Giants Win the Pennant

This picture depicts the very moment in which the umpire called the third strike, where Ryan Howard was suddenly realizing that he has struck out looking, and where it's just dawning on Buster Posey that the Giants are going to the World Series.

Trying to think about how best organize my thoughts about this series. The national media has tried crafting a narrative of this series as it progressed and I think that the narrative falls short.

Beginning narrative: The Phillies have the best starting pitching in the majors. There was no way that the Giants could win against Halladay, Hamels, and Oswalt. The Giants offense is so bad that they will not be able to score against the Phillies.

This ignored that the Giants starting pitchers had an ERA of 1.00 in the NLDS against the Braves. Also, ignored that the Giants starting pitching had held opponents to 2 or fewer runs in 18 consecutive games in September, and that the overall pitching staff had the second best ERA in the majors. No one acknowledged that Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez, and Madison Bumgarner all had ERAs around 3.00 and that any Giants fan would tell you that Cain was more reliable than Lincecum this year.

As for the offense, Roy Halladay had never beaten the Giants in 4 career starts and had an ERA of 6.66 against them, including giving up 5 runs against the Giants at the beginning of the season. Not only had the Giants beaten each of the Phillies top 3 once this season, they also had beaten pitchers like Josh Johnson of the Marlins, Chad Billingsley of the Dodgers, and other aces. Yes, not a great offense, but nothing like the historical abomination that the media was reporting.

Middle of the series narrative: After the Phillies fell behind three games to one, the accepted wisdom was that the Phillies had beaten themselves in Game 4. Joe Posnanski of SI titled his column's "Manuel Decisions Backfire in Game 4," Mitch Williams on FOX immediately started criticizing the Phillies pitch selection, and other writers basically agreed that the Phillies had lost the game, as opposed to the Giants winning it. So, in Game 5, when Lincecum outpitches Halladay, but Sandoval and Huff both have errors in the three-run third inning...Oh, that's the Phillies winning the game! Not the Giants throwing it away.

And then came the Hagiography of Roy Halladay. After giving up 4 runs in game 1, everyone was talking about how it was a no brainer that Halladay should pitch game 4 on short rest, not game 5. And then in game 5, he didn't look sharp in his six innings and gave up 2 runs. Lincecum lost because his defense collapsed. Other than that, he was much sharper. But, no, Halladay is the guttiest, toughest player in the world!

And then after the Giants win in game 6...Harold Reynolds on MLB network said that this was one of the biggest upsets in sports history. Rob Neyer on ESPN said "The Giants played Game 6 just well enough to win. Which goes double for the entire NLCS. They scored 19 runs in six games; the Phillies scored 20. The Giants didn't outplay the Phillies, exactly. They did play the Phillies to a standstill." Joe Posnanski wrote "These are your National League Champion San Francisco Giants. They beat the Phillies 3-2 Saturday in the most improbable victory since, well, probably since Wednesday when they beat the Phillies by a run. And that was probably the most improbable victory since they beat Roy Halladay and the Phillies in Game 1 of this series by a run."

I'm sure there are a hundred more quotes like this out there. Basically, that the Giants shocked the world, they barely played well enough to win, and got just enough lucky breaks to beat the Phillies.

Here's what I say. The Giants have the best pitching staff in the majors. They completely handcuffed the best offense in the NL. Their offense is much better than advertised. At the beginning of the series they got clutch hits, but in game 6 they had 13 hits. 13 hits! They were getting on base, just not scoring that much. Plus, they were going against a very good pitching staff in their own right. Remember, they didn't eke past the Phillies in seven. They took the commanding 3-1 lead, they blew game 5, and then came right back and won on the road in an insane environment (nice on the Phillies fans for making sure to boo as the Giants celebrated after winning). That's a mentally tough team, that's the championship team, not the underdog scrappy team. Call them the underdog at your peril.