Self-Assessment

As part of my final grade in English, I'm supposed to write a letter of self-assessment about my body of work as a whole. You know the deal: look over my essays and write about how my flawed logic doesn't address the text and how my paragraphs don't have sufficient transitions. I'm thrilled.



Instead of spending a couple hours doing that, I think I'd have a bit more fun assessing the Giants' young'uns. The Giants have kept their word to initiate a youth movement, even though their definition--calling up players who would benefit from more time in the minors--doesn't equate with that of some fans. Hey, it's a start.

To date, the Giants have called up 8 minor-leaguers, which outstrips last year's total of 3 by May.

Brian Bocock SS: His glove came as good as advertised. The same can't be said for his bat. The Giants brought him up primarily as an interim defender until Omar came back, so one could argue that he wasn't expected to contribute offensively. He showed flashes of good plate discipline, with 12 walks in 77 at-bats, but it was clear that he was overmatched by big-league pitching: 29 strikeouts in 77 at-bats. I don't think the Giants did him any favors by rushing him into the MLB, especially since he struggled mightily in San Jose.

Emmanuel Burriss SS/2B: Simply, he's Bocock with a slightly superior bat and a slightly lesser glove. He is one of the fastest players in the organization, if not the fastest, but the Giants' upper system comprises of quick, slap-happy hitters. He can leg out slow grounders or stretch a single into an extra-base hit; it's only the matter of if he can do so consistently.

Another problem is playing time. With Omar's comeback and Durham's rebound, Burriss has seen his playing time diminish to spot starts and pinch hitting. The kicker: Omar needs off-days to rest his post-op knee, but those come once every 4-5 days. Durham's .283/.363/.375 is a perfect opportunity for Bochy to showcase for the trade deadline in July. Shiny shiny.

Steve Holm C: I'm impressed. Here's a guy who has paid his due in the minors for 7 years and made it to the bigs with a strong performance so far. Holm manages his pitchers well and shuffles through their pitches well, and as Kruk has stated a few times on broadcasts, our pitchers love throwing to him.

Offensively, let's just say that Holm has a knack for the dramatic.
Phillies 3 - 4 Giants
Giants 3 - 2 Rockies

John Bowker 1B: Bowker joined the ranks of Will Clark by hitting his first home run in his debut start as a Giant. The day after, he set his own standard by mashing another home run, becoming the first Giant to hit 2 home runs in his first 2 starts. Needless to say, a feat like that got everyone at China Basin pretty excited. He hit his first wall shortly after, going 3-35, but rebounded with a hot series in Philly.

Bowker has power and very well could be the Giants' first-baseman of the future, but he heats up and cools off rapidly.

Pat Misch SP: Ouch. 0-5 in 25 games. In a few of those games, he pitched well enough to earn a win, but no dice. As for the rest of those games, he gets hit hard. A bit reminiscent of Barry Zito, except with an 89-mph fastball.

Thanks to Josh Kalk, we can see why Misch gets in trouble so often. Other than looking like some sort of blotchy spiral, the graph above shows where his pitches turn into hits, right at the intersection of 10 in. on the x-axis and 35 in. on the z-axis. Belt-high and out over the plate against righties. I believe that Misch can become a decent 5th starter, but he has to get his pitches lower in the strike zone.

Alex Hinshaw RP: Is it too early to call Hinshaw the Tim Lincecum of the bullpen? He is already one of my favorite young players to watch. He hit the mid-90's with his fastball in a recent outing, and as a whole, struck out 8 hitters in only 3 2/3 innings of work. For a better sense of him, check out his numbers in Fresno:

15 1/3 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 4 BB, 21 K

Comical.

Billy Sadler RP
Travis Denker 2B

I haven't seen much of Sadler, even though the Giants called him up a couple weeks earlier than Denker, so I can't say much about him. Looking at his Fresno numbers, though, he seems like the type of pitcher with good stuff but not control. Can anyone enlighten me?

As for Denker, he was the PTBNL in the Mark Sweeney deal. I'm still puzzled how Sabean managed to get a prospect for Sweeney, but I'm not complaining. He tore it up in high-A and AAA (not so much at Dodd, where hitters go to die), but those too small sample sizes to predict how he'll do up here.

Comment-starter: Who do you think will have the most success out of this bunch? Who else do you think will get their cup of coffee this season?