San Francisco Sweeps In Series Supremacy

That was quick. The Giants didn't even seem to break a sweat except for some brief extra inning action in game four and anytime Pablo Sandoval was forced to do light jogging. Speaking of Kung Fu Panda, Sandoval took home the MVP and new Corvette after his three homer game one and .500/.529/1.125 series slasher.

Of course the Giants won the World Series. They only faced elimination in three straight games against the Reds. They obviously knew 36-year-old Marco Scutoro just needed a change of scenery from COORS FIELD to become a great hitter. The Giants managed to lull the Tigers pitching into a false sense of security by including Gregor Blanco and Brandon Crawford in their line-ups. And that Barry Zito versus Justin Verlander duel did end up being pretty mismatched just not in the way everybody expected. So congratulations to the San Francisco Giants for proving baseball is a crazy game. An incredible, hard to predict, crazy game.

I mean, I predicted the Giants would win the World Series before the playoffs so don't pull a hamstring rushing to pat me on the back. But the Giants weren't even a popular pick when they got into the World Series according to the research I did by going to ESPN.com. Just five of the 28 ESPN baseball type people had the Giants defeating the Tigers. If my math is correct, that makes me smrter than Keith Law.

The Tigers extra rest and ability to line up their dominant pitching rotation didn't prove to be an advantage. Prince Fielder hit a .071/.133/.071 line so poor Brandon Wood snickered at it. On the bright side, Drew Smyly and Gerald Laird let Angel Pagan steal second base in game two and now we all get free tacos at Taco Bell on 10/30 between 2 pm to 6 pm. Baseball, American as free tacos. Is what my grandpa always says.

It was an impressive run by the Giants but they were kind of jerks by ending the season so abruptly. We'll miss you, baseball.

Curveballs for Jobu 5/27/11

Curveballs for Jobu is Offbasepercentage's daily trip around the ballparks.

Today's honorary bat boy is Chris Clapinski.

Marlins 1, Giants 0.
So.. Anibal Sanchez is good at throwing baseballs. Sanchez tossed the complete game shutout and struck out 8. He's sporting a 2.60/2.74/3.03 (ERA/FIP/xFIP) pitching line now and if Hanley ever starts to hit, the Fish might be scary. The offensively starved Giants (170 runs scored is only better than the Twins 164) aren't off to a good start after losing their best hitter, Buster Posey, for the rest of the season. Giants pitchers must be thrilled.

Phillies 10, Reds 4.
Chase Utley hit his first (of many) home run of 2011. I celebrated with a $13 rum and coke at some new bar on Bourbon Street. In related news, Bourbon Street still sucks.

Cubs 9, Mets 3.
The Mets are getting terrible at an exciting pace. R.A. Dickey made it through 2.2 shutout innings before injuring himself trying to cover first base. Then the Mets bullpen tossed some batting practice and Carlos Zambrano had a better day at the plate than any Met hitter. July can't get here soon enough for Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran.

Red Sox 14, Tigers 1.
Rain ended this one right when the Tigers were going to make a comeback with their 6 remaining outs. Casper Wells had some big plans for the bottom of the 9th. Remember how terrible Carl Crawford was? That's all over now. He hit 2 triples and raised his OPS 103 points in 2 days.

White Sox 3, Blue Jays 1.
The White Sox managed to win despite Adam Dunn's trips to the dish. Dunn wore the golden sombrero as he's really starting to ramp up his year of suck. Jose Bautista failed to homer making the Blue Jays 48% less interesting.

Other games, but down here...
Diamondbacks 6, Rockies 3.
A's 4, Angels 3.
Orioles 6, Royals 5 (12).

How Cody Ross Got Me Slapped

And slapped I got. Last night. My office mates here at the Off Base headquarters in New Orleans, all of the noncontributing members, have a guilty pleasure in How I Met Your Mother. Actually, it's less of a guilty pleasure and more of an obsession. Naturally, we now are in the habit of making slap bets. Fans of the know what I'm talking about and if you haven't seen it, I'm sure you can figure out what a slap bet is.

I made a slap bet with with a friend of mine after Cody Ross' offensive outburst in the NLCS. I didn't think Ross would hit another post season home run while my friend became the biggest Cody Ross fan outside of his parents. Ross hit 14 home runs and slugged .413 this season with the Marlins and the Giants. Surely Ross' NLCS MVPness was just another example of baseball's randomness, right?

Nope. Ross hit a solo shot in the top of the 7th off Colby Lewis and the slap bet was over. While I anxiously awaited the inevitable slap, I cursed Cody Ross with every profane word I could think of and consumed a fair amount of Jager and rum. I vaguely remember the slap so it's safe to assume I had properly numbed myself. Oh alcohol, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.

I might have made a follow up slap bet about Ross hitting another home run. I'll have to check the transcripts from last night.

Pat Burrell's World Series Golden Sombrero

A golden sombrero is awarded to a player who manages to strike out four times in a single game (real golden sombrero not included). It's quite the feat unless you're Ryan Howard or Mark Reynolds. Unfortunately, cycles and no-hitters are all the rage nowadays. Not for me, though. I will pour over the box scores to bring you the finest at swinging and missing.

I thought I was finished writing up Golden Sombreros for the year but I must have forgotten that Pat Burrell was still on a Major League roster that was actually in the post season. Burrell, who plays a bizarre left field, has struggled a bit in the World Series so far to the tune of a .000/.182/.000 line. He brought out the big bat last night and failed to do anything with it in the Giants 4-2 loss. Let's take a look at Burrell's night of futility, right after we take a look at this dog in a mini-sombrero...

Ah, that's better.

Top 1st: Burrell struck out swinging against Colby Lewis. Burrell, ever the master of efficiency, swung and missed thrice while watching only one pitch go for a ball.

Top 4th: Burrell struck out swinging against Lewis again. This time he watched two strikes and went down swinging at the third pitch. Very effective.

Top 7th: Burrell struck out swinging against Lewis for the MTD Hat Trick. The coveted MTD Hat Trick is acquired when a batter strikes out three times, the same way against the same pitcher. I thought that was a pretty rare occurrence, I was wrong.

Top 9th: Burrell struck out swinging against Neftali Feliz. Feliz finally made a World Series appearance and all he did was retire the side while striking out a pair. Who knew Feliz was a dominant reliever?

The Offensive Juggernaut Known As The Giants

The funny part about this is that I actually used the offensive juggernaut known as the Giants tag to mock their pitiful lineup throughout the regular season. Turns out the joke was on me. The Giants have now scored 20 runs in the first two games of the World Series. And to my surprise, the Giants destruction of the Rangers pitching hasn't come from the bat of blog favorite Buster Posey. The Giants offensive outburst has come from the unlikely names such as Edgar Renteria, Juan Uribe, Aubrey Huff and Freddy Sanchez. Okay, maybe not Huff so much as he was a pretty good hitter during the regular season.

Still, I don't think anyone imagined the Giants would light up Cliff Lee in Game One and then pin nine runs on the Rangers bullpen in Game Two. Of course, Ron Washington has been managing his bullpen like a Golden Corral that was going in the red because Bengie Molina bought a season pass. Washington's refusal to use his best reliever, Neftali Feliz, in high leverage situations (or at all) continues to boggle everyone's mind.

Speaking of mind boggling, has anybody been watching Matt Cain this post season? He's now started three games and pitched 21.1 scoreless innings. Another scoreless 8 inning performance in Game Six (if necessary) would break Walter Johnson's record for shutout post season innings. Note: I didn't do any real research, I'm just going off of a Jayson Stark tweet that I hope I accurately remember. I'm awesome at journalism.

The Rangers will lean on Japanese League superstar Colby Lewis to cool off the hot bats of the Giants when the series resumes Saturday in Arlington. The Rangers can plug Big Daddy Vladdy back into the lineup as their DH which should help them offensively and defensively. Vlad still crushes lefty pitching so there is still a little hope for Rangers fans if he can get a few good swings against Jonathan Sanchez.

While I never got around to publishing my World Series prediction post, I had the Giants in six. If the Rangers don't turn it around soon, I might look bad for reinserting that pick here.

BBA NL Willie Mays Award Ballot

Baseball's award season is upon us and we finally have a vote that counts for something this year. We're proud members of the Baseball Blogger Alliance and they've been kind enough to give us ballots. The only thing the BBWAA ever gave us was a slide rule that only went to 4. Today we'll be unveiling our NL Willie Mays ballot for rookie of the year.

1. Buster Posey
Did any Off Base readers not see this coming? We might have given Posey more love than his parents this season. The argument for Jason Heyward over Posey basically boils down to Heyward's extra 180 plate appearances. It's a valid point. And if Posey had caught 103 games instead of playing 30 games at first base, I doubt if it would even be an issue. Either way, Posey hit 18 home runs and .305/.357/.505 for the year. If Heyward wins, and he has a strong case, it's because freakin' Bengie Molina managed to block Posey from playing time. Literally, it's hard to get around his roundness. Posey finished the season with a 3.9 WAR and lost some UZR points when he played out of position at first base. Hey Rays, how's it working out passing on Posey for Tim Beckham? I thought so.

2. Jason Heyward
All the Braves' 20-year-old outfielder did was start the season and be their most productive player. He hit 18 homers and .277/.393/.456 while playing pretty good right field (4.6 UZR). Did I mention he's 20-years-old? He's a beast in the making and the corner stone of the youth movement in Atlanta. Heyward put up a 4.9 WAR and it's only going to get better from there. His .376 wOBA suggests that you better start penciling him in for multiple All Star Games. My Atlanta friends probably won't like me putting Heyward second but most of them are illiterate and I doubt they'll have anyone read this to them. Haha, your public school system sucks.

3. Jaime Garcia
If Garcia pitched in the American League and posted a 2.70/3.41/3.73 pitching line, he'd run away from the rest of the rookie pack. Instead he had to battle Mike Stanton and his 22 home runs for the final spot on my NL ballot. He pitched 163.1 innings of 3.2 WAR which firmly places him as a solid third behind Chris Carpenter and Adam Wainwright in the Cardinals' rotation.

The One Where I Gush About Buster Posey

It's no secret that we play favorites over here at Off Base and Buster Posey is easily one of our favorites. Derwood was turned on to Posey back when he was playing high school baseball in Georgia. I can't easily explain my fascination with him except he's really good at the baseball. He's so good in fact, I'm willing to overlook that his real first name is Gerald. Shame on you Posey parents, Gerald is a 60-year-old's name. The hot hitting catcher is on his way to taking the Giants to the playoffs whether the rest of the offense likes it or not. We'll have a vote for the BBA's regular season awards and, spoiler, our top pick will be Posey. The National League is loaded with potential superstar rookies but here's why we love San Fran's catcher...

1. He plays a premium position. Go look up how many franchise clean-up hitters were catchers. Go ahead, I'll wait. Also, I'm too lazy to do that research on my own. But I assume there aren't that many and Posey certainly looks like he's heading in the right direction.

2. Posey is hitting .323/.370/.524 with 16 home runs and gets very little help from the rest of his lineup as a 23-year-old. His main competition for NL ROY is Jason Heyward who, in 177 more plate appearances, is hitting .285/.400/.472 with 2 more homers while playing right field. That's basically a month worth of more service time. More on that later. Heyward probably deserves a little extra credit though because he's putting that line together as a 20-year-old.

3. Buster was temporarily and ludicrously blocked at catcher by Bengie Molina. The Giants eventually jettisoned Molina to clear the way for Posey behind the dish. I'd love to tell you that all of his receiving skills were vastly underrated but UZR doesn't work for catchers and I'm no scout. But it doesn't seem like the Giants will have to move him off of his position and he can't be any worse than Mike Piazza was, right?

4. What say you, nerdy stats? Heyward is out WAR-ing Posey 4.6-3.9 but, again, WAR is a counting stat so Heyward's extra playing time certain gives him a boost. Then there's the defense issue. UZR rates Heyward as an average right fielder while Posey takes a little hit from UZR for the time he played first base. So far, Posey appears to doing just fine in the catching categories that Fangraphs uses for WAR. Heyward is beating out Posey in wOBA too but just barely at .384 to .378. They're BABIPs are a wash, Posey .339 and Heyward .343. They're even deadlocked with 136 OPS+.

It's really close and both are going to be superstars along with Mike Stanton who might hit 40 home runs next year. There's plenty of time left to decide the ROY and both Posey and Hewyard are still in playoff races. I'm not sure how this evolved into a ROY post but at least all I'll have to do for my official ROY post is change around a few numbers. You're welcome, future me.

Curveballs for Jobu

Curveballs for Jobu is Off Base Percentage's daily trip around the ballparks.

Today's honorary bat boy: Mike LaVailliere

All right boys and girls and mainly shut-ins, I'll be handling Jobu for Derwood today while he's out having fun. I lost the Rock, Paper, Scissor contest when I fired off double birds and claimed Stone Cold Steve Austin beats Rock. Then I got disqualified for making a bad wrestling joke. Let's try to shake that off and go to some baseball.

Nationals 6, Mets 5. Strasburg got off to a rough start walking 3 in the first inning. He made it through 5 innings and allowed 2 runs while striking out 5. The Nats would get him off the hook and win it when K-Rod completely melted down in the 9th. K-Rod pitched 1/3 of an inning and gave up 3 walks, 3 hits and 3 runs. And had this to say...

"The freakin' worst performance I ever had in my entire life," K-Rod said. "I should be ashamed of myself. So embarrassing."

I'd like add that you should also be ashamed of that beard.

Tigers 6, Mariners 1. Verlander cruised through 7 innings while striking out 10 and only allowing 1 earned run. The win moves the Tigers into a first place tie in the Central. The loss gets Cliff Lee one game closer to getting his escape from Seattle.

Yankees 11, Blue Jays 3. The Yanks exploded for all 11 runs in the 3rd inning led by an improbable grand slam by Brett Gardner. Even Teixeira chipped in going 2-3 with 2 RBI. His batting average then skyrocketed to .236. Kendry Morales still has a higher WAR than Tex despite missing over an entire month. Just sayin. Jose Bautista hit his major league leading 21st home run of the season. When reached for comment, Chris Shelton mumbled some expletives and said, "It won't last."

Royals 4, Angels 2. Bruce Chen retired the first 18 Angels he faced and Jeff Mathis hit a home run. Nothing in this game made any sense. In fact, you had to watch this game through one of those pinhole eclipse viewers to prevent going blind. Wilson Betemit, 0-4.

Giants 11, Rockies 8. The offensive juggernaut know as the San Francisco Giants roughed up NL Cy Young leader Ubaldo Jimenez to the tune of 7 earned runs over 6 innings. Zito wasn't much better allowing 6 runs over 5+ innings. But the next 4 Rockies' pitchers were outclassed by the next 5 Giants' pitchers to earn the win.