Rich Aurilia received five standing ovations Thursday, one for every two years in service to the king. A fair return, all in all, and besides, gratitude is free.

But with the customers in a magnanimous mood during the Giants' 7-3 win over Arizona to end their home season, Bengie Molina must have slipped their minds. I mean, we know Aurilia isn't coming back so the gratitude was well-earned. But Molina might come back; more importantly, the Giants don't have a way to replace his 20 homers and 80 RBIs, and their need for him is as a great as his need for them.

He offered one last reminder to the home folks Thursday with a fourth-inning double down the right field line that scored the second of San Francisco's seven runs. And while the audience was properly appreciative, a little extra oomph in the thank you wouldn't have hurt.

Molina has been branded as the good but oversensitive soldier in his time here, a high-maintenance producer who wants to be paid for his years of getting beaten up and overplayed in San Francisco. Even Bruce Bochy has admitted that he overused Molina because he had nobody else in the lineup save Pablo Sandoval to hit a home run or drive someone else in.

But nobody gets paid for doing the job unless there is an expectation that he or she can keep doing it, and while the Giants 2010 catching situation has always been painted as an either-or with Molina and Buster Posey, the greater truth is that it doesn't have to be that way at all. In fact, it can't be.

Molina has played 411 games and caught 388 of them in the last three years at ages 32, 33 and 34, an average of 137/129 per year. He gets hurt, and he gets tired. This is a load that he can no longer carry productively.

Conversely, Posey is not a 125-games-a-year catcher either; at least he hasn't shown that his game is broad enough to manage it. A number of scouts from several teams like Posey, but not yet. Boiled down to its essentials, Molina and Posey can co-exist, and in fact probably should.

The question, of course, is whether Molina wants to stay for what the Giants would want to be perilously close to a hometown discount - a hometown discount being business-ese for "way less than you deserve." His current contract ($6 million) expires this winter, and the other A-level free-agent catcher, Victor Martinez, has a club option with the Red Sox for 2010, making him essentially unavailable. None of the others save Kansas City's Miguel Olivo have any real power, and he has a mutual option with the Royals for 2010 at the tidy cost of $3.3 million. So no, he won't be available, either.

That leaves luminaries like Rod Barajas, Ramon Hernandez, Jason Kendall, Ramon Castro, Josh Bard, Jason LaRue, old favorite Yorvit Torrealba and Jason Varitek. In short, Molina is hoping the sparse catchers' market will work in his favor, and the Giants are hoping nobody will want to meet his desired numbers for cash or length.

And they won't. The Mets have been listed as the biggest spender with the most dire need, but their cash crunch in the post-Madoff-swindle era is profound, and a 35-year-old catcher isn't going to get three years at $8 million per, even from them.

"I want to come back," Molina said in a very truncated chat Thursday. "They know that." Has he decided on a contract length that would comfort him? "Not yet." The perfect answer from a coy chanteuse.

The Molina conundrum is by far the most difficult decision the Giants have to make this winter, especially since the Bochy-Brian Sabean issue is essentially settled in the affirmative.

But this much must be said before we get too much further: The Giants do not have the piece that replaces him yet, and risk depleting their already wonky offense by letting him pass unloved. He may prove to be too expensive, but the Giants have not outgrown his contributions. A year with him and the much beloved Posey is the best the Giants can hope for in 2010.

And since they exceeded the best they could hope for in 2009, they'll need all the help they can get for the new year. So if you feel the need, send Bengie Molina a card. He'll appreciate the thought.