REGIONAL #90:  This regional featured a World Series champion, the 2010 Giants, and a host of other competitive teams that promised to make it an interesting bracket. The 1975 Orioles were in between pennant wins at the beginning and the end of the 70s and looking for a second straight regional win for this franchise; the 1966 Tigers would capture the flag two years later after a near miss in 1967; and two Pirates teams 40 years apart feature some weapons that make them interesting dark horses. The 1958 Cardinals will try to avenge the 1957 squad that was eliminated in the 2nd round in the last regional, while the 1992 Mariners seek the first regional title for any Seattle team, although the ELO ranks indicate that they were the worst team in the majors that year. I picked the pennant winning Giants over the Tigers in this one; the ELO rankings (in parentheses below) portray a very different outcome, predicting the Orioles will best the 1991 Pirates in the finals. I was surprised when I looked up the ELO ranks to discover that those rankings had the WS champion 2010 Giants as only the 5th best team in baseball that year, while the 1991 Pirates were pegged as the top MLB team that year despite being eliminated by the Braves in the NLCS.

First round action

As I expected, the 90-win 1975 Orioles had a strong starting rotation and excellent defense (Brooks Robinson, Belanger, Grich, Blair all "1"s), but aside from Don Baylor their offense was unexpectedly weak:  for example, Mark Belanger, as usual, hit .226, but that was still better than Blair and Robinson!  Their opponents, the 1958 Cardinals, only managed 72 wins but had more offensive weapons--including Stan Musial-- than the Orioles, albeit nowhere near the pitching and defense of the O's.  However, the Cards started off quickly against 23-game winner Jim Palmer, rapping 3 singles in the top of the 1st but scoring only one run as Belanger turns a great double play.  Belanger somehow makes back-to-back errors in the 2nd, but the Cards can't convert, and the game remains 1-0 until the bottom of the 4th, when a hit and a couple of walks by the Cards' Vinegar Bend Mizell loads the bases for the bottom of the O's lineup.  Blair converts a SI 1-8 off Mizell's card to tie the game, and with the bases still loaded Robinson misses Mizell's HR 1-9 split, but the resulting double scores the fleet Blair and the O's lead 4-1.  Palmer seems to have settled down, but in the 7th he loads the bases for the heart of the Cards order, and singles by Musial and Boyer tie things up.  Baltimore responds immediately, with Jim Northrup missing Mizell's HR split to put runners on 2nd and 3rd with nobody out, and St. Louis summons Morrie Martin from the pen, with no complete hits on his card, but quite a few walk results.  And the O's hit those walk results enthusiastically; Martin issues a walk to load the bases, and then two more walks drive in two more.  Obviously, at that point Martin is gone, and Phil Paine comes in and adds to the pain with an error and another walk, and the score is 8-4 after an eventful 7th inning.  The events continue in the 8th, with the Cards getting a 2-out walk and single before rookie Curt Flood converts a HR 1-7 split off Palmer's card to narrow the gap to 8-7, but two more walks from Paine and a Lee May single pushes the Baltimore lead to 9-7 after 8.  With Palmer getting battered, the O's eye their bullpen for the 9th, but how do you pull a HOF pitcher in one of his best years with a lead?  Sure enough, Palmer allows 2 hits in the 9th, but gets PH Wally Moon to groundout to Brooksie, and the Orioles move on with a hard-fought 9-7 win.

The 64-win 1951 Pirates were largely a two-man show; in the starting rotation, Murray Dickson won 20 games and nobody else won more than 9, while on offense Ralph Kiner's 1.079 OPS dwarfed the rest of the team by a wide margin.  In contrast, the 88-win '66 Tigers had multiple weapons in both areas, with Earl Wilson tapped for the start over formidable alternatives like Denny McLain and Mickey Lolich.  The Pirates found some weaknesses on Wilson's card quickly, loading the bases in the top of the 1st and scoring a run on a Joe Garagiola sac fly.  That lead didn't last long, as homers by Al Kaline and Willie Horton in the bottom of the 1st made it 3-1, and a 2-run single by Norm Cash in the 3rd extended the Tigers' lead to 5-1.  A 2-base error by Horton leads to a Pirate run in the 5th, and in the 6th Wilson falls apart after allowing a 3-run pinch hit homer to Erv Dusak off Wilson's card; when the flames subside Fred Gladding is on the mound and the Pirates lead 7-5.  The Tigers counterpunch with a Don Wert solo HR in the bottom of the 6th, and then in the 7th a 2-base error by Pirates SS Strickland is followed by consecutive doubles from McAuliffe and Kaline.  At that point, the Pirates pull Dickson for their best reliever, Ted Wilks, and Norm Cash greets Wilks with a prodigious blast into the far reaches of Tiger Stadium.  Wilks allows three more hits in a row, and by the end of the inning the score is now Tigers 12, Pirates 7.  With a solid lead, the Tigers dig deeper into their pen to preserve Gladding for later rounds, and Orlando Pena tosses two perfect innings to close things out, sending the Tigers into the 2nd round with the comeback win.

Setting the lineup for the 92-win 2010 Giants pennant winners helped me understand why the ELO rankings for the team weren't better despite their World Series title; they were pretty good in most categories, but not really great in any.  Their much lower ranked opponent, the 1992 Mariners, lost 98 games but in Griffey Jr. had a bigger offensive weapon than anyone on the Giants, and the M's were better defensively than the Giants, although their starting rotation was cringeworthy, featuring a young Randy Johnson who had lots of velocity but no aim.  Johnson and his counterpart, Tim Lincecum, keep things scoreless until the top of the 5th, when the Giants score five runs on only two hits, aided by 2 Mariners errors and 3 walks (2 with the bases loaded).  However, in the 7th Seattle gets to Lincecum, with Henry Cotto, in the game for his glove, hits a 2 run HR and Edgar Martinez adds an RBI double and it's now 5-3, with Casilla summoned from the bullpen to close out the inning.  The Giants add an insurance run in the 8th on a Posey RBI single, and in the bottom of the 9th they turn it over to Beach Boy closer Brian Wilson, who strikes out the side to seal the 6-3 win with an exclamation point.

The 1991 Pirates won 98 games and the NL East, and were a well-balanced team with good pitching in the rotation as well as some in the pen, a defense that had 6 of 8 positions either a "1" or a "2", and a lineup featuring Barry Bonds and Bobby Bonilla when they were good but not yet infamous. In contrast, the 89-loss 2012 Blue Jays had little to brag about aside from Edwin Encarnacion's 42 homers. That didn't prevent Jose Bautista from putting a 2-run homer into the cheap seats in the top of the 1st against the Pirates' 20-game winner John Smiley, but an RBI double from Bonilla in the 1st and a timely single from Mike Lavalliere in the 2nd quickly tied the game at 2-2. The Jays push back ahead in the 4th with solo shots from Encarnacion and catcher J.P. Arencibia, while Toronto starter Brandon Morrow is settling in and the Pirates can't convert hits to runs. Smiley yields to Roger Mason in the 7th, who prevents further damage for Pittsburgh, but the Pirates don't muster a real threat until the bottom of the 9th, when a Buechele walk and a PH single from Lloyd McClendon puts the winning run at the plate, but #9 hitter Jose Lind pops out to give the Jays the upset 4-2 victory over the ELO regional favorites. Unfortunately for Toronto, Morrow was by far their best starter as a swingman, and they lost both LF Rajai Davis and DH David Cooper to injury, meaning they'll have to play the semifinal game undermanned and undertalented against a pennant winner.

The survivors

A semifinal matchup between the 1966 Tigers and the 1975 Orioles was accurately predicted by the ELO rankings, but although those ranking favor the Orioles here, after setting the lineups in round 1 I was sticking with my pick of the Tigers in this pairing, as I believe they have more offensive weapons and a starting rotation arguably as good as Baltimore's.  Not many 2nd round games feature two 20-game winners squaring off, but that was the case with Mike Torrez vs. Denny McLain.  The game was scoreless until the 4th, when a couple of hits and a Torrez 2-base error led to 3 Tiger runs, but the Orioles knotted the game in the 7th when McLain loaded the bases with nobody out; Baylor fanned but Lee May drove in 2 with a single and Grich added another to tie things up.  Grich provides more heroics in the top of the 9th, driving in Baylor to put the O's ahead.  Torrez then tries to close things out; he walks Freehan but gets two quick outs, and faces PH extraordinare Gates Brown as the potential winning run.  But Brown grounds out, Torrez completes a 6-hit complete game, and the Orioles move to the regional finals with the 4-3 comeback win.  Worthy of note:  Jim Northrup was in the starting lineup for both teams at ages 26 and 35, the latter being his final year.

When facing a World Series champ in this tournament, I've discovered that it's much better to do so in the 1st round than in later rounds, because by then the pennant winner almost always has a much better starting pitcher available.  That was the case with the champion 2010 Giants' Matt Cain against the 2012 Blue Jays and Carlos Villanueva, and the Giants drove home the point with two 1st inning homers from Freddy Sanchez and Aubrey Huff, and a Pablo Sandoval double in the second that made it 5-0 Giants before the Jays could even get anyone on base.  Jose Bautista gets the Jays on the board with a 2-run HR in the 4th, but Pat Burrell's solo shot in the 5th makes it 6-2.  When Villanueva allows a double (off a missed HR split on his own card) to lead off the 6th, he's pulled for Darren Oliver, but another double for Sandoval makes it 8-2 Giants, and that's how it ends.  Cain gets the 6-hit complete game victory, and the Giants head to the finals aiming to capture an impressive 8th regional win for this franchise.

This regional final thus matched the ELO favorite 1975 Orioles against my pick, the pennant winning 2010 Giants, and it looked to be the strong defense of the Orioles against the superior offense of the Giants.  The two starters, Mike Cuellar and Jonathan Sanchez, were both top-flight #3 options and the game remained scoreless until the top of the 5th, when a key Aubrey Huff error followed by a gbA+ single set the plate for a 2-run Ken Singleton double.  The Giants had never been behind in this tournament before, and they got further behind when Belanger singled home a run in the 6th when his SS counterpart Uribe couldn't get to the ball.  The Giants made it 3-2 in the 7th when Cody Ross hit a 2-run homer off Cuellar's card, and when Don Baylor led off the 8th with a double the Giants went to closer Brian Wilson to try to keep them in the game--with Wilson retiring the side without incident.  Similarly, Cuellar exits in the bottom of the 8th after allowing a leadoff double and the O's turn it over to Dyar Miller to try to convert the save--and like Wilson, Miller retires the side quietly.  In the top of the 9th, Giants LF-4 Pat Burrell allows a leadoff single, and Paul Blair follows with a triple on a 1-4 split off Wilson's card to provide an insurance run, and the Giants can do nothing against Miller in the bottom of the 9th, giving the Orioles the 4-2 win and the second regional title in a row for the franchise--meaning that the 1975 Orioles will face their 2013 counterparts in Round 4 of the tournament.

Interesting card of Regional #90:  This card shows what it's like when your pitcher leads the league in both strikeouts and walks allowed.  I put Johnson in with the likes of Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax as big strikeout guys who took a while to learn the control necessary to become great pitchers.  Although Koufax never led his league in both walks and strikeouts, Ryan did it a record-setting SIX times. In researching this, I was surprised to discover that 19 other pitchers have done it since 1901, including a number of Hall of Famers.  Can you think of some?