analysis? I’m struggling to make the connection. Anyways agree with your facts but also agree with coach’s sentiment. The fact is they should be playing Belt full time and aren’t.
I did look at Posey’s batting line. It said his avg. was around .300. That constituted a “hot start” from the Giants’ perspective. Burden of proof falls back on you.
Just so we are clear, Westcoast Hero.
Molina’s last game for Giants: June 29.
Posey’s batting line on June 29th: .290/.316/.387/.703
Also, his batting line from May 31st to June 29th, basically one month’s worth of hitting, covering 24 games: .250/.281/.333/.615
If either is what you are looking for in a hitter batting clean-up, please raise your hand:
So, are you telling me that either of those batting lines are what you expect from your clean-up batter?
I still call that a gigantic leap of faith that the Giants did by trading away Molina while Posey’s batting line was that bad. His peripherals were good, but nothing was showing up in his batting line. They believed in what they were seeing, and not what has happening.
And a comparable prospect to Posey is Matt Weiters, and his batting line after 24 games was basically the same, only less batting average and more power, yet it took him basically two full seasons before he started hitting regularly.
And really, arguing based on batting average, so 19th Century of you, your Fangraphs ID should be revoked for bringing up that as the basis of your argument.
“NO WAY Sabean takes that deal. Lind is too young.”
I literally LOL’ed at that, in a quiet office.
Thank you for that Eno. It has been frustrating watching Belt get this treatment.
Bochy is clearly the problem right now, but I think that Sabean cannot be let off the hook. The Giants set out this offseason to improve their lineup and traded for Pagan and Melky…. uh.
While acceptable hitters, they are not game changers for any lineup. Making the argument that the lineup will improve by the return of Posey also makes no sense. 1) Posey played a bit last year, 2) Posey is not yet an elite hitter, 3) he is coming off a pretty serious injury, and 4) he is a catcher that only plays 140 game (MAX) anyway.
This organization clearly knows how to put together a pitching staff, but their work with the lineup has proved futile year after year.
Now moving forward Posey, Sandoval, and Belt make a pretty good core. I think they all have the potential to be 120 wRC+ over the next few seasons. Of course we will never know with Belt until he plays. Guys posting .750 OPSs blocking him is not rational.
Regarding 2), if Posey is way better than the guy filling in for him, then Posey way improves the lineup.
“But we aren’t talking about giving Huff more than 36 PAs to recover. Because Huff has played to a .244/.307/.371 line over his last 615 PAs. Belt has been given 231 PAs over the same time frame and has a .220/.307/.395 line.
He’s already better.”
For an article so methodical and careful in in making its argument, this looms as a gaping failure in logic.
Moral of the story: Bruce Bochy is an idiot. But we already knew that.
Very, very frustrating to watch a talented young hitter jerked around like this. They’re going to ruin him.
It should be noted that Belt did enter the game in the 10th in front of Huff, who was also available off the bench.
Even stranger!
There is a time any coach makes the decision that a player has ‘gotten’ what he’s been advocating and gains confidence in him. I choose to believe Belt crossed that point last evening. As to Belt’s performance in past weeks and last year, not the issue, in Bochy’s mind, which is all that matters.
Probably more for defense than offense; they have said that they consider Belt to be the superior defensive player.
So if Belt is the better fielder, clearly a better base runner and with potentially more upside, then Bochy’s rationale for Huff is something like this: “We know Huffy is a liability in the field and on the base paths, but we ABSOLUTELY need his bat in the lineup.”
This much enter Bochy’s mind when he submits the lineup card. And this makes zero sense that anybody with an IQ over 80 could think like this. Especially to be paid millions for this way of thinking.
Given Brett Pill’s greatness so far Belt is going to continue to platoon and finally get sent to the minors soon. He will be back in the minors by middle of May. Brett Pill will be the starting first baseman the rest of the way.
Couldn’t agree more, the only logical thing for the Giants to do is trade him to the Nationals for a toolsy outfielder that produced once upon a time on a small sample. Let Belt play for Davey Johnson and begin to look like the second coming of Will Clark.
The impression I have is that the Giants are just not a very advanced organization analytically and have had recent success in spite of the fact that they incorporate few of the tools other organizations do in evaluating their personnel. They have built a strong club on the back of phenomenal pitching, attributable to good scouting and development (or luck), but this has led to their dependency on “traditional” baseball thinking which is pitching and defense. That’s not to say a team couldn’t use analytics and do well with a pitching and defense model, the article about the Rays and Baedenhop from a couple days ago is an example of such a possibility. It is to say, however, that the Giants front office is as much to blame as Bochy for condoning this sort of reasoning and approach.
All of that being said, there’s a strong chance he just pisses Bochy off for some inexplicable reason and/or is in the doghouse for something we don’t know about. At the end of the day a manager of a baseball club is similar to a manager of a Chili’s in the sense that they are managing personalities and attitudes. Maybe Bochy just doesn’t like Belt and that’s why he’s getting the Monday/Wednesday lunch crowd.
Yeah I don’t think it’s necessarily the FO — he was put on the roster for a reason!
I guess Pablo Sandoval and Buster Posey don’t exist.
I’m so sick of all the excuses for Brandon Belt. If he wants to play, then F’n hit. Yes, he is being jerked around, but .220 in 200+ plate appearances isn’t exactly getting the job done either. If Belt hits and stops striking out in key situations he will play more. For all the crap Bochy gets, he is known for playing the hot hand. Right now that guy is Schierholtz. Should Belt be playing over Huff? Sure, but Belt needs to force that hand. Last night was a good start. He is just as much to blame in this as anyone. The job is there for him to take and he just needs to go out there and take it. No more excuses. Start hitting Brandon.
Nope. First of all, BA isn’t a good thing to cite. His OPS in his jerked-around sample is .707. Not great, but still better than Huff. That on top of the fact that they just haven’t given him the opportunity to settle in and get going at the dish, when his MiLB track record suggests he’s capable of doing so.
Here’s a list of guys who have yet to “F’n hit” this season. Please tell me which of them should start to lose playing time until he begins to “F’in hit”:
Albert Pujols
Matt Holliday
Jose Reyes
Kevin Youkilis
Aramis Ramirez
Logan Morrison
Nick Markakis
Giancarlo Stanton
Kendrys Morales
Jay Bruce
You get it.
DavisNC, why don’t you post what all those hitters career batting lines are pre-2012 and then put Belt’s next to them. I’ll bet most of the people here can see what the difference between Belt and those players are.
Matt Weiters had two seasons to get himself untracked, he was hitting way below what projections says that he would. Gordon Beckham has hit way below what he was projected to produce. Sean Burroughs and Andy Marte even more. Tell me how Belt is different from them and will succeed where they didn’t?
People seem to think good hitting in the minors is a fait accompli that he will hit in the majors. It is a very good indicator, but it is no guarantee either, for any particular season. Sure, eventually, very good indicator. For that particular season, no guarantee.
Hence you must have a backup plan in case you are dead wrong. Nobody has a plan other than to start Brett Pill because they had already dumped Huff. I don’t consider that a viable plan, because the next step after that is making Burriss or Theriot the starter there.
The most logical thing to do is to play Huff over Belt until Belt forces the issue. Some players get all the chances in the world and still it don’t click for them. Belt has been up and down in terms of performance, supposedly due to lack of consistent playing, and yet Nate Schierholtz somehow gets inconsistent play every season, and forces his way into the lineup multiple times (and gets pushed out just as fast once he gets injured and unable to hit).
I would love to just put him in there and let him play, but with the distinct possibility that Burriss and Crawford will be our offensive contributors up the middle (I am not holding my breath on Franchez), we need more than what Belt has been able to produce. 700 OPS just don’t cut it for me when he’s striking out so often.
Nobody points out that Huff is striking out very little while walking a lot, meaning that his BABIP is pretty low given all that, yet his ISO is pretty high when he’s connecting with the ball, his BABIP should regress to better territory and boost his batting line greatly, he has been suffering from bad BABIP luck, whereas Belt has no such hope, other than people saying that he’s projected to be one of the better bats on the Giants in 2012.
They also neglect to say that he was projected to be one of the better bats on the Giants in 2011 as well.
They also neglect to say that before 2010, nobody, but nobody, gave Brandon Belt another thought as a prospect. Only the Giants thought enough of him, he was called an overdraft, even in the 5th round. Then the Giants transform him and everybody jumps on the bandwagon and think that they discovered him first and know what’s the right way to handle him. Maybe the ones who think so much of Belt now is wrong in over judging how good he’ll be as they were when they dismissed Belt as a nothing prospect.
So what is the plan if Belt does not hit as you all think he will with regular play, since Huff would have been traded away by the time you realize that Belt’s not hitting (because Huff will be like Rowand and sulk his way onto another team, a team leader he’s not).
Obviously Aubery is a better defender, base runner, team leader, and is a known clutch specialist.
Eno- Thanks for the post enjoyed it.
Clearly this thread is serving as as defacto group therapy session for Brandon Belt fans. Let me say I’m firmly in that group.
But I think it boils down to this: Fans and Members of the front office have a long term vision for future the organization that Bruce Bochy in some ways cannot afford to have. He’s doing what mangers do, trying to win games. NOW!
This is not the first time someone in life has looked for a quick fix to a larger problem. But that’s exactly what’s happening.
We as fans say to Bochy, :”Put Belt out there he projects to have a .363 W/OBA the rest of the season, he’ll eventually regress to his true talent level.”
To that Bochy might say something to the effect of “The Dodgers started 9-1, Arizona has pitching depth coming out of their ears to go with their superior offense and you want me to put a kid out there that can’t hit an inside fastball, and hope he figures it out? We’re trying to win a division here. I’ll take my chances with Huff regaining his swing. He’s someone I’ve SEEN have success at the level”
It’s hard to ask someone to believe in something they’ve never seen before when their job and something they love is on the line. Maybe it’d be different if Bochy had grown up with sabermetrics but when backed into a corner he’s going to go with what he knows and trusts. Not what “might” or is projected to happen. This sabermetric discussion is relatively “new” especially to someone who has been a baseball man his whole life.
We’ll see, hopefully Brandon plays well and impresses Bochy enough to turn the projected into a reality.
I think this sort of dynamic is at play much more than it seems across baseball and totally could be at play now.
Extremely well put, WMH. Yours is as good an explanation for what is happening with belt as I’ve seen.
The Giants are operating in an extremely short-sighted, cowardly run-to-mama methodology when all they need to do is drop Belt into the 7th slot, and LEAVE HIM THERE for a couple of months.
As it is, given that he was benched after THREE F’N GAMES this year, we don’t have any way to know if Belt can perform.
Until he’s given actual playing time, the Giants are dead wrong, and they are guilty of most very bad juju.
“So this guy now won’t make changes similar to ones he once made? With a starting job on the line? Seems unlikely. ”
This is the part that bothers me a lot. You shouldn’t throw your best hitting prospect (non Posey/Pablo division) under the bus like this. Personally I think there are too many birds chirping in Belt’s ear at this point. He needs to listen to Will Clark’s advice to him: “Get you a pitch to hit and whack the piss out of it.”
Thank you Mr. Sarris for changing up the dialogue some. It is gigantically frustrating right now. If the Giants think he has a hole in his swing, send him down the same day. Belt has 825 minor league PAs. He has 62Ks in 273 AAA PAs/213 ABs (55BBs and a .436OBP!) If he needs to cut down on the Ks, maybe they should make sure its good on the AAA level (I imagine it is… but make sure?) There is no shame in hitting the minors for another 200 ABs. But this hole in the swing claim stinks of a PR jobby, the kind the Giants screw up all the time.
I think Sabean recognizes the need for Belt and Bochy just doesn’t trust him. It would be nice to have a shift in dialogue, maybe starting with a rotation of Schierhotz/Huff/Belt at least. Bochy is getting hammered, and his reaction will be to dig in his heels. Unless Belt hits HRs. Well, that’ll keep the K rate up. Get rich or die tryin’.
I think much of the arguments that Belt should be starting are mostly strawmen.
1) Platoon: I view the platoon as an opportunity for the Giants to see both Belt and Pill play. If you didn’t notice, Pill had a great 2011 season in AAA. In addition, if you also didn’t notice, Belt didn’t have that great a 2011 season in the majors. This is win-win to me: Belt gets regular starts against RHP while getting a blow vs. LHP, which gives us a chance to see how Pill does in some regular play.
2) Changing behavior. I don’t see any problem with this view.
Change is a tricky thing with people, you usually need some sort of trigger to get them moving. For Belt, I think it was that he wasn’t that good a hitter in college. He’s a 1B and has an OPS of 939, and he was not close to being in the Top 5 in OPS, wasn’t close to the leaders in HRs. Not sure what the average was for the league, somewhere mid-800’s, so he was good, but for example, one TEAM had an OPS of 921. Change is easier when you view it as a uphill climb.
But after his stellar 2010 season, he had a lot of great success with what he was doing, so it would be natural for him to be resistant to change now.
What he and very few people who I have seen opine on this seem to be missing is that while he has a gaudy OPS in AAA, he also has a pretty horrible strikeout rate in AAA, around 30%, and it didn’t get better in the majors. And he’s still striking out a lot. Until he figures out AAA pitchers and learn not to strike out against them, he’ll be no more than a 3 sure outcome hitter: K’s, walks and HRs.
I don’t want that. I want the guy who was a hitting god in AA and Advanced A. But he’s not going to be that until he tames the strikeouts. And it is not just the Giants saying he has a hole: HIS STAT shows it, he strikeouts out way too much to sustain a high BA. If that is not a call for change, I don’t know what is.
I just don’t get the saber-mentality, I see all these commentators getting down on Gary Brown for not walking enough, even though he don’t strike out much and gets on base a lot via a combo of HBP, walks, and hits all through his college, cape cod and pro career, but nobody says ONE things about Belt’s inability to swing and miss in AAA, where he’s facing lousy pitchers (compared to the majors).
3) Patience. First, in what universe is .225/.306/.412/.718 batting line “near average” for a firstbaseman? I have to assume you just meant average, as in an average hitter, but first basemen have a higher standard there. In any case, I don’t want Belt to be average, I want him to be superlative. He’s not going to get there unless he cuts out the strikeouts.
And where can I see the guarantee that ZiPS projection for Belt is a fait accompli? That had a pretty good projection for Belt last season too, and yet he didn’t deliver on that. I would also bet that ZiPS had a pretty good projection for Jason Heyward last season, the Braves fans would like to know where they can get their guarantee too.
I am so tired about people using ZiPS to argue one player being better than another when a player has not proven to be a good MLB hitter. That’s why they play the games, that’s why Sean Burroughs, Andy LaRoche, and Andy Marte didn’t match by a long shot the projections that all the experts and projection systems had forecasted for them. It is a guide, not a guarantee. Please read Ron Shandler’s rant about projections.
In any case, patience is a two way street, which you don’t note. If the batter is too patient, he could be letting by hittable strikes, leading to a poor hitters count, exposing him to even worse strikes to hit, or pitches out of the zone that he chases because he’s behind the count. Rick Rueschel used to have his rule on pitching that he made clear to other hitters: my pitches will be strikes, and each one will be less hittable than the last, within the count. He did that to encourage contact early in the count.
Which brings me back to my point above: he’s striking out way too much.
4) Really, you are saying Belt is better based on 231 PA’s? You call DrB disingenuous, but really, 231 PA’s prove it? Joe Charboneau fans will want their money back, he “proved” how good he was in 512 PA’s until the next season. I think all the fantasy players who have selected Gordon Beckham the past three seasons would also like their money back too, on your guarantee here that 231 PA’s proves anything. The Jeff Francoeur gravy train would also like to have a word with you as well.
You left out a key point here: he had a contact rate of 69% in those 206 ABs (232 PA) he has had. The best hitters have a contact rate above 85%. Huff contact rate was 83%, just short of that, but still much better than Belt. His BB/K ratio was better too, 0.57 BB/K vs. Belt’s 0.38 BB/K.
And you gave DrB grief, saying it was just a conversation starter, but really, re-read that last two paragraphs of yours, how could we not come to such a conclusion, you basically say there “he got a hit against a lefty, therefore he could do better if given a chance”.
To me, clearly the Giants love him and thinks he’s close, despite all the fans sturm und drang. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t bother keep on bringing him up, over and over, trying to find that key that will enable him to stop striking out so much. They apparently have discovered a hole in his swing that they say he needs to fix. They are the one who fixed his swing in the first place, that no other team saw, else a Top 20 ranked prospect (last season) wouldn’t have lasted into the 5th round, maybe they know something? Or maybe Barry Bonds saw something this spring and brought it to the Giants attention, he was there this season.
And it is not just the Giants who found the hole. Pitchers have too. His contact rate this season is still a puny 63%. And it is not just major league pitchers, minor leaguers too, both AAA and AAAA pitchers who can’t make it in the majors strike him out regularly: 71% contact rate in AAA so far. And it only makes sense that his contact rate in the majors should be less than his in AAA.
For me, I would rather he go to AAA and prove he can handle them like he handled AA pitchers. Maybe he never makes the leap, but clearly a 71% contact rate in AAA shows that he still has something serious to learn about hitting, no matter how nicely his batting line looks in AAA or in ZiPS projections.
Meanwhile, I would have Huff start at 1B and Schierholtz in RF, Huff to give him one last chance to show that 2011 was the fluke, not 2010, Schierholtz a chance to start and prove that he can play without injuring himself and being unable to hit like he shown he can when he’s not injured, which is too often. And given Pill lots of chances to show off what he can do too, maybe getting all the LHP starts, where Huff and Nate alternate getting a rest.
By mid-season, re-evaulate. If Huff is still scuffling (FYI, in late April 2010, Huff was hitting in the low 700 OPS, around 700 OPS, before he got hot), then I would just trade or jettison Huff at that point and bring Belt up to start, for better or worse. If Huff is hitting well, but Nate is doing his injury dance once again, bring Belt up to start, for better or worse, Nate’s blown his chance again. Though I would note that if Pill is doing well and Belt still is striking out a lot still, I would give Pill more of a chance.
They’re all straw men — just because they are straw men does not make them wrong, just makes them less informed. Which I readily admit to. I’m not on the team staff.
The last paragraphs just reads differently to me. I see a strong maybe. The whole setup of the article is ‘here are all the straw men arguments in play in this at-bat last night.’
I’m okay with the platoon actually, if he got his actual platoon share. But I don’t see him as needing a caddy.
The adjustment thing? Just seems like your straw man versus mine. I haven’t seen statistical evidence that pressing exists, but anecdotally, sure. he’s pressing.
Contact rate? Yes, it might be a problem. But he’ll have the best walk rate on the team already, and yes, that stabilizies in less than 231 PAs. So he’ll have a good walk rate.
What doesn’t stabilize in 231 PAs is power. And Belt has shown that at every stop.
If Belt is a true talent 10%/25% BB/k guy, he’ll still be better than Huff when he shows his power.
one thing missing from your analysis is age. Pill was old for every stop, did Triple-A twice, that’s why he had nice stats. Huff is really old, it’s folly to think he can play like he used to. Belt is young and has already shown — reliably — that he can at least walk.
Putting maybe don’t absolve you out of your statement. Unless you are really saying maybe, in that maybe he will, maybe he won’t, in which case, you aren’t really saying anything substantive at all. Any of us can say, “well, maybe he will or maybe he won’t.”
Bochy said in the press that Belt came to him and told him he was pressing. That’s not anecdotal, unless you are saying that Bochy is in the habit of lying in the press about what his players are saying to him. And I find 1 for 10 with 5 strikeouts in a hitters park to be evidence that maybe he’s pressing.
A high walk rate don’t mean much if he’s hitting .223 BA (his career rate up to now), unless you are impressed with a .310 OBP.
Did I say he has no power? His ISO is 175, which is pretty good power, he is already showing it in the majors, I guess you didn’t notice that last year when he hit all those homers, yet his OPS right now is .708. I’m not satisfied with getting .708 OPS out of Belt, I want something closer to what Sandoval is doing so far in his career.
I never said that Pill was better than Belt in potential, or that Pill will even prove to be an OK major leaguer. I only want to give him ABs to see how well he can do in the majors.
I clearly think that Belt is capable of great things, else I wouldn’t say that I want to see him hit like he did in AA. Maybe Belt is like Matt Williams taking parts of three MLB seasons to finally figure it out and hit the way that he can. Meanwhile, if Pill can be an OK hitter, there’s value there and a potential trade chip that we can use in the future; he won’t be worth anything in trade until he shows something though. Or maybe he’s like one of those old prospects the A’s would give chances to and they prove to be useful for a little while. Before Belt came along, Snow said that Pill had the best 1B glove in the minors, maybe he can keep 1B warm for Belt while Belt tries to figure out how not to strike out so much in the minors.
And if Belt is a bust breaking fans’ hearts, he’ll still be worse than Huff. I can play the “If” game too.
Huff’s a career .808 OPS hitter, 114 OPS+, he’s not chopped liver as a hitter. Age does not mean that he can’t play to that level of hitting, which would be very useful in the Giants lineup, it is only folly to think that he can hit as he did in 2010, 2008, 2004, 2003, 2002. If he can hit like he did in 2005-2007 that would be fine with me. And he’s suffering from bad luck so far this season, his contact rate is 90% and his BB/K ratio is 2.0 (above 1.0 is very good), yes small samples, but at this point, at least he is doing well in that way. And he’s showing power too, 172 ISO, suggesting his very poor BABIP is just due to bad luck that will revert to the mean over time.
And I never said that Belt couldn’t take a walk. If that is all he had to do to be a good HITTER, then he’s on his way to a great career.
Frankly, I can’t believe that you ended with talking about his walk rate. I think I was pretty clear in my comment that his inability to avoid the strikeout is his biggest issue and that if you want a three true outcome hitter, then he’s there, but I want more and that’s not going to happen unless he starts figuring out how to avoid strikeouts.
Do you want more? Or are you happy with his walk rate and willing to settle for that? You apparently are not aware that his power has been shown, else you would not have made that statement that he’ll be better than Huff when he shows his power, as he has a great ISO for the majors so far, and great walk rate, and yet his OPS is near 700 for his career. If you are happy with that, then at least we know where you stand.
But I’m not happy about that, I want twin towers of Sandoval and Belt sandwiched around Posey, anchoring the Giants middle lineup for the rest of this decade. He’s not going to do that striking out at such a high rate. I want more than a Mark Reynolds from Belt, I want more of a Sandoval batting line and peripherals from Belt.
Walking is just one small part of what a hitter can do. I don’t know why sabers obsess so much over that, but it is much, much, much (did I say much?) more important that a hitter can avoid strikeouts, than taking a walk, in terms of being an overall hitter. Some hitters can compensate with a lot of power to make up for that poor ability to avoid strikeouts, and clearly walks help, but that’s now what made us fall in love with Belt.
We love Belt because of the way he hit in AA and Advanced A. His hitting in AAA is nice, but nothing like his AA when he just dominated, low K-rate, high walk-rate, high batting line, high power. That’s what got him his Top prospect ranking.
He’s just not going to achieve that striking out so much.
I think he has more power than he’s shown. I don’t think I put a lot of importance in the one at-bat (to me it was just a device to talk about this issue), or his batting average. More contact would be better, and it’s obviously missing a little right now, but I’d be fine with a .250/.380/.450+ guy, especially since I don’t think Huff can do that. I think he’s better than Huff already, now, and has the chance to be much better, and that his observed (and already reliable) walk rate is a big part of that. It doesn’t make sense to think that a player like Huff could play like he did four years ago, you have to take four years of aging off that baseline. Even if you think that 2010 is his true talent, you have to take a year-plus of aging off the top. I’m not saying that Belt didn’t say he was pressing, I’m saying that a player saying he’s pressing vs. just pressing quietly hasn’t been shown to mean much. So I don’t see a difference between Belt and Huff in this regard. I don’t think much of Pill.
We’ve danced this dance before, on last season’s Giants preview, and not sure we see things similarly.
I hate the way, BTW, the comment box goes to the bottom, away from the original comment I’m replying to, I have to go back and forth.
There is a big difference between “when he shows his power” and “he can show even more power”. The former means that he has not shown any power yet, the latter means that he has but could do more.
I understand your point about using the AB against the lefty as a device. You did that well at the beginning of your article. It is your last two paragraphs I have a disagreement on. Am I the only one who sees that?
I would be fine with a .250/.380/.450+ guy as well. Unfortunately, he’s not that guy right now. Using the stats you used, he’s far from that guy, he’s a .223/.310/.398/.708 guy, he’s at a 10.3% BB-rate, and needs to bump that up to around 15% to reach the level you listed as you would be fine with (meaning he would have to raise his batting average to .250 PLUS raise his walk rate, to reach the .380 OBP and .130 ISO.obp). He’s not far from the 200 ISO.power, as he’s at 175 right now. So he’s actually pretty close to the power you see for him, but very far from the patience that you would be fine with. So reliable or not, his current walk rate is actually not very close to what you envision for him at his potential, whereas his power is a lot closer.
I don’t think Huff can reach that either, but I feel a lot better about him reach 800 OPS right now than Belt can. You say “four years” like he’s done nothing in those four years since. He’s actually had two great years, years I’m hoping to get from Belt regularly every year if he could just cut out the strikeouts reliably.
At this point, as far as I’m concerned, you can not conclusively tell me that Belt is ensured to be a major leaguer better than Huff right now. For every “if he hits .250/.380/.450/.830” you give, I can say that Huff has hit much better than that in two of the past four years, plus his peripherals right now (contact rate and walk/K ratio) are good so far this season, so maybe he can beat Belt’s “fine” batting line. There’s a lot of crapshoot in this that few people believing in Belt fails to acknowledge.
What I haven’t seen yet is any Belt fanatic (I’m a fan, not a fanatic) give me an explanation of what happens if your scenario of Belt as batting god fails to materialize, but in the meanwhile, you had already jettisoned Huff (that is the consensus that I’ve seen) and apparently you might not even have Pill around, but in any case, you think so little of him that you should not be turning to him in this situation.
Convince me that you have every contingency covered. I’m all about risk mitigation and coverage. You all think that putting Belt as the starting 1B will magically transform him from the lousy hitter he’s shown so far, into a good one. You don’t know when he will figure it out. Matt Weiters took almost two full seasons to figure it out. Gordon Beckham has been lost for longer than that. So what happens if you are wrong? Nobody I’ve seen has given me a plan I can buy into.
Give me a plan, an understanding of your grand scheme. How long do you go with Belt starting at firstbase if he continues to hit as well as he has in his first 232 PA? What if the team is sinking offensively while Belt struggles, do you turn to someone else, and if so, who do you turn to, now that Huff is gone (he’s now hitting HRs left and right for LAD) and you don’t believe in Pill? Or are you going to let your team sink, damn it, Belt will be fine, eventually.
This is an evidence based site, right? What evidence does anyone have that Belt is, in fact, capable, of putting up a .350/.380/.450 line at the MLB level when he’s never done it or even come close to doing it? Now, THAT is a straw man if I ever saw one, and mighty disengenous to use that as if it’s a foregone conclusion!
What evidence does anyone have that letting a young guy play part time at the MLB level and work his way into a starting job will make him any less of a player than playing full time at the MLB level and flailing vs full time at AAA cleaning up on vastly inferior pitching? Again, those are two more straw men being bandied about as if they are proven facts. There are lots of MLB players who started out as part timers and worked their way into starting roles.
Those are your straw men Dr. B. I never said in the piece that he’s that kind of player, nor does my piece depend on him being such a player. I just think he can be that kind of player, and do think there is some evidence he can be that kind of player (his MiLB track record in three times the PAs as his MLB track record), but he doesn’t need to be that kind of player to be better than Huff. I also never said that he’s being hurt right now by this, you read that into it.
What I’m saying is all up there: I don’t think he needs a platoon caddy. I think he can make adjustments. I don’t think he has a hole in his swing. I think he’s better than Aubrey Huff.
And OGC, how did my plan suddenly have Huff in LA and hitting dongs? If you want a plan from me, it’s simple: reverse the priorities. Make it a priority to get the young guy with upside in there, and use Huff when you need to, as an extra piece that can fake it (badly) in the outfield, and play some first base, and pinch-hit.
Do you want to see some comps for 35-year-old corner infielders? It’s not pretty.
Eno,
Here is your exact quote from your response to OGC above: “More contact would be better, and it’s obviously missing a little right now, but I’d be fine with a .250/.380/.450+ guy, especially since I don’t think Huff can do that.”
You know what? I don’t think Huff can do that either, but what on Earth makes you think that Brandon Belt can? He’s certainly never going to do it with the kind of strike out rates he’s putting up now! As for his MILB record, do you really think that numbers put up mostly in the Cal League and Fresno are in any way predictive of what he’s going to do the the majors? The scrap heap is littered with guys who put up enormous numbers in the Cal League and the PCL. Maybe you’ve missed some of the discussions about Gary Brown’s line from the Cal League last year?
I watch almost every Giants game on TV. Yes, there are things you can tell from actually watching a player perform. Brandon Belt is not ready to be a starter in the major leagues right now. Whether he will be next week, next month or next year, I don’t know, but he’s not ready now.
It just may be that his development will progress more by playing part time at the MLB level than by going down and hitting .400 against PCL pitching. I think Brian Sabean made that point recently.
The Giants currently have 5 of their 8 starting positions filled with young homegrown players who broke in under Bruce Bochy and Brian Sabean. 3 of their 5 starting pitchers are homegrown and broke in under Bochy and Sabes. 2 members of their bullpen plus Brian Wilson also broke in under Bochy and Sabes.
Yet, Brandon Belt is held up as exhibit A of how Bruce Bochy hates playing young players and is not in sync with Sabean and the front office. Come on, people. Give the people who have developed one of the best cores of young homegrown players in MLB some credit for possible knowing what they are doing here.
The Giants love Brandon Belt and think he is going to be a huge part of their future. He and other position prospects are a big part of the reason they felt they could go ahead and spend big on retaining their pitchers. Brandon Belt is going to get his chances and will likely develop into a very good player for the Giants for a very long time. He isn’t going to get traded unless it’s for a boatload of talent coming back.
Come on. I explained that was my personal feeling about his upside, which is really not relevant to his conversation since I set different parameters in my fully researched article just about two inches higher. Are you really going to quote me back to my face from two comments ago? Should I go back and get some of the quotes you left on my Giants preview last year? That might be fun.
As for Belt. I watch baseball every day since I do this for a living. I watch all baseball, including the Mets, but my family watches the Giants. I watch a ton of Belt. I like his approach. He’s the only dude on the team that can discern balls and strikes other than Posey in my mind.
And I notice you left the Eastern League off. His MLE for that work, in Double-A, was .274/.334/.473. So there is a precedent for numbers similar to the ones I cited other than the OBP, and then you could forgive my exuberance given his plus walk rates in the Minor Leagues. I’m not wishcasting some PCL numbers. I’m aware of that league and its run environment. AS I said before, I also don’t think he needs to hit that upside to be better than Huff.
Bochy? Sabean? Young players? I don’t blame either of them for the Belt situation, at least not solely, so don’t put words in my mouth. They obviously turn to young players some times — especially when they play good defense at a premium position, and especially if they play well at first. (I wouldn’t give them credit for Schierholtz, though, as an aside. Dude had to basically turn 30 to get a shot at everyday work).
What I’m interested in, and what I wrote about, is why not THIS young player. Why not now. Why 230 PAs of work similar to the veteran in front of him has put him in the doghouse.
And, as you can see from my article above, I think it has something to do with his approach. Which I like. And maybe you don’t. Or maybe the Giants don’t.
It’s probably that simple.
Eno,
“Dude is the only guy on the team that can discern balls and strikes other than Posey in my mind.”
You mean like swinging at sliders that hit him on the back foot while looking at called third strikes by the dozens? I think Buster might resent being paired up with that.
“They obviously turn to young players sometimes.”
How about pretty often, like in 5 of 8 position starters, 3 of 5 SP’s, 2 bullpen guys and an injured closer?
“Why not this player?”
Because maybe they are seeing what I see: A guy who is swinging at bad pitches, letting good ones go by, and is not able to do anything but fight off pitches on the inside half of the plate?
Eno –
Schierholtz is 28 right now, for the whole season, and his injuries have denied him as many opportunities as the Greybeards. And his shaky spring training might just have had something to do with them green lighting Belt as well.
It is very, very early in the season. One thing that might be happening is some shakeout towards an eventual rotation of left handed bats. Bochy may be more aggressive with the 6th inning substitutions for Huff. There is a lot of grey area here and fans are taking this very black and white and choosing sides. Belt may not be ready for 500 PAs. Huff may not be up for even 400. Nate maxed out at a career high 362 PAs before the injury.
Thanks for the different look at the situation. Fans might not want to choose Teams yet. There might just be enough ABs for all 3 players when its said and done. I do hope the Giants find some other tact with their public outreach to fans though, its pretty inconsistent right now.
DrB – That’s not fair, he’s had 23 PAs. 7Ks. Lets let this one breath a bit.
shankbone!
the lefty-heavy nature of the corner outfield and first base is actually the roster construction fact I was most disappointed in while looking at this. Blanco’s a lefty even! That meant Pill had to make the team. It plays an under-rated role in this situation for sure. Probably should have spent more time on that, but I wanted to focus on Belt himself.
I understand the concerns about heaviness in lefties, but 1) Huff has been an OK enough hitter vs. LHP to play full-time (of course, if you don’t believe he will return to career norms, you will scoff at this point), 2) Nate has been great vs. LHP, he has had a reverse split against them for a long time, let’s put it this way, if he could continue hitting this well against LHP (.773 OPS) while hitting RHP better at the normal rate for lefties, he would be a star in the majors, leaving just 3) Belt as the titular lefty you worry about.
Sandoval has also been good enough vs LHP, when healthy (i.e. not overly overweight). Though Cabrera in his career has not been good against LHP, but looking at his splits, he’s been pretty good in 2 of this past three seasons against LHP, which is another aspect that supports the position that perhaps he has raised his game a big notch upward.
So while I understand the concern, there are mitigating factors in there, particularly if/once the Giants implement the Posey plan, and have Posey at 1B with Hanchez at C, vs. LHP, with Huff in LF and Cabrera in RF (or I suppose Cabrera in LF and Schierholtz in RF).
Also, this is probably an adjustment over last season, to improve our record against RHP, which most starters are: 60-58 vs. RHP and 26-18 vs. LHP. One could argue that while it will hurt vs. LHP, it should greatly help our record vs. RHP.
Discerning balls and strikes are only one aspect of a hitter, albeit an important one. More importantly is what the batter does when discerning strikes. Belt has not been doing anything with the strikes, based on his batting line. And with a contact rate of under 70% and poor batting line, he’s isn’t doing much while discerning the strikes.
Based on research (see Shandler), it is much more important that he avoids strikeouts than it is to get walks. It is much, much easier to generate a high batting average when you can avoid strikeouts plus get a large percentage of walks relative to strikeouts, than it is being able to just get a lot of walks while striking out a lot.
Getting him to reduce his strikeout rate should lead to a better batting average, whereas just throwing him in there and getting his lumps as he “learns” (never helped Sean Burroughs or Andy Marte or Andy LaRoche, among a long history of top prospects who never panned out) is no guarantee that he will get better. Not all batters get better with experience, many do, but it is no panacea either.
And if he’s still batting low .600 OPS by mid-season, you probably have no choice but to keep playing him, even if it costs us a year of our window of opportunity, because by then Huff would be as disgruntled as Rowand and the Giants would be forced to dump him too.
I would rather have him learn in AAA out of the limelight, work on that one thing, then come back up once he’s natural with doing that. The Giants think that he can accomplish that in the majors, and hopefully they are right, but it will involve a lot of this “start, start, start, bench for a while while we tweak his mechanics”. But remember, if they clearly like Belt because they keep on tweaking him and bringing him back. That is what they have done with Schierholtz over the years, while they got rid of other prospects much sooner, once they are convinced that he won’t progress any more (and so far, they have been right for the most part). Guys don’t learn much sitting out one game, you need them to calm down, move their minds away from that last AB where he was flailing, and focus on fixing his swing.
As Shandler noted, “A contact rate of 65% or lower offers virtually no chance for a player to hit even .250, no matter how high a walk rate he has.” The .300 hitters most often come from the group with a minimum 86% contact and 11% walk ratio (he was just under 10% in 2011). H is contact rate, albeit in small samples, is 63% right now. It was 69.5% last season. So he is borderline above that, rate, so even .250 is probably too high to hope for from him right now.
In addition, only 4% of sub-.250 hitters with BB/K ratios under 50% will mature into .300 hitters the following year. That’s the category Belt is in, as his ratio for his career is 37.5%.
Furthermore, even if he hits .250 and continues to walk at just under 10% that Enos is enamored with, Belt’s OBP is then .325-ish. He would need to raise his walk rate to roughly 15%, to get it to be close to what Enos wants. At 15%, his OBP would be around .360-ish (.380 is the fine mark). At 20%, it would be around .395-ish. In other words, if he don’t improve his strikeout rate, he would need to push up his walk rate 50-100% to get into the range where his OBP is pretty good.
Of course, I don’t want Belt for his OBP, I want it for his SLG, though OBP is very nice too. At .250, even if he were to bump up to 200 ISO.p, that’s still only 450 SLG, which with a sub-.350 OBP leads to a below 800 OPS. And so far, his ISO.p is 175, pushing him nearer to mid-700 OPS than 800-ish. That’s basically what Huff can do, perhaps even outdo if he is as in shape as all the spring training interviews suggest.
Fix his strikeouts first, I don’t care in AAA or majors, but fix it. If the Giants think he can fix it in the majors, fine, but he’s going to be in these up and downs of consecutive starts followed by a stretch of non-starts, to clear his mind and focus on fixing/learning while he’s not starting. It is not as obvious for a starting pitcher, but skipping one start gives him 10 or so days of down time to work on what he need to do. With hitters, it just sticks out like a sort thumb when he is sitting.
3000+ words in I’m still hearing mostly one idea, that he has to make more contact to be valuable. I agree that I’d like him to make more contact, but if he manages his career rate, he’d still be valuable, because of his patience. Which is why I gave that upside batting line without looking (no, I’m not enamored with it, nor am I enamored with the ‘s’ that’s not in my first name).
I gave that line because I wanted to point out that a dude that hit .250 but walked in the double digits would be more valuable than and old dude that has managed the feat once in his life — especially on a team that has, over the past five years, given away more outs than any other team in the National League.
Why are we talking about batting .300? Even if he gets his strikeout rate down to the 22-24% I think he can manage, he’ll need great batted ball luck to hit .300. I’m well aware of the research on contact rate from all over the internets, and it’s really just common sense that you have to make contact to hit for a good batting average. Huff’s not going to hit more than .260 anyway, and he’s not going to pair a plus walk rate with it, not if his whole career is to be believed more than 2010 and two weeks of this year.
I think the more interesting line of reasoning with Belt anyway is less his contact rate and more his looking strike three %. He took a called strike three at league average rates in the minors and now he’s almost double league average. It does say that perhaps being more aggressive will help him, but I’m glad that he’s coming from the patient side given the Giant’s deficiencies in that arena. What I haven’t seen, research-wise, is a study about the reliability of looking strike percentages. There were almost 40 qualified batters with double-digit swinging strike percentages, so it’s not just contact rate that’s the thing here. If Belt can walk 10% of the time and saw strike three at a league average rate in the Minors, what I’m saying is he can improve that part of the game.
We’ve only seen one-third of a full season from Belt.
I see some of that patience/aggression stuff in what you’ve written, and I’ve written about it (re: Josh Hamilton’s low K% despite high swSTR%) which is why I responded, but honestly, we’re the sound of one hand clapping at this point and the Giants are on. Let’s just table this until the next time I write about the team.
Brett Pill did not have a “great” season in AAA in 2011. His wRC+ was 107. As a 26 year old, in his 2nd season at AAA. As a 1st baseman! He’s a replacement level first baseman, without the potential for more than that. I’m okay with him as a right-handed bat off the bench, but not as a platoon partner for Belt. Pill and his poor walk rate and mediocre (for a 1st baseman) power and not-good defense are not worth it. It’s more important for Belt to hit against lefties.
OK, I stand corrected on Brett Pill, he did not have a great season.
However, it is not like he’s a nothing prospect either, which is the impression I got from your dismissal of him as a platoon partner. The 2012 Minor League Baseball Analyst book lists his potential to be an average starting 1B, so it is not like he’s the dregs pulled from the bottom of the prospecting barrel. Baseball America rated him 12th on the Giants, noting “He’s a durable performer who has a simple swing, easy power and the ability to make consistent contact. He’s an advanced hitter who uses the whole field in RBI situations. … He’s an above-average first baseman with good actions and soft hands.” Not that he didn’t have any negatives (that was the …) but it is not like what you are saying, that he is a nothing prospect with a 2011 performance not worth developing.
Even an average player overall has value, and if he can perform well while Belt figures things out in AAA, all the better. But I’m not holding my breath that Pill will prove capable of that, but as long as there is still strong question marks about Belt’s ability to hit well against MLB pitchers, and no strong evidence – a hit against a lefty in a clutch situation is not strong evidence nor even a tipping point – that Belt is figuring it out yet, I have no problem splitting time between the two. Once Belt is hitting like he did in AA, I have no problem pushing Pill aside and saying “Thanks for while it lasted”.
But if Belt takes three years to figure it out, like Matt Williams did, and nobody can say definitively that he won’t or that he would ever figure it out (see Burroughs, Marte, LaRoche), then it would behoove us to see if Pill might figure it out.
Just because prospect experts say one thing does not make it true. Belt is no sure thing and Pill, well, who knows? The year Brandon Webb came up and became the stud that he was, he was so good that even in a broad general article on D-backs prospects, one of their so-called “Baby D-backs” crops that seem to pop up every few years, the author couldn’t even be bothered to mention Webb’s name. All the other prospects, like Santos and others, failed to do anything, but Webb was among the best in the league for a long while.
Not that that means Pill will ever amount to anything, but more that Belt might never turn out, no matter how much we loved how he takes walks. Surprises happens, both good and bad. To dismiss Pill outright, to me, is just as silly as anointing Belt the starting 1B now, before he proved himself in the majors, and right now, there’s 232 PA’s worth of evidence that he’s not all dat. Giving both an opportunity, to me, is a fine compromise until Belt shows that he’s figuring it out.
I would rather put Belt in AAA, but I’m no expert, just a fan with a reasoned opinion. I think he would develop faster if he first figures out the AAA pitchers, then the major league pitchers. It’s like trying to run before you can walk. I personally find it mentally hard to battle when I am getting schooled every game. You build up mental blocks over time if you have few wins to boost up your confidence.
But the Giants think that he’s close, so I can live with the decision, but hope that if they find it is taking too long, they cut the cord and let him get regular ABs against LHP and RHP in AAA, and just work on that hole that they see (and apparently enough pitchers see that he strikeouts out way too many times for a good hitter; it’s fine if he’s not going to be a good hitter, but my premise has all along been that we all agree that he’s a good hitter, just disagree about how he should be handled to reach that).
Ooops, this was meant for above.
Discerning balls and strikes are only one aspect of a hitter, albeit an important one. More importantly is what the batter does when discerning strikes. Belt has not been doing anything with the strikes, based on his batting line. And with a contact rate of under 70% and poor batting line, he’s isn’t doing much while discerning the strikes.
Based on research (see Shandler), it is much more important that he avoids strikeouts than it is to get walks. It is much, much easier to generate a high batting average when you can avoid strikeouts plus get a large percentage of walks relative to strikeouts, than it is being able to just get a lot of walks while striking out a lot.
Getting him to reduce his strikeout rate should lead to a better batting average, whereas just throwing him in there and getting his lumps as he “learns” (never helped Sean Burroughs or Andy Marte or Andy LaRoche, among a long history of top prospects who never panned out) is no guarantee that he will get better. Not all batters get better with experience, many do, but it is no panacea either.
And if he’s still batting low .600 OPS by mid-season, you probably have no choice but to keep playing him, even if it costs us a year of our window of opportunity, because by then Huff would be as disgruntled as Rowand and the Giants would be forced to dump him too.
I would rather have him learn in AAA out of the limelight, work on that one thing, then come back up once he’s natural with doing that. The Giants think that he can accomplish that in the majors, and hopefully they are right, but it will involve a lot of this “start, start, start, bench for a while while we tweak his mechanics”. But remember, if they clearly like Belt because they keep on tweaking him and bringing him back. That is what they have done with Schierholtz over the years, while they got rid of other prospects much sooner, once they are convinced that he won’t progress any more (and so far, they have been right for the most part). Guys don’t learn much sitting out one game, you need them to calm down, move their minds away from that last AB where he was flailing, and focus on fixing his swing.
As Shandler noted, “A contact rate of 65% or lower offers virtually no chance for a player to hit even .250, no matter how high a walk rate he has.” The .300 hitters most often come from the group with a minimum 86% contact and 11% walk ratio (he was just under 10% in 2011). H is contact rate, albeit in small samples, is 63% right now. It was 69.5% last season. So he is borderline above that, rate, so even .250 is probably too high to hope for from him right now.
In addition, only 4% of sub-.250 hitters with BB/K ratios under 50% will mature into .300 hitters the following year. That’s the category Belt is in, as his ratio for his career is 37.5%.
Furthermore, even if he hits .250 and continues to walk at just under 10% that Enos is enamored with, Belt’s OBP is then .325-ish. He would need to raise his walk rate to roughly 15%, to get it to be close to what Enos wants. At 15%, his OBP would be around .360-ish (.380 is the fine mark). At 20%, it would be around .395-ish. In other words, if he don’t improve his strikeout rate, he would need to push up his walk rate 50-100% to get into the range where his OBP is pretty good.
Of course, I don’t want Belt for his OBP, I want it for his SLG, though OBP is very nice too. At .250, even if he were to bump up to 200 ISO.p, that’s still only 450 SLG, which with a sub-.350 OBP leads to a below 800 OPS. And so far, his ISO.p is 175, pushing him nearer to mid-700 OPS than 800-ish. That’s basically what Huff can do, perhaps even outdo if he is as in shape as all the spring training interviews suggest.
Fix his strikeouts first, I don’t care in AAA or majors, but fix it. If the Giants think he can fix it in the majors, fine, but he’s going to be in these up and downs of consecutive starts followed by a stretch of non-starts, to clear his mind and focus on fixing/learning while he’s not starting. It is not as obvious for a starting pitcher, but skipping one start gives him 10 or so days of down time to work on what he need to do. With hitters, it just sticks out like a sort thumb when he is sitting.
George Arias, Ben Davis, Xavier Nady, Ruben Rivera, Sean Burroughs, Melvin Nieves…Brandon Belt?
Bochy repeatedly balks at playing reputable youngsters; and it has historically appeared to be detrimental to them.
Who? Most of those names I don’t recognize and Nady is at best a 4th OF most of the time. I know a number of these players got chances after Bochy and yet they never did anything. Maybe he knew something.
Ah…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuR6B2U3e2s
I think that you’re 100% right on with your main parts in the article, but just want to point out that Belt wasn’t brought into the game as a pinch hitter to face a left-handed reliever. Rather, in the prior half inning, he came into the game as part of a double-switch where Clay Hensley relieved Javier Lopez. With Crawford and Belt (both lefties) due up, the Phillies brought in a left-handed reliever after having pinch-hit for Lee in the top half of the inning.
As you point out, they really didn’t have a good pinch hit option available. Having already used Sanchez (B), Blanco (L), and with Pill (R) out of the game, the Giants only had Burriss (B) and Huff (L) available to pinch hit. They were in a tough spot, since Burriss essentially was serving the function of the backup catcher (had Posey been hurt, Sandoval would have moved behind the plate and Burriss would play third). So the question is whether it was worth burning Belt and Huff and leaving themselves without a position player on the bench other than Burriss.
The best hitting pitcher on the Giants is Matt Cain, who of course started the game and was therefore unavailable.
Bottom line either:
1. Play Belt. Do it for 2-3 months. Platoon with Pill for RH/LH splits if you must, but play him. Give him the confidence that he can fail and still be in lineup. Give him the chance to make adjustments. If you feel he is ready for MLB then make the investment now. Given the Giants need to develop home grown hitting talent to support their pitching talent, this approach makes a lot of sense.
or
2. Send Belt down to AAA Let him play everyday. Have him make adjustments, reduce his SO rate and work on “holes”. Then “Molina” Huff in June and bring up Belt to stay. Platoon Belt and Pill as needed to play the RH/LH splits and/or hot hand. Plus you might get prospect for Huff.
I really think there is a third way here and it’s exactly what the Giants are doing. Keep him in SF, give him playing time in situations where he’s likely to succeed and let him play his way into a starting gig.
It doesn’t do him any good to run him out there every day and flail, nor does it do him any good to let him destroy vastly inferior pitching in the PCL.
Bochy is an idiot!
If Bruce Bochy is an idiot, what does that make Charlie Manuel and Ron Washington?
Do you mean the Charlie Manuel who allowed Thome to face Lopez with a man on 3rd and one out and, after Thome predictably struck out, forced the RHB vs. RHP match-up of Mayberry (.228 BA / .305 OBP vs. RHP’s) vs, Hensley instead of allowing Pierre (.306 BA / .363 OBP vs. LHP’s) to face the lefty Lopez? Charlie Manuel is one of the worst in-game managers that I have ever witnessed in my 40+ years of watching baseball. That is a pretty low bar against which to measure Bochy or any manager for that matter.
As an aside addressing a prior comment on an unrelated topic, Juan Pierre is a LHB who has been better vs. LHP’s in his career (and in > 1,000 PA’s).
Charlie Manuel is the worst in-game manager that I have seen in my 40+ years of watching baseball. He is not the bar against which you should measure any manager.
Huff wore the red “lucky” thong.
What has Belt done?
One thing that often gets lost in the shuffle is that it is not necessarily a matter of “Belt or Huff”; the real block is Melky Cabrera. Otherwise, Huff and Belt could be 1b and lf (take your pick of which goes where). But Cabrera can realistically only play lf these days, and his hot start has blinded many–obviously including the traditional-stats oriented Giants organization–into overlooking his pretty well established pattern of mediocrity. (For the record, Huff’s career OPS is .808, OPS+ 114; Cabrera’s is .731, OPS+ 93; we will spare the meaningless digression into age issues, but they don’t change anything enough to matter.) If, as the probabilities suggest will happen, Cabrera falls back to his career levels and Huff rises to his, perhaps the choices will be clearer.
“For the record, Huff’s career OPS is .808, OPS+ 114; Cabrera’s is .731, OPS+ 93; we will spare the meaningless digression into age issues, but they don’t change anything enough to matter.”,
You really think Huff being 35 doesn’t matter. Then I’m sure you’re in favor of resigning Miguel Tejeda and stopping IRod from retiring cause their career numbers are good. What Huff did at age 28 is COMPLETELY irrelevant to the player he is now, just as, what Cabrera did at age 22 is completely irrelevant. In the last 9 months that Huff has played (dating back to August and September of 2010, here’s his monthly OPS during that time: .735, .834, .573, .648, .793, .599, .749, .678, .713. So of those last 9 months, what makes you think he’ll come back to his career average of .808 in his decline years? Looks like to me he’s right around a .700 OPS and plummeting first-baseman with horrible defense and bad base running.
Let’s look at Melky’s last 9 months of OPS: .693, .543, .737, .785, .713, .992, .832, .798, .846. Now, he’s 27 right at the beginning of his prime. What makes you think he’ll get worse with that above trend?
Huff is ONLY playing, and ONLY on the team for that matter, because of his salary. If he were making 3 mil a year, he’d been cut a long time ago. It’s like people that stay during a movie that is awful because they don’t want to waste the $12 they spent on the ticket. The money is GONE, it’s already wasted, might as well leave early and not waste your time too. This is how the Giants think. When rather, they should realize Huff’s money is gone and wasted, it ain’t coming back, now don’t let Huff hurt your team along with wasting that money, just cut him and play the better hitter, fielder and base runner in Belt.
That’s not quite right, Curtis.
Huff was paid $3M in 2010 and he was hitting just as poorly in April 2010 as he is now, but the Giants stuck with him.
If Belt were like Huff right now with very little strikeouts (around 90% contact rate) and a lot of walks, I would be more than happy to play Belt, even if he were hitting as badly as Huff right now. Huff’s suffering from bad BABIP luck right now, Huff is showing power and discipline at the plate, but the balls have just been hit right to fielders, resulting in a very low BABIP. He should regress to a better BABIP and his batting line should rise, but if not, I don’t think the Giants will go through May with that batting line, he will get less starts if that happens.
It seems to me that Belt may struggle because he knows that his manager doesn’t have his back. Every time he has a bad game he lands on the bench.
I get the argument that Bochy is managing for his job & thinks that playing Huff/Pill is a better option. Looking at the numbers, that could be the case, as none really distinguishes himself from the others. Belt clearly has more upside & that’s who I would play.
If Sabean really wanted Belt to play, he would call Bruce to his office & say “Play Belt or you’re done” or “Play Belt, and we’ll be ok with the learning curve”.
I wish they would just trade him to Texas. BTW, we’ll see this cycle repeat when Gary Brown comes up….
Bruce Bochy is absolutely not managing for his job. He’s managing the way he is because he and the Giants front office think they have a great chance of winning another World Series this year and they are committed to putting the lineup that gives them the best chance of winning each and every game.
The biggest reason for Belt’s lack of playing time is #3, by far. Agree with the Giants’ philisophy or not, they like aggressive, high contact hitters and they are very up front about that. Not just Bochy but Sabean too. And to their eyes Belt absolutely is too passive. I’ve been watching this team for a long time now and I’ve seen it over and over again. Especially in RBI situations, they would rather see a young hitter swing from the heels at 10 straight balls then to watch 1 fastball in the zone go by. You can argue the value of walks and OBP until you’re blue in the face but it’s not going to get you any further than trying to teach algebra to your dog. So Belt will show himself to be the hitter they want him to be — in whatever playing time he gets — or he will not play. Simple as that.
I agree with everything you just said here except the part about swinging at 10 straight balls, but I’ll chalk that up to a bit of indulgence in hyperbole.
Enis the Nevermind? That doesn’t make any sense. They should have thought of a word that rhymes with Enis. Oh wait I get it, it’s like the movie Bachelor Party with “Nick the … Nevermind”.
SFG should stop beating around the bush and just tell him to “do what Will Clark did” and then he’ll get more playing time.
I put the quote up above. “Get you a pitch to hit and knock the piss out of it”.
When he gets his chances he needs to get with it quick. Fair? Maybe not. Who cares, its the majors baby!
I just don’t see Belt as having a good baseball body. Plus he has an ugly girlfriend.
Free Brandon Belt Now!!! Trade to the Nationals please.
Sure, I’ll take Bryce Harper in trade for Belt anyday.
Aubrey has a whole in his swing on the inner third of the plate, as posted with facts that he hit below Mendoza there.
If you google “Huff sliders”, one comment comes up:
“….Aubrey has a whole in his swing on the inner third of the plate, as posted with facts (Fox Hot Zone) that he hit below Mendoza there in 2011.
Additionally, he got owned by RHP throwing him sliders. That probably accounted for most of those ground balls to 2nd, which could have been a Major League record.
In 2010, Huff saw 255 sliders from RHP, and had a GB rate of 21% off of them.
In 2011 it was 216 sliders and GB% of 47%…….”
“Because Huff has played to a .244/.307/.371 line over his last 615 PA’s”.
I don’t Huff is going to change from this line and belt could match this with Plus defense.
Watching Huff 4-3 is better than a Belt K? I believe the Giants should do with Huff the what the rockies are doing with Jason Giambi .
so which is the worst. Freddi SPEDy Gonzalez sitting Heyward last year for a 27(?) year old “prospect”, LaRussa turning a great defensive SS with a bad bad into a bad defensive SS with a bad bat/turning a 5 tool potential CF into a mediocre mid 20s CF, or Bochy stunting the growth of a high upside 1B on an offensively starved team?
I think the only time benching a young guy has ever worked was when Bobby Cox benched Andruw Jones for not hustling. Then he goes out and for 10 years is amazing before getting fat and then turning into a great platoon guy. I’m a Braves homer though.