Monday Bantering: World Series Contest Winner

Happy Monday, I hope all of you in the east have tied yourselves down. I just watched some tiny reporter on CNN do her best impression of a kite. There is no such thing as a storm bad enough that CNN won't send a reporter out into the middle of it.

Congratulations to the San Francisco Giants on their second World Series win in 3 years. At least the last game was interesting. I don't know how much of the Tigers' batting problems could be blamed on the days off they had before the series and how much of it was because the Giants just pitched great.

In our World Series prediction thread, most of us picked the Tigers (shows what we know), but a handful picked the Giants: JaysfanDL, JRSteve, Alan F, Carm, Damaso's Burnt Shirt, CuseJays, jakeOLSEN, JaysFan101, LimeyJaysFan, munniec, EthanDR and MartsB.

Most of them figured the series would go 6 or 7 games though. No one saw a sweep coming. The closest was CuseJays, who predicted the Giants in 5, so he's our winner. Take a bow.

We didn't need our tie breaker, but Marco Scutaro hit .250 in the 4 game series. I'm happiest for him, he quickly became a favorite of mine when he was here, great to see him so happy yesterday.

Other bits of news:

• It's free agent season. We have 5 that are now free agents: Jason Frasor, Kelly Johnson, Brandon Lyon, Carlos Villanueva and Omar Vizquel. I wouldn't mind seeing any of the pitchers back. We hold an option on Darren Oliver, who is considering retirement, and Rajai Davis, whose option I'd imagine will be picked up right away. If you want a complete list of those eligible for free agency, by team, Adam Rubin has posted it.
• The Toronto Star has joined the Globe and Mail in the 'paywall' game. It is understandable, newspapers are trying to find ways stay in business. Course it is good news for us, SB does well enough with just the ads and, as much as I complain about them on occasion, ads don't block readers from getting to the site.
• Steve Goldman, over at Baseball Nation, tells the story of the Giants how the Giants have managed to survive in San Francisco.
• Sportsnet.ca posted a bunch of pictures from the riots in SF. I don't understand rioting when you win, not that I understand rioting when you lose, destroying stuff doesn't really excite me I guess.
• Our friends at Getting Blanked posted shots of the front page of the San Francisco area newspapers for today.
• There are no Blue Jays on the list of the finalists for the 2011 Gold Glove. I had hopes for Brett Lawrie, but no such luck.