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Fandom of the game itself provides a few reliable rewards. If you love baseball, you can simultaneously enjoy the beauty of a well-pitched ballgame and a game-winning three-run shot. Indeed, both things represent classic features, the stuff of victory and of defeat, now and forever. We all inevitably happen upon other elements, of course, and sample and promote them as a matter of discretion: bullpen hyper-specialization, little ball, the speed game, even the virtual oxymoronics of "productive outs." But the mechanics of the game reward the same things now that it did five years ago or 50: great starting pitching and three-run homers.

So Monday night, we got those things and essentially only those things. There was little space for some dubious feat of scraptitude, almost nothing for the "little things." Just the big things, showing up across a canvas painted blank by matching zeroes through six. This was not a game determined by bunts or boners, umpiring or in-game options. It was simple, short, and decisive, and whatever your rooting interest, in its zen-like simplicity, it was glorious. Tim Lincecum was all that, a pitch shy of an entirely regret-free ballgame.

Cliff Lee wasn't really just one pitch away, but he wasn't that far from it, and a lot closer to putting this series back in San Francisco than history is likely to remember.* At least until he faced Edgar Renteria, perhaps one batter Lee particularly didn't want to see with two men on, because Renteria had managed three extra-base hits in 20 career at-bats against the power lefty, while striking out just twice. But Renteria was merely the hero of the moment in a lineup in which just one of the batters in Monday night's lineup had a historical track record for struggling against Lee in his career.

Indeed, if you want to move beyond the classical elements of brilliant moundsmanship and a decisive three-run homer, the leitmotiv of adaptability that you'll find threaded throughout the Giants' season showed up in Monday night's lineup card as well. Pat Burrell might have been a critical component to the Giants getting there, and even as the one batter who had struggled in his very few at-bats against Lee, he belonged in the lineup against this or any lefty. But Bruce Bochy didn't pretend the rest of the series hadn't happened—Burrell's track record mattered, so he was batting seventh in Game Five, as opposed to cleanup in Game One—as important as Burrell had been, even against a lefty, even with a career .237 ISO against southpaws.

Instead, hero-come-lately Cody Ross batted cleanup, and for as much as some brands of sabermetric orthodoxy preaches that lineup order doesn't matter, guess who wound up initiating the seventh-inning sequence? Admittedly, "good enough" and ex post facto rationalization makes for a fairly low standard by which to judge success. Even so, consider how the frame played out. If you were frightened of a double play in the seventh inning, little-ball fiends might take their satisfaction from Aubrey Huff dropping his first successful sac bunt with runners on first and second, and that's swell, but keep in mind, Bochy had already risked the chance of scoring any runs by having Juan Uribe hit away after Cody Ross' leadoff single. Uribe ranked among baseball's 20 deadliest rally killers when it came to delivering the deuce from the dish. Instead, Bochy did not get insipidly, prematurely tactical, and instead, he played for more than one run, even when taking his chances and having Huff sacrifice. The in-inning tactic was not to get one run, but to create a lead that was safe from a bases-empty mistake. That it was a mistake Lincecum would indeed make in the bottom half of the inning against Nelson Cruz only made Bochy's risk seem that much better in retrospect.

So, Burrell might have been seen as the more likely guy to generate the big inning, but Renteria's track record for making contact, and particularly for making hard contact against Lee, could be taken as confirmation of the value of taking the chance. Subsequently fretting over whether Renteria should have been given a free pass would ignore that Aaron Rowand also had a good measure of career success against Lee, having hit .280/.379/.560 against him in 29 at-bats. It would be fair to observe that Rowand isn't the same player today as the younger version who accumulated a track record against Lee, but you could say much the same about Renteria.

In the end, I'd suggest that the Giants' lineup had the virtue of its interchangeability. In picking heroes for a week or a month, a series or a season, whether you want to nominate Ross or Burrell, Renteria or Rowand, or players as fundamentally different yet simultaneously valuable as Juan Uribe and Buster Posey, the Giants had enough power up and down the order that there was no shortage of potentially dangerous matchups, because whatever the Giants' lineup lacked in terms of overpowering greatness, it made up for with an absence of easy outs.

That's a worthwhile takeaway, because the contrast with what, among several things, went wrong for the Rangers shouldn't be ignored. Josh Hamilton's opportunity to shine on the national stage with everything at stake was decisively eclipsed by Giants pitching. If Vladimir Guerrero wanted to add a ring to a career already laden with highlights, he had to settle for joining Hamilton on the list of missing men. The Rangers batter determined to do the most damage was rookie Mitch Moreland, buried at the bottom of the order between the guy with the sub-.300 OBP and the leadoff man who barely slugged .300. Where Bochy was tailoring his lineup cards game by game, the Rangers' Ron Washington rode his convictions to their bitter ending, another minor source of disappointment among a series in which so many elective decisions didn't work out very well for Texas. It was bittersweet to see Neftali Feliz finally come into a tight game before the ninth, but perhaps you can take his appearance at the last instant as evidence of a hard lesson learned.

Despite all that, Rangers fans should keep their hope and faith invested in the likelihood that this first World Series loss represents just the first of what should be several years' worth of bites at the post-season apple. However much winning in the postseason is a crapshoot (or not), this was a risky venture to exploit the initial breakthrough of what could and should be a brilliant future. Getting Lee in July, to capitalize on this moment and this opportunity, and then not realizing it, is not cause for despair. Instead, it was the action of an organization with the guts to go for it, but also one armed with the capacity to keep going for it. As much as you can anticipate that some of this season's Rangers heroes are just passing through, this is a team worth rooting for. The present belongs to the Giants, but in the competitive dynamics of the present, it's easy to see how tomorrow more likely belongs to the Rangers.

But here and now, whether you're a Giants exec or a Giants fan, there's no cause for regret. Certainly, a future populated with this rotation and Buster Posey is going to be cause for joy in the city by the bay for years to come. The fact that this happiness will forever be flavored with the memory of a season populated with little, successful risks and strokes of wire-related good fortune, some might call destiny. I'll settle for describing it as good fun, and evidence that however many preconceived notions—like the old lesson about winning with three-run homers and good pitching—can be confirmed in any one ballgame, and any one season can teach you to look at any one player, manager, or general manager in a different way.

Which is to say, for men as different as Bochy and Brian Sabean, or Renteria and Uribe and Ross, I expect we all look at them somewhat differently now. To Sabean, credit is due for lining up the elements of success, either via the draft or his scrabbling desperation in shoring up his roster as frequently as he did. Maybe history would have been different if Jose Guillen hadn't hurt himself, keeping Ross from his Gene Tenace-like star turn in the postseason; we will never know. Bochy will forever be the skipper who tried almost anything in the pursuit of victory, despite a roster not exactly replete with tactical options; it's easy to offer the aside that a starting rotation this good affords a skipper all sorts of freedom to take chances on offense, but not everyone would, and this was somewhat consistent with his demonstrated capacity for risk from the regular season. Whether his actions in October inform how he uses or structures his rosters in the future will make for interesting watching.

But most of all, as Casey put it best, they couldn'a dunnit without the players, and while that rotation deserves pride of place, and Ross' October phenomenon may rank with Tenace's '72 or Ray Knight's '86, the guys I can't help thinking about are Uribe and Renteria. If Renteria was once a great player while Uribe never earned that label, there's something simple and rewarding in seeing both of them play critical roles in one improbable team's success, and provide ready reminders that not every player who performs past-peak in his career has anything to apologize for, and that there's value to be found in players who wind up somewhere short of stardom. People will take their symbols where they can find them, but where the 2010 Giants are concerned, I probably found mine on the left side of their infield. To both of them, I feel a debt of thanks for the reminder that mere greatness isn't necessary to do great things, and perhaps that, if anything, is the Giants' legacy.

* Leave it to his representation to provide reminders to Lee's suitors this winter. You can weep for Texas, if not for Marse Cliff.

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robustyoungsoul
11/02
Man, baseball is just the best.

Cheers to BP for another great year of coverage.
bbienk01
11/02
Its been a wild ride. Thanks Cristina for the great writing.

KNBR during the games (the mute button is your friend) and your analysis made a dream post-season that much more enjoyable.
ckahrl
11/02
Thanks bbienk01, much appreciated. Thank you for being here, and see you next. :)
TonyMollica
11/02
When you're talking about what batters have done in their career against Lee; how much does it matter that Lee has been a "different" pitcher the last two years than he was in the rest of his caree?
ckahrl
11/02
Hard for me to say, given that we're talking about wee bits of playing time, but then I'd expand that from two years to three. Then again, Lee's career segments rather neatly into his initial trio of years as an Indians' rotation regular, his 2007 breakdown, and his transformation into one of the game's best pitchers. That initial three-year period, when first he was walking too many guys, and then his strikeout rates dropped into the pedestrian, makes for a fascinating contrast.
TonyMollica
11/02
I had a typo and the last word should have read career.
beanpj
11/02
Beautifully said, Christina.

You remain this Giants fan's favorite baseball writer on the planet. Thanks for an(other) outstnding year.
ckahrl
11/02
Thanks, beanpj, I'm gratified by the compliment, and already looking forward to the next one.
nickgieschen
11/02
Jeez, that second paragraph almost had me tearing up.
junglechef
11/02
Christine, I have enjoyed your writing and your views on the game the entire season. This column hits me deeply as I have been another of those lifelong Giants fans who felt that he would never get to feel as I do today. My Dad took me to my first ever baseball game at Seals Stadium against the Phillies in 1958 and I have been waiting ever since.

Your writing today was, as always, spot on and it did of course hit me right in the heart and soul of where I live. The last paragraph brought tears to my eyes.
Thank you so much for a great season

David L Mahler
www.chefofthejungle.blogspot.com
Justice
11/02
Christine, I could not agree more with your observation about the underrated Juan Uribe. The MLB Network has been a godsend for the simple reason that they do not ignore players like Uribe, Cody Ross or Edgar Renteria -- players who have contributed to teams whose end result was greater than the sum of their parts. Too much of the national baseball press -- notably ESPN -- tends to ignore anything that happens in the game outside of the northeast corridor of the U.S. Just to show how valuable Uribe and his teammate Aaron Rowand have been in their careers notwithstanding their obscurity, consider the following stats:

Uribe's teams that have made the postseason (the '05 White Sox, '08 White Sox and '10 Giants) have a combined post-season record of 23-8.

Coming in just behind that stellar mark are Rownad's teams that have made the post-season (the '05 White Sox, '07 Phillies and '10 Giants). Those teams have a combined post-season record of 22-8.

I cannot imagine a time when ESPN's Baseball Tonight would ever offer little more than polite, token praise to Uribe or Rowand but those players have been stalwarts for some of the excellent teams in this (or any other) era. They should be recognized for their contributions.
padresprof
11/02
Another fine year for baseball and BP. Yet again BP provided the data for its readers to comfortably predict the outcome of the World Series. Yes, the BP Prospective Hit List told us the favorites for the NL and AL pennants - i.e., the lowest ranked teams in each league- Rangers for AL, Giants for NL. And given the fact that the Giant end the season 7 slots beneath the Rangers on the List, this World Series wasn't going to be close - a blow out by the Giants in 5.(1)

So hats off the BP for knowing their stuff - especially reminding us how the misfits and castoffs of the Giants clearly had the better team chemistry, which was the primary reason for their success.

/end sarcasm

(1) For conformation of this prediction see comments the Oct 26 Preview of the series http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=12317 )
dcarroll
11/02
Thank you to Christina for another lovely article.

My family moved to the Bay Area in 1959, and I rooted for the Giants teams of the 60s. These teams included not only Mays, Marichal, and McCovey but also the likes of Len Gabrielson, Hal Lanier, and Chuck Hiller, as starters no less. The ineptitude of the scrubs was matched only by a front office that made an impressive series of bone-headed moves.

Although I enjoyed watching the 2010 team beat some seemingly more talented teams with shrewd moves and tactical genius, the experience was also imbued with a sense of disbelief. The Giants--a scrappy team that wins with intelligence and teamwork? Really?

harderj
11/03
Not to mention Alan Mitchell Edward George Patrick Henry ("Dirty Al") Gallagher :-).
bb10kbb10k
11/02
SWEET.
rawagman
11/03
For a kid in Toronto, who improbably grew up idolizing Will Clark, this year has been glorious. I even got out to San Francisco and to Phone Company Park for the first time - Cain shut out the Dodgers in early August on Sunday evening to complete a sweep. These playoffs have affirmed this guy's fandom, and BP has been a crucial part every step of the way - writing, analyzing (not always both) and carrying the conversation. Thanks for everything, Christina and to all of the other BP writers and staffers.
Justice
11/03
Christina, sorry for the typo and inadvertantly changing your name to Christine.
HarleyBK3
11/05
This series was also enjoyable to watch simply because it reminded us of many of the ground-floor principles that BP has taught us over the years. Specifically, this five-game "romp" of the Rangers was a robust example of how important luck is in a short series. San Francisco's pitchers were clearly beneficiaries of a favorable BABIP, carrying a number of .215 for the series. On the other hand, Rangers pitchers were doomed by a merely "to be expected" BABIP of .294. This is not intended to take anything away from the Giants pitchers, as luck has probably been the key factor in the vast majority of World Series Championships. Of course anyone who expects SF pitchers to carry their World Series "grit" and "clutch" skill set to the 2011 season based on a week of TV baseball would be best served to temper those expectations.