I knew the Giants would force the game 7. I can't say that they'll actually be able to WIN that game 7... but I knew they'd make it at least. I still try to remain hopeful.

On the other side of things, Detroit is having to wait awfully long for this series to wrap up, considering they swept the Yankees. I've seen this sorta case come up in the past and a team that sweeps and has to wait for a 7-game series from the other end often ends up becoming cold from the inactivity. This is going to make it very difficult for the Tigers to win the WS, especially if they have to face St. Louis. The Giants as a team aren't hitting well enough to truly take advantage of such a situation, but the Cardinals are the type of team to be able to light up the scoreboards against rusty pitching. It should be interesting to see how things play out.

Here is my assessment...

Giants vs. Cardinals game 7 - 60% chance of Cardinals victory

hypothetical Cardinals vs. Tigers WS - 75% chance of Cardinals winning

hypothetical Giants vs. Tigers WS - 80% chance of Tigers winning

Crazy Li :

I don't know. I think the Giants have a better chance of winning said hypothetical World Series than the Cardinals do.

Ignore the fact the Giants are up like 7-0 right now. Pretend game 7 is just starting.

The Giants have momentum on their side right now. They've won 5 straight elimination games, and have the scrappy mentality that the Cardinals did last post season. The Cardinals magic looks about used up thankfully. After being gifted a wild card round matchup, and getting lucky with calls at the plate during their NLDS matchup, they've had a very even NLCS, against a team some would say is inferior.

If the Cardinals win game 7 from the start (ignoring the 7-0 score) then they'd be favorites. But we live in a world where they are down 7-0 to the Giants. If they rally to win, while they'd have momentum, I question whether or not they'd have enough energy to hang with the Tigers and their pitching.

The Giants have everything going right now.

When Tim Lincecum is pitching like he did a couple years ago, you know your team has a good chance of winning.

I honestly would not be surprised to see the Giants sweep the Tigers. I think a Giants-Tigers series goes 6 games, but the sweep is extremely possible.

I wish the Giants luck in the rest of this game, because I hate the Cardinals (more so than I hate the Yankees even... ugh.) and want nothing more than to see their fans get upset over losing a fair series.

The off time for the Tigers will help their pitching, but I question if their hitting will have the proper timing in games 1 and 2. Good thing they'll probably put their two best guys out there the first two games.

Looks like this year's series will be slightly more interesting than last year's.

legacyme3 : You said one important thing in your post...

"If the Cardinals win game 7 from the start (ignoring the 7-0 score) then they'd be favorites."

When I made my comment, game 7 had not yet started. This is the basis for my comments. Now of course with the Giants jumping all over the Cards early in game 7, that changes things. I didn't think Lohse would get hammered as hard as he did, but I'm obviously glad that things worked the way they did. I'll keep cheering my team on in the WS despite the odds still being against them in my view.

9-run offensive performances have been rare for this team... but just getting that late game spurt would be enough to do in the Tigers. It really comes down to whether or not San Francisco can punish the Tiger pen.

Crazy Li :

I was not aware you wrote it before the game started, I logged on, and I click on the reply to post page so I don't have to load two pages to make one post.

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Well Tigers vs. Giants.

Who do I want to win? I guess the Giants. I don't particularly like either team, but I'm a fan of Marco Scutaro, Hunter Pence, Tim Lincecum and Matt Cain. Oh, and Buster Posey of course. Not really a fan of the Giants as a team, but they have some great players I enjoy watching.

Who do I think wins? Still the Giants. The Tigers are good, but I think this time off is really going to hurt them.

At any rate, I think I'm actually going to watch this world series. When I was thinking about potential world series matchups, Tigers-Giants didn't really come up once (Mostly because the Tigers were not a team I expected to make the World Series). But this looks far more interesting than games like Cardinals-Yankees, or Orioles-Reds. All about a matchup that could go either way.

Hunter Pence's broken bat base hit was definitely one of the more odd moments in post season history. Then again, so is the Giants' injured closer. What a beard.

Its funny how this World Series panned out. Looking at when the post season started, many people had Oakland beating Detroit. Possibly even more people had Cincinnati beating the Giants. I think Texas losing to Baltimore in the wild card turned the post season on it head. Of course the infield fly rule was a very entertaining way to begin the post season, especially this being the first wild card post season ever.

What was so interesting about the Giants' climb to the World Series was that it seemed like they couldn't score runs. When they could score runs, their pitching occasionally let them. Yet they stepped up in the clutch and dug deep to perform admirably when they needed to. I really do hope this World Series goes 7 games. I also really hope that unsung heroes define this World Series. Seeing Cabrera, Fielder, Verlander or Posey would be a bit boring and predictable.

I'm happy to see Scutaro being very successful though. He was a solid ball player for his whole time with the Jays and one of my favourites.

Zito could be great, but Verlander is usually great, so they may cancel each other out.

Also, Oakland was on a hot streak to don't forget, when they knocked off Texas to take the division on the last day.

On the other side, Oakland rallied from and 0-2 series deficit to for a clinching game and came up short, so this post season could have gone very differently.

But all and all, I'm glad that Baltimore got in, and I'm glad that the Yankees flopped.

As for the NL, I'm disappointed that the Reds lost, but kudos to the Giants for being clutch when they needed to be.

The reason why I made my Texas comment was because the Rangers had been in the World Series the past 2 consecutive years.

Of course, you can't say enough about how good of a club the Cardinals are. I'm just surprised they collapsed the way hey did.

I hope the Yankees collapse will have a similar fate to what happened to Boston in recent years.

Also, it is worth mentioning that there are rumours that Ozzie Guillen could possibly be considered a replacement GM for the Jays.

He would fit in fine here, since theres no USA, Cuba drama. Also, several of the Jays players are Latin or South American.

I approve of Ozzie become a Jay.

bobq : Well the Yankees have to decide what to do with A-Rod, Swisher, and Ichiro (to make a few). In my opinion I think they will resign Ichiro, not resign Swisher, and try to trade A-Rod or keep him.

I'll also agree with Oakland coming up short was a disappointment, but they are young and could be a powerhouse in a couple of years.

I could careless about Ozzy since I didn't think the Marlins would be good.

Ozzie Guillen? The Blue Jays manager?

Oh man, I can't wait to see how he goes from one incompetent team to the next...

Provided he does. I think Sandy Alomar wins the job.

Well Roberto Alomar is in the Hall as a Jay. He is also on the Jays staff, so it is a definite possibility.

I think there is a chance he might come over to the Jays but not as a GM, because Farrell took one of out staff members with him to Boston.

If we could get Alomar and Guillen, it would be win-win.  doubt Alomar will leave Cleveland for a non GM position though.

The problem with who is available right now is that none of them have won a World Series, with the exception of Ozzie.

It must not be forgotten that the Jays are considered to have the best farm team in baseball, and we have stacked up on quality pitchers in recent drafts.

I am not sure how good of a player Mike Avilis is, but he will replace Escobar most likely at short stop or second base and move Johnson over.

I hope Encarnasion can repeat the year he had this year. Hopefully Bautista can return to form fully healthy as well.

The Jays had a stupid amount of injuries this year. Our record really should have been better than it was. We are at least a .500 team when healthy. We are very young, and when we mature more, we should be contenders. I say we make the wild card within the next 3 years.

bobq :

Mike Aviles is not a very good baseball player. Take it from a guy who watched all his games.

He'll have one hot month. Then do nothing.

Game 7 tonight. Zito vs. Verlander. If Verlander does what he has done throughout the playoffs, then this should be a win for the Tigers, unless they put in Valverde. Not to take anything away from Zito, but I don't think anyone denies the fact that Verlander is the better pitcher.

patar4097 : I think you mean Game 1 sir; cause if it was Game 7 I would have heard non-stop talk about how the Tigers can't close the series lol.

Was this maybe the most unexpected World Series, of the teams who were in the playoffs this post season, possibly. What do you think?

Maybe Baltimore would have been more surprising, but Detroit had the worst record of the post season teams I believe.

Sandoval hit a home run in the first inning for the Giants.

Marco Scotaro may have been safe in the bat before.

Let us see if that run would have meant something later in the game.

bobq : I agree with you partially. Most people wouldn't have picked the Giants to make the playoffs as there were better more complete teams in the NL that could have made the World Series (the Nationals before the whole Strasburg controversey, Philly, Dodgers to name a few.) Detriot on the other hand was I believe the 4th most likely team to make the World Series (they were behind the Yanks, Angels, and Rangers.) Detriot has the talent to be good, it just took some time for them to get into the grove.

Oldschool41 : Oh, that's right. Well, Verlander didn't do well anyway, and those Giant bats are going crazy, and Zito is dealing it. So that makes my other post wrong in many ways.

patar4097 : Well who would have guessed that Verlander wouldn't do well against the Giants. Giants are just on fire.

They showed a stat of World Series match ups in he past where one team sweeps and the other team goes 7 games. The team that went 7 games the series before has come out on top every time.

Also, Detroit has been known to struggle against left handed pitching this year, and the Giants are throwing out another left hander on the mound for game 2.

Pablo Sandoval may just be the best Giants player in playoff history.

Like seriously, I think he'll eventually pass Bonds in most things.

If the Giants can win game 2... series over.