2014 World Series: San Francisco Giants vs Kansas City Royals

thought it'd be easy to root for kc but they've been so annoying about everything

Rooting KC, but no predicting.

go KC

i don't mind the giants at all, really, but i'd love to see the royals win

i forgot that KC owner usta run Walmart, ptui

(yeah i know, it's a circle of thieves)

KC in 7

Giants in 9.

giants in 5

If you're not a) from San Francisco, b) a Giants fan from elsewhere, or c) a disgruntled Orioles/Angels/Mariners fan, I'm not sure why someone would want the Giants to win their third in five years instead of KC winning their first in 29. I'll say KC in 7.

Giants in 6.

everything is always "in 6" so i'm going to be courageous and bet one million dollars on "royals in 4"

how did he have the courage to make that bet

If you're not a) from San Francisco, b) a Giants fan from elsewhere, or c) a disgruntled Orioles/Angels/Mariners fan, I'm not sure why someone would want the Giants to win their third in five years instead of KC winning their first in 29. I'll say KC in 7.

― clemenza, Saturday, October 18, 2014 2:18 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean a part of it definitely has to do with being disgruntled, it definitely feels like their obnoxiousness was rubbing their sudden uncontrollable success in our faces, but i think at least some of it is objectively noticeable. i was so glad they beat the angels, they were the team i was rooting for right after the o's, but they did enough to spoil it -- stuff that wouldn't really bother me normally but their darling status changes things and suddenly i'm caring about baseball etiquette ("who cares" - morbsy). the chest-thumping cocky responses to every little success, eric hosmer's unbelievably punchable grins, gordon's and moustakas' also-punchable-but-less-so grins, dyson's comment, guthrie's shirt (nb especially o's fan disgruntled but still). o's (non-stannish) beat writer roch kubatko mentioned that they were doing a lot of yapping from the dugout. actually his entire post about this is similar to what i'm saying now, and it's been shared by a lot of other o's fans at least. it's disappointing they're making this hard, but at least if they win the WS history will ignore any sour grapes i'm venting over right now. and the national media darling status isn't helping.

of course i sound like a super butthurt orioles fan anyway rn

It wasn't until Linda Cardellini started rattling off the specifics that I realized the preceding post wasn't aimed at the Giants.

i have never met a giants fan irl

by which i mean i have practically no personal background with the giants other than being annoyed at their success-despite-boringness and shitty unis

i find hunter pence way less obnoxious than the royals rn

"Disgruntled," a pejorative, was the wrong word. If the Royals had eliminated my team, I'd be rooting against them too.

but is that bc you're angry about losing or bc you're angry about their demeanor (which you may not've cared about otherwise) or both

I used to hate Eckersley, and for both reasons: he'd beat the Jays, and he'd showboat. (Making Roberto Alomar's HR in the '92 playoffs the greatest thing ever...even though I'd given up that game, and had turned to the presidential debate.)

If the Giants pull this off and win 3 titles in 5 years, it's a pretty impressive feat especially considering how much roster turnover they have had. There is a core with Posey, Sandoval, Bumgarner, Cain (hurt now), Romo and Affeldt that have been there the whole run but that's it.

Probably meant ironically, but terrible headline:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/52750/welcome-to-the-worst-world-series-ever

Should maybe decide that after it's played. The '98 Series (to name one obvious example among many) involved 212 wins between the two teams, and I can't remember a single thing about it.

I remember that Bruce Bochy was the losing manager.

sensationalist title is the whole point of it

Oh, I know: click-something-whatever. I get it. I don't approve, though.

shitty unis

yeah orange and black, who'd wear that

the giants actually *did* eliminate my team, but i find them . . . weirdly likeable? posey is great and hasn't quite yet been granted jeterian status, pence is goofy and fun to watch, their first baseman's nickname is baby giraffe and thir third baseman's is panda, madbum is very good and only 25 and also goofy-looking, they have a decent manager who looks like a manager. they're rich but not in the top five, they don't have the best fans in baseball, and most of their dudes came up through the system. tbh the most annoying thing about them is when bee ok's passion becomes overwhelming

i want to love the royals and i'm happy for their fans and it's a pretty amazing story, but i can't quite shake the feeling that ned yost and dayton moore are bad at their jobs and should therefore not be rewarded with victory. this feeling is the internet's fault and i should get over it and enjoy the improbable ride, but it's a struggle

the main problem is that horrible slate gray. and any shade of orange that isn't bright orioles orange is crap (also looking at you tigers)

basically you're in san francisco why are you still keeping up this self-serious NY giants facade, go nuts. i agree that some of their players are v rootable tho.

i'm a fan of pence's abject dorkiness and willingness to actually practice hitting balls six feet off the ground

the best thing abt the giants is how well they troll the dodgers.

Latest odds, if you feel the need to put your life's savings on the line:

http://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/17/world-series-betting-odds-royals-vs-giants

karl malone has already bet one million dollars iirc

On KC, I think...He's only getting $833,333.33 back (plus his original million, of course).

6/5 odds on KC winning the WS, but surely much longer odds on them sweeping, right? I'm expecting to make at least 10 million bucks on this. Guess I should have asked what the odds were before I gave them the million. I'm new to the gambling world

The '98 Series (to name one obvious example among many) involved 212 wins between the two teams, and I can't remember a single thing about it.

Awesome Tony Gwynn homer in Yankee Stadium! Crushed one.

Not the best example for me to use: I had my first full-time classroom in the fall of '98, and didn't care in the least who won that Series, so I probably didn't watch a whole lot of it. I was able to look up Gwynn's home run on YouTube--just shy of upper-deck.

Anyway, I think this year has the potential for a great Series: what seem to be two fairly evenly matched teams, two unusual teams, and a winner that will be guaranteed to leave many people scratching their head.

as a dodger fans I hate the fucking giants but really appreciate how much san francisco loves its baseball.. hard to believe they almost lost the team to tampa

and to Toronto in the '70s!

Giants in 9.
― My Life with the Thrillho Kult (Leee)

MVPs: Honus Wagner if the Giants win, Cy Young if it's the Royals.

We almost got the Giants ourselves in 1976. I'd forgotten how incredibly close we were until I recently watched a TSN special on the Jays' beginnings. Horace Stoneham had been given two or three hours to find a buyer for the team, or the other owners were handing it over to Toronto. That's when Bob Lurie stepped in.

77 players have been on both the Royals and Giants:

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/10/19/top-10-player-who-have-played-for-the-giants-and-royal

Most of the highlighted 10 had a drastic tilt in one direction: people like Cepeda and Perry who had big years with the Giants but did nothing with the Royals, Beltran and Quisenberry in the other direction. Melky Cabrera has the most equitable split.

(Yes, I wish they'd start the games.)

i always forget what a good hitter chili davis was, right up to the end.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

basically you're in san francisco why are you still keeping up this self-serious NY giants facade, go nuts

from way upthread but I can't believe anyone who has seen a giants game or even spent any time in SF in the last few years would use the words self-serious to describe either the team or the fans. Pretty much from April to October, and especially in even years it is not uncommon to see people decked out in absurdist iterations of black & orange. The ballpark atmosphere is mostly fun, pretty non-douchey for being a sports event and the teams in all their permutations appear to always be comprised of at least a few goofballs and few preening superstars. I don't know if they're more boring than other teams- but this postseason has made for some great games and I'm definitely excited for tomorrow night.

i'm talking specifically about their (official) unis, all looking like they were left out in the rain, with that same "GIANTS" font they used in NY

totally unbefitting for SF and everything you're describing, yes, agreed

haha of course. I don't take issue with the unis, but never have liked this logo that they use on occasion

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/San_Francisco_Giants_logo_1977-1982.png

still

Really excited for this to start. I would love to see the Royals win as they've been through so much over the last 3 decades and they're such a great story (and a fun team to watch) but I wouldn't mind the Giants taking another one, they're also a fun team to watch. Screw that "worst world series ever" talk, I love seeing the dark horse teams take it

when i was in SF last year i bought a Giants jacket specifically because it had that logo!

here it is: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dysign/15447570101/in/photostream/lightbox/

it's gonna be weird if the Giants have 3 titles in 5 years without ever being, y'know, great.

what % of championship teams are actually Great though? surely last year's red sox don't qualify either

Usually winning as many as 3 WS in 5 years has always qualified as a "dynasty" tho. This was discussed on the BP podcast today w/ Grant Brisbee. What is the 2010-14 Giants' identity?

hadn't read this in a while, couldn't remember who the prime dick was but now i know i have a better reason for hating hosmer other than just his face

ofc ball players everywhere are probably huge dicks but i don't have proof of anyone else so

tbf i have interviewed hosmer (albeit before he was a 'star') and he was quite pleasant. i did not, however, mistake him for someone else or open with 'hey i'm (ethnicity) too'. i'm not even a good interviewer, but i do try to have a clue

eno definitely fucked up but hosmer followed him around the clubhouse to snicker behind his back which is exactly what a person with that face would do and continues to do at every opportunity

did you see the francoeur prank this spring? it's a tough crowd

http://mlb.mlb.com/images/2005/10/28/93CmhKrq.jpg

what a jackass

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B1KpoiMIYAAfPpM.jpg

I have no idea where SBN got that 52 million viewership figure; it's crazy, I'm not seeing it anywhere else. Game 7 averaged 23.5 million, peaked around 28m.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/sports/baseball/world-series-2014-game-7s-ratings-surge.html

also, it escaped me that KC only stole one base in the WS.

If somebody knows what they're doing, the only guy to lead off a Halloween WS parade is Pence.

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/10/31/7135679/giants-parade-world-series-2014-schedule-map

i did think it was strange how little they ran vs the giants.

I think there's a Cameron piece about how long the Giant pitchers held the ball.

Roger Angell:

I don’t know what it felt like watching Mathewson pitch, but watching Bumgarner is like feeling an expertly administered epidural nip in between a couple of vertebrae and deliver bliss: it’s a gliding, almost eventless slide through the innings, with accumulating fly-ball outs and low-count K’s marking the passing scenery. It’s twilight sleep; an Ambien catnap; an evening voyage on a Watteau barge. Bumgarner is composed out there, his expression mournful, almost apologetic, even while delivering his wide-wing, slinging stuff. Sorry, guys: this is how it goes. Over soon.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/best

http://imgur.com/Dmo2zNX

MLB San Francisco 2015 commitments:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=t4r9nky1EouVJsFXQlv3FKQ&output=html

they look to be in great shape with only $127,277,777 committed so far.

4 more years of bumgarner, sick

can we now call buster The Captain y/n

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xap1/v/t1.0-9/p480x480/10636112_892799327411434_8367340437442719500_n.jpg?oh=d026044defa8634533e106c1768db61d&oe=54F1123D&__gda__=1425047651_8a1fc0c5314b5759be58829ec0c5f608

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/mlb-big-league-stew/hunter-pence-gets-wwe-title-belt-from-daniel-bryan-at-giants-victory-parade-203652125.html

Bee that 127m figure means sabean is going to give Sandoval a megacontract

shouldn't bryan be a mariners fan tsk

Bee that 127m figure means sabean is going to give Sandoval a megacontract

Only after we give 3 / 40 million to Ishikawa.

paying that much for travis ishikawa is dumb as fuck for many reasons

But totally keeping in line with Sabean's history.

i honestly had no idea sabean was still the giants' guy after those many years of being a laughing stock

It helps that they stopped throwing away their high draft picks every year.

they did throw Wheeler away

According to ESPN’s SportsNation, literally every state in the union was rooting for the Royals over the Giants, including California, where the Giants’ own fan base was no match for Dodgers Hate and A’s Envy.

don't know if anyone saw that from grantland's column on the series by rany jazayerli, hashtag just sayin

*hears bee's head explode from rage 3,000 miles away*

good thing i live in a province in a parliamentary constitutional monarchy!

isn't canada technically a dominion?

http://img2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20070426223122/memoryalpha/en/images/d/d3/Female_Changeling.jpg

??

ah, i see it is no longer technically called the dominion of canada

wtf is that lee

Sorry I'm letting my nerd show.

haha i got no bones with sci fi just have no clue what that is since it's not BSG, original trek or TNG

DS9!

daniel bryan looks like a typical sf street person kudos to him

http://mlb.mlb.com/assets/images/4/2/8/100348428/cuts/yostcostume_eq0nf7wa_mv4k5n7n.jpg

In trying to figure out how the Giants manage to do what they do, something like this is helpful:

http://www.billjamesonline.com/giants_defensive_positioning_a_big_assist_in_game_7_victory_/

Since all teams have that data, wouldn't most (except the Phillies) be doing something similar? or shouldn't they?

Beating an extremely flawed team 4 out of 7, hmmm, i guess i'm still not overly impressed at what they do, aside from picking the right month to get hot every other year.

Just caught up with this Rob Neyer column (I don't check him regularly, even though I should).

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/alex-gordon-world-series-game7-mike-jirschele-royals-third-base-coach-103114

Ancient history, but the thing that caught my attention was that Neyer's mental calculation on Alex Gordon's triple was identical to my own--like word for word:

But something did bother me about the whole thing. I’ve seen a lot of baseball games. I don’t know how many, but I’ve been pretty obsessive about baseball for about 35 years, and we had two super-stations on our cable package in 1977 or ’78. My very rough estimate is that I’ve seen at least 45,000 innings of baseball. When Gordon’s liner got past Gregor Blanco, I thought triple. When Gordon’s liner then got kicked along the warning track by Juan Perez, I thought holy shit he’s going to score.

He doesn't question the coach, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7IgTE593oA

damn i was sure that was about 70 years ago