A few random thoughts about The Series:
Bumgarner looked as good as he ever has tonight. The fastball velocity is still a little inconsistent from start to start, but he has such a long, lazy arm action with 230 lbs behind it that the arm speed doesn’t match the actual speed of the pitch and the ball gets on the hitter quick. Plus, when he’s right, he’s always around the plate and he pounds the inside part of the plate down and in to righties as well as any lefty in the game today.
Prince Fielder scares the shit out of me coming home. He has some history with the Giants from his Milwaukee days. He lit up one of their backup catchers on a play at the plate where the guy didn’t have the ball and wasn’t looking at Fielder. Then the whole homerun celebration/beanball incident from 2009-2010. And he could have gone through Posey like a Pamplonan bull on that play at the plate tonight. Posey handled it much better than last year against Cousins.
Fister showed me something tonight. The bastard took a fucking missile off the back of his head and he stayed in and matched Bumgarner pitch-for-pitch for 6.
That great bunt by Blanco that loaded the bases in the 7th was a big play, but it might have been detrimental for the Giants. It loaded the bases and kept a force in a play, which Crawford then hit into for a doubleplay that scored one run and left a runner at 3rd with 2 outs.
If Blanco simply bunts and advances the runners, it’s runners on second and third with one out and Crawford probably gets walked to load the bases for a potential inning-ending doubleplay. But Theriot would pinch-hit and Leyland would bring in Dotel, who sucks fucking cock and might have given up a hit to a guy like Theriot, who won’t hit the ball out of the park but isn’t going to strike out and isn’t going to swing at bad pitches. A base hit there plates two runners instead of just the one that Crawford knocked in. I suppose in the end I’d still rather have bases loaded with no outs and a worse matchup than bases loaded with one out and a preferential matchup. Dotel can’t throw a strike sometimes, so he might have walked him, and probably more likely than Smyley walking Crawford.
If the Giants win this Series and they win another one after that within the next couple years, they’re a legitimate baseball dynasty, the first since the Yankees of the 1990’s. I think they’d probably have to win more than just three, or play in at least two more before they’d be considered one of the better dynasties though.
The weather report for this weekend in Detroit is for really cold temperatures. I’m not sure if there’s any possibility of rain, but if there is and a game is rained out, it would allow the Tigers to come back with Verlander as early as Game 3 if there’s more than a day’s postponement. Probably an unlikely scenario, but as it stands now he’d have to go on 3 days’ rest to start Game 4 if there’s no postponements, which means that he could start Game 4 at least on regular rest if there DOES happen to be a delay. I liked the Giants’ chances against Verlander in Game 1, but I wouldn’t expect much from them against him in a second start.
Of course, if the Giants win on Saturday behind Vogelsong, the Tigers would HAVE to respond with Verlander on 3 days’ rest against Matt Cain in Game 4 to stave off elimination. I don’t give a fuck what happened in his last start or who the fuck the Tigers have lined up for Game 4 otherwise, if you have a pitcher like Verlander you throw him with your back up against the wall no matter what. That’s what he’s there for if he can’t get you out to an early lead with a dominant start in Game 1. Now his job is to save the Series for the Tigers and the only way he can do it is to start Game 4 if the Giants win Game 3.