The Giants are going to have some problems in 2011

There will be a metric butt-ton of “10 reasons the Giants won’t repeat” or “10 reasons the Giants will repeat” articles written in the coming weeks. Hint: avoid the ones with slide shows. They’re awful.

Actually, you can probably avoid all of them except (a) the one I inevitably do when I’m hurting for content in a week or two; and (b) the one that Dan Szymborski did over at ESPN today. Bonus: it’s only four reasons long. And apologies, but it’s Insider-only content. I’ll give you the executive summary, though: the rotation was unusually healthy last year, Posey, Huff, Burrell and Torres are likely to regress, and there isn’t a lot of room on the roster to work in the couple of young guys on the horizon like Brandon Belt. I think the first reason Dan cites is the best, however:

While the team didn’t win the World Series, the 1993 Phillies shared a lot of similarities with last year’s Giants; both teams played on the perception that they were made up of a bunch of unkempt castoffs. The Phillies kept the roster intact and fell apart the next season, the premature end of the season due to the strike almost a mercy to the 54-61, fourth-place team.

The Giants have basically stood pat. Their most notable move that didn’t involve simply retaining a player was letting Juan Uribe go and signing Miguel Tejada instead. I think that’s a step down.
Everything broke right for San Francisco last year and they are either intentionally or effectively banking on it happening again. That tends not to work out very well very often, and I don’t think it will work out well for the Giants in 2011.