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Every year, managers, coaches and writers from around Major League Baseball award honors and trophies to the players—and every year, they screw up.

So Bleacher Report’s featured columnists decided to do it ourselves. Instead of just complaining about the awards as they were announced as we would normally do on our own, we teamed up to hold our own mock awards vote.

This week, we looked at the Comeback Players of the Year in the AL and NL before naming the AL Rolaids Relief Man of the Year. Today, we end Week 2 of our four-week series with the best relievers in the National League.

The top five vote-getters are featured here with commentary from people who chose them. The full list of votes is at the end.

So read on, see how we did and be sure to let us know what we got wrong!

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The San Francisco Giants won their first World Series with a 3-1 Game 5 victory over the Texas Rangers. It was the first title for the Giants franchise since 1954, four years before they moved from New York.

Giants SS Edgar Renteria, who was talking retirement just five weeks ago, tells teammate Andres Torres that he’s hitting the long ball. And he did just that. In the seventh, Renteria took a Cliff Lee 2-0 cut fastball for a ride, a three-run home run that silenced the 52,045 in Arlington. His heroics were awarded, as he was named World Series MVP in a 3-1 World Series-clinching victory.

“I got confidence in me, but I was joking like I’m going to get it out. But it went out. I got confident, looking for one pitch. So he threw the cutter and it came back to the middle of the plate,” Renteria said.

Renteria’s heroics are nothing new, though. His 11th-inning walk-off RBI single for the Florida Marlins won Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, and he became only the fourth player in MLB history to drive home the winning run in two clinching games, joining Hall of Famers Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra.

The Giants won the way the best teams do—strong, young pitching. They also received a ton of support from what many deem “castoffs and misfits,” which was essentially a collection of short-term rentals, releases and waived players from around the league. No Giants player ranked in the top 10 in any significant statistical category during the regular season.

It didn’t matter that the Giants weren’t headlined by a big-name superstar, as they had a handful of unlikely saviors throughout the postseason—Cody Ross, Juan Uribe, Aubrey Huff, Freddy Sanchez and now Renteria.

“For us to win for our fans—it’s never been done there with all those great teams—that was a euphoric feeling. All those (former players) were in the clubhouse so many times and they were pulling for these guys to win. They helped us get here,” manager Bruce Bochy said.

Much credit is due to RHP Tim Lincecum, better known as “The Freak.” He out-dueled Lee (how often does that happen?) not once, but twice. He went eight strong, gave up just three hits and two walks while striking out 10. He’s now able to add a World Series trophy to his two NL Cy Young awards.

“You know what it is? It’s called being a gamer. Walking into the clubhouse today, the guy’s as loose as can be, joking around. Same old Timmy. You’d have no idea he had the opportunity to go out and win Game 5 of the World Series and win us a World Series championship. You saw it from the get-go. He had swing-and-miss stuff all night. Cruz hit a pretty decent pitch out. And he bounced back and got us out of there,” said Buster Posey.

The question now is can they do it again? A team consisting of castoffs and misfits wasn’t supposed to get this far in the first place, but now, it’s quite possible that a repeat is in the cards.

With an offence that ranked 17th of 30 teams in the bigs with just 697 runs scored during the season, this unlikely championship team has proven that there is no blueprint to success in the MLB.

Around the fanbase, it has proven that baseball is one of the greatest sports for playoff unpredictability, where the best team doesn’t always win, but rather, the one that happens to be playing best at the time.

Taking a look at this team’s roots, there is a ton of homegrown talent. Buster Posey and Pablo Sandoval, for example, are two of the club’s few homegrown position players, whereas the pitching staff was created predominantly through the draft—Madison Bumgarner went in the first round 10th overall (in 2007), Lincecum, 10th overall (in 2006), Matt Cain 25th overall (in 2002), Brian Wilson (24th round in 2003) and Jonathan Sanchez (27th round in 2004).

As for their “castoffs and misfits,” a lot of their bats came from second or third markets—so much credit is due to the club’s scouting.

When all was said and done, it came down to their starting pitching. Lincecum defeated Lee in Games 1 and 5, while their other young starters, Cain and Bumgarner, won Games 2 and 4. The trio did an incredible job of putting the Rangers bats to bed—the heart of the order, OF Josh Hamilton, DH Vladimir Guerrero and OF Nelson Cruz, who homered their way past the Tampa Bay Rays and New York Yankees in the postseason, were a combined 7-for-54 in the Series, which includes Nelson’s solo shot that got the Rangers their only run in Game 5.

Wilson retired those three batters in order in the ninth, finally punching out Nelson at 9:30pm CT, initiating a celebration 56 seasons in the making.

One has to love the story behind this team—specifically, for Wilson. It’s the same routine for the creator of “Fear the Beard”—after recording the final out of a ball game, the closer turns away from the plate, crosses his forearms in front of his chest and quickly looks toward the sky. It’s an MMA-style signal that he says he adopted to honor both his late father, who passed away from cancer when Brian was only 17, and his Christian faith.

“This one was the most special, sure. It showed that hard work really does pay off. That’s what my dad always taught me,” he said.

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After 56 years of waiting, a change in location, and years of dealing with Candlestick Park, the San Francisco Giants have again reached the summit, winning the 2010 World Series, doing so with great pitching and a surge of hitting.

The 2010 World Series was not what many were expecting. Most had a Yankees-Phillies rematch, and many didn’t even have the Giants making the playoffs until a late September push. As a result, the Giants’ win is one of the more surprising ones.

Where does this Giants’ victory rank among the top 25 least likely world series champs?

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Nov. 1, 2010 in Arlington Texas, the Texas Rangers lost their fight for the World Series against the San Francisco Giants.  The end has left Rangers fans with a huge pain in our guts that we know too well, as we come to terms with the disappointment of losing the final game of our season. 

No one expected the outcome of the last five games, as all the sports writers had Texas to be the victor.  We have to give credit to our opponent. They found a way to silence the Rangers bats, and made our Ace pitchers look like deuces. 

While losing on the world biggest stage in Major League Baseball isn’t the greatest feeling right now, to keep things in perspective, there is a whole lot for Rangers fans to be proud of. 

To be able to lose in the World Series means the Rangers had to win a lot of games, something new for Rangers fans.  They are after all, the American League Champions and Josh Hamilton is our MVP. 

This seasons Rangers gave their fans more to cheer about than any squad before them.  And we will be ready to rally cry the “Claw and Antlers” for them the next season too. 

The changes within the Rangers organization that propelled this club to its new-found heights are only two years old.  A few kinks in the armour can be expected to surface when you’re going places you never been before. 

This was a young team that grew up fast before our eyes, and this postseason was valuable experience that will serve the Rangers in the future. 

We can rest assured that the brain trust of owners Nolan Ryan, Chuck Greenberg and company have put in place are not going to rest doing the shortest season break in Rangers history. 

They will do all they can to ready our “Wonder Boys of Summer” for another run next season. 

“Big Tex” Ryan and General Manager Jon Daniels have a huge uneasy task of keeping the players like pitcher Cliff Lee and others who made a big impact this season together on the Rangers roster.  The front office is crystal clear—they are ready to fight to keep our team intact. 

The team’s notebook of things that works will be extra thick this year, skipper Ron Washington and his crew will review game films to see where the Rangers could have better themselves.  Every position go under the microscope as they look for ways to get the bugs out. 

The whole Rangers management gang will take a long hard look at the Ryan-inspired conditioning program for the pitching staff.  Refinement of the stretching program can be expected, since the Rangers pitchers lack success in the World Series. 

The Rangers scouts will be at their best, ask any team in the League, in finding the best young recruits for the Rangers farm program.  Remember Ryan’s implemented changes reach all the way down to the farm too. 

Big changes are planned for sprucing up the BallPark as well. Greenberg wasn’t on the road trips with the Rangers for nothing.  He was checking out the other teams’ facilities to see what worked there and what changes could be made here to improve the fan experience at Arlington. 

Rumor has it the Rangers organization want to host the mid-season All-Star game in a couple of years, even more for Rangers’ fans to look forward too. 

Some of our players will go home to rest, some to heal, others will opt for winter league play, all will have a short vacation. 

So hold your heads up high Rangers fans and be proud of your team, and take a short rest too, for the 2011 season is just around the bend.

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With the World Series wrapped up and the Giants taking home baseball’s ultimate prize, now is a good time to look back at some of the best performers in the history of the Fall Classic.

Some of the best players in baseball history were either ineffective when it mattered most or never got the chance to play in the World Series. While at the same time, one of the most memorable moments in baseball history was given to us by a light-hitting second baseman named Bill Mazeroski.

So without further ado, here are the 40 greatest hitters in the history of the World Series.

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They’ve been called Torture, The Dirty Dozen, The Misfits, The Cast-Offs, The Scrapheap Gang, The
Bad News Bears, The Little Rascals and compared to virtually every underdog team in sports history.

For the video accompanying this article go here.

But now they’ll ultimately be known as the 2010 World Champion San Francisco Giants.

For a guy like me who was born and raised in San Francisco and grew up idolizing the Giants, it feels amazing to say.

This team of colorful, diverse, outspoken, crazy characters was indeed a team of destiny.

The Rangers lineup inspires much more fear than the Giants. Cliff Lee was thought to be immortal until the Giants proved otherwise.

The Phillies are a much better team on paper. They’ve got seven all stars in their lineup and a supremely dominant three headed pitching staff. Halladay threw the first no-hitter in the postseason in decades, then a no-name cast-off, Cody Ross, made him look junior varsity.

It doesn’t make sense—at all.

If the Atlanta braves don’t lose Billy Wagner, Martin Prado and Chipper Jones before the playoffs the Giants don’t beat them. Period. Because then Brooks Conrad isn’t on their roster and all those eighth- and ninth-inning comebacks don’t happen. Something miraculous had to happen. And it did.

Miracle after miracle happened, over and over, and no one could even attempt to explain it except with theories of heart and Divine Intervention.

It’s too bad a lot of the country didn’t follow the 2010 Giants and learn their story. It’s a great one, like Boston having their 3-0 comeback against the Yankees and then winning it all. Just a great story.

Sports stories like this one just don’t happen that often.
 
There is story after story of guys on this team who all faced extreme humility and fought back against adversity with the notion of team as their North Star as they overcame every obstacle on their way to World Series glory.

Instead of telling them all, I’ll just tell the most unbelievable one: Cody Ross. A few months ago he wasn’t even a Giant, and he was then, in fact, a strategic acquisition to prevent him from going to competitor San Diego

But more amazingly, Giants fans disliked him a few months ago.

Not like we dislike anyone in a Dodger uniform, but like we dislike Casey Blake for mocking Brian Wilson, or Vicente Padilla for nailing Aaron Rowand.

Ross flipped his bat at Matt Cain after smacking a dinger off him in July. Cain glared at him all the way around the bases, then struck him out swinging his next at bat.

Had that game versus Florida not been close Cody Ross would have gotten a Cain fastball in the ribs. And Giants fans would have loved it.

Has that ever happened before in the history of baseball? A guy goes from hated prick to irreproachable playoff hero in the same year?

It’s the kind of story that fiction writers make up and people laugh at because it’s so implausible and ridiculous. Yet that happened. That happened to the 2010 Giants.

And so in the end, there can be no logical explanation. The Giants played better defense in the playoffs than they’re capable of.

They got more clutch hits in the playoffs than they did in the regular season.

They had a higher percentage of late inning comebacks in the playoffs than they did in the regular season.

Yeah, we’ve always had great pitching, but we didn’t do play like this in the regular season.

We’re 11-4 in the postseason. That’s the best we’ve played all year.

Other teams players got injured. Invincible pitchers suddenly turned mortal. The San Diego Padres lost 10 games in a row, which must have had a probability of less than one percent.

We won game one of each playoff series and never trailed at any time. Everything went right.

The 2010 Giants shouldn’t be the world champions of baseball. But that they are is a reason to believe in something greater than ourselves for anyone out there looking for a reason.

Maybe that sounds like a cliche, but sports isn’t at its greatest when great competition leads to entertaining and dramatic finishes, it’s at its best when great contests tell the amazing, unbelievable and miraculous stories of regular human beings.

That’s what the Giants are: A regular and very flawed group of guys that somehow rose above themselves and played as a TEAM.

And I believe it is a miracle.

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Twas the night after Halloween and all through the stands

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In his young career, Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants has accomplished some pretty special things on a pitching mound. Already owning two Cy Young awards, he has now added a World Series title, in which he out-pitched Cliff Lee in the clinching game to earn the Giants their first title since moving out west from New York.

Lincecum and his merry band of outsiders, otherwise known as the 2010 San Francisco Giants, out-pitched, outhit, and outclassed the Texas Rangers in every facet of the game, earning themselves baseball’s most coveted prize, the title of World Series Champions.

Facing an offensive powerhouse, led by leading American League MVP candidate, Josh Hamilton, as well a pitching staff headed by modern postseason legend, Cliff Lee, the San Francisco Giants weren’t expected to have much of a chance against the Texas Rangers. Relishing the underdog nature of their title challenge, the Giants went to work, with several dominant pitching performances and a rotating cast of characters providing heroics each night.

The resulting five game World Series victory is the Giants’ first championship since 1954, and the lone title they have won since relocating to San Francisco prior to the 1958 season.

Led by their own pitching phenom, Tim Lincecum, the Giants proved that strong pitching is the key to baseball postseason success. Lincecum’s stellar effort, coming five days after an uneven Game 1 start, would be enough to stifle the powerful Rangers and claim the championship.

San Francisco’s unorthodox right-hander already authored a classic postseason start in his personal playoff debut during the NLDS, but his World Series clinching Game 5 performance will stand as one of the greatest clinching performances baseball has seen.

Let’s see where Lincecum’s gem ranks among the greatest World Series clinching, starting pitching performances of all time.

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When it came down to the games that mattered most in 2010, the San Francisco Giants didn’t torture their fans at all. In fact, it seems that every time there was a must-win game, the Giants won it handily. 

Once Edgar Renteria hit his second big homerun in the World Series, did anyone really doubt it could be done? Was there anyone not wearing a Rangers hat that thought Texas had it in them to come back from a three-run deficit against Tim Lincecum, Javier Lopez, AND Brian Wilson while also bouncing back two days later to beat Matt Cain?

I know I didn’t. And it isn’t because the Giants have been just rolling through the playoffs. It’s because of the statistics that back up a Giants win and that it was all quite predictable.

Here are three facts:

With three or more runs of support, Tim Lincecum is 47-8 in his career.

When given the chance, Brian Wilson struck out the last batter of the game 27 times this season. 

Pat Burrell struck out 12 times in 13 at-bats, but for every great regular season pickup the Giants made (like Burrell), there’s been someone else who stepped up in the postseason batting right behind them (like Edgar Renteria).

It might not make sense that the Giants ended up sending Cliff Lee home with an 0-2 record in the World Series (the only two postseason defeats in his career), but then look at it closer.

Look who the Giants beat this year. For some reason, they excel at making bad pitchers look great and then turn around and make the ace of the staff look like a back-ender in the rotation.

Roy Halladay was 0-1 with a 6.43 ERA in one start in the regular season, and went 1-1 with a 4.15 ERA against San Francisco in the NLCS. Remember, this is a guy who threw a perfect game AND a no-hitter this year against a lineup that was not exactly leading the league in hitting.

Roy Oswalt went 1-3 this year against the Giants in the regular season, without bad peripherals, but still picking up three losses. He dominated San Francisco in Game 2, but was less than stellar coming out of the bullpen in Game 4 and ended up with a no-decision in the series-clinching Game 6. 

The Giants also touched up Cole Hamels during the regular season to a tune of nine runs in 11 innings, good for an ERA of 7.63 and a WHIP of 1.909. In Game 3, he gave up three runs in six innings, but for Matt Cain, that was more than enough to get the win. 

Going back even farther, the Giants beat Derek Lowe twice. They dropped seven in an inning on Ubaldo Jimenez earlier this year. They beat Mat Latos twice in the final month of the season to finally make San Diego lie down. 

There’s something about this team that makes you wonder how they do it. As many have said this year, up and down the lineup (and the roster, pretty much), they’re all pretty much the same. No one jumps off the page, and for that reason, the Giants can either be very good, or very, very bland.

The guys with power (Burrell, Huff, Uribe, Posey) showed up at certain times this year, and between them you can expect just what you got: 15-25 HRs, 70-90 RBIs. 

The guys without power also showed up (Sanchez, Fontenot, Torres, Ross, Renteria), and again gave very solid lines. All of them hit around .275 and could be expected to pop the ball out of the park a few times a year. 

Simply put, although this team didn’t have any huge playmakers, they didn’t have any glaring weaknesses either. The focal point on this team is (and should be) the pitching, and it was. 

It was a team full of complementary players, and when all you need is one guy per game to step up, the Giants put themselves in a very good position to storm into and through the playoffs like it was no problem. 

That’s the strength of this team. There is no drama, because if Burrell strikes out, Renteria has the hero in him to pick him up. If Sanchez fails to move Torres to third, Aubrey Huff has the power in him to crush one over the wall.

Every guy in this lineup can hurt you, and although its not Ryan Howard or Albert Pujols status (that you KNOW he’s going to hurt you), it’s something that carried this team all season. 

So, was it torture? Of course it was. But was it unexpected? Not at all. This was a team of destiny, and boy did they act like it. 

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Although there are always references to one, there really isn’t a “baseball handbook.”

There’s nothing that managers use in the dugout to decide which course to go during a game. They can’t say to themselves, “OK, men on second and third, two out, score tied at zero, in a lose and go home game.”

If there was, you can bet Texas Rangers’ manager Ron Washington would have found a very simple explanation: The number four. As in the number of balls Cliff Lee should’ve intentionally thrown to Giants’ shortstop, Edgar Renteria.

In case you missed it, Cliff Lee and Tim Lincecum met last night in Game 5 of the World Series. It was a rematch of Game 1.

In Game 1, Lee was tagged for six runs over 4.2 innings of work. Lincecum wasn’t much better, but got the win. Both starters were solid last night, matching zeros through six innings.

In the top of the seventh inning, with the score still tied at zero, Rangers’ starter Cliff Lee gave up back to back singles to Cody Ross and Juan Uribe. Aubrey Huff  then laid down the first sacrifice bunt of his career to move the runners up to second and third. Lee then came back to strike out Pat Burrell, which brought Renteria to the plate with two outs.

Now, I know what you’re thinking people. Intentional walk, right? After all, Renteria, at that point, was batting .411 in the series with three RBI. He had burned the Rangers in Game 2 and they weren’t going to let that happen again, right?

Wrong.

Instead of checking that baseball handbook, Cliff Lee chose to go after Renteria instead of putting him on to pitch to Aaron Rowand. Well, it didn’t work out, to say the least.

Renteria hit a three-run homer that barely cleared the left-center field wall, but brought the Giants their first world series championship in 56 years and the first since their move to San Francisco.

After the game, Lee said, “I don’t walk people. I go after them.”

Oh really? Well that decision cost your team the game and the World Series.

I understand the incredible numbers that Cliff Lee had put up to that point in the postseason. Other than his Game 1 start in the World Series, Lee was masterful. He had struck out 41 batters and walked only two. But, if Cliff Lee’s 2010 postseason record showed three walks at the end of Game 5, there might have been a Game 6 and there might have been a championship in Arlington.

Lee’s decision may have been the right one as far as his ego is concerned, but it was the wrong one as far as his team was concerned. The best pitchers in the game are fearless. They attack hitters and don’t worry about runners on base, just concentrate on the man in the box. But there is a fine line between being fearless and being reckless.

If Lee had struck Renteria out, maybe we’d be looking at a different box score, but he didn’t. 

I understand that the decision to intentionally walk a batter should come from the manager, and it didn’t. But in his post-game comments, Lee took full responsibility for pitching to Renteria. If Washington says not to walk him, and Lee thinks they should, call time and say something. Otherwise, get the out. Lee did neither.

Cliff Lee is one of the best postseason pitchers we’ve seen in a while, and whether or not you feel his decision to pitch to Renteria was on his shoulders or Ron Washington’s, it was the wrong choice and it cost the Rangers their season.

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