Posted By Jeff Fletcher on February 24, 2011 2:06 pm

On my fourth day in Arizona, I have finally made it to the camp of the defending world champs. They don’t seem to have missed me.

The big news today is that Bruce Bochy announced the order of the rotation for the start of the regular season: Lincecum, Sanchez, Cain, Zito, Bumgarner. Bochy said he wanted to split up the righties. Personally, I’m not a big fan of that. I don’t really think that Lincecum and Cain are that similar, nor are Sanchez, Bumgarner and Zito, so I wouldn’t think that it would matter.

Bochy actually pooh-poohed a suggestion that colleague Henry Schulman made. Henry asked if one of the reasons was to split up the most durable pitchers so the bullpen wouldn’t get taxed as it might if Sanchez, Zito and Bumgarner pitched on consecutive days. That I believe, but Bochy wasn’t buying.

Lincecum will start the big Cactus League opener against Arizona on Friday, and Bumgarner will also pitch in that game.

The other event of the day on Thursday was an intrasquad game that included just about every prospect worth seeing in the Giants organization (except Zach Wheeler, who isn’t in big league camp). I can’t say anybody made too much of an impression in the small sample of a couple innings, but the game was a little sloppy. Grant Green didn’t look good on a fly ball. Brandon Crawford booted a ground ball and made a bad throw.

Brandon Belt batted twice, and he struck out and singled. Bochy said that Belt is going to get a lot of playing time this spring. I talked to Felipe Alou this morning about a variety of topics, and one of them was Belt. He said Belt looks like he could turn into a Keith Hernandez type. I had figured Belt had a little more power than that (Hernandez was a 10- to 15-homer guy), but he still had a very good career, so the Giants would take that.

Finally, I had a good chat with my old pal Jeff Suppan. I go way back with Suppan, because I covered him when he played high school baseball in LA back in 1993. I covered him and Randy Wolf, and last year they were teammates on the Brewers.

That’s all for today. I am working on a Madison Bumgarner story for FanHouse, but it won’t run until Friday around mid-day, so be sure to check that out. Time is running out to read my stuff on FanHouse.

Oh, and be sure to check me out on Chronicle Live tonight at 5 pm.