After second baseman Joe Panik got called up in 2014, there was so much stability in the middle of the infield for the Giants that the organization started regularly using a nickname -- Crawnik -- as a marketing gimmick.
But Panik is gone, first to New York and now to Toronto. And the Giants' shortstop position, which was as set-it-and-forget-it as any in the National League, all of a sudden carries some intrigue.
There's no doubt that Brandon Crawford is the starter, but Giants officials have talked often in the last six months of the need to get more production out of the middle infield, and it's not hard to read through the "we'd like to keep guys fresh" lines that get thrown out every once in a while when core players are asked about.