I’ve never rooted for a team that won. Ever. I was too young to experience the 49ers in 1994, and that’s the only Bay Area team that has won a championship in my lifetime. Or, excuse me. Had.
Even the Sacramento Kings came thisclose to winning a championship before it was stolen from them. I mean, before they blew it. Heck, no team I’ve ever even played on has won a championship.* So I think I can be forgiven for not ever letting my guard down as the World Series commenced. Once upon a time, the Giants were 97% favorites to win the Series.** Forgive me for not trusting a 3-1 lead in the hands of Brian Wilson.
*And don’t even get me started on the IM Ultimate team my freshman year. Ohhhhhh man.
**So all the way through the Series there have been, naturally, a lot of comments made about the debacle in 2002 and leaving Russ Ortiz in and the Spiezio home run, but here’s what I had forgotten. The strange tricks of memory had me convinced that the Spiezio home run put the Angels in the lead, but that, of course, isn’t true. The Spiezio home run made the score 5-3, taking the Angels from a 7% chance of winning to a 19% chance. That is, even after the Spiezio home run, the Giants still had an 81% chance of closing the game out. It seems to me that Giants fans have been unduly harsh on Felix Rodriguez, and instead should be mad at Tim Worrell, who started the 8th inning with a home run by Darin Erstad, then gave up back-to-back singles to Tim Salmon and Garret Anderson. Anderson advanced on a Bonds error and Worrell was taken out. Troy Glaus then hit a 2-run double off of Robb Nen, and the rest, as they say, is history.
But after all that, they did it. They actually did it. The Rally Thong has replaced the Rally Monkey. The ghosts of 2002, 1989, and 1962 are gone. The Giants are World Champions, for the first time ever in San Francisco.
Man. Let that sink in a little bit.
They did it with pitching. You know what’s funny, for three seasons now, the experts have been saying, “This Giants team would be very dangerous if they could only get to October.” Well, they made it to October, and what happened? They were underdogs against the Braves. They were underdogs (big ones) against the Phillies. And they were underdogs against the Rangers. Haters gotta hate, I guess.
The pitching and defense were spectacular all season. The Giants allowed 583 runs this year, which is the lowest in a 162 game season since the true Year of the Pitcher in 1968. In that year, the league OPS was .641. This year, it was .723. These Giants were also the first in the league in Defensive Runs Saved Above Average, thanks in large part to Andres Torres (no surprise) and Aubrey Huff (big surprise). Even more surprising is Pat Burrell, who actually saved 6 runs in just over 600 innings, a fantastic rate. In all, Torres, Buster Posey, and Freddy Sanchez finished tenth in their respective positions in the Fielding Bible Awards, and Huff Daddy and Burrell both received votes.*
*Interestingly, Torres, Posey, and Sanchez all received a significant boost from one voter in the awards, the Tom Tango Fan Poll. The Fan Poll had Torres as the second best CF in the game, Posey the fourth best catcher, and Sanchez the fourth best second baseman. Giants’ fans are nothing if not loyal.
And the truth of the matter is, the offense was really not as punch-less as advertised. They hit 162 home runs, 12 above the major league average, in a park in which it’s very hard to hit homers, especially for lefties. Their team OPS was seven points higher than the NL average. Sure, they have their faults. They ground into way too many double plays (158, the most in the NL), and it really wouldn’t kill them to take a walk every now and then. But this wasn’t the Punch-and-Judy lineup of, say, 2007.
The 2010 Giants surprised some people. Hell, they surprised me. I mean, if it was my team I would have fired Bochy last winter and Sabean sometime around the middle of May. But that’s baseball, ain’t it? The Giants are World Series champions.
“The right-hander for the Giants throws, and SWING AND A MISS! AND THAT’S IT!! The Giants…are World Champions!”
Enjoy it. I know I will.
No comments:
Post a Comment