Belt: ‘I Have Not Lost My Confidence'

On Tuesday night, Pablo Sandoval suffered a hamstring injury that could keep him sidelined for, well, no one knows how long. It could be a day. It could be a week. It could be longer. We'll see. But it seems likely that Brandon Belt's going to have to step up and play in his absence.

Which makes Belt's blog on Tuesday morning quite fortuitous -- Belt wrote at MLB.com's "Brandon and Brandon" that he has "not lost [his] confidence" and that he isn't upset about being benched. (And he actually sounded pretty angry!)

"I’m going to get right to the point," Belt wrote. "One, I have not lost my confidence. Two, I have no trouble with Bruce Bochy sitting me while I’m struggling."

This Brandon Blog, by the by, was responsible for the walkoff win last night and helping to spin the rare 8-6-3 double play that preserved a shot at victory.

Anyway, Belt kind of took it personally that Carl Steward, filling in for Alex Pavlovic, wrote some fairly rough things about his body language ("pitiful to the point of pathetic") and his lack of confidence ("appalling").

"Look at me when I’m going well. I look the same. It goes back to the whole awkward thing. I’m awkward. I slump my shoulders. I walk with my head down. That’s how I’ve always been. But now that I’m going bad, people are reading all kinds of things into it," Belt wrote. "Also, if my 'lack of confidence is appalling,' wouldn’t it be affecting my defense? Wouldn’t I be carrying my failures at the plate onto the field if they were so devastating to me? But my fielding percentage is .996 – the best among all first basemen in the National League."

Um, this Brandon Belt is awesome. He's smack-talking the media through our own medium! He's bragging, quite confidently, about his fielding percentage! And, quite frankly, he sounds pissed off.

That's a good thing for the Giants, a good thing for Belt and a good thing for Bruce Bochy. It didn't result in Belt smacking 10 home runs in a single at-bat, but he's not going to do that. He never will.

And, um, no one will. Belt's the only one with those expectations though.

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