Even Year Experience

It’s an even number year and the Giants are in the postseason facing off against Thor and the Mets on Wednesday for the opportunity to play baseball experts’ darlings, The Cubs. You could not ask for a better one-game playoff match-up than MadBum vs. Thor for the right to continue deeper into October, but what team holds the advantage in this clash of the pitching titans. That’s easy, THE GIANTS, but here’s three reasons why.

MadBum over Thor

Madison Bumgarner leads the way with a 7-3 postseason record with a 2.14 ERA with 77k’s over 88.1 innings pitched. Not too shabby. Not to mention that he pitched a nine-inning shutout, 10k performance against the Pirates in the 2014 Wild Card game.

On the flipside, Noah Syndergaard has 3.32 ERA in the four games he’s pitched in the playoffs and lacks the experience of MadBum along with only lasting 5.2 innings while allowing 4 runs against the Giants during his lone match-up against them this year.

Experience

The Giants have been here and they done this before, in fact they have 11 players that were part of the 2014 Championship roster. It’s kind of crazy with the current baseball climate that they have that many players still left two years later.

It’s an even number year

It’s not scientific, but it’s trend since 2010. My thought on this is has always been the Giants pitchers arms are fresher because they get extended rest on odd years of not being in the playoffs. The talent is there, but their arms just tire earlier in the year.

The proof of that lies in the innings pitched by starters. In even number years since their first championship in 2010 their starters logged an average of 38 more innings pitched than in odd number years following a championship, and if you compare this season to 2015 Giants starters pitched 45 more innings.

It just lends itself as to why it’s so difficult to repeat in baseball no matter how good your pitching is year-after-year; fatigue.

Those are my thoughts as to why I believe the Giants have what it takes to head to the NLDS and beyond this season, but there’s a reason they play the games and don’t crown champions in April, well, unless you’ve had to suffer through Chicago sports radio this year.