Seasonal Transitions

It's been a busy summer and I have not been blogging a lot. I can't believe summer is already over and we are transitioning to fall. This time of the year means the sports calendar is pretty busy- not that the sports calendar is ever barren for us serious sports fans anytime of the year! We got our collective national obsession called the NFL in full throttle right now, college football is ramping up, and the MLB playoffs is flowing fine. We love the playoffs in any sport, but major league baseball probably has the highest bump in terms of edge-of-the-seat drama from the regular season to the playoffs. And especially this year, every other playoff game seems to be going extra innings. The drama started rather painfully for me with the Oakland A's blowing a 7-3 lead late in their wildcard contest against the Kansas City Royals and losing the game and the season in extras. That game was a microcosm of the last two months of the A's season and not a happy one at that. Their sudden and ugly reversal in fortunes can be directly traced on the calendar to the Lester for Cespedes trade - a trade I supported whole heartedly. Whether or not that's what caused the disastrous slide, we will never know. But I am ready to at least accept that the trade did not work. It was still a good gamble, but sometimes gambles don't work. Thats why its's called a gamble.

As controversial and equally loved and criticized as Billy Beane is, this season and that trade is the biggest blot on his resume to date. GMs, coaches, and other leaders will never publicly accept failure or that they made a wrong call, but I am surprised Billy is still defending the trade and is saying he will do it all over again. That's where I separate from Billy. I liked his effort and I supported his trade, but I will NOT do it all over again given that we now know what happened since the trade. If I am allowed to rewind time, I would rather try and see what happens with Cespedes. It can't be worse than what we saw since July. Billy says he saw both the Angles and the A's problems coming and thats why he did the trade. He maintains the A's would have missed the playoffs without Lester and the trade. I don't buy that only because the A's were not just a little different since July, they were flat out horrible. Sure, Billy and everybody else saw the Angles surging, but you can't tell me he predicted the A's would be this bad all of a sudden and you can't convince me that they would have been worse with Cespedes. But we will never know and the season is now over. Regardless of what Billy says, his resume is a little uglier because of this trade - fair or not. The harder truth to swallow for the A's fans is that this was their best chance to win it all and next year figures to be a lot more challenging. 

The Kansas City Royals, who put the A's out of their misery, continued their post-season brilliance on the road at Anaheim as if they do this playoff thing every year. Thats pretty impressive for a team that has missed the big dance for 25 straight years! I am totally on-board with them putting the Angles to rest in the ALDS. At least the A's fans don't have to deal with the Angels celebrating. The team across the bay from Oakland, San Francisco Giants, have won both their road playoff games as well much like the Royals and are back home to host and possibly eliminate the Washington Nationals. The Giants had a couple of horrible months much like the A's, but they picked a slightly better time for that bad stretch. They righted the ship towards the end of the season and are now rolling in the playoffs. They won a 18-inning game yesterday that they were trailing 1-0 in the 9-Th. You just can't put the Giants away that easily in this Brian Sabean era. A Giants-Dodgers NLCS will be epic, though the St. Louis Cardinals might have something to say about that. In any case, looks like we might have two wildcard teams in the championship series. The playoff games have been greatly entertaining and hopefully, the trend continues rest of this playoffs.

Giant Pitching

The typical post-season script in baseball reads "pitching wins championships". It may not play out that way every year, but the San Francisco Giants definitely stuck to the script in these playoffs. The Giants have now won 2 out of the last 3 World Series and one more in the next 2 years, we will be using the D word - dynasty. They are already in the New York Yankees territory. In roughly the last decade (since 2002), the Giants have been to 3 World Series and that's one more than any other team including the Yankees. They were clearly powered by their pitching in 2010, led by Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain, carrying a sub-par offense which came alive a little bit during the post-season. This season was different, almost weird. The Giants pitching was still good, but the dominating ace we expected in Tim Lincecum was nowhere to be found the entire season. In fact, he ended up in the bullpen for the post-season while Barry Zito was named a starter. That was something we could have never guessed 6 months back. The pitching staff still had enough bullets even with a mediocre Lincecum, but all of them seemed to slip up and struggle a little towards the end of the regular season. Their offense was not stellar, but they scored a few more runs in the 2012 regular season than 2010, though with the help of far fewer home runs.

The Giants looked shaky because of these reasons going into the playoffs and they promptly fell behind 0-2 against the Reds after 2 home games. They then came back and shocked the Reds by winning 3 straight. They again fell behind 3-1 to the Cardinals and that's when things shifted decisively in the Giants favor. Barry Zito, of all people, was slated to start the elimination game on the road. After giving the Giants close to nothing in 6 long, expensive years, Zito inexplicably shut the Cardinals down. The Giants never look back from that point on. Their pitching took off from there as every starter wanted to and believed he could do what Zito did. Beginning with that Zito start in Saint Louis, the Giants pitched 4 shutouts in 6 games and gave up just 1 run in another game during that stretch. Ryan Vogelsong recaptured his form and was dominant throughout the playoffs and the rest of the rotation joined him at different points led by Zito. When Detroit rolled into town for the World Series, they were punched in the mouth by a pitching staff that was nasty at the start, nastier at the end with their closer Sergio Romo and everywhere in-between via their stellar bullpen. The big, bad Detroit lineup just looked fat and out of shape in this series as triple crown winner and potential AL MVP Miguel Cabrera hit .231 and Prince Fielder hit .071.

The Giants survived a strange season and a mediocre Tim Lincecum. They survived losing closer Brian Wilson at the start of the season and Melkey Cabrera to steroids in the middle of the season. They survived all the money spent by their division rival Los Angeles Dodgers and crazy trades. They survived 6 elimination games - 4 of them on the road, and a triple crown winning opponent in the World Series. Buster Posey can now say "I win the World Series if I play more than 100 games in a season, period!" He turned their 2010 season around and was a big part of that World Series run. He will probably win the NL MVP this season and the Giants have another ring. Buster got hurt and played in only 45 games in 2011 and the Giants promptly missed the playoffs. Posey is the real deal. For all the talk of Brian Sabean not drafting a decent position player, he might have found a hall of famer in this guy. I am happy for Sabean. As an A's fan, there is no question in my mind that Billy Beane is the best GM in the league. But I have always believed the Bay Area is home to the best 2 GMs in the entire league. I am glad Sabean has been vindicated twice in the last 3 years after a long wait. I am also happy for Ex-A's and Beane find Marco Scutaro. He stood tall and carried the Giants in the NLCS. Great team work, great season. Congrats to the San Francisco Giants.