2014 World Series: San Francisco Giants vs Kansas City Royals

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.

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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?

i associate them with great pitching and good-enough hitting, though it looks like that's not even the case this year

This year's identity is screwing up less than the other team.

Their identity is from the continuity of players (and the manager) -- same as for any other successful team. They have a lot of them -- MadBum, Timmy Jim, Cain, the bullpen, Posey, Panda -- even if they all didn't have starring roles each of those years. All of the Red Sox's three 21st century championship teams had more player turnover for instance (not to mention managerial and front office turnover).

yeah to me their identity is more or less great pitching, good enough offense (which has been taken to a higher level w/ posey and sandoval) and good defense to match that OF made entirely of power alleys and strange gaps.

that and getting a shitload of good luck and amazing performances from randos like aubrey huff, cody ross, pat burrell, juan uribe, edgar fucking renteria, marco scutaro, etc etc etc etc etc

yeah the BPers were talking about future nostalgia for "the Andres Torres-Cody Ross years"

They'll be a great story if they win this year, and obviously they're a fantastic postseason team. As a dynasty, though, I don't think you can overlook that their regular-season win totals will be 88, 94, and 92--very ordinary, and the divisional-play era, probably not good enough to make the playoffs half the time at least. (I'm guessing.) Schoenfield rounded up the three-in-five teams the other day:

Only five times has a team other than the Yankees won three titles in five years: the Red Sox did it twice early in the 20th century, the last time from 1915 to 1918; the Oakland A's from 1972 to 1974; the St. Louis Cardinals from 1942 to 1946 and the Philadelphia A's from 1910 to 1913. So that's impressive company.

I'd have to look at the earlier teams, but they don't rank with the '70s A's, I don't think.

Giants made no changes at all to the roster that has brought them to the Fall Classic, while the Royals made just one minor tweak. Kansas City swapped out infielder Christian Colon for another infielder in Jayson Nix.

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2014/10/21/7028555/royals-giants-set-world-series-rosters

Timmy lives

he's been down in the basement drinking coffee for about the last four hours, and he should be all ready to go.

yeah i don't have a problem with a team that's never really in contention for best in their league, but for a dynasty, come on now

http://www.clickhole.com/article/wow-scientists-taught-baseball-manager-rudimentary-1223

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/so-youre-about-to-pitch-to-pablo-sandoval/

There's a heat map of KC OF range within

http://grantland.com/the-triangle/2014-mlb-playoffs-giants-royals-world-series-preview-predictions/

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so ready for this, have driven my co-workers crazy this postseason.

great start

i hear Giant fans.

Can't imagine.

Xpost

who is the 3rd base coach for the giants? why did he wave posey in? reynolds is talking about how great the relay was but any RF in baseball, even the very worst, would have been able to beat posey on that

baseball is a game of inches and posey was out by about 39 feet

SLIDE BUSTER SLIDE

come on royals, i have $1 million USD riding on this

RAM INTO THE CATCHER BUSTER

RIP KC

(occasionally appears in) BIG GAME(s) JAMES

was shields ever good in big games or is it one of those ironic nicknames?

just want to point out that my gf is really creeped out by the face and dimeanor of brandon belt

he looks like a more athletic samm levine from freaks and geeks

has she studied Pence carefully? xp

big gaem jaym

on pace for a 5-hr game

they should not have sent Posey home on that play but Tim Flannery probably said hell with it this is the World Series.

im OK with it though he did take a run off the board.

good reasoning by both of you

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