The A's are gone, but not forgotten (sort of).
This is the time of year that media outlets both love and hate at the same time: one of the teams you cover has made it to a championship round. In one instance it's a great opportunity to showcase your newspaper or Web site and fill it with preview material, feature stories, analysis, human interest stuff, general nonsense. But these moments are also abhorred by those same folks because it's chaos too.
I've covered three College World Series, two in Razorback-mad Arkansas, when myself and our co-beat writer were run ragged in the days leading up to the CWS. Our editor was relentless: "Do this story, do that story. Can we get this in? How about this graph? What kind of pictures can you set up?" It's frantic, it's stressful, it mostly sucks. The actual games are cathartic because it's the only time when your boss can't hound you, much, because the game is playing and you have to, like, cover the game.
So it's no surprise that the A's are being dragged to this San Francisco party by the scribes and talking heads of the Bay Area looking for fresh material and schtick. But the Athletics are barely the Giants' plus one in this bash; more like the nerdy friend who can break into his or her parents' liquor cabinet and sneak some whiskey out of the house and add something crazy. There's been so much hoopla with the Giants -and it's tough to deny its justification- it feels more like six months rather than two weeks ago the Athletics were sharing the October spotlight. Now they are just a convenient space-filling sidebar for the team that pushed Detroit to the limit in the American League Division series, while the big, bad Yankees died like dogs in the championship series.
Hey Tigers: you guys played in Oakland and praised the crowd noise? Expecting that from the AT&T Park campers?
What say you, Brandon Moss? You faced -and lost to- Justin Verlander and the Tigers twice. How do you see the Giants faring against him?
And BoMel, Derek Norris and Tommy Milone: how good are these Tigers? What's the recipe for beating these cats? Or almost beating them like you guys?
OK, to the pick. Really quick parallel is I'm thinking 2007. The Colorado Rockies were the hottest team in baseball. They stormed to a 14-1 finish, including a one-game playoff win over San Diego. Colorado swept Philadelphia and Arizona in two playoff series, and if you're counting at home that's 20 wins in 21 games, 2002 Athletics-ish. Then the Rockies waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Nine days from the end of the NLCS until Game 1 of the World Series. The Boston Red Sox had to scrap and claw from 3-1 down in the ALCS against Cleveland. And what a comeback, Boston outscoring the Indians 30-5 in Games 5, 6 and 7 to win. Then after just two days rest, weary Boston routed rested Colorado in a four-game sweep.
Things are a little less dramatic this time around. The Tigers will have only been off for five days since finishing off the Yankees, and the Rockies' World Series Game 1 starter in 2007 was Jeff Francis. And he was not Verlander, who gets the ball tonight in Game 1 and gives the Tigers a great shot to get out to a quick lead (you know, like Cincinnati and St. Louis did on the road in San Francisco). But the Giants' situation was very similar to the Ought-seven Sox. The Giants, even with a lot of new faces, are just a couple years removed from a World Series title (Boston won in 2004, S.F. in 2010). Like the Red Sox, the Giants dominated the last three games of the NLCS rallying from a 3-1 series deficit.
And here's another bad omen for the Tigers, and unfortunately it ties the Athletics to this historical tidbit:
But baseball trends have been thrown out the window by the Giants in the playoffs, so the Tigers' dominant starting pitching, Verlander possibly being able to throw three times, and the potential of big bats like Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder breaking out against the Giants' somewhat inconsistent rotation gives Detroit a decent shot. But I can't see it, and it's not so much from crunching sabermetrics or questioning the Tigers' shaky bullpen or expecting Verlander to hit a rough stretch or Bruce Bochy out thinking Jim Leyland in the dugout.
The destiny darling Giants may as well call Hollywood producers while the iron is hot and pitch a script for a sequel to "Unstoppable". This is an orange and black Caltrain commuter without a conductor in the engine car running wild up the Peninsula. Said choo-choo is doomed to run over the Tigers at the end of the line at the Fourth Street station a couple blocks from AT&T Park. In the last round, character actors like Marco Scutaro and Barry Zito stole the screen time for the Giants. But the A-listers like Buster Posey and Matt Cain could channel their inner Denzel Washington and Chris Pine for this flick.
Being objective as I can possibly be in this difficult time for Oakland A's fans: Here. Goes. Nothing.
Giants in Six.
This is the time of year that media outlets both love and hate at the same time: one of the teams you cover has made it to a championship round. In one instance it's a great opportunity to showcase your newspaper or Web site and fill it with preview material, feature stories, analysis, human interest stuff, general nonsense. But these moments are also abhorred by those same folks because it's chaos too.
I've covered three College World Series, two in Razorback-mad Arkansas, when myself and our co-beat writer were run ragged in the days leading up to the CWS. Our editor was relentless: "Do this story, do that story. Can we get this in? How about this graph? What kind of pictures can you set up?" It's frantic, it's stressful, it mostly sucks. The actual games are cathartic because it's the only time when your boss can't hound you, much, because the game is playing and you have to, like, cover the game.
So it's no surprise that the A's are being dragged to this San Francisco party by the scribes and talking heads of the Bay Area looking for fresh material and schtick. But the Athletics are barely the Giants' plus one in this bash; more like the nerdy friend who can break into his or her parents' liquor cabinet and sneak some whiskey out of the house and add something crazy. There's been so much hoopla with the Giants -and it's tough to deny its justification- it feels more like six months rather than two weeks ago the Athletics were sharing the October spotlight. Now they are just a convenient space-filling sidebar for the team that pushed Detroit to the limit in the American League Division series, while the big, bad Yankees died like dogs in the championship series.
Hey Tigers: you guys played in Oakland and praised the crowd noise? Expecting that from the AT&T Park campers?
What say you, Brandon Moss? You faced -and lost to- Justin Verlander and the Tigers twice. How do you see the Giants faring against him?
And BoMel, Derek Norris and Tommy Milone: how good are these Tigers? What's the recipe for beating these cats? Or almost beating them like you guys?
OK, to the pick. Really quick parallel is I'm thinking 2007. The Colorado Rockies were the hottest team in baseball. They stormed to a 14-1 finish, including a one-game playoff win over San Diego. Colorado swept Philadelphia and Arizona in two playoff series, and if you're counting at home that's 20 wins in 21 games, 2002 Athletics-ish. Then the Rockies waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Nine days from the end of the NLCS until Game 1 of the World Series. The Boston Red Sox had to scrap and claw from 3-1 down in the ALCS against Cleveland. And what a comeback, Boston outscoring the Indians 30-5 in Games 5, 6 and 7 to win. Then after just two days rest, weary Boston routed rested Colorado in a four-game sweep.
Things are a little less dramatic this time around. The Tigers will have only been off for five days since finishing off the Yankees, and the Rockies' World Series Game 1 starter in 2007 was Jeff Francis. And he was not Verlander, who gets the ball tonight in Game 1 and gives the Tigers a great shot to get out to a quick lead (you know, like Cincinnati and St. Louis did on the road in San Francisco). But the Giants' situation was very similar to the Ought-seven Sox. The Giants, even with a lot of new faces, are just a couple years removed from a World Series title (Boston won in 2004, S.F. in 2010). Like the Red Sox, the Giants dominated the last three games of the NLCS rallying from a 3-1 series deficit.
And here's another bad omen for the Tigers, and unfortunately it ties the Athletics to this historical tidbit:
And this little fact: Three times in the past, the World Series has matched a team that went to Game 7 in the LCS against a club that swept its series. In all three instances, the team coming off a Game 7 win breezed to the championship.Boston swept Colorado in 2007, St. Louis chased Detroit in five games in 2006 and Orel Hershiser and the Dodgers beat Oakland in five games in 1988.
But baseball trends have been thrown out the window by the Giants in the playoffs, so the Tigers' dominant starting pitching, Verlander possibly being able to throw three times, and the potential of big bats like Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder breaking out against the Giants' somewhat inconsistent rotation gives Detroit a decent shot. But I can't see it, and it's not so much from crunching sabermetrics or questioning the Tigers' shaky bullpen or expecting Verlander to hit a rough stretch or Bruce Bochy out thinking Jim Leyland in the dugout.
The destiny darling Giants may as well call Hollywood producers while the iron is hot and pitch a script for a sequel to "Unstoppable". This is an orange and black Caltrain commuter without a conductor in the engine car running wild up the Peninsula. Said choo-choo is doomed to run over the Tigers at the end of the line at the Fourth Street station a couple blocks from AT&T Park. In the last round, character actors like Marco Scutaro and Barry Zito stole the screen time for the Giants. But the A-listers like Buster Posey and Matt Cain could channel their inner Denzel Washington and Chris Pine for this flick.
Being objective as I can possibly be in this difficult time for Oakland A's fans: Here. Goes. Nothing.
Giants in Six.
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