Andres Torres has the highest SLG% on the team

[KR4]

Of any regular player.

http://sanfrancisco.giants.mlb.com/stats/sortable_player_stats.jsp?teamPosCode=sfn&statType=1&noHighlight=true&section1=1&timeFrame=1&c_id=sf&statSet1=1&subScope=teamCode&timeSubFrame=2010&&sortByStat=SLG

Posey is the highest but only 19 AB's...

Just thought that it was interesting...makes a lot of sense considering how consistently poor the G-men are at hitting with RIP.

[TheLowlySquire]

Dammit Bam-Bam, teach us how to hit!

[Stanford]

He's been very good this year, and to be fair he was one of our best hitters last year too.

I'd like to take this thread as a positive rather than a negavite. Torres is a good leadoff hitter who can play CF. That means less Rowand, which is always a good thing.

Here's an article I got from another board about Torres' swing change.

[1] The biggest thing that was holding back my highest-level client, Andres Torres of the San Francisco Giants, was that he was taught a linear hand path. He was taught to throw his hands at the ball, to slap the ball, and to try to beat out the throw. This worked for him all the way up through the AA level, in large part due to his incredible speed, but it stopped working for him at the AAA level. Over the past year I have helped him move to a more rotational swing, using Albert Pujols as his model, and he has seen dramatic improvements in terms of both his average and his power. That is why I teach Rotational Hitting and not Linear Hitting.

[2] In my work with Andres Torres, I found that the biggest and most important revelation for him was the distinction between Connection and Extension. This is relevant to the Linear versus Rotational debate because when he tried to swing using a linear hand path, he would end up extending too early, disconnecting, and robbing himself of power.

http://www.chrisoleary.com/projects/bas ... tting.html

[TheLowlySquire]

Uh, this is a negative. Torres is playing well, but he's on a hot streak. A guy like him should be a good bat off the bench or one of your 7-8 hitters. For him to be leading a team that wants to be in contention for the playoffs in major hitting categories is just sad. Not trying to take anything away from Torres, he's doing his job at a surprisingly high level, but the big guys like Sandoval, Rowand, and Molina really need to step up.

[Stanford]

Rowand, Molina? Come on, Torres is a better hitter than both of them. He's had enough ABs to prove he can hit.

[TheLowlySquire]

Rowand and Molina are proven hitters that should be playing at a higher level, and have proven in past seasons that they can. I don't like either, but I expect more out of them. I expect them to be better than Torres. I doubt half of baseball fans even know who Torres is.

[Stanford]

Rowand and Molina are proven hitters that should be playing at a higher level, and have proven in past seasons that they can. I don't like either, but I expect more out of them. I expect them to be better than Torres. I doubt half of baseball fans even know who Torres is.

Bengie has never had an OPS over .800 in his career, and only finished with a +.300 OBP once as a Giant, which is pathetic. He proved last year that he can hit .265 and thanks to Bochy, that's from a gigantic sample size.

Rowand had a grand total of two good years in his career, and neither were with the Giants. his plate approach is awful and his bat speed has gotten worse and worse.

I don't know what else Torres has to do to be a better hitter than these two. Sign a contract for more than he's worth?

[TheLowlySquire]

I didn't say Torres wasn't a better hitter than them. He is right now, easily. I just expect more out of Molina and Rowand, and for them to be better than him, partly due to the differences in their contract. Yes, they've usually been teh suck, but that doesn't mean I should expect them to be this shtty.

[Stanford]

I just dispute the claim that Rowand and Molina are 'proven hitters'. Rowand has been an average hitter his entire career apart from two two years (07, 04) and Molina has simply just been average his whole career.

I agree, as far as contracts and respect from the manager go, they should both be hitting better than Torres. But that's not a reasonable expectation because they're just not good hitters, plain and simple.

[TheLowlySquire]

They've proven they can hit 20 homers and 70-80 RBIs. Not great, obviously, they're probably worse than good ol' Happy Pete a few years ago, but still better than what we're seeing now. Except for this season, Torres doesn't really have a record of doing anything, so I am surprised by what we've seen this year, and I certainly didn't think he would have the highest slugging percentage on the team. That would've been our DP king, Pablo Sandoval.