Well it wouldn't be a Giants filled World Series without some extra-curricular controversy. Apparently, the Royals have flipped the script and accused the Giants of cheating/gaming by purposefully dampening up the basepath dirt in an attempt to slow down the speedsters from Kansas City.
How does it feel Giants fans? Not so great when it's someone else doing the accusing, eh?
A couple of good links this morning from our friend over at Rockies Zingers.
First, Adam Peterson continues his look inside the numbers reflecting the Rockies base running for 2014. Unsurprisingly (at least to this writer) is that the Rockies were among the leaders in TOOTBLANs. This article reminds me again that unless specifically equipped for it, running/hustling in baseball is simply too high risk with too little reward.
Also, Jeramiah Penalfor takes a look at the mostly highly touted pitching prospects in the Rockies system, reviewing their 2014 and previewing their potential in 2015.
Finally, Kenny Kendrena at the Hardball Times has published some work on "The Little Things" inside the game of baseball. I am on my third read, and will likely need a few more. Kenny is measuring things in terms of positive and negative plays in order to see how little things that may not show up in a box score (sac flies, poor plays that aren't errors) end up affecting games.
He even uses a game played between our beloved Rockies and the Dodgers of Los Angeles in order to demonstrate how a team (I'll let you guess which one) can blow a game by losing all the little battles even when the box score suggests they should have won. Great stuff here and a way of thinking about the game that is much more closely related to how some of us watch baseball.
It's stuff like this, Adams findings on the Rockies base running, and the work RIRF has done on drag factor, that lead me to believe this roster does not need huge changes. Maybe just a bunch of little ones.