Brandon Belt Makes the Cut

I'll admit that I was pretty apathetic about the whole "Will Belt start the season in AAA or in the big leagues" thing. If he made the team, great. If he was sent back to AAA, fine, a little minor league seasoning wouldn't hurt and the Giants would probably be fine for a month or two without him. Well, today Belt made the cut, and I am very, very excited. If nothing else, there's always a lot of anticipation involved with a top prospect making their debut and thinking about that prospect carrying your favorite team for years to come. It's also pretty refreshing to see a team ignore all the arbitration clock crap. Don't get me wrong, that stuff is important, but it shouldn't affect putting your best team out on the field. The Giants thought Belt was ready, they wanted him on the team now, and they aren't worrying about how much more money he'll make in a few years.

Of course, as the Giants set their 25-man roster today, there were other roster moves made. To make room for Belt, the Giants designated Travis Ishikawa for assignment. That was no surprise as Ishikawa becomes sort of redundant and inferior with Belt on the roster. The interesting thing to see will happen in a few weeks when Cody Ross comes off the disabled list. If the Giants are rolling, Ross is probably staying on the bench, at least initially. But if Burrell struggles or maybe even Torres starts slowly, they might be the ones losing their starting spot. And who gets cut? Every Giants fan and their mother wants Rowand and his $24 million slary cut, but it could be Nate Schierholtz.

The last bullpen spot was given to Dan Runzler. I'm not sure what that means for his attempted transition into a starting pitcher, but it does mean that Ryan Vogelsong and Marc Kroon, both longshots to make the roster, are headed for the minors. Guillermo Mota was also given a bullpen spot, and one of he and Runzler is likely gone once Brian Wilson comes off the DL.

Here's what the final roster looks like:

Starting Lineup

Torres

F. Sanchez

Huff

Posey

Burrell

Sandoval

Belt

Tejada

Bench

DeRosa

Schierholtz

Fontenot

Whiteside

Rowand

Starting Rotation

Lincecum

J. Sanchez

Cain

Zito

Bumgarner

Bullpen

Ramirez

Mota

Runzler

Lopez

Affeldt

Casilla

Romo

I also wanted to do a small division preview type of thing. We have been absolutely terrible offseason bloggers, and we really have no excuse. But by tomorrow night we will be doing recaps for every game and hopefully featuring more content in general. I think the regular season and watching actual games motivates us to write. Anyway, even though this should've been done in a different, more comprehensive post, here are my thoughts on the division.

I have the Giants finishing in first place, and if I get anyone telling me a homer, I might kill myself. The Giants are simply the most complete team in a pretty weak division. But as we've outlined before, they do need a lot of things to go right, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if the Rockies or even the Dodgers *shudder* came out on top. The Rockies usually hit a lot, but I really only see 2 dangerous hitters in their lineup, Tulowitzki and Gonzalez. Their rotation is pretty solid, but nothing spectacular. I have them in second place. The Dodgers finish third, mostly because their offense could struggle to score runs and their staff is deep, but also not spectacular. The Padres don't have much going for them, but the Diamondbacks are terrible, so they'll finish in fourth place. The Diamondbacks are terrible. Fifth place. I'm not going to make any kind of World Series prediction because I don't want to pick against the Giants but I don't want to pick them either. There's my beautiful season preview.

Tomorrow is opening day. Opening day would be exciting enough, but it's Opening Day with the 2010 World Series Champion San Francisco Giants facing the enemy LA Dodgers. And Brandon Belt is making his debut. It doesn't get much better than that.