Read any game or series preview and most of the focus will be on the teams and the players. As it ought to be, as games and series are competitions between teams made up of players. What we always want to believe is that the team with the players who perform better will emerge triumphant. But of course, what we know is that there are not countless variables, but there are more variables than we would like to count. It matters what the environment is. It matters what the weather is. It matters what other things are. And it matters who the home-plate umpire is. Because home-plate umpires are human, not all home-plate umpires are identical, so not all home-plate umpires will have the same effect on any given game.

It’s worthwhile, then, to talk a little bit about the home-plate umpire in anticipation of the start of the World Series. For tonight’s Game 1, the crew chief and guy behind the plate will be Gerry Davis. You might remember Gerry Davis for drawing some strike-zone criticism in last year’s playoffs, from the Yankees. You might alternately remember Gerry Davis for just being an umpire you’ve heard of, or for being a guy who lives on your block if you live near him. For the remainder of this post, we’re going to examine Gerry Davis’ average strike zone. For Justin Verlander, Barry Zito, and many of the rest of the Tigers and Giants, this is going to be some sort of factor.

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The 2012 World Series begins in just some hours, with the Tigers trotting out their ace in Justin Verlander. The Giants will respond by trotting out a guy who might have been an ace once many years ago in Barry Zito. I was tasked with the project of writing up a Barry Zito Game 1 game plan, and to me it couldn’t be more simple. Zito’s Wednesday night strategy:

1. do what Justin Verlander does
2. maybe do it better?

All right, so that is a physical impossibility, unless Verlander suffers a crippling injury between now and then and still somehow is allowed to start. A more realistic Barry Zito Game 1 game plan:

1. hit all of the spots
2. do not miss any of the spots

See how easy this is? Barry Zito might well win tonight just so long as he pitches perfectly. If he doesn’t make any mistakes, at all, then surely he’ll have the Tigers’ hitters off balance and maybe the Giants will score a run against Verlander or the bullpen and, presto, there’s a World Series advantage! I guess my work here is done, sooner than I expected it to be.

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The Washington Nationals had under contract one of the very best starting pitchers in baseball, and they decided against using him in the playoffs, where they lost. The decision was talked about for weeks and months in advance. It’s probably still being talked about somewhere, and it’ll be a topic for years. Meanwhile, the San Francisco Giants have under contract one of the better hitting outfielders in baseball, and they’ve decided against using him in the playoffs, where they’ve advanced to the World Series. With the stakes at their absolute highest, the Giants are still committed to going forward without Melky Cabrera. The Cabrera situation and the Stephen Strasburg situation are very different, with little to do with one another, but I needed an intro and I feel like this served the purpose.

So here’s where we are: the Giants are in the Series, and while they have home-field advantage — in part thanks to Melky Cabrera’s performance in the All-Star Game! — they need to identify a designated hitter for Games 3 through 5 in Detroit. Were Cabrera on the active roster, this decision would be pretty easy. He’s not, so it isn’t, because the Giants’ bench is bad. Still, there has to be a best of the worst, so let us discuss in some depth.

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The following sentence was buried at the bottom of Nick Cafardo’s Sunday notes column in the Boston Globe:

Tim Lincecum, RHP, Giants — He will be available in trade, and it will be interesting to see who bites on the two-time Cy Young winner.

Next season will be the last under Lincecum’s current contract with the Giants. Last winter, he signed a 2-year/$40.5 million deal with the team, taking him through the end of his arbitration-eligibility.

Cafardo’s column had no quote from a Giants’ official, off or on the record. No source. Just a declaration that Lincecum “will be available in trade.”  No matter, Cafardo’s comment was picked up by all the trade rumor blogs and then the Twitterverse. All on the eve of Game 6 of the National League Championship Series, which had Giants fans in a tizzy about the truth and timing of Cafardo’s comments.

Later in the day, San Francisco Chronicle baseball writer John Shea asked Giants GM Brian Sabean about Lincecum’s future with the team:

Timmy’s going to be a Giant,” said Sabean, reminding that his contract has one year remaining.

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The score was still within a manageable two runs when Hunter Pence “settled” into the box with the bases loaded in the third inning of last nights’ game seven win for the Giants. Joe Kelly, just in the game for Kyle Lohse, threw him a 94.5 mph two-seamer that bored in on the bat handle — just your typical bat-breaking, weak-ground-ball inducing heat in on the hands. Of course, you might have seen the slow-motion replay of what happened:

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Generally speaking, players not named Carlos Beltran don’t turn into different players come playoff time. That wouldn’t make any sense — it’s still regular baseball, and the things that apply in September still apply in October. Players might become slightly less effective in the playoffs, due to the increased quality of competition, but a strike-thrower will probably stay a strike-thrower and a power hitter will probably stay a power hitter. So maybe it doesn’t need to be written that Marco Scutaro has been doing an incredible job of making contact in this year’s postseason. But, aw, what the heck, we’re all here. What follows is an incomplete list of players who have one strikeout in the 2012 MLB playoffs:

• Mitch Moreland
• Jason Motte
• Sergio Romo
• Endy Chavez
• Marco Scutaro

What a carefully-selected list of players who have barely batted, and Marco Scutaro! Indeed, Scutaro’s up to 48 postseason plate appearances, tying him for seventh-most in baseball. He’s got just the one strikeout to his name, against Edward Mujica in Game 1 of the NLCS. As a Giant in the regular season, Scutaro was an extreme contact hitter. As a Giant in the playoffs, Scutaro has been an extreme contact hitter.

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The way people talked about him, Chris Carpenter was supposed to be unbeatable in the playoffs, and Ryan Vogelsong was supposed to be a little more beatable. Yet the NLCS between the Cardinals and the Giants has advanced to a Monday Game 7 in large part because, on two occasions now, Vogelsong and San Francisco have bested Carpenter and St. Louis. In Game 2, Vogelsong allowed one run in seven innings, while Carpenter went four innings and allowed five runs, two of which were earned. In Sunday’s Game 6, Vogelsong allowed one run in seven innings, while Carpenter went four innings and allowed five runs, two of which were earned. Ryan Vogelsong isn’t the only reason the Giants are still alive, but he might be the biggest one, and he’s earned this post.

Vogelsong was outstanding on Sunday, and he didn’t allow his first hit until there were two out in the fifth. He came out amped up, throwing his fastball harder than usual in the early innings, and he struck out six of the first nine batters he faced. He wound up with a career-high nine strikeouts, and while he acknowledged later that he got away with some mistakes, all good pitching performances require that a pitcher get away with some mistakes. Vogelsong made mistakes, but he didn’t make many of them.

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Tonight, the Giants and Cardinals play one game for the National League pennant. The Giants have Matt Cain rested and ready to go, and he’ll likely be called upon to carry a significant workload to get through the right-handed heavy Cardinals line-up. On the opposing side, the Cardinals will start Kyle Lohse, who simply isn’t as good as Matt Cain. However, for this year at least, he did a pretty amazing impression of the Giants ace.

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The Cardinals have a pretty commanding 3-1 series lead on the Cardinals, but it is far from a done deal yet. Even if they do win the series in the next three games, the Tigers and their pitching staff, which just dominated the Yankees, are waiting. St. Louis potentially have 10 games left this season. While even over 10 games, one starting position player being out does not usually make much of a difference, it does make a difference. Given the stakes, teams obviously need to have all hands on deck. Matt Carpenter has done a nice job filling in for Carlos Beltran since the latter tweaked his knee earlier in the series. Beltran is hoping to start, but if he can’t tonight or in the near future, how much is it likely to hurt their offense?

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The playoff version of Matt Cain hasn’t much resembled the regular season Matt Cain.

For the fourth straight season, Cain browbeat opposing National League batters and is a very big reason why the San Francisco Giants are back in the playoffs. In fact, you could argue that 2012 was his very best performance of his eight year career.

Cain posted a career low ERA and WHIP at 2.79 and 1.04, respectively. His 22% strikeout rate was the highest of his career and his 5.8% walk rate the lowest of his career. Despite Cain continuing to be the poster boy for pitchers that confound FIP (highest NL FDP, in fact), it appeared that he had taken a measurable step forward in a number of critical areas and at least made a questionable off-season contract extension not look so bad.

But so far in the postseason, Cain has had underwhelming results. It might have a lot to do with his slider.

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