UPDATE, 6:10 p.m.: Larry Baer plans to speak after the season with Barry Bonds about a possible roles on and off the field in 2015 for the all-time home-run leader, but there have been no talks about Bonds reprising his spring-training instructor role during what is left of 2014.

Bonds visisted AT&T Park on Friday, as he has several times this season, but only for what he called a “meet and greet with a little kid,” as part of a fundraising auction conducted by the Giants Community Fund.

Bonds, asked about donning a uniform again and working with Giants hitters, said he and Baer had a brief conversation about 2015 recently in which Baer pledged to continue the discussion. Bonds is awaiting Baer’s call and said he was willing to hear what the team has in mind.

Baer said Friday that likely will occur after the season and that the team had not expected Bonds to be on the field in 2014 beyond his spring-training stint. Both sides saw Bonds’ week in Arizona as a feeling-out process to see how he would like coaching. When Bonds’ week in Arizona ended, he said he was not sure if he was ready to commit to more coaching.

“I haven’t gotten that far,” he said. “One week is fine for me right now.”

Meanwhile, Brandon Belt is not going to be on the field anytime soon. Manager Bruce Bochy said when the team goes to Chicago next week the first baseman will fly to Pittsburgh to visit Dr. Mickey Collins, the nation’s pre-eminant sports concussion physician.

Belt had an MRI on Wednesday. He is on the disabled list for the second time with concussion symptoms resulting from a thrown baseball accidentally hitting him in the face in Miami on July 19.

“He’s about the same,” Bochy said. “We think it’s impportant to get another look at him, another opinion, to see where he’s at.”

ORIGINAL POST: For a team to own a 21-36 stretch and believe it can make the playoffs, it needs to take a stand. More specifically, each underperforming player must take a stand and endeavor to be better.

Would that it were that easy. They try, sometimes too hard.

One player in particularly really needs to take a stand, even though he’s a 13-game winner with a healthy 3.22 ERA.

Madison Bumgarner needs to pitch a good game at AT&T Park, where he has been terrible this year. His home-road splits are remarkable, actually: 4-6, 5.60 here, 9-3, 1.72 everywhere else. Opponents are hitting Bumgarner more than 100 points here at AT&T (.309) than away (.206).

Why?

Nobody knows, but you have to thank after a while it becomes a mental issue as well as mechanical, and I say that with some trepidation knowing how strong a mind Bumgarner has.

It’s especially important that Bumgarner take a stand tonight because he is facing Cole Hamels, who remains one of the majors’ best pitchers. He has a 2.37 ERA, strikes out a batter an inning and over his past five starts has not allowed more than one run. That includes a July 24 game against the Giants that he won 2-1, beating Tim Hudson.

The Giants open play today 5 1/2 games out of first place in the National League West. Before Wednesday’s 7-1 win against the White Sox, manager Bruce Bochy convened a team meeting and told his players not to focus on numbers like that and just work had to get into the playoffs one way or the other, because once in, anything can happen.

By the way, the Giants’ deficit against the Dodgers in the loss column is four games, which is not as daunting as 5 1/2. That’s important to note because it means the Giants have played three fewer games. That in turn means the Giants have more control over the outcome of the division race than do the Dodgers.

Which becomes meaningless if the Giants remain the .368 team they have been since June 8, and do not take a stand.

The lineup: