San Francisco Giants: 5 things to watch for in the second half

2. Will the veterans get hot?

If the San Francisco Giants are going to have any success the rest of the year, they are going to need the likes of Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford, and Evan Longoria to rebound from middling first-half performances.

For the majority of the first half, all of those players were hitting dismally. While the overall statistics still don’t look very good for any of them, the numbers don’t tell the full story.

Longoria has been tearing the cover off the ball lately with five home runs in the last week and a half, and Posey is starting to show signs of coming around of late.

With bloated contracts and middling season stats, it’s unlikely the Giants will be able to find takers for any of these veterans on the trade market, so for better or worse they will be a key part of the team’s short-term outlook.

It would be nice to see the recent offensive surge that’s been led by Longoria makes its way to some of these other veterans. At the very least, improved numbers in the second half from that group would go a long way toward keeping the offense from bottoming out once again.