KANSAS CITY, Mo. — There is no doubt of the World Series greatness we have seen from these San Francisco Giants. The moments and the characters should be long remembered.
Buster Posey hit .300 as a rookie to help beat Texas in 2010. Pablo Sandoval smashed three homers against Detroit in the opener in 2012. Madison Bumgarner has been nearly flawless, no matter the opponent.
“Incredible character guys who play the game hard, who understand the game and bring guys together — that, combined with great leadership,” said the Giants’ Jake Peavy, adding later: “They certainly have found a formula that’s worked.”
So they have, and that formula has produced championships in 2010 and 2012, with a chance for another as Peavy took the mound against the Royals for Game 6 at Kauffman Stadium on Tuesday. The Giants’ overwhelming October success makes for a fascinating talking point.
Are they really a dynasty? The term connotes a higher level of team achievement, but is open to interpretation.
“When I think of a dynasty, I think of, I guess, the Yankees’ run, the 49ers, the Cowboys, the Lakers, the Celtics,” said Aaron Boone, the ESPN commentator whose home run gave the Yankees a pennant in 2003.
“I guess the Big Red Machine jumps into my head, but that’s just a two-year run, so I don’t know if you’d call that a dynasty. Maybe you do. Many go to that team as being a great team.”
Greatness, for sure, is required for a team to be called a dynasty. The Reds won the World Series in 1975 and 1976, lost it in 1970 and 1972, and lost in the playoffs in 1973. They had multiple titles in a short time frame with largely the same cast of stars. They were acknowledged as a favorite every season, respected and feared by their rivals.
Winning in alternating seasons, rather than consecutively, could dilute the perception of this Giants’ era, if only a bit. The Cardinals won titles in 1942, 1944 and 1946, but they also won a pennant in 1943. The Giants did not reach the playoffs in their years between World Series.
Duane Kuiper, the Giants’ longtime broadcaster and former second baseman, said the Chicago Bulls of the 1990s embody the term dynasty. The Bulls won six N.B.A. titles in eight seasons with a core of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. They were widely expected to win, and they did.
These Giants, then, are different. They entered each of their charmed seasons with little national hype. ESPN polls at least three dozen of its contributors before every season, and just once in the Giants’ World Series years had anyone predicted them to win the championship: Jim Caple, of ESPN.com, did so in 2010.
“I think parity is here in baseball, more than maybe at any other time,” said Boone, who picked the Phillies in 2010, the Angels in 2012 and the Dodgers this season. “I go into spring training these last few years, we have to do our stupid predictions, and I can make a case for about 25 teams — ‘If this happens, they’re going to be good; if that goes wrong, they stink.’ So with all these teams in it and now having to win more rounds in the postseason, it’s special what they’ve done.
“There’s probably a ton of teams at home going, ‘We’re better than that team.’ But yet, here they are again, going through more rounds in the playoffs than they have in the past. Incredibly impressive.”
Kevin Millar, the former first baseman and a host on MLB Network, said the Giants had to be considered a dynasty if they won a third championship. Millar’s Red Sox reached the playoffs in three consecutive seasons, something these Giants have not done, but they prevailed only in 2004.
“Really, truly, why not a dynasty?” Millar said. “Three championships. To win a championship is tough, and I think sometimes we take that for granted. To win three in five years, I don’t care who you are, a ring’s tough. To get here is tough, and so many things have to go your way.
“I’ll tell you what, the Giants have been an amazing organization, they really have. All those years they had Barry Bonds, they weren’t in the World Series and winning championships, and then they get this group of guys, and Bruce Bochy comes over here and has turned them into an absolute, I think, dynasty if they win.”
Yet no one sees more of the Giants than Kuiper, and he would not use the term. Each of the Giants’ World Series teams has been different, he said, with just eight players on the active roster for all three postseasons.
Those players are Posey, Sandoval, Bumgarner, Tim Lincecum and four relievers: Jeremy Affeldt, Santiago Casilla, Javier Lopez and Sergio Romo. Another 10 or so have been active for two of the postseasons, including Matt Cain, a rotation stalwart who is out this time after elbow surgery.
“Maybe you could call it a dynasty organization,” Kupier said. “But as far as team, there’s so many different people that have created great moments. I mean, every year there seems to be a guy wearing Cody Ross’s uniform.”
The Giants claimed Ross, a journeyman outfielder, on waivers in August 2010, at least partly to block him from the Padres, who were then in first place. Ross wound up hitting two homers off the Phillies’ Roy Halladay in the opener of the National League Championship Series, and was the Giants’ cleanup hitter the night they won it all in Texas.
Other veterans have wandered in for pivotal cameos. In the 2012 World Series clincher, Marco Scutaro drove in Ryan Theriot with the winning run in the 10th inning. Tim Hudson and Peavy, who won hundreds of games for other teams before this season, have made half the Giants’ starts in this World Series.
The lack of roster continuity, then, works against these Giants, historically.
“When I say no, I’m not shortchanging these groups,” Kuiper said. “But I just think of the same guys doing the same thing, every year.”
What the Giants have, he said, is a dynasty manager in Bochy, a dynasty general manager in Brian Sabean and a dynasty catcher in Posey. Not a dynasty team? That may be only semantics.
The Cubs, the Indians and the Phillies have won just two championships apiece in more than a century of trying. Three in five seasons for the Giants would look more and more impressive as time goes on — a nontraditional dynasty, perhaps, but a dynasty just the same.