And fly like Ratto from non-sinking ships. Ratto overboard!
And they became one of the genuinely special operations of the past 40 years. Only four franchises, Oakland, Cincinnati, New York (twice) and Toronto have won multiple World Series so close together, and if you want to quibble about the definition of dynasty, then by all means do.
But two in three means you’re no longer lucky, and you’re no longer merely grinders. You’re a team with a high profile, something that makes Sabean’s teeth grind.
...You see, one championship is a party. Two in three years is a statement. In the new baseball, which looks more and more like hockey in this way, the real trick is not to dominate the regular season but to create some space by the start of September and then go foot-to-floor for as long as one can manage it.
This is the real Giants Way. The fundamental truth that stands the game’s principal dynamic on its head. Specifically, the postseason starts on August 1, and doesn’t get serious until September 1. And it ends, or at least it could have ended, on November 1.
The Giants in 2010 and 2012 have won 61 of 90 games from September 1 forward. That’s how postseasons are owned.
...They are a tough out now, these Giants. A piece of post-expansion history, with those A’s and those Reds and those Yankees and even those Blue Jays. They are the new platinum standard of modern baseball.
Repoz
Posted: October 29, 2012 at 06:25 AM |
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We know the Giants are good, but we have no way to legitimately compare them to other two times in 3 year "World Champions." "World Series" wins just don't signal much these days. Nice work, Bud.
There were four years between the two Dodger champions I mentioned instead of two, but things moved more slowly in the days before free agency. These Giants have also accomplished something pretty solid, and it should be appreciated.
I do agree that the rapture over their inability to do anything wrong is both hyperbolic and premature. To take nothing away from their achievement, to be one of five teams that has won two of three Series six times in 40 years is coming close to business as usual.
Yeah. That's not random luck or anything.
these giants are hurt in terms of perception because folks look at offense and think san fran's offense is average or below average when this team led the nl with runs scored on the road.
that and people too often still ignore defense
like people at bbtf for example.
Wonder who of the one year deals stays this offseason?
Sometimes Pete Kozma hits for you. Sometimes Barry Zito pitches well. Baseball is random.
I think it's kinda funny that so many people complain about this, but whenever a team wins multiple championships in a short span (which is an argument AGAINST the postseason being random), people get sick of them fast and wish that someone else would've won instead. Yankees win 3 straight and 4 of 5 and people were definitely sick of them. Red Sox win 2 in 4 years and people start comparing them to the Yankees. Cardinals win 2 in 6 seasons and people start bashing them. Now Giants win 2 in 3 years and people are already starting to tire of them too.
Do we want randomness where a different team wins every season, or do we want legit teams with good cores that aren't just one year flukes? Make up your minds already.
As cool as it was to see new teams make playoff cameo's like the Reds, Nats, O's, and A's, it would've looked much more random if one of them had won the WS than the Giants.
I think a big part of the issue is that the Giants 4/5 starters, who combined for a ~77 ERA+ this season, were huge reasons why the Giants won. Not that the Giants don't have a good core, but the way the won seems to lean toward the latter, not the former.
I don't see this at all, I guess because two WS titles in three years isn't enough to convince me the Giants are all that good. I think they just hit the random lottery twice.
They needed a Padres collapse to win the NL West in 2010, and this year they had the weakest record of the NL division champs (and weakest pythag mark of any of the NL's playoff teams). And hell, if the Reds don't lose their Cy Young contender one inning into the NLDS, they may get swept in three. As juggers go, they're not.
But part of the reason for that is that their 4/5 starters are incredibly talented compared to other teams 4/5 starters, despite their poor regular season. Also, every champion has meaningful contributions from weird corners of their roster, that's just the nature of the beast.
I see what you did there.
The Giants 4/5 starters are also veteran pitchers with terrific records of success. Lincecum's 2012 season was more of a one-year fluke than his postseason performance.
The Giants have a very good team, and then they played extremely well in the playoffs. So they won the championship! good for them, good for their fans. This doesn't have to be terribly complicated.
Sure. They have many good to great players. But they're just been one of the teams that was capable of winning a title over the past several years, and they happened to do it twice. That they happened to do it twice is wonderful for them and their fans and the entitre city of San Francisco, but it doesn't make them better than the 90ish win teams they were in both those cases.
This isn't the Yankees or Braves of the 90s, teams that were year-in, year-out one of the two best teams in their leagues. It was just a good team that navigated the playoff process twice in three years (while missing it entirely in the middle).
If it's not my team, I want someone different each year. If it's my team, I want a dynasty. Else I complain. /channeling typical fan
Maybe Lincecum's regular season was a huge fluke, but Bochy certainly didn't treat it like one.
It seems that two in three years is about the closest we're going to get to a repeat these days. I admit to thinking that I thought the Giants seemed pretty random in 2010 - especially after their sub-par 2011 - but their best position player was also injured for most of last year. They don't seem flukey to me at all, anymore.
The Reds and especially the Nats look like young up-and-comers that could be contenders for a while, but looking at the O's I still don't understand why they were so good. I expect them to be around .500 next year. If they had won, they'd have seemed like the very definition of a fluke champion to me.
Yep. The only reason I even remember the likes of Mark Lemke, Jim Leyritz, and Scott Brosius is because of their flukish postseason heroics.
I don't think they're flukey. I just don't think this second title elevates them into greatness either.
The playoffs are a bit of a crapshoot, and they always have been. Even in the 20's. The fact that more teams are in the playoffs, and teams win the world series with bad regular season records is basically proof that regular season record is not a great predictor of playoff success. If we want only teams with great regular season records to win the world series then we need to go back to two best records in the league going to the series. You still won't get the best team by regular season standards sometimes, just likely the better team at the time of the series.
Maybe not the players, but I think it elevates the status of Bochy. Did Bochy make a single mistake this postseason?
Mark Lemke will always be remembered as the Homestar Runner.
Absolutely. He's got to be moving quietly (let's face it, quietly is the only way he moves) into the Hall conversation down the road. Six division titles, three pennants and two WS tites will go a long way. He'll probably need to get the W-L record over .500 (some of those Padre teardowns have damaged his overall winning percentage), but he's turning himself into a legit candidate.
What are you talking about? He didn't pull him out of the rotation during the entire regular season, in the playoffs they gave him 1 start and then crucial relief innings, and they have already announced he will be a starter next year.
I'm pretty sure Latos wouldn't have pitched in Game 1 (and Arroyo in 2, Bailey in 3 and Leake at all) if Cueto doesn't go down.
The larger point is the Cueto injury was a pretty big blow to the Reds in the series.
Ironically they may actually rate higher than that based on talent and that for the regular season their performance may have undershot their talent (plus Scutaro was a legitimate upgrade on their second base situation). The A's probably played better baseball all totaled, but the Giants likely had the better roster. The same, I guess, with the Orioles. I'd say I'd probably have the Yankees, Rangers, Reds and maybe the Nationals as having better rosters.
We want (unavoidable) postseason randomness to be significantly reduced in importance. Baseball's not really that random over 162 games. The postseason is rapidly approaching "exhibition" status, and may already be there.
This isn't, of course, to say that the Giants aren't a really good team; they probably are. Ninety-four wins is nothing to sniff at. It is to say that their postseason performance is all but irrelevant to measuring whether they're a really good team.
In any event, it would hardly be a surprise if the Dodgers went into next season as the Vegas favorites in the West.
How do we do that? Even in the days where the best record in each league automatically met in the World Series, the better team only won half the time. That's baseball (and every sport except the NBA, which IMO has the opposite problem). I just don't really see the point in getting upset about this every single season.
I think most of the people in this thread have it about right. Neither of these championships were exactly a fluke, but they certainly weren't the best team in baseball either year.
With the exception of a few years, the Giants have been one of the top 10 teams in baseball for about 15 years. With that sustained success a team would expect about one title given the current playoff format. This was their sixth postseason appearance in the current format, not counting the '98 wild card tie-breaker. The fact that they won in '10 and '12, and not '02 or '03 is randomness. Sabean was in charge then, he's in charge now. The Giants haven't discovered any secret to winning, any more than Jeter and Rivera forgot how to win after 2000.
Of course as a fan, I don't care about any of that. The Giants won and I'm happy.
Letting them play against each other in a mini-tournament seems like a fun way.
Seconded.
And I would add, as a Giants' fan, whether their true talent aligns perfectly with the results of the season/postseason tournament results is the furthest thing from my mind. It's just a blast to win. Every bit as much as it's a ##### to lose. Believe me, as a lifelong Giants' fan, I truly know the latter, and it feels great to finally get to truly know the former.
Heh. Exactly.
I didn't read the article, and if it's claiming that the Giants are an all time great team now, then yes, that's really stupid. I sure wouldn't put them on the same level as say, the 70's Reds, who also won two titles.
Mainly I just don't understand why SF winning seems to bother so many people here. They won their division, and did so with a good regular season record (unlike the Tigers, 2006 Cards, 1987 Twins, etc). In fact, they were within, what, like 4 wins of the best record in baseball? They seem like the exact type of team that people here always say SHOULD be winning.
These fanbases aren't being fooled. They don't just "think" they're still in it for a longer period of time. They are still in it for a longer period of time. There is no illusion. It is what it says it is.
but ultimately I also think it detracts from the meaningfulness of really putting together a great whole season.
Of course it does. It must. It's axiomatic. A sport cannot have it both ways.
And I've been among those who've said for, oh, about 20 years now that fewer divisions and fewer playoff rounds makes for a more compelling entertainment for we purists. But if I were running the business of MLB, I would do it largely as they do. They have a different interest than we purists.
Still doesn't mean it isn't a freaking blast when your team wins this thing.
By repeatedly pointing out the randomness of the playoffs every time we have a chance, until such time as the playoffs are properly understood to be a big, shiny idiot bauble at the end of a baseball season.
In Arlington this year, for exactly one day :) But you're right, the game was played and I was there. Beats staying home watching football on TV.
Eh. Sports are just shiny things for the purpose of entertainment in the first place. Ain't nothing wrong with that.
There really isn't much more to say about it than this. It was great watching the Tigers sweep the Yankees, but it doesn't prove they're a better team. The short-lived excitement of that will never outstrip a year like 1984 or, honestly, even 1987. Coming from way back in the last week to overtake the Blue Jays for something real, that takes you 97 wins to earn, is cooler than even sweeping the Yankees as a flawed 88-win team.
Anyway, the question is: How often does the best team win the World Series? Given the current playoff format, what are the odds?
In a typical baseball playoff series, how often does the best team win? Two-thirds of the time? Help me out here.
If that's right (actually I think that's a bit high), then doesn't that make it a 30% chance that the best team will win three playoff rounds (.67 x .67 x .67)?
I'm sure someone here has a better answer to the question.
Combined regular and postseason records sorted in order of winning %:
Washington .599
Cincinnati .593
San Francisco .590
Atlanta .577
Oakland .575
Yankees .573
Baltimore .571
Texas .571
Tampa Bay .556
LAA .549
Detroit .543
St. Louis .543
Give a small bump to the AL teams for strength of schedule... recognize this is missing other SoS factors. What do you have? A group of teams all of whom are roughly equally deserving. San Francisco is no more than 2 games from the top.
Edit: or what #49 said. Well put.
Also, the Giants were significantly better with Scutaro and the Nationals shut down their best pitcher.
By the end of the season, SF was no worse than the second best team in majors.
As opposed to the profoundly deep and meaningful significance of the children's game which is played by grown men the rest of the year?
If you can't tell the difference between the value of results from a game played over 162 events, vs the value of that same game played over 12 events, I can't really help you man.
So far this century, the team with the better regular-season record has won 6 World Series, the other team 7. That's an initial data set, anyway.
But the question is beset with definitional problems. How much better gives you a how much better chance? With teams playing different schedules in leagues of different strengths, and adding and subtracting players all season, how do the two teams in a series "really" compare? And a lot of the fun of sports is seeing who can come up with the better strategy, anyway, hypothetical talent aside. The four-corner stall and the rope-a-dope and using Ryan Theriot as your designated hitter are all part of the wonder of it :)
And that accomplishes what, exactly?
Postseason success matters in baseball, and that's been the case for a long time (going back before the days of divisions). The most memorable games in baseball history, with no more than a couple of exceptions, have either occurred on the postseason stage or between two teams who are fighting to get there late in the season. The goal isn't to be the *best team* - it's as Jim Valvano put it, to survive and advance.
-- MWE
Sure, but the attitude that the regular season is all that matters and the playoffs are just meaningless exhibition games (and I know you didn't specifically say that) is just backwards, IMO. Winning the World Series is the goal of every team before and during the entire season. Having the best regular season record only matters in the sense that it gives the team a shot at the WS.
Don't you think the 2001 Mariners players, coaches, and fans would've rather had 96 wins and a title instead of 116 wins and an ALCS exit? I sure as hell would if I were an M's fan. Best regular season record in most years is a fairly irrelevant distinction that few will even remember the following year. World Series champ is a much more memorable distinction.
That it is status quo doesn't make it less stupid. You can support the status quo, or you can support intelligence.
With that said, any Giant fan who, this morning, is upset because some grumps on the internet aren't bowing down to their team needs to get a life. They're at a party and they're unhappy not everyone came?
Define "best team". And how do you know a priori which team is the best team?
In the broad sense, it really doesn't matter which team is the best team, because that's not the point of the competition. The point of the competition is to be the one left standing at the end of the battle.
-- MWE
Exactly. Talking about a team having the best regular season record isn't much different than talking about them having the most HR's or the lowest ERA or whatever. Those things only matter cuz they help a team win games. And winning regular season games only matters cuz it helps a team get into the playoffs, which is necessary for winning the World Series.
So yes, winning the World Series doesn't necessarily mean a team is the "best." But so what, since "best team" is an irrelevant and generally forgetable distinction anyway?
And this is why they hate us.
I don't know if most people DO call the WS champ the "best" team. Every list I see always labels them the WS winners or the championship winners or whatever. And those titles aren't disputable.
The "best team" is as elusive as the "best player", yet there have been many attempts to define it. If you search, you can usually find someone making a serious attempt to answer it, although I can't point you anywhere at the moment.
You can say that it is the team with the best record, or the playoff champion and leave it at that; if that is the same team in a year few would argue with you. Even if, theoretically, the evidence indicates otherwise.
What evidence? The usual: strength of schedule, "true talent", Pythag W-L, and other statistical analysis woven in with assumptions about what makes teams win.
There's a long drive...it's gonna be, I believe...
THE GIANTS ADVANCE!
THE GIANTS ADVANCE!
THE GIANTS ADVANCE!
THE GIANTS ADVANCE!
There was a time when the regular season champion was considered to be a champion and a meaningful one too. I suppose that's never coming back, but I don't have to be happy about it.
You hit the nerve. Baseball is clearly a man's game which is played by children, not the other way around. If you've watched fourth graders try to throw strikes you would know this is the case. What you're thinking of is kickball.
And you're OK with that? If "best" is irrelevant, why have playoffs, regular season or games? Why not go watch the ballet instead, you'll see equally impressive displays of athleticism?
This is one attitude which annoys the crap out of those of us who aren't happy about the expansion of the postseason in number of teams and the glorification of the postseason in terms of importance. The best doesn't matter. The regular season only matters in that it gives you a shot at the playoffs (and in the other sports, that's half the teams so the regular season barely matters for that).
The point of competition, the very reason for its existence, is to determine which person/team is better. If the competition is reduced to the level where its only purpose is to produce a winner for the sake of there being a winner, why should I watch baseball and why should I care who wins?
The problem is that it's very rare for there to be a clear cut "best." Did the one extra win prove the Braves were better than the Giants in 1993? Were the '78 Yankees clearly better than the Red Sox? If Bobby Thomson swings half an inch lower and pops up are the Dodgers the clear best in 1951?
For me assigning values like "best" and "worst" is a fun intellectual exercise but the objective of the game is to win under the rules as constituted.
Do you want to know the horrible truth, or would you like to see Pando Sandoval hits some dingers?
I'm "okay" with that because the alternative - having no playoffs and the league winners meet in the World Series every year - is much worse. Yes, having the entertainment of getting to see a few more rounds of baseball is more important to me than making sure the "best" team wins every year. What you're wanting just isn't possible, and it never has been.
Um, isn't that what the World Series is too - a competition for the purpose of producing a winner for the sake of there being a winner? Even if you went back to the old format and eliminated all rounds of playoffs except the WS, you'd still only see the "best" team win about half the time. Why even have a meaningless exhibition like the WS then? Why not just declare each league champ the winner and leave it at that? Implementing the WS in the first place killed this argument over 100 years ago, IMO.
That it is the status quo does not make it less stupid.
If you think the World Series is stupid and you consider the season over once the last regular season game is played, that's up to you. I don't see why it should bother you though that not everyone else does the same.
I think the complaint is that Ratto spewed up this "new platinum standard of modern baseball" horseshit more than anything else. As I said, I have nothing particularly against the Giants. They're a perfectly boring baseball team with no really interesting players who are good enough to win their division and ran the post-season tournament. But they're not exactly a "new platinum standard" for anything other than getting a few lucky bounces and a few pitchers hot at the right time.
And the post-season is stupid. People who like it are stupid.
Yep, again. The worst part of the modern postseason is how it's rendered seasons like the Nationals' an afterthought. Why was that fanbase subjected to a home Game 5 that far removed from the World Series against an obviously inferior team that left their fanbase disappointed, if not embittered?
The old postseason wasn't really meant to determine the "best" team, but instead to act as a Tournament of Champions, by which champions could add additional championships to what had already been a great season. The modern postseason is, obviously, entirely inconsistent with that aim.
NOTE: This has nothing to do with the Giants winning this year.
World Series is stupid. Got it.
The Nats rendered their own season an afterthought the moment they shut down Strasburg. I was actually cheering for them to make the WS (check my picks in the postseason thread), but it's hard to have too much sympathy for the "best" team losing when they deliberately didn't put their best team on the field.
Under the premises of the modern postseason, maybe. Not under the old system, though, when their well-earned NL East championship would have (a) got them a round closer to the World Series; and (b) salved the pain of losing the LCS -- in itself, and also because they wouldn't have lost it to a joke team like the Cardinals. You lose to a 97-win Reds team -- the only team worthy of playing you -- you get over it, hang your hard-earned flag next spring, and celebrate an excellent season.
The National League should have been Nationals-Reds in a 7-game LCS. The post-'93 system sucks.
The grapes are sour. Understood.
Many, many things in life are less than robust equations of manly perfection. That doesn't make them stupid. Chocolate has obvious flaws and shortcomings. So does beer, so does sex, and so does the playing of baseball games for the entertainment of a crowd. That doesn't make people who like them stupid.
Except that even pre-1993, the winner of one division may have been an inferior team to the 2nd place team in a stronger division. And in the format prior to that, the winner of one league may have been inferior to the 2nd or 3rd best team in the other league. The only way to avoid this would be to eliminate the postseason entirely (including the WS), which no one except Sam seems to advocate doing.
And played superb defense.
No, the grapes are fine. He's just pretending that they're sour because he didn't get any.
You are obviously eating the wrong chocolate, drinking the wrong beer, having sex with the wrong people, and watching the wrong baseball games.
Ur doin it rong.
You're probably right. The arrow of causality is probably reversed on that one. People like it because they're stupid.
To me, the system should be set up so that the teams that make the entertaining postseason should have a claim to the throne. Then it is a short tournament between legitimate candidates for best. You mention 1951 and 1993. I think either LA (51) or SF (93) would have been fine combatants in the postseason tournament. SF would have, in fact, been better than the Phillies.
But what we have now is a system where, very often, it is obvious that one of, if not the, last teams standing is NOT the best. Not arguably not the best, obviously not the best. The Tigers weren't the best team in the AL and everyone knew it. Same for St. Louis last year. That sucks.
The Giants, this year, are a completely legit champ.
I guess what I'm saying is, I'd rather leave a good team home than have a bad team advance. Eventually, everyone has to be eliminated.
I get that I'm in a clear minority.
Of course.
Of course.
You haven't been paying attention, then.
Your abject defeat on the merits of the argument is duly noted.
College football.
So you really wouldn't consider any Braves championship meaningful unless they were clearly the best team in baseball that year?
My bad, then. I do believe you're in an extreme minority on that one, though.
To be fair to Sam, the Braves generally played postseasons like they believed that themselves.
But they were different leagues so you really couldn't be sure. The champions of the National League were the Champions of the National League, not the World Series qualifiers from the National division.
The point is that adding layers upon layers of playoffs pretty much has to have a significant effect on how success in the regular season is perceived. And many of us feel that the overall result lessens our enjoyment of the season. Going to the division setup was a small step backward, but as long as the schedules were unbalanced you could live with it. But now we've got two more rounds of playoffs and likely additional playoffs in the future.
Not that it matters, but I don't like it.
Manchester City celebrates what must have been a historic win in the championship game:
Man City are playoff champs!
I honestly don't understand how you people intend to determine the "best" team. In the NL this year, was the best team the 98-win Nats or the 97-win Reds? Is one game really enough to tell, especially given that they played different schedules? Are we talking about the Nationals with or without Strasburg? The Reds with or without Joey Votto? Can you be sure the 94-win Giants weren't the best team once they got Marco Scutaro? Does your opinion change if Scutaro hits .233 next year?
Barring the odd case like the 1998 Yankees, there's just no such thing as an objective "best team in baseball." It exists only in someone's supposition.
We don't, or at least I don't. What I prefer is for success over 162 games be prioritized over success over 16. The "best" team still might not come out on top after 162 (even if you could know such a thing), but I think the team that does come out on top will have done more to deserve it.
As I pointed out directly above, it isn't like such a setup is unworkable in modern sports, there are probably more professional sports leagues in the world who do it that way than not. Ironically enough, the English league is set up that way because it modeled its league structure and scheduling after professional baseball.
Bochy's winning percentage is already over .500, though not by much. He's at .502 (1454-1444) after the 2012 season. Even so, I generally agree with your point. He's turning into a legit candidate but it would help to an even higher winning percentage- which he could do with a few more seasons in San Fran.
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