PARTY TIME! Hunter Pence (center) and the Giants celebrate their World Series victory last night in Detroit, thanks in large part to Marco Scutaro’s 10th inning single (inset) to drive in Ryan Theriot for the 4-3 victory in Game 4. (AP; Getty Images (inset))
DETROIT — Let’s see if we can follow the trail of shame.
The Yankees got swept in embarrassing fashion by the Tigers, who in turn got swept in just slightly less embarrassing fashion by the Giants — who are stunningly your World Series champions for the second times in three seasons after outlasting the Tigers, 4-3 in 10 innings, in Game 4 at Comerica Park.
Does this chain of events make the Yankees look even worse, that they couldn’t keep up with a club that subsequently keep up with a team that starts Ryan Theriot as its designated hitter? Or does it shed some sympathetic light on the Yankees and the month of October as a whole, strengthening the notion that the postseason is so random that it’s a fool’s errand to try to derive any sense from it?
Put my vote in the latter column.
“This game is nuts,” said former Yankees left-hander Phil Coke, who suffered the season-ending loss despite pitching extremely well over the month. “This game is crazy. No matter how good a pitch you throw, the dude at the other and is just as good.”
The critical dude at the other end on this night was someone who boosted his Q rating exponentially this month: Marco Scutaro, the decent middle infielder, who stroked a single to center field to score Theriot from second base. Sergio Romo pitched a 1-2-3 bottom of the inning, and the Giants celebrated in front of an impressively large contingent of Giants fans in enemy territory.
The Tigers’ swing in fortune was as dizzying on the inside as it seemed from the outside, veteran manager Jim Leyland confirmed.
“I’m a little bit flabbergasted, to be honest with you,” Leyland said. “In both of those series, I never would have thought that we would have swept the New York Yankees, and I never would have thought that the Giants would have swept us, but it happened.
“It’s a freaky game, and it happened, and so be it.”
The Tigers seemed sad, but not shocked, as had the Yankees in this very building 11 days prior.
“We played hard,” said Prince Fielder, who went 1-for-14 in the Fall Classic. “You can’t try harder.”
Said American League Triple Crown winner Miguel Cabrera, who struck out looking to end the series and wound up 3-for-13 with three walks: “We never found our game. We never played our best baseball. We want to win a World Series for Detroit here.”
Are these the words of losers? Not self-critical enough? Eh.
“If somebody told me in spring training that we would be in the World Series, I would have had to say I’ll take that,” Leyland said. “It was kind of a weird way that we got there because we were a little inconsistent all year. Then we played pretty good when we had to get the division, and we obviously played pretty good through the first two rounds of the playoffs. We got to the World Series and we just sputtered offensively.”
Only one team gets to celebrate last each season. The Giants, remarkably, have earned that right in both 2010 and 2012. Yet that hardly makes them favorites for next year. They’ll have decisions to make this winter and then will need some breaks to fall their way next season.
The same goes for the Tigers, and for the Yankees, whose hitters were accused by many of some sort of moral failing simply because they didn’t hit. The younger, more intimidating duo of Cabrera and Fielder proved just as susceptible to the October blues as did Alex Rodriguez, Robinson Cano, Curtis Granderson and Nick Swisher.
“You expand the strike zone,” Cabrera said. “That’s why you see a lot of strikeouts, because you want to make something happen. To me, that’s the worst thing you can do.”
Cabrera struck out in his final three at-bats last night.
Back at ’em next year for everyone. A fresh start and, if they can survive the regular-season marathon, a fresh October. And the best path to missing October altogether is obsessing over what went wrong the previous October.
“We did everything we could,” Fielder said. “We can go to sleep at night.” As should the other 28 teams that won’t spend the winter celebrating.