The moods in the respective clubhouses were predictably different after last night’s game. Here are what eight players — three San Francisco Giants and five Detroit Tigers — had to say about the 2012 World Series:

Prince Fielder: “It’s definitely unfortunate that we lost, but we did everything that we could. We played hard. You can’t try harder. We battled, it just didn’t work out. Good pitching does that at times. We had some good at bats, it’s just that they made good pitches when they had to.”

Jeremy Affeldt: “I think this has been as good as you can ask for. This is a situation for Bochy and for Rags, and Sabes as a GM, where they should be very happy with how the starters have thrown. This is what good starters do in the playoffs.

“You can build an offense all you want — you can put up guys who can score 10 runs — but if you give up 11, you lose. You’ve got to have good pitching to go to the World Series”

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When the World Series began last week, the Tigers were considered strong favorites, with 23 of 28 ESPN commentators selecting Detroit as the eventual champion, myself included. After they rolled over the Yankees in four games to win the ALCS, the story became that the Tigers were “built for the postsesaon”, with four strong starting pitchers, two premium power hitters, and the ability to overwhelm their opponents with star power. Just based on their six best players — Justin Verlander, Miguel Cabrera, Prince Fielder, Austin Jackson, Doug Fister, and Max Scherzer — there probably isn’t another team in baseball that can match up with the top end of Detroit’s roster. After all, those six combined for +32.5 WAR in the regular season; 10 teams didn’t match that total with their entire rosters.

From 1-6, the Tigers are probably the best team in baseball. From 7-25, however, there isn’t a team in baseball better than San Francisco, and those 19 players were the guys who made the difference for the Giants in their playoff run.

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Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of Daily Notes.

1. Contract Crowdsourcing: Starting Pitchers (1 of 3)
2. Reminder Photo: Scott Baker
3. SCOUT Leaderboard: Arizona Fall League Hitters

Contract Crowdsourcing: Starting Pitchers (1 of 3)
Free agency begins five days after the end of the World Series (which is something that happened on Sunday). FanGraphs is asking readers to estimate the years and average annual dollar values likely to be received by certain notable free agents. We continue today with the first third of this free-agent class’s notable starting pitchers. (Click here for more on the contract crowdsourcing project.)

Other positions: Catchers / First Basemen / Second Basemen / Third Basemen / Shortstops / Corner Outfielders / Center Fielders / Designated Hitters / Right-Handed Relievers / Left-Handed Relievers.

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The Marlins and Red Sox each made managerial splashes last offseason, bringing in controversial skippers in an attempt to change team culture. The Red Sox, fresh off of their historic 2011 collapse, replaced Terry Francona with Bobby Valentine, a supposed strategic genius who isn’t exactly known for warm and fuzzy relationships. The Marlins, meanwhile, traded two somewhat substantial prospects to pry Ozzie Guillen away from the White Sox.

Both Valentine and Guillen were fired after one season, as the Red Sox and Marlins underperformed and each manager seemed to cause more drama than contribute to team victories.

Yet, despite seeing through Guillen how risky it is to actually give up non-monetary value to acquire a manager, and seeing through Valentine how even those with strong resumes can struggle in the position, the Red Sox just filled their managerial void by ostensibly trading Mike Aviles for John Farrell.

Farrell, the former Red Sox coach who landed the Blue Jays managerial spot a few years back, was made available because the Jays weren’t convinced that he was worth a contract extension. Some in Toronto questioned his ability to handle a clubhouse, and while injuries have ravaged his teams, they haven’t shown much improvement.

Trades for managers are rare, and something of a novelty, but the current managerial landscape is changing. In what feels like a new climate, trading prospects for Ozzie Guillen — a proven manager in the sense that he won a World Series — was questionable on the Marlins part, though it was evident what they were trying to accomplish. It’s much tougher to understand the logic behind trading a solid defensive shortstop for Farrell.

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Earlier in the regular season, I got a message from a pitcher asking about how his slider rate compared to that of a teammate. It seems they had something of a friendly wager. I checked and replied that, while his slider rate was high, and higher than his teammate’s, neither was close to the league lead. Way up top were guys like Luke Gregerson and Sergio Romo, who threw sliders with nearly two-thirds of their pitches. Romo, for example, threw sliders like Clayton Kershaw threw fastballs. Romo’s got a pitch, and he’s especially got that pitch against right-handed batters.

Now let’s take a step back. Between 2007-2011, Tim Wakefield posted a roughly league-average ERA over nearly 800 innings. The overwhelming majority of his pitches were knuckleballs, a very small minority of his pitches were curveballs, and just over ten percent of his pitches were fastballs. His fastball had the average velocity of another guy’s slow curve. It was, in isolation, a very bad major-league fastball. Yet, on a per-pitch basis, between 2007-2011, Tim Wakefield’s fastball was one of the most effective fastballs in the league. You don’t have to do much research to figure it’s because hitters were taken by surprise. The fastball seemed faster than it was, and it was often simply unexpected. Nearly three in four Wakefield fastballs were strikes. There was nearly an equal ratio of called strikes to swings.

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Ben and Sam discuss the start of the offseason and what the Giants’ second World Series win in three seasons says about GM Brian Sabean.

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As they had throughout the postseason, ushers handed out white rally towels to fans entering Comerica Park before tonight’s game. Walking through the concourse, I overheard a woman wryly ask her husband, “Are these crying towels?”

They proved to be prophetic words.

The better team — at least for four games in October — won the 2012 World Series. The San Francisco Giants were deserving. The Detroit Tigers were equal parts anemic and star-crossed.

A first-inning at bat epitomized the Tigers fortunes. On the ninth pitch he saw from Matt Cain, rookie outfielder Quintin Berry hit a line drive to right field that landed inches foul. Not to discredit the Giants, who clearly outplayed Jim Leyland‘s team, but the Tigers seemed unable to catch a break.

In the top of the second, the Tigers couldn’t catch drives off the bats of Hunter Pence [a double to left-center] and Brandon Belt [a run-scoring triple off right-field wall]. The back-to-back hits came after three of the first four Giants hitters went down on strikes. It was typical Max Scherzer, who had the highest K-rate [11.08] and second-highest BABiP [.333] among all qualifying pitchers [teammate Rick Porcello had the highest, at .344].

Conversely, Giants starter Matt Cain, at .259, had the 84th-highest [and fifth-lowest] BABiP. The numbers are indicative of the advantage San Francisco held on the defensive side of the ball. It showed throughout the four games.

In the third inning, with Austin Jackson on base, Miguel Cabrera hit a fly ball to right that looked relatively harmless off the bat. Buoyed by a gust of wind — the baseball gods giving the Tigers brief redemption — it ended up carrying into the seats. Detroit led for the first time in the Series, and for the first time in 57 innings the Giants trailed in a game.

Told about the streak [54 innings at the time] following Game 3, Giants reliever Javier Lopez was duly impressed.

“It’s pretty impressive to see that we’ve been able to do that,” said Lopez. “It speaks to the strength of our ball club, which has been the pitching. Those guys have been able to hold onto leads.”

The Tigers couldn’t hold their 2-1 lead. In the sixth inning, Buster Posey homered with Marco Scutaro to board to put the Giants back on top. In a Series that had lacked back-and-forth drama, the game was just starting to get interesting.

In the bottom of the inning, Delmon Young — who has more postseason home runs than any player in franchise history — made it 3-3 with an opposite-field blast. After Andy Dirks followed with a single, Jhonny Peralta hit a deep drive to left — into the same wind that helped Cabrera‘s ball — that didn’t quite have enough to get out.

The Giants stranded the go-ahead run on second in the seventh. Jeremy Affeldt struck out the side in the eighth. Phil Coke did the same in the top of the ninth. In the bottom half, Peralta hit another deep drive, this one run down by centerfielder Angel Pagan.

Then came the tenth and the return of the baseball gods to San Francisco‘s side — again, no disrespect to the team that swept the Series.

Ryan Theriot blooped a single. Brandon Crawford sacrificed. Scutaro blooped a single to drive in the deciding run. In a Series that featured numerous big-name players — mostly on the losing side — a trio of lesser-known players helped small-ball the Giants to a championship.

Sergio Romo closed out the game, with Cabrera going down on strikes to end it.

It wa perhaps fitting that Cabrera made the last out, as he and Pablo Sandoval exemplified the Series. Each hit third in his team’s lineup, making them only the second pair of third basemen to bat in that spot in the order in a World Series [George Brett and Mike Schmidt did so in 1980]. Cabrera finished 3-for-13 with a home run and three RBIs.Sandoval went 8-for-15, with three home runs and four RBIs, and was named the Series Most Valuable Player.

The Giants pitching staff could just as easily have garnered the award, as could Bruce Bochy or Brian Sabean. What matters is that Tigers fans were left crying in their towels and the Giants are bringing a trophy back to San Francisco.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland expressed it best.

“I tip my hat,” said Leyland. “They’re World Series champions and they deserve to be World Series champions.”

The last WPA graph of the 2012 season.

Source: FanGraphs

Congratulations on a fantastic season to the Giants organization, their players, and their fans.

You think of the Tigers and first and foremost you think of Justin Verlander, Prince Fielder, and Miguel Cabrera. You think of the Tigers on a day that Verlander isn’t pitching and you think of Fielder and Cabrera. There are other guys on the roster — lots of them! — and some of them are good, but Fielder and Cabrera are the big offensive guns. They’re the players the Tigers most want in the spotlight in important situations.

The Tigers lost Game 3 of the World Series on Saturday, and now they have to win four in a row if they want to take the title. They lost not because the Giants lit them up, but rather because they very much didn’t light the Giants up. The story right now, depending on your perspective, is either the Giants’ run prevention or the Tigers’ miserable run production, and Saturday saw the Tigers blow what opportunities they generated. Worse, opportunities were blown by both Fielder and Cabrera. The Tigers got the bats they wanted up in the situations they wanted, and still they got shut out by Ryan Vogelsong and the San Francisco bullpen.

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