Would it be fair to say the Giants won last night because they got to use the DH? What would have happened if they’d been looking at pinch-hitting for MadBum in the seventh or so?
It certainly highlights the difference between the AL game and the NL game. Last night, though…given that the Giants had the lead, and Bumgarner can swing the bat, I’d say that there was no reason whatsoever to pinch-hit for Bumgarner. If the score had been reversed – maybe.
They talked a lot last night about occasions where a starter has made 2 starts plus a relief appearance (eg, Randy Johnson in 2001). In 1965, Sandy Koufax and Jim Kaat both got 3 starts.
No. Of course, we can’t know how things would have turned out if everything had been different, but NL teams don’t just pinch-hit for effective pitchers without very good reason. The number nine batter only came up once after Bumgarner came in, and there was no one on base at the time. There would have been no reason to pinch hit for him.
There’s also the more subtle effect of a pitcher cooling off too much, and losing focus on the next batters, from having to run the bases in a slow inning, the result of being too good a hitter.
I had thought I recalled Orel Hershiser getting a save as well as a couple of wins in a WS.
Thanks for pointing that out, yeah. So, sloppy scoring by MLB? Here,
http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?id=341029107
and here,
it shows this (italics mine - see first line):
Are scoring mistakes usually corrected later?
I’m pretty sure the (3) means that it was his third double of the series, not that it was in the third inning. Notice that it also has 2B : P. Sandoval (3, W. Davis). Sandoval’s double was in the 8th.
Right, he’s not a typical pitcher at the plate (this year, at least). His batting average during the regular season was .258, with a slugging percentage of .470. He had 4 HRs, including 2 grand slams this season. It would have made more sense to use him as a pinch hitter than to pinch hit for him.
Ah, okay, thanks for that!
I looked up salary info and found this. I hope the Giants stay where they’ve been, right about 8th-highest, so just about in the top third of teams.
(http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Sports/2014/10/30/World-Series-Payroll)
Also:
I should probably point out that “winning run” isn’t really right. It’s the pitcher who was in the game when his team took a lead which is not relinquished.
In this case, that’s also the winning run. But it doesn’t have to be.
Munch:
That’s so nice of you! Much as I appreciate the thought, you can save yourself the trouble and the postage, because…I got my rally towel before Game 6 at the K! Yes, I was actually there! (Major props to my 16-year-old son, who had the idea to surprise me with the gift of a World Series ticket!) What an amazing, awesome time that was, he couldn’t have picked a better game to send me to.
But, I totally appreciate your keeping this out-of-town Royals fan in mind! Thank you!
Soooo ummm …
Nothing wrong with that. I like the idea of Bumgarner getting a 5-inning save. It goes along well with the 4 HRs he hit this year.
There’s no way the Giants can let Sandoval go anywhere after this postseason. They haven’t yet let a free agent get away that they really wanted to keep (in the Brian Sabean era). They don’t have a replacement in their farm system, and there’s not another third baseman in the free-agent market who’s better, so it makes good baseball sense to resign him…and the fan appeal, dugout/clubhouse likability, and the massive amount of Panda Hats sales makes it a good move from a business sense as well.
They may (almost certainly will) ‘overpay’, but they’ll resign him.
Hey, the Giants already held up their end of that bargain for 5 solid decades!
Two championships within a decade reset that clock.
I don’t think they would have pinch hit for him anyway. Bochy said after the game that he was avoiding MadBum between innings, not wanting to hear that he was tired.
They would have been forced to pinch hit for Affeldt though, so either somebody else would have had to pitch an inning, or MadBum comes in one inning earlier and may not be able to finish. I would say “definitely isn’t able to finish”, but I didn’t think he could finish the game as it was.
This is what made the game so insanely stressful (to a Giants fan; I wonder how the casual fan felt). Every inning Bumgarner came out, I wondered if this was going to be when his arm fell off and he got rocked. Every inning on offense I was begging for an insurance run, but the KC bullpen kept putting up matching zeros.
With hindsight it seemed inevitable – MB was unhittable and the game was over when he came out of the bullpen. At the moment, it was far from it.
Ugh, don’t remind me. I was there. 
What is this, some sort of Monty Python Yorkshiremen sketch? “When aaaah was a lad, we had to walk uphill both ways to school.”
Neither of the things that you have written here are true, as far as I can tell. The Giants were never, at any stage, 13 games under .500 in June, and even their mediocre June record (10-16) is only 6 games under .500. And they were shut out six times, not eight, in July.
I have no axe to grind with the Giants, but this was not some scrappy team of unheralded misfits that pulled off the biggest upset of the century, which is the story some Giants fans seem to be writing at the moment.