Giants vs. Tigers World Series: No luck here for San Francisco, just skill

After a division series that featured the San Francisco Giants trailing 2-0 to the Cincinnati Reds and a championship series that saw them trail the St. Louis Cardinals 3-1, some might have attributed the Giants success in sweeping the Detroit Tigers to a little luck. Not so says Andrew Baggarly at CSN Bay Area:

This was a team that featured smooth infield defense and swooping birds in the outfield, a team that traded home run trots for frenetic doubles and triples, a team of tough, contact-oriented hitters who stayed in the middle of the field with two outs and got the runner home from third base with less than that, a bullpen that refused to be broken and a talented rotation that shuffled itself from the discard pile and came up aces when it mattered most.

Speaking of that unbroken bullpen and talented rotation, the Giants allowed the Tigers to score just six runs over the four game series, including a pair of 2-0 shutouts in the second and third games. Midseason addition Marco Scutaro seemed to come up big every time his name was called and the World Series' most valuable player, Pablo Sandoval, started things off with a bang in the very first game as he deposited two Justin Verlander pitches and one from Al Alburquerque the bleachers. He became just the fourth player in league history to hit three home runs in one World Series game.

The championship is the Giants' second in three seasons and second since moving to San Francisco in 1957.