SF Giants’ Posey discusses Eldridge’s promotion, offense’s struggles

SAN FRANCISCO In the midst of a frigid offensive stretch the Giants promoted top prospect Bryce Eldridge and reliever Trent Harris from Double-A Richmond to Triple-A Sacramento The next step naturally is the majors a step Eldridge could conceivably take this year I think all of these decisions and conversations are fluid stated president of baseball operations Buster Posey Things can change I still think that for Bryce it s best to get reps But again things change so we will continue to have conversations and watch his progress During his conversation with beat reporters on Tuesday Posey appeared more open to the idea of Eldridge making his major-league debut compared to last December At MLB s Winter Meetings Posey tempered expectations regarding Eldridge playing with the Giants in citing how the -year-old would only be a sophomore had he attended college With Eldridge excelling and San Francisco struggling a debut sometime this season may not be out of the cards We re monitoring his progress and majority of definitely want to put him in a position to succeed Posey commented but yeah ultimately the goal is to win games at the big-league level Eldridge has shown he has the prospective to aid San Francisco s offense down the line The six-foot-seven first baseman owns a career OPS in the minors and this season Eldridge had a slash line with seven home runs and RBIs Eldridge s defense at first base a position he picked up last year remains a work in progress But if Eldridge continues to produce at Sacramento it wouldn t be surprising for the Giants to use him at designated hitter as he continues to work on his defense What s the most of promising aspect of not only seeing it with your eyes that he s getting better is his willingness to work and his willingness to take direction from the staff Posey disclosed Take direction from Joe Panik when he comes in or it s Will Clark He s eager to learn He s eager to get better He wants to be great at it He still has a lot of work to do and I think he knows that as well but it s nice that he s moving in the right direction Added manager Bob Melvin He s a hard worker There s a tremendous amount of skill offensively He works really hard on his defense and that s something that he continues to do but I think it was the work ethic that stood out and he was all for trying to get better Eldridge can help the Giants offense down the line but the club is still searching for solutions in the here and now Over their last games the Giants have only generated runs They haven t scored more than four runs in a single match since Wilmer Flores hit three homers against the Athletics going -for- with runners in scoring position during this stretch In May San Francisco finished with a losing record - despite its pitching staff posting a ERA and Robbie Ray winning National League Pitcher of the Month San Francisco received a much-needed reinforcement on Monday in Jerar Encarnacion who was activated off the -day injured list But Encarnacion alone will not cure the club s offensive ills From my vantage point now it s looking at are there different options out there What are the different options internally We re at a strange point in the season as far as other teams willingness to make trades at this point with us being still a couple of months away from the transaction deadline Posey explained From our perspective as a front office we re not satisfied with the production So we re trying to exhaust all options The majority of San Francisco s lineup is at this moment in a funk but LaMonte Wade Jr in particular hasn t ascertained his footing the entire season his OPS being the eighth-lowest mark in all of baseball min plate appearances Wade is now day-to-day after being hit in the right hand with a mph four-seam fastball by the Padres Stephen Kolek We ve been as consistent with him as we have been because of the track record Posey announced There s nothing saying that he can t turn it around It goes without saying sometimes that there s an unlock there s a couple of bloop hits there s a couple of balls hit hard and people can get back on track I ve watched this guy play for quite a while now and I know that it s in there We just have to find a way to get more runs across the board as well as we ve pitched We need a little bit more Related Articles SF Giants to promote top prospect Eldridge to Triple-A source confirms SF Giants offensive woes continue in extra-inning loss to Padres SF Giants Encarnacion back from injured list Matos optioned to Sacramento Kurtenbach The SF Giants next two weeks will tell us where they stand in the NL SF Giants conclude three-city road trip with series win over Marlins Patrick Bailey too is searching for answers with the bat Bailey remains one of the greater part valuable defensive players in baseball but the catcher enters Tuesday with a OPS over games He d be the first to tell you that he wants more production than there has been to this point He is extremely valuable behind the plate He s done a nice job managing the staff I feel like that s been an improvement this year The framing is there the throwing is there the ability to keep the ball off the backstop But no question he s working hard I don t want to put words in his mouth but I assume he s not satisfied with where he is right now