Brandon’s minor league belting

Brandon Belt won the San Francisco Giants’ starting first base job in spring training, but struggled at the plate in the first couple of weeks of the regular season, and was sent back to triple-A to get his stroke going.

That seems to be working out pretty well. In 10 Pacific Coast League games, all Belt has done is put up a line of .500/.610/.843.

As of yesterday, the just-turned-23-year-old Belt has now accumulated 636 minor league plate appearances, or pretty close to a full season’s worth. In 77 games at high-A, 46 at double-A, and now 23 at triple-A, his cumulative minor league batting average is .360. In 522 at-bats, he has 47 doubles, 10 triples, and 25 home runs, along with 103 walks. He’s scored 108 runs and driven in 123. And, just for the heck of it, he’s stolen 25 bases in 33 attempts.

One can scour the history of minor league statistics (and yours truly is just the sort of nerd who has) and discover very few minor league resumés as impressive as this one. Especially given that the Giants are mired in a team-wide hitting slump of epic proportion, it isn’t exactly going out on a limb to predict that young Mr. Belt will find himself back in San Francisco fairly soon.