Not Just Lucky

This happens every year and it is rather humorous. A team catches some breaks and makes others and you end up getting the fans who call the team lucky. Nobody ever wants to give credit, especially when their team had a strong year and didn't win the championship. There is always going to be something you can point at and say, "if that didn't happen, it would be a lot different." This Giants team is no different and if you look enough, you will hear it all.

They are lucky the Dodgers fell apart because the Dodgers were a better team. Yeah, I will give you this one. The Dodgers were a lot better, in April and May. After the first 32 games, they were 7 games ahead of these Giants. From that point on, they were 14 games worse and essentially a 500 team. There really was not much of a race this year. The Giants were the better team and once the NL MVP, Buster Posey, got confidence in his leg holding up the Giants took off and the Dodgers had no chance.

Well, fine but they are lucky they got a run off Bailey before he even gave up a hit in game three of the Division series and even luckier that Cueto got hurt and Rolen made an error to extend the series. Yeah, Bailey hit a quick runner, then walked the next guy and the Giants took advantage. There is nothing wrong with that at all, it is manufactured baseball. As for Cueto, he had a terrific season but last I checked, he is not Roy Halladay. He is a good pitcher and the series may have gone differently had he not gone down but injuries happen. Rolen's error was not an unforced error either. Joaquin Arias was hustling down the line and put a lot of pressure on Rolen. Luck did not beat the Reds, the Giants did.

There are a lot more examples I could bring up; the Lynn error in the NLCS, the ball hitting the bag in game one of this series, etc. People are always going to try to bring you down or discount what your team accomplishes, especially if they feel like their team had a good shot at winning it all. Just smirk and move on. This isn't a video game, this is a real game played by real men and things don't always go the way you would expect. If they did, why the hell would you watch?