They just win

Via WordCrunch

By Adam Cancryn

The Giants are World Series champs for the second time in three years. If only we knew how that happened.

When it came time to secure the San Francisco Giants' second World Series title in three years, it was a panda, a journeyman infielder, and a reliever with only one good pitch who provided the necessary push. 

For this team, that sounds about right. 

There is no deeper explanation for the Giants' blink-and-you-missed-it sweep of the Detroit Tigers. No statistical advantage or dominant player or crucial turning point. They were simply better. For four games, the Giants were better than the Tigers, and those games happened to be the last ones of an improbable championship run. 

This is part of what, I think at least, makes baseball both the most maddening and beautiful game. It's so quantifiable that everything a player does between the lines can be tracked and graphed and deciphered to inform the future. Not only that, we can even break down the things that they don't do, the choices they don't make. Few, if any, other sports offer the deep understanding that baseball's statistics provide us about individuals' strengths, weaknesses and unique abilities. 

But then something comes along and blows all of that understanding out of the water. Suddenly, Justin Verlander gives up two home runs on throwaway pitches out of the strike zone. Prince Fielder records 13 outs in 14 at bats. Barry Zito rediscovers the bend in the ball that abandoned him for the better part of a decade. Suddenly, you're sitting there with all the data in the world and no concrete answers. 

Some call that part of the game the "intangibles." I reject that term, at least in the traditional sense. Who tries harder, or who has more "heart" or "grit" or "hustle" matters only at the margins, if at all. It's the vapid go-to phrase for when we lack both the ability to understand what just unfolded and the willingness to try. 

But there is something to the concept of intangibles, even if it's been wrongly employed for so long it's become the equivalent of a sabermetrician's third rail. And it's present in all situations in life. Who at any level hasn't played a sport or given a presentation or a speech or just plain done their job for a couple of days at a level far beyond what you thought capable? Even though you haven't consciously changed anything, you're sharper. You're seeing the ball well out of the pitcher's hand. You're making solid contact, and everything feels like it's waiting just an instant longer to make sure you're ready for what's coming. 

It's a palpable feeling. And then it's over. 

Except for the Giants, that fall back down to Earth never had a chance to come. And when a couple guys are in that zone, it has a tendency to snowball. The team with few advantages on paper is now performing radically different in real life. A third baseman whose free swinging ways resulted in just 12 home runs all season will net three in one game. A 36-year-old shortstop on loan to his sixth team will get white-hot when it matters most. A reliever who throws his slider three-fourths of the time will lob an 89 mph fastball down Broadway in the bottom of the 10th. And the first Triple Crown winner in more than 40 years will stare at it for strike three. 

These are the inexplicable things that make up a short series. They are the blips, the anomalies, the quirks of the game. They are unquantifiable in a way that drives both sabermetricians and "traditionalists" mad. Over a long 162-game season, these moments are smoothed over. We know that Verlander will win a battle with Pablo Sandoval. We know that Marco Scutaro is just slightly better than average. We know that Miguel Cabrera crushes any fastball in his orbit, much less one of the 89 mph variety. 

But this was just one series, where small sample sizes are the rule. And damn the data, in this series the Giants were just plain better.

Adam Cancryn is an editor and co-founder of Began in '96.