Hitting was a major storyline heading into this year’s World Series baseball odds action. With a team averaging nearly 7 runs per game, a collective team batting average over .300 and 6 of the nine hitters hitting over .300 –some of them over .350- how could it not be?
No doubt the Texas Rangers entered the 2010 World Series with the hottest bats in the post season but it’s been the Giants swinging the lumber through the first 2 games of the baseball betting odds action in one of the most surprising reversals of fortunes in baseball history.
Teams can get hot and pitching staffs can choke on the monster stage of the World Series. It happens all the time. The big moments in sport bring out the best and worst that athletes have to offer. But what the San Fran Giants are doing goes beyond that.
And what makes this sudden offensive outburst all the more strange is the fact that the Giants have had a tortured offense all season. In fact, over the past few seasons this team has been all about pitching and praying that somehow the lineup could keep pace and manufacture a run or two.
But through two games this milquetoast Giants offense has scored 20 runs against what was the best starting pitching staff in the MLB playoff baseball odds heading into the World Series. That’s like a month worth of runs in just two games for this club.
And it’s not as though the Rangers pitching has been bad. Cliff Lee pitched well for the majority of his innings last night, despite not having his favorite pitch due to location problems, before giving up most of his 6 ERs in the later innings. The same for CJ Wilson in Game 2 who gave up just 2 ERs in 6.0 innings of work.
The problem is that the Giants hitters are making these guys work; hanging in on at bats, fouling balls off until they get a full count and extending pitch counts. And they’re also scoring 2 out runs at an historic pace, something that breaks the soul of a pitcher and isn’t easy to do.
When you look at what the Giants are doing at the plate in this baseball odds matchup an it almost seems like they’re a team of destiny.