Hello, baseball fans!
One of the highlights of the second half of last season was Brandon Belt, both on and off the court. Belt memorably gave himself the nickname “captain” of the team and embraced role-playing in a way that some professional wrestlers might envy. Belt’s season was cut short, unfortunately, due to a broken thumb that kept him out of the NLDS (and cut his hunt to 30 homers in a short season at 29).
But it was arguably one of the best seasons of his major league career, if not the best. So it was a bit of a surprise that he accepted the San Francisco Giants’ qualifying offer last fall, avoiding what turned out to be a pretty turbulent free agent market.
Now Belt is back with the team and captain shtick continues. With Belt now replacing Buster Posey as the longest-serving Giants player (a fact he’s certainly towering above Brandon Crawford as we speak), he’s once again playing his self-proclaimed role in the clubhouse.
And while it’s been an incredibly fun part of the 2021 season that has continued this year, the hope is that the fun on the pitch will continue as well. Not just for the fans, but for Belt himself, who still hopes to strike a longer-term deal, preferably with the Giants, now that he’ll be entering free agency that won’t be hampered by a qualifying offer (or a lock).
He explained his decision to accept the qualifying offer of NBC Sports Bay Areafrom Alex Pavlovic:
“I wanted to stay with the Giants. That was a huge part of it. It’s the only organization I’ve been part of, obviously, and that organization means a lot to me. I wanted to stay here. I think there was a bit of uncertainty as to what was going to happen with the lockdown and that certainly played a part, but mostly it was just hard to turn down that offer to come back and play at home .
Belt also added that he believes he can maintain his level of production from the 2020 and 2021 seasons. If so, that would put him as a primary target next offseason, or prompt the Giants to offer an extension during the season, as they did with Brandon Crawford last year.
Something else came out yesterday. There is a public safety mandate in New York that requires athletes to be vaccinated against the Covid-19 coronavirus in order to play at city venues. If you follow basketball, you might already know this, as it has already affected Kyrie Irving from brooklyn nets (see also: man who thinks the earth is flat, but I digress).
Anyway, I won’t go into details about it, but you can read more about it in this post of the New York Daily News, which also deals with the situation that the New York Yankees and New York food are faced with because of this.
I bring it up here because it could also be a problem for the Giants, as their first road trip of the season includes a four-game series against the Mets in New York. Currently, all unvaccinated players would not be allowed to play, due to the public safety mandate.
That situation could change before the start of the season if wealthy, politically connected team owners are successful in pressuring city officials to make exceptions or revoke the mandate altogether.
Which, as stated in the article I linked above, is not suitable for some people. The SEIU, a major service-industry union that supports the vaccination mandate, noted that every worker in venues where games are played must get vaccinated in order to keep their jobs, and questioned why the millionaires think they should be exempt from public safety warrants. .
Why, indeed. Either way, we’ll keep you posted as we get closer to this series.
How many days before opening day?
23, but only two until we have live baseball from spring training!
