You can't say all that in 30 seconds in an elevator. ;)

John Barr joined the Giants in 2007 as head of scouting. While Lincecum was drafted under his predecessor, Bumgarner, Posey, Wheeler, etc. are all Barr's. Both Lincecum and Posey were Golden Spikes award winners, so it's a bit much to credit the team for going after them, but Bumgarner and Wheeler are major credits to Barr's draft philosophy.

Prior to Barr, Sabean had miserable drafts, seemingly out of spite; he even deliberately punted his first-round pick one year by signing the worthless free agent veteran Michael Tucker. It was the blossoming of 2002 draft first-rounder Matt Cain, who made the majors in 2005, that seems to have reminded Sabean of the value of first-round draft picks.

"Good team, got a little lucky" is indeed the highest compliment a team can get these days. Death to the Division Series.

You made me more aware of the razor-thin differences between teams in MLB which is why we, the fans, love our voodoo rationales, upside down rally caps and totally fictional analyses of outcomes... Baseball has always been the home of fiction lovers because we can imagine and dream absurd outcomes for insane reasons and think we are making great sense. WARPS, and stats notwithstanding. And we keep coming back, unchanged.

Bravo.

Zack Wheeler tears in my Giants fan eyes.

What I don't understand is why some fans get offended if you ever intimate that part of their team's success was luck-related. Given how often many fans blame their team's failures on bad luck, you would think that they would be willing recognize the opposite side of the luck coin.

All championship-winning teams are both good and fortunate. Saying this about the Giants is just boilerplate.

Here's my 30 second pitch:

The Giants drafted and developed stud starting pitchers and one of the best young player in baseball. Their deep teams played good defense, pitched well out of the bullpen and had a well-rounded skill set. They made some questionable investments in veterans, but many of these investments paid off. San Francisco provides a great geographic market from which to build a solid financial base and fan support. Great stadium combined with good and stable ownership, front office and on-field management.

"The Giants are like the Moneyball A's. They developed great, cheap pitching and got enough of an offense to win games."

I'm not sure you could say the Giants didn't field well in 2012. Maybe not in the regular season, but, if my memory serves me correctly, in the last 10 or so playoff and series games, they only gave up something like one run that didn't score on a ball over the fence. You can't run down a dinger, but the Giants' defense strangled their opposition in the postseason last year.

This "good not great but lucky" meme that surrounds much of the fan and pundit commentary about the 2010-2012 Giants is laughable. In one of the most competitive eras in baseball history the Giants, with basically the same exact pitching and coaching staffs + Posey have won Championships in 2 out of three years with an 86- win, largely Posey-less season sandwiched in between (gee the Giants sure were "lucky" that Scott Cousins veered left and plowed over their best player while he was a sitting duck). They went 22-9 over two postseasons against the best teams in baseball. What they did was remarkable, and the remarkable residue of design and a lot of roster and management continuity, not luck. Their performance hasn't really been matched a short period in the wild card era unless you count the Yankees, who operate with the luxury of a much higher payroll (is their large fan base and revenue stream "luck" moreso than the Giants reliance on other ways to win besides home runs?). The Cards and Sox have put up similar performances spread out over 4 years but not 3 like the Giants. Had Poseu not been injured in 2011 who is to say they wouldn't/couldn't have pulled off a trifecta? Maybe Giant critics should consider the possibility that the Giants have been unlucky to not advance 3 seasons in a row. When you repeatedly over course of years find gold at the trade deadline that other teams are missing out on (Burrell, Ross, Scutaro, Beltran) then its an organizational talent not a four leaf clover

Here's your 30-seconds:

It turns out that pitching and defense really do win championships. Now do whatever you like with your remaining 15 seconds.

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Or, alternatively:

Did exactly what the Rays did in terms of drafting and finding undervalued talent to build around a brilliant young nucleus, except had an extra 20mil and a beautiful stadium instead of the Rays' Tropicana Dumphole.

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It's not really that simple, but I think you're missing a key point looking at teams who picked 3 straight 10+ win players. How many of those teams got anywhere near 10 WAR out of those players IN THEIR FIRST SIX SEASONS?