Giants In New Territory Heading Down Stretch

For the first time in 5 seasons, the Giants will be playing the role of spoiler as we embark on MLB's home stretch of the regular season. Barring a miracle, there will be no playoffs this year, no World Series defense, but instead, a new direction for the seasons final 2 months.

We're a week into August, the Giants are 50-63 and 13.5 games out of first place in the West, so needless to say it's time to mix things up on this roster, and Bruce Bochy and Brian Sabean are starting to do a little bit of that. The most notable addition to the lineup over the last week, and a guy who should really stay out there the rest of the year as the everyday left fielder, has been Roger Kieschnick. The 26 year-old missed his shot to make an impact at the big league level in '12 when the Giants needed offense, but this time around, he's healthy and he's off to a good start in San Francisco, going 8-24 with 3 RBI. I also wouldn't mind seeing Juan Perez get some looks in center field again over Gregor Blanco, and if he can at least heat up somewhat by September, maybe even have a Gary Brown siting at AT&T for the first time. No matter which way you dice it, the Giants are out of it, and even though they didn't rid themselves of some of their expiring contracts before the non-waiver deadline, I still expect them to make every effort to open up more roster spots for young players in the coming weeks.

Biggest disappointment of '12?

As far as the veterans who've still been going out there everyday, you can tell that even they're starting to accept 2013 as a lost season. Back in May, it looked like Hunter Pence was in for a big bounce-back year, Panda was hitting .330 with power, Buster was starting to come around and it looked like the offense may finally be ready to carry some of the burden for the struggling pitching staff. Unfortunately though as the weeks wore on, we saw the holes up and down this lineup, the constant nagging injuries that knocked key guys out at various times and a pitching staff that just couldn't get on track at the same time. Mostly though, it was players from last years World Championship team not living up to the standard they set a year ago. Angel Pagan was a shell of his 2012 self before the injury. Scutaro, Posey and Crawford have been solid, yet hardly spectacular. Everyone else in the lineup has underachieved this year in my eyes. I know this almost sounds like an end of the year piece when there's still 7+ weeks of baseball and we've seen crazier things happen, but right now, this season is finished for all intent and purposes, and the sooner the Giants go into full "build for next year and beyond mode" the better.

Roster Notes: The Giants made another roster move prior to Thursday's game with Milwaukee, parting ways with Guillermo Quiroz and re-calling Hector Sanchez for what seems like the 8th time this season. Hector has had a real tough time staying healthy and getting any kind of rythym going this year, but he appears ready now to re-take over the duties he held for this team last year. If he continues to struggle though, I really would like to see Johnny Monnell given a look see before September. I know Monnell is hardly the defender the Giants are looking for behind the plate, but that bat could sure play well in the lineup when Buster needs a break (hitting .286 with 17 HR and 55 RBI in Fresno over 96 games). Speaking of which, we'll be catching up with the minor league system in our next post, as it's been a couple months since we did and there are certainly some topics to discuss.