Blast From the Past: Why the Giants Beat the Phillies

A lot of people who claim to know a lot about baseball are still scratching their heads trying to figure out why the Giants beat the Phillies in the just completed NLCS. Interestingly, almost none of them attribute it to the Giants being good, or the better team. The Phillies didn't hit in the clutch is one I just got through reading. The most common explanation on sabermetric oriented sites is sample size, anything can happen in a short series and the Giants just got lucky. One post on a site that usually has pretty good analysis went so far as to say if the series was replayed many times, the Phillies would almost certainly win most of the time.

I submit a thesis that the Giants won because they were the better team. How were they the better team, you ask? Pitching, pitching and more pitching! It's an old axiom in baseball that pitching is 70% of the game and that good pitching will beat good hitting. But, but, but......I can hear the sputtering now, didn't the Phillies have one of the very best playoff rotations in the history of the game? Ah, by some measures, yes they did, but as always, statistics may be objective, but their selection and interpretation is not. Prior to Game 1 of the NLCS, the same fangraphs.com site I alluded to above posted a column comparing xFIP's for the Phillies and Giants starting rotations clearly showing the superiority of the Phillies big 3 of Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels. No argument here on the excellence of the Phillies' Big 3. They were good all year and still good at the end of the season. They were great in the NLDS against the Cincinnati Reds. What was a bit more misleading was the Giants season long numbers. Tim Lincecum's ERA and xFIP were inflated by a rough May and an even rougher August. His numbers down the stretch, though, were excellent and actually much closer to his career averages. He had regressed POSITIVELY to his true mean! As for Matt Cain, his ERA has outperformed his xFIP his entire career, but that's a whole other post. Jonathan Sanchez steadily improved all season and down the stretch was one of the best pitchers in baseball. In summary, the Giants top 3 starters actually matched up much better than some statistics would make it appear.

Here's where the so-called experts went really wrong. They apparently forgot that a pitching staff, even a playoff pitching staff, consists of at least 11 pitchers, not 3. Here, the Giants had a clear edge. Madison Bumgarner, their #4 playoff starter put up much better numbers than anyone the Phillies could muster for Game 4. Brian Wilson has grown into one of the elite closers in baseball while Brad Lidge continues to be inconsistent at best. As for the remainder of the bullpen, there really was no comparison. The Giants secondary bullpen pitchers outperformed the Phillies all season by a wide margin, particularly late in the season after the acquisitions of Javier Lopez and Ramon Ramirez.

Another well known axiom for the postseason is, it's not who was best all season that counts as much as who was the best at the end of the season. A team has to win games throughout the season to make the playoffs, but once you're in, the hottest team is usually the one that comes out on top. Well, as a whole, the Giants pitching staff, over the last month or so of the season was one of the best in the entire history of baseball! They held opponents to 3 runs or less, what, 21 games in a row? 26 out of 27? I mean, that hadn't been done since something like 1921 or something!

So, the formula for the Giants to win the NLCS over the Phillies was actually easy to see. The Giants top 3 starters would battle the Phillies top 3 starters to a standstill, while Bumgarner would have the advantage in Game 4. The close, low scoring games would then become a chess match between the respective managers and the bullpens, a battle of attrition, if you will. The Giants had a clear advantage in a series decided by the bullpens. First of all, the Giants bullpen was significantly better and deeper than the Phillies. Secondly, nobody in baseball is better at managing a bullpen than Bruce Bochy. It's no accident that he had great bullpens in San Diego and the Giants bullpen has gone from being a sick joke to one of the best in baseball since Bochy's arrival.

The formula worked, just barely, but it worked! The Giants starters neutralized the Phillies starters. The Giants got some timely hits. Bruce Bochy outmanaged Charlie Manuel and the Giants bullpen was able to outlast the Phillies' bullpen. That is why the Giants are going to the World Series while the Phillies, their fans and most sportswriters scratch their heads trying to figure out what just happened.