Per Henry Schulman, the Giants have trimmed their roster down by eight spots in yesterday’s first round of cuts.

They are: SS Ehire Adrianza, OF Wendell Fairley, C Johnny Monell, OF Thomas Neal, IF Nick Noonan, C Hector Sanchez and C Jackson Williams.

All of the 7 above players were reassigned to minor league camp and Brett Pill was optioned to AAA Fresno. Nothing too surprising out of the first wave of cuts. Schulman states that with Huff’s defense looking so bad this spring, he was a little surprised to see the heralded defensive first baseman, Brett Pill, get cut so soon. Realistically, Pill had little chance to break camp in the majors. His slash-line from 2009 in AA looks nice — .298/.348/.480 — but his track record on offense leaves something to be desired. As a 25-year-old, he’ll start the season in Fresno.

Thomas Neal is the best prospect of the group and he’ll start this year in AA Richmond as a Flying Squirrel — I love minor league team names. Neal had a breakout season in ’09 with the San Jose Giants. Neal, finally healthy, showed power (ISO .242) and patience (BB% 11.6) while terrorizing California League pitchers. Any way you slice it, Neal is a Top-5 prospect in the Giants’ farm system at the moment.

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Lincecum Freakout-’O-Meter: In his start yesterday against the Indians, Lincecum pitched 4 innings, gave up 4 earned runs, 4 hits, walked 4, and struck out 4 batters.

Nameless NL scout says:

One NL scout at Tuesday’s game said that Lincecum’s fastball ranged between 87 and 91 mph with one touching 92 — about three to four mph slower than Lincecum used to throw routinely.

Excuse me while I shuffle off to my panic room. In all seriousness, I could quote you a thousand different reasons why you shouldn’t care about Spring Training Stats (STS), but I’ll save both you and me the time: don’t worry about them. It’s silly.