It’s still a bit early and the official official news on Buster Posey is not completely out yet. But the bottom line is that he was severely hurt and the Giants must go on, probably for a long time, without him.

Here’s what has happened:

• Giants call up Brandon Belt. This is actually something they should have done a few weeks ago when they decided that Pat Burrell would be more of a role player. At that point the choice is really between Belt and Nate, not Belt and Pat. I would much rather have Brandon Belt playing 4-5 times a week and using Nate as a super-sub/4th OF for the sake of our anemic offense. This is a no brainer.
• Giants call up Chris Stewart. Also a no brainer. Stewart is basically Eli Whiteside 2.0 so we now have two guys who should only be in the major leagues to play once a week to do all of our catching. Awesome. Not a lot of catching available elsewhere and it is probably too early to start speculating on trades, but let’s make one thing clear: No Benjie Molina please! Molina will be a huge temptation because not only does he know the pitching staff, once upon a time he was also a CLEAN UP hitter for a major league team. And the big problem with losing Posey (among a host of other problems) is losing his bat.
• Which leads to the third thing that happened today: the Giants call up Brandon Crawford. I have a soft spot in my heart for Brandon Crawford (despite his college choices). In today’s new baseball world, there is once again a spot for great defense/bad offense middle infielders. There is some hope that Crawford can develop into an average, if never great, offensive player but he hasn’t shown it (outside of the small tear he was on at San Jose…which, btw, is Single-A ball). I was kind of hoping he’d get the call in September and be given a legit shot at being the starter in 2012, but now it looks like he’ll get at least two weeks to show what he can do in the big leagues. However, the Giants have two huge holes in their lineup.