The San Francisco Giants are four wins away from their third World Series championship in five seasons, which is pretty unbelievable considering the franchise went 56 years between their last title and their first one in this current run. It’s been a pretty incredible few years for a team that, for whatever reason, no one ever seems to think can win it all.
Standing in the way of the Giants’ claim to a dynasty are the Kansas City Royals, a franchise that’s no stranger to long, long championship droughts. The Royals are going to be a tough challenge for the Giants, and the Giants are going to have to play near-perfect ball to beat them. It should be one heck of a series.
Here are five keys for the Giants to win the series, with Game 1 looming tonight:
A real DH.
In their past World Series appearances, the Giants have trotted out the likes of Shawon Dunston, Tsuyoshi Shinjo, and Ryan Theriot as their designated hitter when playing in the American League ballpark. This time around they have Michael Morse, who is about as good of a choice to DH as anyone in baseball right now. Morse gives the Giants a decided advantage in that he lengthens their lineup out, giving them another threat near the bottom of the order and allowing them to break up their run of three straight lefties (Brandon Belt, Travis Ishikawa, and Brandon Crawford). He’s also their most dangerous power hitter, capable of uncorking a monster shot with every swing. It’s not often that the NL team has a better DH than their AL opponent, but this could be one of those times. Morse is a dangerous hitter who can make a real impact for the Giants in Kansas City.
Lean on their bullpen.
Madison Bumgarner is capable of going deep into games, but the Giants would probably be happy with five or six quality innings from the rest of their starters. That means they’ll have to rely heavily on their bullpen, as they did in the previous two series to outstanding results. The Giants bullpen has given up seven earned runs this postseason, and all of the runs have come from solo home runs (four off Hunter Strickland alone). Jeremy Affeldt, Javier Lopez, Sergio Romo, and Santiago Casilla have all been up to the challenge this October and will likely be called upon to get big outs again in the World Series. Kansas City’s bullpen gets all the attention but the Giants’ pen has been just as dominant, and they’ll need it to be dominant again if they hope to win it all. It’ll be interesting to see if Bruce Bochy uses Strickland in any kind of high leverage situation, and also whether or not Tim Lincecum can find his way into a game for the first time in these playoffs.
Get Blanco going.
This has been a key for the Giants in every round, and Gregor Blanco has yet to deliver. But since Bochy won’t mess with something that isn’t broken and move Blanco down in the order, the Giants will have to hope their leadoff man can get things started for them and get on base a little more than he has. Blanco has managed just seven hits the entire playoffs, but he may be showing signs of life: he had two hits in the Giants’ clincher against the Cardinals and looked the best he has in weeks at the plate. If he can carry over some of that momentum to the Series, the Giants offense will be in good shape. They need their table setters to actually, y’know, set the table for their big hitters. And with Morse giving the Giants a more dangerous lineup in the AL park, it’s imperative that Blanco starts getting on base any way he can to give his guys more RBI chances.
Beat up their starters.
The Giants want to avoid facing KC’s ridiculous bullpen without a lead, and to do that they need to get to the Royals’ starters early and often. Luckily for the Giants, the Royals don’t have a very intimidating rotation and appear to be very beatable. The Giants can’t afford to face off with the KC ‘pen without holding a lead. They shouldn’t be intimidated by their bullpen by any means– San Francisco has some of the best fastball hitters in baseball occupying the middle of their order– but there’s no arguing with the success the Royals relievers have had. They’re tough to beat, and if the Giants are going to win this series they’ll have to do it by beating up the starting pitchers.
Keep the chip.
It seems like the Giants are the decided underdog before every series: they weren’t supposed to beat the Pirates, the Nationals were going to boat race them out of the division series, and the Cardinals had too much momentum. The Giants beat all of those teams handily, and did it with a pronounced chip on their collective shoulders. You only have to listen to the clubhouse speeches of Hunter Pence to know how the team feels about themselves. They know they can beat anyone, and more importantly believe they can beat anyone, regardless of the odds. The fact that the Royals are the early favorites in the series should work in the Giants’ favor. They just play better when they’re the underdog and when no one expects them to win. It’s one of those intangible things that is hard to prove, but the Giants use it to their advantage. Whatever works.
