Big roster changes for the Giants:
UP: Ryan Rohlinger and Pablo Sandoval from AA, Travis Ishikawa from AAA.
DOWN: John Bowker and Steve Holm to AAA, Jose Castillo designated for assignment.
There were rumblings of this over on the McChronic earlier today, but the rumor-spreader got it partially wrong. Here's what it means:
- We probably haven't heard the last of Bowker. He's got a short, powerful swing. When he hits the ball, he hits it hard. He's gotten into a funk, though, and his demotion is a good thing. Consider him in the mix for 1B/OF next year. Ishikawa is probably on a make-or-break mission. He turned his career around this year, apparently with some help from the Big J.C. Let's hope he does well enough to merit consideration next spring, too. At the least, the Giants could use his glove at first base. Bowker had some painful gaffes there. Bowker gets to work on his swing under less pressure, the Giants get a better glove and a hotter bat. Nothing to lose with this swap.
- Rohlinger should get most starts at 3B (otherwise, WTF is he being called up for?). Castillo had frittered away his usefulness. Plucking him from the scrap heap was a nice try. A versatile 2B/3B with a little HR power and an opposite-field, gap-to-gap swing is a nice asset, and Castillo was all that for a month or so. Before you get too giddy, please note that Rohlinger was a 24-year-old in low-A ball before he hit a few bombs in spring training this year and got noticed by the higher-ups. Even in this, his so-called breakout year, he couldn't crack an .800 OPS in 277 at-bats in the California League (where balls fly over fences). That earned him a promotion to AA, where he was doing well, but not screamingly, call-me-up-right-now well. And not John-Bowker-in-2007 well, either. I'm looking forward to seeing Rohlinger in the black-and-orange and giving him a silly nickname, but if I were a bettin' man, I wouldn't put a lot of chips on him being a revelation at the plate between now and Oct. 1.
- Sandoval. Now we're talking. This is going to fun. Can the most insanely hot hitter in the low and mid-minors make the jump to the bigs? He started hitting in April and hasn't stopped.
The bigger picture is that the Giants continue to jump guys more than one level at a time. In effect, Rohlinger and Sandoval have come to the majors from A-ball, with only a short stopover in Connecticut this summer. Burriss, Bocock, Bowker, Romo, Matos, Espineli, Denker: they've all been fast-tracked to the majors with extremely divergent outcomes. At times it's seemed like a big dredging operation: take a healthy scoop from the lower depths and see what comes up.
Perhaps a better description is to call it Operation Rawhide. With the exception of Sandoval, you see these fair-to-middlin' dogies hangin' out in the corral? Head 'em up, and if they ain't pulling their weight, move 'em out!
