When It’s Time For a Change

The San Jose Mercury News and its 12 reporters are saying that Kevin Frandsen has ruptured his Achilles tendon and may be done for the year.

Either the Giants got lucky picking up almost the exact same player earlier this week or Brian Sabean is clairvoyant.

It’s hard to get worked up about this from a “How does this affect the Giants chances?’-angle, because all it means is that the Giants will still have a terrible offense and win less than 75 games. but it’s terrible for Frandsen who was already starting to get frustrated about being banged up when he finally had a shot to win some playing time.

It’s odd how an injury to one player who wasn’t guaranteed a starting job can affect a team such as the 2008 Giants.

This kills the competition he had with Ray Durham at second, makes third base even more of a sinkhole and basically solidifies that Brian Bocock will start the season in San Francisco after the Jose Castillo pick-up dropped it from 100 percent to 99 percent certain. It’s almost funny to think the Giants have mismanaged the roster so much that the best young, near-major league ready player they have was just sent to AAA (free Nate Schierholtz!) while the service clock on a shortstop that hasn’t even played above A-ball will be starting soon.

So the opening day infield? If the team is serious about playing Rich Aurilia at first, then it’s him, Durham (if he has the strength to stand after all), Bocock and Castillo.

Bocock should be fine in the field but lost at the plate. Castillo could be both or play passable defense. Durham could be league average offensively or a black hole if he repeats last year and Rich Aurilia should not be a major league regular.

If you look at those four and Dan Ortmeier, the other first base possibility, none had an OBP exceeding .333 at any level and none had one higher than .317 at the major league level. PECOTA has none of them projected at higher than Aurilia at .329.

None of this is a surprise (Except for Castillo. I only recently discovered he was not very good at baseball) , but it’s still worse for losing Frandsen. He was to be one of the few youngish players to watch and root for this year. It’s sad to see that possibly that wont happen.