CSN: The platinum standard of modern baseball

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DETROIT -- Brian Sabean looked at the champagne-soaked players come and go behind him through the crowded hallway that connected the Giants clubhouse to the outside world, and he looked bemused.

He looked, frankly, like a guy, who had celebrated a great moment with one set of kids, and then celebrated the same moment two years later with another set. It was Groundhog?s Day, with an unlimited amount of free beer.

And who doesn?t think that?s a good idea?

?I?m just sort of numb right now,? he said, staring into space as though eye contact with the real world might somehow spoil the moment. ?We?ll take a step back, then we?ll go to the parade and we?ll be over the moon, and then . . . and then I guess we?ll go back to work.?

So it went, this second World Series championship. A more efficient, even bloodless victory than the one two years before, capped off by Sunday?s 4-3, 10-inning victory over the Detroit Tigers. And yet they were more exhausted than they were two years earlier, because this was not that year. There was less magic and more blow-trading ? more of what Tim Flannery, the third base coach, used to describe Sunday?s win.

?These are our slingshots and rocks,? he said. ?This is what we fight with.?

Most Series sweeps lead to broad conclusions about a team?s place in history, but to understand the Giants, it helps to understand one hard and cold truth.

This, their triumphant moment, was the worst game they played in the last seven. It was also the most dominant game they played when it mattered, in the final four innings, right after the Delmon Young home run that tied the game at three.

In other words, if you?re keen on metaphors, this was it. Blow-trading.

And they became one of the genuinely special operations of the past 40 years. Only four franchises, Oakland, Cincinnati, New York (twice) and Toronto have won multiple World Series so close together, and if you want to quibble about the definition of dynasty, then by all means do.

But two in three means you?re no longer lucky, and you?re no longer merely grinders. You?re a team with a high profile, something that makes Sabean?s teeth grind.

?We do keep a low profile, and we just work together for the common goal,? he said of his staff. But when someone asked him how he intended to keep that low profile with the wave of hyperbolic megapraise headed their way, he sounded less sure even when he said, ?We will.?

Because he knows they won?t. They can?t. Other teams will start poaching their brightest minds. The changes that worked so well for them on the field (Buster Posey and an entirely new position group) will start to affect the front office, and who does what they have become so accustomed to doing as a unit.

You see, one championship is a party. Two in three years is a statement. In the new baseball, which looks more and more like hockey in this way, the real trick is not to dominate the regular season but to create some space by the start of September and then go foot-to-floor for as long as one can manage it.

This is the real Giants Way. The fundamental truth that stands the game?s principal dynamic on its head. Specifically, the postseason starts on August 1, and doesn?t get serious until September 1. And it ends, or at least it could have ended, on November 1.

The Giants in 2010 and 2012 have won 61 of 90 games from September 1 forward. That?s how postseasons are owned.

And they got lucky, when Johnny Cueto lasted eight pitches in the National League Division Series. And when Lance Lynn threw a perfect strike right at the second base bag to trigger the rally in Game 5 of NL Championship Series that began the suffocating run that ensued.

And they overcame their own hitting struggles, working just enough good at-bats around the bad ones that were starting to worry Bochy as late as Game 4 of the World Series. They struck out a preposterous 40 times in their four games against Detroit, but trailed for only two of the 37 innings they played.

And they got very hard to deal with in the late innings. Never mind Tim Lincecum, of which much has, is, and will continue to be said. Taking out the one blowout game they lost, Game 4 of the LCS, their bullpen as a whole allowed seven HITS in 27 innings in the final 11 games.

And they took blows and gave one more every time, against every opponent. Anyone can dominate over a short piece of time, but to win a reputation for being a tough out is something that happens only with time.

They are a tough out now, these Giants. A piece of post-expansion history, with those A?s and those Reds and those Yankees and even those Blue Jays. They are the new platinum standard of modern baseball.

And yes, they have lost the low profile they so cherish. They will now learn what it is to be copied, and be chased, and be poached. Brian Sabean and the organization he assembled will now feel the slingshots and rocks, and he and they will have to become even more nimble and creative in not only ducking them, but building better slingshots and finding better rocks.

Source: http://www.csnbayarea.com/10/29/12/Giants-are-the-new-platinum-standard-of-/nbcsportsgiants.html?blockID=794759&feedID=2796

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