A Giant week

The San Francisco Giants actually sealed the deal and won their first championship in SF after 52 years. It was great news for the Bay Area that has been in a sports funk the last few years. There are a lot of teams in the area, but most of them have been extremely mediocre lately since the great run by the niners in the nineties. The Giants have been pretty bad since Bonds left and this year was not supposed to be any different. They had built a good pitching staff the last couple of years, but their hitting has been downright garbage since Bonds retired. The most over-used phrase in baseball is probably "playoffs are all about pitching". While this is true, you will often see games in the playoffs that are 8-6 or 11-3. This is because the playoff teams often feature good hitting in addition to good pitching and on some nights, hitting trumps pitching and thats especially true in the American League. But this year, the playoffs were truly about pitching. Between the Giants and the Phillies, the NL pitching was out of the world and Cliff Lee basically carried the Rangers through the AL playoffs.

Not to take anything away from the Giants' timely hitting, but their pitching was awesome - both starters and their bullpen were phenomenal. They had 2 shutouts and a one run game in the 5 World Series game thanks to Lincecum, Cain and Bumgarner. Their entire starting rotation is comprised of talented, young and most importantly, home-grown pitchers. The aforementioned three studs were all first rounders and Jonathan Sanchez was a 27-Th round pick by the Giants. This is a rarity in this day and age. No wonder the Giants fan base feels this good about their team. While I am not a Giants fan, I have to admit that this team is the exact opposite of the mercenary Yankee model and I like that about this team. Their most expensive pitcher, Barry Zito didn't even make the playoff roster. Their biggest offensive weapon - Buster Posey, is also home-grown and young. He is clearly the MVP of this team. It's his call-up to the bigs and the subsequent promotion to every-day catcher status after the trade of Bengie Molina that was the turning point of this season. The team's hitting was so bad on paper, that a lot of the pieces were accumulated over the course of the season and they were not even part of the starting day roster. Posey was called up, Pat Burrell was signed late and the playoff hero Cody Ross was added in August. Thats the exact opposite of the 200 million dollar Yankees lineup for instance since it was assembled last December and January by spending millions and zillions of dollars.

Of course the youth and pitching on this roster has the fans dreaming about a dynasty and multiple championships. While the Giants are going to be good, nothing is guaranteed in life, especially with pitching. Doesn't it feel like just yesterday we were all gushing about Kerry Wood, Mark Prior and Carlos Zambrano? Forget a championship or the Cubs, these 3 dudes are barely even relevant as individual pitchers anymore. Thats how fickle pitchers and their arms can be. But even assuming the Giants studs stay strong and Posey improves, championships are not easy and thats what makes them special. Dynasties have become a thing of the past in both football and baseball and it happens only in basketball these days. Baseball at least has some notion of dynasties because of the high-spending teams like the Yankees and Redsox that are at least expected to have a winning season and a possible playoff berth most years. Otherwise, for the most part, teams that make it to the Super Bowl or the World Series don't even get back to the playoffs next year. The Phillies made it to 2 straight World Series and the NLCS this year and thats as impressive a 3 year stretch as you will see these days with teams not named the New York Yankees. It's doable, but the Giants fans can't assume it's a given. Not to rehash a old theory, but the Giants still need some hitting. It's one thing to catch lightning in a bottle over a 10 or a 15 game stretch and win the championship, but they can't assume this will happen every October. They still need a lineup that scales to handle a 162 game season. They need to upgrade their hitting, but they may not be as far off as we originally thought, especially with the development of Buster Posey.

With all this said and done about baseball, we all know football is the real national past time as Sunday night showed us. The Steelers-Saints regular season game outdrew game 4 of the World Series on TV and I was not even surprised. Of course the one million or so Giants fan who gathered at the parade yesterday don't care. They are just happy their Giants won.