Thread: How do the Giants do it?

Two World Series appearance in three years. When I look at their roster, it does not look that impressive. They seem to be the ultimate clutch hitting, solid defense, and good pitching team. Their outfield plays really good defense, but does not bring power to the plate. I think it's a pretty great story.

looking at the giants , the As and baltimore and you ask yourself , why not the twins?
the reason why not the twins,no pitching and no defense....these are all direct results of the 3 stooges...
other then pitching and defense the biggest disapointment last year was getting a runner on 2nd or 3rd with no outs and failing to score 1 run
the notorius small ball is lacking , what was once the pride of minnesota is now there demise...under tom kelly(who i didnt like) the twins way was solid d , and well rounded players not 1 dimentional players,now under gardy the twins way is to lose 95+ games a year...sad but true

Playoff Baseball = Crap Shoot...

Originally Posted by Seth Stohs

Playoff Baseball = Crap Shoot...

Imo, it's not a crap shoot at all. The teams that win nearly always have the best pitching. Pitching for the most part doesn't slump. Like we saw with the Yankees even very good hitting teams can slump in a short series. Unless you have very good pitching getting to the world series takes a lot of luck. With 3 series instead of two now I think luck will have a much harder time holding up.

In 87 the Twins were lucky. They got the Tigers after they had a draining season ending run to make it. Then they got the Cards with several injuries to key guys. 91 they were a very good team and had very good starting pitching in Morris, Erickson and Tapani.

Originally Posted by Winston Smith

Originally Posted by Seth Stohs

Playoff Baseball = Crap Shoot...

Imo, it's not a crap shoot at all. The teams that win nearly always have the best pitching. Pitching for the most part doesn't slump. Like we saw with the Yankees even very good hitting teams can slump in a short series. Unless you have very good pitching getting to the world series takes a lot of luck. With 3 series instead of two now I think luck will have a much harder time holding up.

In 87 the Twins were lucky. They got the Tigers after they had a draining season ending run to make it. Then they got the Cards with several injuries to key guys. 91 they were a very good team and had very good starting pitching in Morris, Erickson and Tapani.

If pitching were your answer, the Braves would have a half dozen World Championships or more with Smoltz, Glavine, Maddux, Avery/Neagle/Ashby/Millwood. In the wild card system, it truly is a crap shoot. A team can get hot for a short period of time. A bullpen can dominate a series (and the Giants have one of the best in the game right now). One hitter can swing a whole series. In general, it's rare to see 8 runs in a postseason game even in the height of offensive era in the early 2000s because teams with great pitching were the ones that could endure the regular season, but pitching streaks just like hitting. If you were going on pure talent in the rotation and bullpen, the Braves should have gone farther this year and the Nationals would be in the World Series. A one-game play in game and a five-game series make anything possible with one or two poor starts in a rotation turn.

San Francisco pitchers struck out 1,237 batters this year. The Minnesota pitchers struck out 943. The next lowest total was Cleveland who still had 143 more K's than the Twins. So even when the Twins record an out, the other team's are much more likely to score on sacrifice hits and move runners over and that's beside the fact that even poorly hit balls in play can find a hole, or give the fielders a chance to make an error. With about 300 fewer batters putting the ball in play against the Giants, they are allowing a lot fewer baserunners.

The Twins team 5.9 K/9 rate is embarassing, and the front office better recognize this. Any thought of signing a Joe Saunders or Brandon McCarthy for the front of the rotation better be squashed ASAP.

we must be horrible at crap shoots, cause we haven't won a playoff game in our last 12 playoff games. 0-12 crap shoot? Who is The Cooler?

Was thinking the same thing about that Giants roster. It's not like they just got hot in the playoffs, they won all year long with a roster full of mediocre hitters. They hit less than 30 HR at home this season. Is Buster Posey that good?

They have a great pitching squad. That's what does it in the playoffs. Cain, Vogelsong, and Bumgartner are all elite pitchers.

Pitching "slumps" far, far less than hitting. Good pitching never goes out of style. Play-in games aside, the playoffs are far from a crap shoot.

It is a crap shoot. If you really believe the best team is the one that wins the World Series, you're simply missing baseball. For that to be true, the Angels would be in the playoffs this year while the Tigers were watching. Instead, the Tigers are in the World Series while the Angels weren't even in the playoffs. The correlation prior to divisional play to the best record in the league to the World Series winner was high, and now it's virtually nil. The best team by record virtually never wins the World Series anymore. Now you can say that unbalanced schedule influences record or other such things, but we've seen more wild card teams win the World Series since 1995 than teams with the MLB's best record. If that isn't a crap shoot, I'm not sure what you consider a crap shoot to be.

If the theoretical "Best Team" won the Big Kahuna every year - I think most would lose interest and tune out by June 1st (even the "Best Team's" fans). I like the fact that a powerhouse team can smash through the summer months, play okay in September, and get beat by a lesser talented team that has found their mojo in the dusk of the baseball season. This is what baseball has always been for the most part.

San Fran has a very, very good team, and if you told me 2 months ago they would be in the WS, I would not have been surprised. Where they lack in hitting, they make up in the pitching department and it's not as if they don't have any impact offensive players. I just hope they beat the living excrement out of the Tigers!

Viva San Francisco!!!!

Yeah, it's a crapshoot. Last I checked the Nats and the Reds were the best teams this season in team ERA. The Braves were ahead of the Giants too. So where does all this crap about best pitching staff come from?

The truth is, all it takes is a fluke or two to dramatically shift a series and a playoff structure. As Twins fans, we should all be very familiar with that. In the regular season those flukes balance out, in a 10 days worth of games they make the results much more of a coin flip.

I don't want to classify it quite as a crapshoot. The pressure increases in the playoffs, each play becomes more important - the game does change in the playoffs versus what we see in the regular season. For example going from 5-man starting rotations to 4-man or 3-man, quicker hooks for pitchers, different roles for some players, more pinch-hitting, players trying to be heroes and swinging for the fences, etc..Some teams/managers handle that better than others. The Twins of the past decade have not handled it well.

The playoffs are, but getting to them is not. They got to the playoffs 2 of the last three years due to pitching.

Pitching may not slump, but it does have bad games (see Verlander, Jason; Sabathia, CC; Carpenter, Chris X2; Zimmerman, Jordan).

Originally Posted by Bark's Lounge

If the theoretical "Best Team" won the Big Kahuna every year - I think most would lose interest and tune out by June 1st (even the "Best Team's" fans). I like the fact that a powerhouse team can smash through the summer months, play okay in September, and get beat by a lesser talented team that has found their mojo in the dusk of the baseball season. This is what baseball has always been for the most part.

San Fran has a very, very good team, and if you told me 2 months ago they would be in the WS, I would not have been surprised. Where they lack in hitting, they make up in the pitching department and it's not as if they don't have any impact offensive players. I just hope they beat the living excrement out of the Tigers!

Viva San Francisco!!!!

Yes and no. Do I think the best team every year should win the series? No. I do think that calling it "the best team in baseball" is a misnomer in today's playoff set up because of the lack of correlation between regular season record and World Series appearances, let alone wins. I do think San Fran is a very solid team, and their regular season record shows that as well. They arguably had the best trade deadline of any team, in spite of Pence's performance. Their defense is top notch as well.

San Fran has a great manager/pitching coach for one . San Fran starting 5 had 161starts in regular season & they get treated like glass & are allowed to pitch deep into games.....thereby not blowing out their bullpen.
Management has sculpted the team according to the park....no power hitters but solid situational hitters.
Their star player also actually plays the position he's supposed to.

Originally Posted by TheLeviathan

Yeah, it's a crapshoot. Last I checked the Nats and the Reds were the best teams this season in team ERA. The Braves were ahead of the Giants too. So where does all this crap about best pitching staff come from?

The truth is, all it takes is a fluke or two to dramatically shift a series and a playoff structure. As Twins fans, we should all be very familiar with that. In the regular season those flukes balance out, in a 10 days worth of games they make the results much more of a coin flip.

The statistics of your fifth starter, long reliever, and last two guys in the bullpen should be meaningless for the playoffs. Team stats are meaningless. The utility guy's stats should be meaningless. You probably did not get there with a third sting catcher.

Originally Posted by old nurse

The statistics of your fifth starter, long reliever, and last two guys in the bullpen should be meaningless for the playoffs. Team stats are meaningless. The utility guy's stats should be meaningless. You probably did not get there with a third sting catcher.

Did you even look at anything before you posted this? Talk about meaningless:

Cueto has a chance to be the NL Cy Young. (Which he did, BTW, in a much worse home park for pitching than anyone on SF) Latos and Bailey were pretty comparable with Vogelsong and Bumgartner too.

Zimmerman and Gio are both outstanding pitchers.

The Cincy bullpen was ridiculous in the regular season.

All that and the fact that SF's fifth starter most of the season (Barry Zito) has pitched well in two key games. I could keep going with this post but I've put more time, effort, and thought into than you earned with that retort. Yeesh.