The San Francisco Giants Forgotten Asset: Brandon Belt

With all of the changes happening this offseason, there is one player that seems to have been forgotten and that’s the San Francisco Giants first baseman.

Brandon Belt is a name that starts plenty of conversation/arguments among Giants fans.

Either you love Belt for what he does well, or you hate him for what he doesn’t do well.

What he’s been good at throughout his career is getting on base. He has a career OBP of .358 with a career-high of .394 in 2016.

Even last year when he had a bit of a down year average-wise he posted an OBP of .355, which was second best on the team only behind Buster Posey.

Belt’s detractors point to the fact that he isn’t a prolific home run hitter, which is what you normally look for from your first baseman.

Over the last three seasons he’s hit 18, 17 and 18 home runs respectively. Giants fans would love to see he him finally hit over 20.

Plus, he’s driven in more than 68 runs in a season just once.

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To be honest, I’m in the group that has never really loved Belt. I’m old school in the sense that your home runs comes from your corner players, while your speed and average and comes from up the middle.

I would much rather have a 30 home run first baseman than what Belt is giving us.

But like it or not, Belt is our first baseman for the next two or three years.

And with the players that have been brought in this offseason, that should take some of the pressure off Belt. He doesn’t have to be something he’s not.

With last year’s lineup Belt was looked upon as the one who would provide the power — in fact, his 18 home runs were tops on the team.

Now he can go back to focusing on getting on base and putting the ball in play.

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I’m expecting big things from Belt this year as he won’t have close to the amount of pressure on him in the lineup as he had in 2017.