Now that the season is fading into the sunset, our beloved Giants are showing signs of their old self. I know, too little, too late. But at least they are fun to watch again! Last night's 3-2 tenth inning victory over the pesky rookies is a great example. I will admit that exhaustion kept me from seeing the end, yet I had a good feeling when I turned it off. Strange, a " good " feeling is not the norm for 2013.
A high quality start from Tim Lincecum ( 8 innings, 2 runs, and a strong finish ), combined with high quality clutch hitting by Brandon Belt made for a nifty win. I am not a huge Belt fan but I have to give him his props. His streaky hitting is hard to live with but it looks like the adjustments are making that less obvious. His future looks bright, indeed. Master Lincecum also seems to be on the right track, however it is much harder to be optimistic about his future. It is my feeling that we should RE-SIGN Tim. I realize that may be tough ( especially if he wants many years ) but we have so many holes already, a missing starter would be huge. Tim has morphed into a good #3 starter and that is a hole no one can afford.
3 comments:
I really thought Tim's Little League Moment (not covering home) to give the Rox the lead was going to doom him to a Caining. Alas, BB got the big hit late to tie it up. And Tim pitched even better after that gaffe and wound up with a really nice start.
Yes: re-sign Lincecum!
It's nice to see Belt doing better, but I had faith in him all along. Take a look at the NL leaderboards and you will see the obvious 1B studs, Votto (5.8 WAR) and Goldschmidt (5.7). Then there are the 3-4-5 guys, Freddie Freeman (4.2), Belt (3.8), and Adrian Gonzalez (3.5). Only Freeman is younger. Belt is under contract for 2014 and his arb-clock doesn't start until 2015.
He just topped 1000 career PAs and he's improved each of his three seasons. And as far as "inconsistency" goes, he topped a .750 OPS at the end of May and has been there or inching higher ever since (now it's .828). Not everyone is Buster Posey, and even The Great One has seen his OPS drop 70 points since June.
I think Belt has made his case and deserves the job at 1B and a middle of the order spot. Remember how much you hated Chili Davis? Looking back on is whole career, would you take what he could do (121 OPS+, 38 WAR) now? Young hitters are frustrating, but they get better. We've been spoiled by guys like MadBum and Tim and Posey who were stars the moment they put on the uniform.
Yeah, I never got that whole thing with Chili Davis. He was a good player. For those of you who weren't there, whenever Davis was introduced as the batter Jon would stand up, yell "Boo!" at the top of his lungs, stomp up the stairs and exit the bleachers. It was fun to observe.
I'm in the re-sign Tim camp. You stated the most important reason, because a(nother) hole in the rotation would be huge. We might get by with patching one hole with Petit/Gaudin/rookie, but not two.
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