Bring back Travis.

The real question (one that is prevalent not only in MLB but the other major sports as well) is whether you reward someone with a large contract for what they have previously done. Aubrey Huff played his heart out for us last year and I have no problem with the move Brian Sabean made from a moral standpoint.

The more interesting question to me is -- assuming Huff keeps up his odd-year-suck, even-year-awesome routine -- do you exercise his option for $10M in 2013? Say he finishes 2011 with a wOBA of .350 with overall bad defense. Then he comes back next year with a wOBA of .370-.380 and less bad defense. Would he be worth the $10M gamble?

Wrtong question being asked here. We should be asking, would you take Brandon Belt hitting 0.200 with a couple of HR's or Huff. While I hope Belt becomes the next great Giant, Belt's stats in the minors have not translated yet. And until they do, my vote is for a veteran 1B!

Belt watch: Last night's game in Fresno, 1-4, HR, 2 RBI, 2 SO The strikeouts in AAA are a tad concerning, other than that, there is a lot to like.

I think it is a bit complicated from the GM side. I lived in Florida in 97, when the Marlin's went through the giants, and ended up winning it all. Then Wayne Huzienga sold off his winning team, and the fan base has never been the same eventhough the marlins won another series. The sin he committed was not letting his team come back to defend the championship. What Sabean did was fanbase friendly, and it shows by attendance. There probably is no reason why the giants cannot win approx. 90 games or more again, despite all the injuries sufferred so far. The team indeed played like a team. Perhaps they need an infusion of one or two new good players. But it is early in the season. Huff is only hitting about 40 points below Pujols.

Very interesting post Rory. I admit, I was not on the bandwagon to re-sign Huff. I felt that he had career years not only offensively, but defensively as well. I thought another one year deal would be fine, but I did think we overpaid him a little bit when you consider his age and his career cycle of showing power one year and seeing it going away the next (he's had seasons where he's had an ISO over .200 and then followed with a sub. 200 ISO the past six years). Furthermore, I imagined Huff's walk rate would regress to normal (his 12.4 walk rate was a career high and the first time it's been over 10), so there were a lot of factors going against Huff this year. However, considering he's on the hook for this year and at least next year, I think we're in the position where we have to play him and keep Belt in the minors. I still think Burrell, Torres and Ross are all valuable starting outfielders who merit consistent playing time, and the odd man out would be Schierholtz, which I think would be a travesty if he got DFA'd. He still deserves platoon time at the very least. As for what we have seen from Belt, I think this is to be expected. His numbers are good in Fresno, but his strikeout rate is 28 percent, which is very high, even considering the amount of walks he's drawn this year. From what I've seen of Grizzlies games on MiLB.tv, he still could hone his approach a little more. He's being a little too patient, and he still could do a better job in terms of pitch recognition and knowing what pitches he can put power behind and which ones he can lay off. His numbers are still great by all means, but they aren't pristine and flawless by any measure. At the very least, I say we wait until late june or july and see if any of our outfielders go through a major slide or injury. Belt is doing well, yes, but this is only his second season of professional ball, and I would hate to yo-yo him between Triple A and the Majors, which I think would shake his confidence more than anything.

In the case of Belt, people are forgetting the lesson about hitters who can hit in AAA but haven't proved it in the majors: sometimes they fail and many times they bounce up and down until they figure it out. People love Matty Williams but forget that he went through years of up and downs before sticking with the starting lineup. I think Belt will be in that mode than the mode of Will Clark or Buster Posey. The reason for this is because people are ignoring his very high strikeout rates so far in AAA and majors: 72% contact rate in AAA, and 75% contact rate in MLB (you want at least 85% in majors for good hitters). Over last 5 seasons, hitters in the 71-75% contract rate range hit around .250 for his BA. Even if you combine it with a 11-15% walk rate (he's at 13%), the average was .254. If he hit .254 with a 13% walk rate, his OBP would be .342, which is OK but not great. Even if he attained the MLE ISO he had last season based on Baseball Forecaster's MLE formula, 242 ISO would equate to .496 SLG for a .838 OPS, which is nice (and good for our lineup) but not exactly what you are expecting to get from your 1B. Given his struggles so far, I would bet the under on 242 ISO. People forget from his rapid rise up the system that he was largely overlooked as a prospect going into the 2010 season. That meant his odds of making the majors was major in the opinion of all the paid experts. He has issues he needed to take care of and while he took care of a lot of those issues, few people have looked beyond his hype to notice that he strikes out way too much right now. If you want to settle for a .838 OPS 1B, that is your choice, but I would rather he figure out his problems in the minors than have us experiment with him up in the majors again. I was OK the first time up, you never know when you have lightening in the bottle, but he clearly needs additional experience that I think it would be better if he stayed down right now. He admitted that his confidence was shaken a bit by his trials up earlier, I would rather wait to see if we can continue to win with the team we got now and only bring him up if we fall too far behind. I would rather see him figure it out in the minors and get back to us as a hitter who can get his OPS into 900 OPS range, like Sandoval, like Huff. The thing is, if Posey was hitting for power right now, like we expected him to, we would not feel the need to bring up Belt, the offense would be scoring enough to win with our pitching. In fact, if you want a cautionary story about what to expect from Belt, look at Posey. Many of the same people clamoring for Belt were the same ones who thought that Sabean brought Posey up later than he should have. These people forget that Posey hit under 700 OPS to the end of June, and appears to be duplicating that same problem this season. And he's a hitter who knows how to avoid strikeouts and gain walks at the same time: his contact rate was 86% in 2010, only 81% so far this season, and his BB/K ratio has been around 50%. He's been a better prospect and better hitter than Belt, and yet he's been struggling to find himself offensively this season. Is it reasonable to think that Belt will have a better or easier time figuring it out if he is brought up right now?

I wish people would check to see what is happening now, not at the start of the season. If last season was any guide, things change in a hurry, particularly once players warm up. For one, Schierholtz has been playing more: out of 17 games in May, he has started 10 and played in 15. His hitting improved and thus he's been getting more ABs, particularly against RHP, and while he has hit well against LHP, both Burrell and Ross KILLS LHP, so Bochy has been going with quasi-platoon, I have no problem with that, as long as Nate is kept around and not traded. Huff should be closer to his May than his April. Huff has been hitting .306/.358/.587/.910 with 2 HR in 49 AB since May 3rd, for over two weeks. And while his May BABIP is on the high side, his April BABIP was way on the low side: in 2010, he had .329 BABIP in May, dipped in June, then had .322 BABIP for rest of season, which his May .342 is closer to than his 2011 April .266. He did a similar thing in 2008, his second half BABIP was .338, which is basically the same as what he is doing in May 2011. And I would not want either Pujols or especially Reyes since he would cost us even more in prospects, because the big contracts we would have to sign them for would probably mean we would have to say goodbye to Lincecum, Cain, or both, long term. I ain't having that, pitching is the reason we are as good a team as we are, everyone has forgotten that we had Bonds not so long ago and even with him in the middle of the lineup, the offense was not that great. In any case, current research says that it is pitching and fielding, period, that helps teams go deeper into the playoffs. Offense has no statistically significant relationship with going deeper into the playoffs, yet everyone who thought the Giants could not win it all last season think that the same prescription that they prescribed last season - more offense - will fix the team this season, if only if we give up some of our pitching. If someone can come up with a solution without harming the pitching, particularly long term, as I strongly feel that we need to keep Wheeler around, we have no assurance that Lincecum will stay with us long-term, you can count me in, but I have not seen one yet.

I argree nate needs to play more! We need more table setters. What a disaster with tejada! Trade for Reyes and bring Belt back up he can't do any worse than what we have now. Imagine a line up of.... Reyes SS Torres CF Posey C Panda 3B Sanchez 2B Schierholtz LF Ross RF Belt 1B I bet we score at least 1 run more per game and one more thing, when big "Z" comes back move hime to the Bullpen he is always good for 1 or 2 innings its the second time thru the line up when he gets in trouble.

Should remember the numbers are down across the Major League...

o.k. so the giants leading home run hitter is still Pablo Sandoval and i would bet that it will stay the same until he gets back . i know the giants argument for trading for a world class shortstop will be to not give away young talent and the fact that they are teetering in first place . why would they give huff so much money when they could go after Pujols next season and put belt in right ? at the time huff was signed every giants fan was thrilled but thats not Sabeans job to thrill the fans its to bring world class talent to as many positions as possible I'm sure we could have covered that first base position till next year . I wont give this one time world series champ g.m. an F for this season yet but why not go from a solid offense when Pablo comes back to awesome offense with Jose Reyes and Andres Torres at the top of the lineup it would kinda mirror the Phillies speed at the top then we come with Posey and Pablo and Schierholtz and thats another thing PLAY "NATE"

Even more amazingly, Belt's K:BB ratio is actually 21:26, not 26:21. The question now appears to be, with 47 errors in 2900 innings, can Huff play some 3B while Panda/DeRosa are out. I do like having his glove in the hole rather than on the line at 1B, but he does not have good footwork so anything hit slow and in front of him will be a hit.

Rory-it's May! Cmon, Huff will finish with similar numbers to last year on the power side. Average may slip some but they messed with him putting him in the outfield. Now they are talking third base. Leave the guy at first and Belt can play left. We all should be worried about Posey, a .260 single hitter is not what was expected. Congrats on new gig Rory. Justin