Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Rooting for Huff to struggle

The following is a guest post from Rory Paap, who writes at Bay City Ball (ESPN SweetSpot). You can follow him on Twitter (@paapfly).

Andy Baggarly:
The Giants need to get Huff going, and seeing how he has a whopping one home run at AT&T Park all season, these two series in two lively ballparks seems like the best bet.

No. Also, no.

The way I see it, the worst possible scenario for the Giants, and their fans, is for Aubrey Huff to play decently over stretches for the rest of the season. Bruce Bochy has been waiting for his “bat to get going” since April, and folks, it’s just not in the cards.

So, what will really kill the Giants is if Huff has a few games with a few home runs, only to slink back into the sad shell of himself that he’s been all season long. His leash has been disturbingly long this season. With Brandon Belt on the roster, healthy, and having looked pretty good in his few at-bats since being recalled, it’s utterly ludicrous that Huff is still playing over him.

On June 2, Huff went nuts and hit three home runs. That boosted his OPS from pathetic (.628) to just really bad (.694). Right now his OPS is .658, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know. This guy needs to sit.

He’s coming around? Really? He’s had two non-disaster games in a row, including a couple of walks, a duck fart and a few 42-hoppers through the infield. Yup, that’s progress. (Sadly, itis genuine progress.)

Since his “breakout” game against the Cardinals way back when, he’s had an OPS above that .694 mark for exactly two games; he had a .696 OPS after a 2-for-4 game against the Diamondbacks on June 16 and a .695 OPS after a completely non-consequential 2-for-2 game during a blowout loss to the Twins on June 21.

That’s it. Other than that, he’s been completely incapable of improving upon the putrid .694 OPS that he had on June 2, and which HE NEEDED TO GO 4-FOR-5 WITH THREE HOME RUNS TO OBTAIN.

Over the course of the season, a few have tried to explain to me how he might be turning it around, doing so with arbitrary starting and ending points. Well, here’s one for you: Over his previous 24 games, Aubrey Huff has a batting line of .225/.287/.270 (.557 OPS), two extra-base hits, and nine walks to 14 strikeouts.

Does this sound like a guy that’s going to turn his season around? No. It doesn’t. This sounds like a guy that’s ready to be put out of his misery. I’m pretty sure one of the Giants’ starting pitchers could produce a similar line if allowed to hit every day.

It’s time to bubble wrap Huff and throw him in the bench. He’ll do more good there, where he’s a great clubhouse guy and can mentor the younger players during the game. Maybe they can even throw him a pinch hit at-bat every once in a while.

He has been “worth” -1.5 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) according to Baseball-reference and -0.9 WAR according to FanGraphs. He is one of the worst everyday major league baseball players this year. Read that again. Playing every day. Batting cleanup.

So, to recap, the worst-case scenario is that Huff plays better, but still bad overall. This gives the Giants some sort of justification to keep going back to the well. There are two best-case scenarios.

1) Huff calls up Marty McFly, leases his DeLorean time-machine, heads back to 2010, kidnaps himself, returns with 2010 Aubrey Huff, and allows ’10-Huff to play while ’11-Huff sleeps in the closet of his own apartment, eating only Top Ramen and dreaming of the next ground ball to second base. He’ll also be playing the World Series parade on loop and drinking Bud Light, remembering the wonderful time he had with Pat Burrell.

The only problem with this scenario is that it puts the Giants’ 2010 World Series championship into serious jeopardy. That and it’s never going to flipping happen; No iteration of Huff is going to start raking.

2) Huff unremarkably tumbles into offensive oblivion, going on an 0-for-30 or so streak, and leaving Bochy no option but to replace him with an infinitely better option: Brandon Belt.

But will that sort of slump even be enough? The guy has a .658 OPS, it will be August in less than a week, and he’s batting cleanup? I suspect the Giants would trade him if they could, much in the way they did Bengie Molina one year ago. But his contract precludes such a move from even being remotely possible. You couldn’t get a stray cat to drag his dead corpse away.

Say what you will, but I am now actively rooting for scenario two. I don’t feel good about it, but it has to be done. I hope, I hope, I hope, with everything I have, that Huff goes into the worst slump of his career.

Because how you continue to bat his man cleanup, I cannot comprehend. Tim Lincecum doesn’t have the flu. Timmy saw the lineup today and threw up in his mouth. Me too. Harsh? Maybe, but enough is enough. His career WAR, according to Baseball-reference, is 13.7. I fear that it may be zero by the time his contract is up.