2014 World Series thread

The Royals have played at ATT before. You mean this group of outfielders?

 

Right field gives everyone fits. You are either cheating toward the gap to cut off triples and give up the line for double or you go the other way. Pence has been a master at right field in no small part because of his speed. When you play it right, there are a lot of long outs, get it wrong and you're in for a long day.

 

You're right. I over looked the Omar Visquels the Giants trotted out there for years until they finally got serious about the farm system.

 

My point is that the Giants improved their farm system but they *never* stopped going after the Omar Vizquels.

A lot of people have the idea that in baseball you have to either be signing veterans to "go for it" or you should be tanking for draft position and "rebuilding." A well-run organization should be able to draft well and sign good free agents simultaneously, and the Giants did that.

 

Yep. There's no reason to limit your organization's talent pool.

 

I should have known my audience before posting that one.

 

The Chicago Blackhawks have often cited their frequent intra-squad video game tournaments as the reason for their Chemistry and that makes them Winners.

 

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me that if the Royals were skipping video study in favor of video game time, that might have had a detrimental effect on their performance.

College kids drop out of school regularly due to spending too much time playing video games.

 

I'm sure that having a few drinks together probably can build elusive "team chemistry," as well.

That doesn't mean I'd recommend repeat rounds of Wild Turkey shots every night.

 

Been reading Joe Sheehan's newsletter a lot lately, and it's particularly excellent in the postseason.

He noted one matchup to keep an eye on: the Royals' three relief aces are all right-handed and the Giants' regular lineup is five lefties, a switch-hitter and two righties (plus another righty, Morse, in the games in KC).

Would Yost deviate from Herrera 7th, Davis 8th, Holland 9th and throw Duffy or Finnegan out there if say, Sandoval-Pence-Belt is due up in one of those innings? Probably not.

Another thing Sheehan mentioned that I found interesting ... for all the talk of the Royals' lineup being built around speed and defense, would they really be that way if Hosmer, Moustakas and Butler had hit like they were projected to coming out the minors?

 

And would they have this bullpen if Wade Davis hadn't failed as a starter?

 

2010 was the last vestige of that philosophy. It was Posey's first, with the insane pitching talent of Lincecum, Cain and Bumgarner with the old vets—Uribe, Renteria and the like. In 2012, Cain and Bumgarner were back, with Posey and Sandoval in the mix with Marco Scutero as the great midseason signing. This crop seems to have taken the opposite approach: The pitchers are the old guys looking for one last hurrah, sans Bumgarner, but the position players largely (Pence and Ishikawa not included) are homegrown talent.

It will be interesting to see if Sabean tries to maintain this momentum with the farm system. His problem is going to be filling left field and that may become the new shortstop revolving door. After that, starting pitching will need to improve and a viable back up for Pagan needs to come up.

Tonight should be fun to watch, however.