Team Snapshot - San Francisco Giants

Last season the Giants were 72-90 and this offseason the Giants have been quietly busy trying to improve on that. They added Randy Johnson to bolster the starting rotation, Jeremy Affeldt and Bobby Howry to bolster the bullpen and Edgar Renteria to bolster their standing among Colombian fans I guess.

C - Begie Molina is pretty solid behind the plate. Not the most flashy of players but solid.

1st - Travis Ishikawa is the starter as of now and he could be good, very good or simply replacement level. The Giants will roll the dice on a couple of young players and 1st base seems like one of the spots they will gamble on.

2nd - The Giants will be looking at a youngster at 2nd as well. It could be 26-year old Kevin Frandsen, 26-year old Eugenio Velez or 23-year old Emmanuel Burriss. None of these guys excite me. It wouldn't surprise me if all three are out of baseball in 5 years.

SS - The Giants added Edgar Renteria as a free agent. I'm not a fan of this move. Will anyone be surprised if Renteria's skills completely fall off a cliff this season? If it happens in San Francisco will anyone actually notice? Another reason to dislike the move is because it unceremoniously shunts Omar Vizquel into retirement and Vizquel deserved better than that.

3rd - Going with another prospect it looks like 22-year old Pablo Sandoval will open the season as the starting 3rd baseman.

LF - Fred Lewis looks like he'll be the starter and at 28-years old he's one of the older players we've discussed so far.

CF - The over-paid but always hustling Aaron Rowand is the starter. The never-have-to-ever-pay-for-a-beer-in-Boston Dave Roberts is the back-up.

RF - Randy Winn lead the Giants last year among positional players in Win Shares. He had 22. For the Giants to be successful in 2009 - Winn will need to duplicate that number (very possible since this is Winn's free agency year) but be 3rd or 4th on the team with that same number.

Starting Pitching - This is the key to the teams success. Tim Lincecum has to be Tim Lincecum and produce another Cy Young worthy season. He's followed in the rotation by youngster Matt Cain, oldster Randy Johnson and hipster Barry Zito. That's 6 Cy Young Awards total among those 4 starters. Add in a healthy Noah Lowry and you potentially have a pretty imposing starting rotation.

Bullpen - Brian Wilson had 41 saves last year but he also had a 4.62 ERA. The Giants will probably be involved in a lot of low scoring, close games (because their starting pitching is good but the offense is weak) and the bullpen is an obvious key to their success. To bolster the pullpen the Giants have added Jeremy Affeldt and Bobby Howry.

The NL West could be wide open this season. The three keys for the Giants (in order of importance) are:

1. Starting pitching. They need to get strong seasons from their starters and they need for the starters to remain healthy. If healthy then the starting pitching alone gives them hope.

2. They need for some of the "kids" to be successful. Whether it be 1st, 2nd, 3rd or LF - they need at least two players to emerge as well above average for them to contend for the NL West.

3. They need the bullpen to keep them in games and they need Brian Wilson to emerge as a true closer.

I really can't see any free agent that could substantially alter the team but having said that the team may need to sign just one more free agent to give them flexibility because the Giants really don't have the farm team depth to make a good trade mid-season. Then again - chances are much higher that they will be sellers and not buyers come the All-Star game so maybe they should just save the money and see how the kids perform.