San Francisco Giants: Projected Lineup Show Promise in Loss to Padres

In a loss to the San Diego Padres on Thursday, the San Francisco Giants projected starting lineup showed a lot of promise of what could be in 2018.

The projected starting lineup hasn’t played together a lot this year, but most of them did on Tuesday, and it looked really good.

The only exception to the lineup was Buster Posey, and that’s a big exception.

Austin Jackson hit atop the lineup and went 1-4 with a runs scored and 2 strikeouts. I think that’s about what you can except from Jackson this year, a .250-.260 average.

In the two-hole was Hunter Pence, which I don’t think will be the case during the season. I think we see Andrew McCutchen here with Posey behind him.

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But Pence, who had a slow start to the spring, went 3-4 at the plate with a triple, 2 runs scored, and a an RBI. Behind him McCutchen went 2-4 with a run and 2 RBI.

Evan Longoria hit fourth and went 1-3 with an RBI, while Brandon Belt hit sixth and went 2-3 at the plate with a solo home run — his third long ball of the spring.

Brandon Crawford got into the act as well going 2-3 with an RBI and a walk.

Altogether, the starting six on Thursday went 11-21 at the plate with 5 runs scored and 6 RBI.

The Padres didn’t exactly throw their best arms, and I don’t expect this lineup to hit like that every night. But it was nice to kind of see just how good this lineup can be top-to-bottom.

I think this is what the front office envisioned when they build this team in the offseason. A lineup that is so deep that on any night someone is going to give you a big performance. And then every now and then they’re all going to hit at the same time and have performances like Thursday night.

I really hope that is the case during the season, because it was hard watching the offense a year ago.

Next: San Francisco Giants: Blach and Stratton Running away with Rotation Battle

This season should be much better with the additions of Pence and Longoria. We should see a much more consistent offense, and I think Thursday night was just a glimpse of what could be at the height of this offense.