Posted By Jeff Fletcher on October 27, 2010 10:49 am

It seems I’m going out a limb here, since the conventional wisdom is that the Rangers will win the World Series. I can’t argue too much that the Rangers look a little better right now, but I think it’s close enough that I’m not sure why so many people are picking them.

First, I want to point out Baggs’ outstanding blog post in which he writes exactly why it’s foolish to try to make any predictions in a short series. I couldn’t have written it better myself.

Still, I made my case for the Giants in this little FanHouse video. Basically, my prediction comes down to a very simple concept: Good pitching beats good hitting. If you don’t believe that, just ask the Phillies. It’s a popular thing now to say that the Rangers lineup is much more dangerous because they are swinging the bats so well, where the Phillies were slumping. Were they really? The Phillies had averaged 6.0 runs per game over the nine games before the NLCS, 5.4 runs over the previous 19 games and 5.5 runs over the previous 34 games. That doesn’t look like a slumping team to me.

Maybe, the Giants made them slump. Brian Sabean said as much to me in champagne-soaked clubhouse following Game 6:

“I’m a little frustrated that we didn’t get more credit in this series for pitching well and having that be the compliment rather than ‘what the hell happened to their hitting?’ We shut ‘em down. That’s the bottom line.”

Can the Giants do that to the Rangers? Well, I obviously have no idea. The Rangers have looked pretty awesome hitting so far. They also have much more speed than the Phillies. That not only means they may steal some bases, but the Giants pitchers may be less effective if they are worried about stolen bases.

I am going to give the Giants the benefit of the doubt, though, because of the way they just pitched against the Phillies (a better team than the Rangers, by the way).

Now, the Giants are also going to have to score some runs, which is never easy for them against anyone. Cliff Lee is going to be a handful, but the optimistic way to look at it is the Giants are going to be hacking (as they always do), so they may actually fare a little better against him than the work-the-count Yankees, who got behind a lot.

Yeah, I know. That’s pretty silly. If the Giants are swinging at first pitches, Lee will figure that out pretty quickly and just start throwing those first pitches a little further off the plate than he would normally, and he’ll just get them out quicker.

The Giants’ best hope is to keep these games close till the late innings, when they have a bullpen advantage and home-field advantage, and hope to get some timely hits. They absolutely can do that, because that’s what they did against the Phillies. Will they do it? I don’t know.

So basically, I can’t give you any concrete reasons why the Giants will win. No one can. All I am saying is there is enough evidence that the Giants can win that there’s no reason not to pick ‘em.

Giants in 7.