Your 2012 Giants Are World Champions!!!

Epic!

Wow, what a game!  What a series!  What a season!

If ever there was a team effort for World Series MVP, this was it.  Sure, Pablo Sandoval gave the Tigers a gut punch in the first game with his homers and hit well all through the series, but what got lost among all that is that Barry Zito pitched a great game, to go with his other great game. Without Zito, the march to being the World Champions would have ended seven games ago.

And while Pablo won the game for us in game 1, it was Hunter Pence who scored the first run in the following three games, and without those runs, who knows if we would have scored the runs to win those games, and he drove in the second run in game 2, and the Tigers would have won in regulation in game 4.  And Buster Posey, delivering a key homer once again, that kept the game alive into extra innings.  Of course, Marco Scutaro again was in the middle of the action, driving in the winning run, and I thought it was apropos that he drove in Ryan Theriot, the guy he replaced at 2B, the guy who hit well for us starting at 2B after he healed up on the DL, and helped us bridge from Freddy Sanchez to Scutaro.  And back to the start again, Sandoval stout hitting in the series helped make that happen, as the Tigers had to pitch to Scutaro or face Sandoval with two runners on base.

And what about the defense?  Even though they did not hit particularly well in the World Series, both Angel Pagan and Gregor Blanco were making big plays in the outfield over and over again.  Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt as well in the infield, as well as Scoots.  And, in any case, when they did get hits, they got them in key situations, and really, when you are winning games by 1-2 runs, every run is critical and key.

What about the bullpen?  Tim Lincecum was so dominant in middle relief, probably the best middle reliever ever. Jeremy Affeldt and Santiago Casilla were great in setup.  Sergio Romo was great in closing out games, closing out the finale in exclamation with a called strike three on AL MVP Cabrera!  And that struck out the side.

And, despite little usage in the World Series, George Kontos and Javier Lopez, without their work in the NL series, we would not have been here, at the end, Champions once more.  For those who didn't see the importance of spending $10M on both Affeldt and Lopez should see what happened to the Tigers with their bullpen, to see why we spent that money on proven players who the team's management knew, and could trust and rely on proven performance.

Most of all, the starting pitching:  Barry Zito, Madison Bumgarner, Ryan Vogelsong, Matt Cain.  We got three DOM starts in the World Series, and as I noted in my research before, it is DOM starts by pitchers that helps their team win over 70% of the time.  They had 8 DOM starts between the NLCS and the World Series, helping the Giants win the World Championship.  Not that the Tigers fell down like the Cards did - only one DOM start in the seven games - as the Tigers also had DOM starts, in the last three games, but that is where the hitters come in as well as our pitchers, we scored just enough to win each game.  Hitting, pitching, fielding, everyone contributed their necessary contribution to enable the championship, nothing was too small to be of importance, each was necessary for that glorious second championship in three seasons.

San Francisco Giants:  Team of the 2010's Decade

I've been saying this since the late 2000's, that the Giants had the makings of the Team of the 2010 Decade.  Of course, there is the lovely and great starting pitching to start with, Lincecum, Cain, and, clearly, Bumgarner coming up.  Then Sabean has been great at putting together a great bullpen, as he has been able to for much of his time as GM, when the team is good, he is able to pull the trades to build up a great bullpen.  And they have been almost picture perfect for what Baseball Prospectus' study on success in the playoffs found:  high strikeout pitching staff (check!), great closer (check!), and great fielding defense also (check!).

But you still need some sort of offense.  Before this season, we had to accept imperfections because it took time to develop an offense after concentrating on the pitching for so long.  Talent does not come into any baseball system quick enough via the draft and international free agents to fuel a championship.  The Giants, to their credit, has supplemented well in finding gems among the minor free agents, with Andres Torres, Santiago Casilla, Ryan Vogelsong, Gregor Blanco, and Joaquin Arias coming in and contributing significantly from 2009 to 2012.  That is the to the credit of the Giants scouts.

Meanwhile, the Giants picked up offensive gems along the way, Sandoval, Posey, then Belt, Crawford, and Hector Sanchez.  These they grew along the way, while also picking up pieces like Theriot, Pagan, Blanco.  Then traded for the final pieces to this Epic Championship team, Scutaro and Pence, and they were what drove the offense to the championship, as they outscored the Cards and Tigers by a total of 36-7 in the last seven game, averaging 5.1 runs per game while holding the other team to 1.0 run per game in that stretch, keeping the opponents to 3 runs or under in each of the games in the stretch, reminiscent of their streak in late in the 2010 season.

The Giants, by winning their second World Series Championship in three seasons, has laid strong claim on this decade.  If ownership and management can keep this core going forward, this should not be the last of their championships, and hopefully just the beginning.  We should have the core players to at least mid-decade, and if the money can be ponied up, into the latter half of the decade as well.

Thank You Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy!

And we have Brian Sabean and Bruce Bochy to thank for this.  Of course, they could not do it without their top advisers like Dick Tidrow and John Barr, Dave Righetti and Mark Gardner, Tim Flannery and Ron Wotus.  Still, they are the ones who get the public scrutiny.

Sabean, what a masterful job he has done, putting together all the pieces, first with the great pitching staff, then now with the great lineup.  Bochy, what a masterful job he has done, balancing the present and the future while steering the team to another playoff berth, then switching to cut-throat managing, managing as if each game, each win, was necessary to prevent elimination.  And, of course, that paid off in both the Reds and Cards series, as they faced six games of elimination and swept them all.  Hopefully the Naysayers can now see that it is not luck that the Giants won, but through excellent decision making on the parts of Sabean and Bochy.

I am thankful that we have the two of them employed for the Giants and hope that the Giants first moves of the off-season be to sign the two of them to another joint extension.  They have earned it, in spades.

Then I hope the next moves after that, in no particular order, be to sign Posey (ok he should be first), Pence, Pagan to long term contracts.  Plus sign Scutaro, Sandoval, Lincecum, and Affeldt to two year extensions.  I would not mind a long term deal for Belt if possible, Crawford too.

And there is money coming in to fuel all these contracts.  Remember, the new ESPN deal doubles the revenues delivered to teams, adding over $11M to each team's coffers each year.  And revenues from MBLAM has been growing each year, it is one of the great Internet e-commerce success stories so far.   And season ticket holders should expect prices to go up again, as well.  Plus there is usually a windfall from being in the playoffs as well.  Lastly, I'm still hoping the A's will pay at least $100M for the South Bay rights, which will pay for a lot of long-term player contracts.

Congratulations again to the 2012 World Champs, Go Giants!

Your 2012 Giants: Game 4 of the World Series

Wow, again, the epicness continues.  Ryan Vogelsong with his shutout performance continued some epic threads which I'll include in the comments when I have more time.  Suffice to say that Vogelsong, Lincecum, Romo's shutout of the Tigers was another Epic occurrence in these playoffs, this season.  Tim Lincecum has been totally dominant as a reliever in these playoffs, shutting down the other team when they might rise up, bridging the starter and the closer, getting the Giants that much closer.

And that is what has been missing from the media:  pitching wins in the playoffs.  The talk was all about the Tiger's mighty hitters, but nothing about the Giants shutdown pitchers.  As my research has shown, when pitchers dominate, that team normally wins.  Ironically, Anibal had a 5 PQS DOM start and Vogelsong didn't, only a 2 PQS, would have been 3 if he pitched one more out, so the Tigers actually had a better pitched game, but sometimes pitchers can will themselves to a win.  Vogie certainly did in this game.

3-0.  No team has ever come back from that, most end in 4 games, a handful to 5 games, but pretty much done.  Psychologically, that makes sense, but then again the Giants beat that TWICE already in the playoffs, first against the Reds, then the Cards, so the question is:  Do the Tigers have a Hunter amongst them who can rise them up and do the improbable?  From the media, I don't see anyone talking brave like the Giants did in the face of the impossible.  So I would say no, but you never no.  But I don't have anybody else I would want starting this game but Cainer.

Your 2012 Giants: Game 3 of the World Series

Wow, what a great game pitched by Madison Bumgarner!  He did so many epic things in this start, starting with two straight shutout outings in the World Series, see the comments for Game 2 for all the EPIC details.  He was able to figure out, for the most part, whatever it was that was causing him to not pitch well.

He had some bad pitches, leading to a lot of balls, but he was baffling them enough that they could not do anything with his pitches.  And it probably helped that their one big rally ended with Fielder out at the plate, don't know what the coach was thinking there, but that was huge, it probably knocked the Tigers back on their heels, took a little air out of them with that gut punch.  Still, that was the only major threat where they came close to scoring.

So he had a 5 PQS start, a DOM start, and Fister did well do, a 4 PQS, also a DOM start.  That is five straight DOM starts for Giants pitchers, and 7 of 8.  And fifth straight games that the Giants pitcher out-pitched the other team.
Gotta give props to Hunter Pence too.  He was involved in both runs scoring in the game, first as the runner scoring, then as the RBI guy with yet another sacrifice fly by the Giants (they were the leaders by a margin in this particular category).  Some fans seem tired of him and what not, but he's been a really good hitter throughout his career, and I think he'll bust out for us at some point, but for not, I'll take this, because without both runs, Madison's great outing would have been wasted and who knows then what would have happened.  Instead, Giants victory, now up 2-0 in the series, needing only two more.

But, like many of the players have cautioned, you need four to win, and look at what the Giants did in the playoffs, the Tigers could do the same.