Wilson up; Sanchez down

Not a huge surprise for a number of reasons. One, Jonathan Sanchez has stunk for a while in relief. Two, Brian Wilson has been great in relief in AAA, particularly lately. Three, the Giants have a large number of games to play, on consecutive days, and will require a lot of pitchers, hence the merry-go-round we have been having lately with pitchers going up and down.

Four, the bullpen has been particularly putrid for a while now, all the relievers have been severely ineffective for most part for a while now. Five, we all know Hennessey is not the long-term solution at closer and our season has been pretty much done for a long while now, so we may as well bring up our putative closer of the future and install him in that position sooner than later; it sounds like he will get to pitch in a set-up role initially, plus occassionally get the 9th depending on the situation (Hennessey pitching too much or too ineffectively, more the latter lately since the Giants haven't been holding many leads).

Lastly, the Chronicle's version of the decision noted that Sanchez might start at some point, but the sfgiants.com version noted specifically that Sanchez is going down to get more work pitching as a reliever and work on relaxing when he is on the mound, they feel that this is leading him to be inconsistent in his performances. Sounds like they will work him more innings and more often to get him to work on getting more consistent and becoming more relaxed out on the mound. Pitching more will hopefully give him that comfort level to relax and be comfortable with the situation.