San Francisco Giants are World Series Champions!

MLB

One more time. San Francisco Giants are World Series Champs! That sounds so effing sweet.  Growing up as a sports fan in the bay area, I know that we all have been championship starved.  I was too young to take in the 49ers' or A's championships, but not young enough to live without the expectations of winning it all.  The Giants have been the closest to my heart but also the most painful.  2002 took part of my soul, but 2010 gave it back.  After the series, I was asked how I felt.  While expected emotions of excitement and elation occurred, I was surprised to find that "relief" was high on my list.   Finally, I am able to let go of my bitterness towards the Angels and steer away from Bonds immortality.  When you expect to win, strive to win, nothing satisfies that until you do win.  Sure, you can make temporary solutions; winning seasons, postseason appearances, MVPs, Cy Youngs, but all of those are rooted in the hope of a championship.  If winning is the end all, you better find a way to achieve it.

Defense wins Championships.

The 2010 Giants won because of Defense, hands down.  Every team they matched up against had a more formidable offense, but that did not matter because the Giants had the superior D.  To clarify, in baseball I define defense to encompass all that you do in every half inning that your team is out on the field.  This includes pitching and fielding.  Offense, on the other hand, is all you do to score runs in your half inning of batting, including base running.  San Fran was able to scrap together whatever results they could in their half innings of O and that was good enough to compliment their D. Simply put, they dominated defensively.

It doesn't matter how many runs you put up or how often you score, (even if it takes more than 9 innings) the only thing that distinguishes who wins is run differential.   Defense is the best and steadfast way to do this.  Not letting the other team score guarantees a win.  Baseball can't end in ties (except crappy exhibition ones) and nothing is more valuable than a big fat zero in the other team's run column.  Interestingly, there are no guarantees offensively.  You score 7, they can score 9. 10 you, 11 them.  All day.  No number can match the guarantee of that defensive zero.

The structure of baseball allows an effective separation of Church and State, I mean offense and defense.  Unlike many other sports, in baseball, defense cannot be directly influenced by your own offense.  You can't score negative runs and you cannot give up runs unless you are playing defense.  An inning ending double play (a far too popular entree of Giants) hurts your chances, but a pick 6 is punishing.  Other sports are not structured to keep that guarantee of a dominant defense.  See the Chargers special teams this season or anyone who plays quarterback for a Urlacher led defense.  Enough cross-sports talk.  In case your interested, I do plan on ranking the relative impact of defense across sports in a future post.

Back to baseball and my loving G-men.  The most difficult opponent this season was the Padres.  I'll give you one chance: Guess what the Padres did well?  An incorrect answer means you are illiterate. Zero tolerance if you've read this far.  Furthermore, The Phillies presented the toughest challenge for the Giants this postseason.  The reason for this, I'll be more specific. Roy Halladay (my sweet 1st round fantasy pick) and Roy Oswalt.

Mathematically: 2Roys < a Freak + a Cain

It helps if you throw another variable into the equation.  Chase Utley.  Yes, the UCLA product who is a juggernaut at second base.  Before you get offended that I brought an offensive player into a post about defense, remember what I mentioned about D; fielding.  Utley was booting balls and killing the phrase "dropping it like it's hot." Even Jimmy Rollins' (Bay Area!) outstanding defensive effort couldn't make up Utley's defensive miscues on the Phillies' overall D.  I find Utley's mistakes forgivable only because he didn't learn defense from Ben Howland.  Errors are often the ignored column, but oh man, are they important come postseason.  Bill Buckner anyone? And for the Giants faithful, Jose Cruz Jr.  Defensive excellence is either overlooked or comes far too easily in the marathon of the regular season.  The bottle-necking pressures of the postseason squeeze out the truly great defenses from the ones that have just managed to get by.  The greater defense won the pennant and honestly, the series wasn't even close. Despite overwhelming "expert" opinion favoring the Rangers to win with their vaunted offense and the "unstoppable" Cliff Lee, the Giants' team defense shut them down and shut everyone else up.

I say let 'em keep believing in their offensive fallacies en route to more Giants championships and more wasted Yankee money. But if you want to win championships, follow Journey as Giants fan did this fall and "Don't Stop, Believing..." in Defense."