As has become common place in these pages, the Giants are continuing to deal with injuries all over the field. Unfortunately it seems, as soon as one player is ready to return, another goes down with injury.

Freddy Sanchez hopes that he will be able to return before the end of the season from his shoulder injury. However, an MRI showed that there was damage done to his labrum, including “unnatural stretching” of the shoulder capsule, bad news after he had offseason surgery on the shoulder. Sanchez will rehab for a couple of weeks before deciding how to proceed. At some point he’ll likely need surgery on the shoulder, it’s just a matter of whether or not he will need it before the season is over.

So what do the Giants do at second base since it seems likely that Sanchez is done for the year? Emmanuel Burriss has seen some time there, but he’s offered nothing at the plate during his big league career with a pathetic .264/.323/.267 slash line in his 507 at-bat career. He does bring speed with 28 thefts, but the Giants need offense. They will look to remedy that with the addition of Bill Hall. Though he’s hitting only .221 on the year, Hall did power 18 long balls last season in less than 350 at-bats. His main trait at this point is his versatility and his ability to power the odd long ball. Still, this guy owns a .308 career OBP and he’s hit a mere .224 over his last 1,231 at-bats. The Giants did well to add him for virtually nothing off waivers, but if they are expecting him to be an offensive asset they just haven’t been paying attention to his work the past three plus years.

Matt Cain is only 6-4 on the year, but as is his lot in life, the record isn’t really reflective of how he has pitched. The Giants, for some unknown reason, simply don’t like to score runs when Cain is on the hill. In each of his four loses this year the Giants have scored two or fewer runs, and that isn’t going to help anyone rack up the “W’s.” Cain has been uncharacteristically wobbly of late though. He’s won his last three decisions, but in two of his last four outings he has permitted five earned runs, and in three of his last five starts he’s permitted four or more earned runs. Luckily the two middle outings consisted of 16 innings with only two runs allowed.

Pablo Sandoval is back off the DL as his wrist is ready to handle the grind of playing every day. In his first game back he hit third while producing a hit, a run, an RBI an a walk.

Ryan Vogelsong, to the surprise of no one, will remain in the rotation when Barry Zito comes off the DL shortly (his next start is Thursday at Triple-A Fresno). Vogelsong is 4-1 with a 1.96 ERA since Zito went to the DL.

Brian Wilson last allowed a run on May 18th as his ERA is down to 2.61. His WHIP is still elevated at 1.39 thanks to all the walks though. In 74.2 innings last year Wilson walked 26 batters, and the year before it was 27 in 72.1. He’s already issued 19 in 31 innings this season, but the strikeouts are still there (32 in 31 IP). In terms of results they’ve been there as well as he is 19-for-21 in save chances. He’s only blown one of his last 20 chances.

You can read more of Ray Flowers’ work at BaseballGuys.com and you can follow his random musings on the baseball universe at the BaseballGuys’ Twitter account.

Tags: Barry Zito, Bill Hall, Brian Wilson, Emanuel Burriss, Freddy Sanchez, Matt Cain, Pablo Sandoval, Ryan Vogelson

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 at 7:59 pm and is filed under Giants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.