Game Picks - Wednesday: October 24, 2012

After a long 162 game season, wild card games, division series and championship series, we have finally made it to the World Series. There is no other sport like baseball that tests its players and teams to get to the bottom line. The Detroit Tigers and San Francisco Giants have an opportunity to win it all as the World Series starts tonight. Will it be a drama-filled event? Will one team dominate and make this a one-team celebration? At this point, anything can happen.

It is said that the Tigers are in a better place because they are rested and have their rotation set up perfectly. Apologies to those that think that way, but a short series is a crap shoot, plain and simple. The best laid plans can turn to dust in a heartbeat. Come on, did anyone expect Marco Scutaro to be the hero of the NLCS? Marco Scutaro!? And the climax of the series was Barry Zito pitching the game of his broken down life? Who saw that coming?

So, yeah. Talk about who is in a better place all you'd like. The series starts at 0-0 and neither team has the advantage other than the Giants getting an extra home game thanks to a player the team won't even allow back on the field (see Jeff Passan's column today--excellent).

The prediction here is that the Giants will win the series in six. But that is just a guess. What actually happens is anyone's guess. Whatever the case, the Game Picks will end the year with this series. So let's start it off right.

The game pick:

• The Giants over the Tigers: Call this picker crazy, because Justin Verlander is a great pitcher. But he is not unbeatable. That Giants home crowd will be nuts, absolutely nuts. Barry Zito is the zeitgeist star of the post season. He exemplifies all that can happen in a short series in its glorious unpredictability. Of course, the Tigers have a ton of right-handed bats they can throw at Zito. But they also have lousy fielding. Fielding won't matter if Verlander strikes out fifteen. But we'll see. Everyone in the world is picking Verlander to win. This pick flies in the face of all of that. We'll just have to see what happens.

Monday: 1-0

Post season: 14-19

Season: 1,347-1,036