Poor season is wearing on Aubrey Huff

Aubrey Huff was in the middle of an interview, talking about his disappointing, exasperating 2011 season, when a small gift bag arrived from a fan.

"Ohhh no," said Huff, rummaging through the tissue paper. "Pretty sure I know what this is."

He pulled out the lime-green thong underwear and flipped it into an empty, adjacent locker.

"Oh jeez," he said. "Another one."

It's been tough enough for Huff to deal with a summer-long litany of lunging strikeouts and weak pop-ups with runners on base. The dozens of skimpy gifts from well-intentioned fans only serve as another reminder:

This is not last year. He is not the same hitter. And it's not as simple as snapping on a new incarnation of the Rally Thong, which worked so magically last September and throughout the playoffs.

"It's tough, man," said Huff, whose .673 OPS ranks dead last among all 20 major league first basemen with at least 450 plate appearances. "I was counting on coming in and having a good year like last year. They were counting on me. And it just ... hasn't happened."

Huff hit 26 home runs last year, drew almost as many walks (83) as strikeouts (91) and finished seventh in the N.L. MVP balloting, all of which earned him a two-year, $22 million contract.

But after a monster spring, he has 12 home runs this season -- a quarter of which he hit in one muggy evening in St. Louis. His on-base percentage has plummeted from .385 to .301. And with rookie hopefuls Brandon Belt and Brett Pill on the roster, the fans who once cheered Huff like a rock star, the thong clenched between his teeth at the victory parade, now are voting him to the bench with their boos.

Huff, 34, does not make excuses, nor does he skirt blame for contributing to the worst offense in the major leagues, which is likely to doom the Giants' brilliant pitchers from defending their World Series title.

"If I have anything close to the season I had last year, we probably wouldn't be sitting in this spot," said Huff, before the Giants fell seven games behind first-place Arizona with a loss Wednesday in San Diego. "So I take a lot of blame for that. But at the same time, it's baseball, man. Guys have bad years. We've had injuries and bad breaks. Certainly I could've played better. I just didn't."

Failure and acceptance. They can come dangerously easy when you've played a decade for second-division teams, as Huff did before joining the Giants last year. He also has an acknowledged history of following a Silver Slugger season with a stinker.

The difference this time: He isn't stinking it up for a team that expected to lose 90 games.

"We've talked about it," said Giants outfielder Pat Burrell, Huff's close friend going back to college. "We talk about it all the time. Let's be honest. I'm not trying to say anything bad about those other teams, but it's different here. There's a lot more expected, and with that comes pressure. That's difficult to deal with where he's slumping."

Last season, Burrell and Huff would sock each other in the chest to celebrate late-inning heroics. This year, Burrell is pulling no punches while trying to motivate Huff.

"The truth is, we didn't sign back with the Giants because we're friends," said Burrell, who is likely at the end of his career because of a chronic foot injury. "We signed up to win. Just because we're friends doesn't mean I won't give him my opinion. That's not easy, but you know, neither is this game.

"I've told him, 'You can't change yesterday. What you can do is take a different attitude the rest of the way.' "

That's what Giants manager Bruce Bochy hopes to see. Although Huff is signed for next season, the Giants will be desperate to acquire a big bat -- and the two biggest free agents (Prince Fielder and Albert Pujols) play first base.

Even if the Giants don't add another first baseman, they might have a logjam at the position. For all Buster Posey's insistence that he will be the starting catcher on opening day, there is a strong undercurrent in the front office for moving him to first base -- or maybe even third base, with Pablo Sandoval grabbing a first baseman's mitt.

So N.L. West standings aside, these final three weeks loom large for Huff.

"Nobody's owed a job no matter how much money they make," Huff said. "I'll have to come to spring training to prove something, sure."

Said Bochy: "If anything, it'll be a strong message he could send by finishing up strong."

Huff pledged to do his best down the stretch, but he's in too deep to expect a turnaround at this late hour. He isn't wearing the Rally Thong this year. But he's never felt so bare.

"I'm so bad I've just gotta go into the offseason and try and figure something out mechanically," he said. "There's got to be something mechanically, I just can't figure it out.

"You get so down and out it just feels like you're fighting yourself, tweaking things. Hitting is a feel and a comfort thing, and it's just never been there."

(mercurynews.com)