The Giants offense has once again hit a cold stretch, and when this happens, it can get very frustrating. Nobody expected this team to be a power-house at the plate, but they showed throughout the first half of this month (albeit vs. some lesser pitching) that their offense could score enough to support their starting pitchers,
but the Southern California air has sent the team into a semi-meltdown once again. It's prompted Bruce Bochy to do some things differently though, as he put Aaron Rowand up at the top of the order in the lead-off spot for the first time in his Giants-tenure. Rowand is a guy who has been on a steep slide since the opening week of season. In that first week Rowand hit 2 home runs and drove in drove in 7, looking primed to prove last season a fluke. However since his first 7 games, Rowand has only 1 home run and 9 RBI (over the course of 30 ballgames). He also hasn't been the gold-glove caliber defender in center field the way he was in Philadelphia. Everybody clamored that Rowand was a guy who never "takes a day off" and will literally run through a wall for his team. There's a reason why those qualities were bandied about so much in the winter of 2007; he's not a great baseball player. He had a few years in Philly and Chicago that jumped out and showed he has ability, but besides his 2007 season with the Phills, he has never been closed to being an all-star caliber player. I'm not going now sit here and beat Rowand to a pulp all post long though, just wanted to point out that the guy isn't a great baseball player, and the annual 12-15 home runs, 65+ RBI and .270'ish batting average is about what your going to get out of him, especially in this yard.The Giants offense has, however, taken a hit by losing Edgar Renteria, and it's shown big time. The team has gone 1-4 over the last five games without their starting shortstop and second place hitter. Renteria wasn't particularly tearing the cover off of the ball, but he was getting on base steadily at the top of the order. In his absence, the Giants shortstops have gone 2-18 with no RBI or runs scored. Basically they've been obsolete offensively and are a big reason why the Giants were unable to support beautiful pitching performances from Barry Zito (8 IP, 5H, 2R, 3K's) and Jonathan Sanchez (6 IP, 2H, 2R, 5K's) over the last 2 nights. Even though they've suffered a minor melt-down though, the Giants are still just sitting a game below .500 heading into Thursday night's game in which Tim Lincecum faces former Giant Kevin Corriea in yet another lopsided pithcing match-up that the Giants should take advantage of. If they don't, it's going to be another 0-for in SoCal for San Francisco.
I did want to touch slightly on the Noah Lowry situation in this post. I'm sure most fans are well aware of by now that Lowry is officially out for 2009 as he's going to have surgery to remove his lower-left rib in order to relieve tension in his throwing arm and possibly catapult his career back
into motion. I certainly feel for Lowry and his familly, but to allow his agent to pop off and blame the Giants for the way they've handled Lowry's situations is ludicrous. Noah Lowry was an important cog in the Giants rotation from 2005-2007 and if you think they didn't do everything in their power to try and get him as healthy as possible, then you need to step back and look at the situation again. I'm no medical expert, but Lowry hasn't thrown at all in a big league game since 2007, the Giants held him back out of caution, even when he felt he was able to do things he wasn't quite ready for. Again, I don't know all the behind the scenes stuff that went on with this situation, but from the outside looking in, it certainly seemed like the Giants did all they could to get the kid back on the mound. Lowry was an asset to the Giants, and it's a shame his tenure here is going to end like this. He was a winner when he was out there and and I can't help but think of what a healthy Lincecum-Cain-Lowry-Sanchez-Zito rotation would have been doing right now, and into the future.
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