has come on the back of impressive small-ball performances in the postseason. If you want a hilarious write-up of what out looked like in the 2014 postseason, here's what Jayson Stark had to say about it:

http://espn.go.com/mlb/story/_/id/12092111/mlb-strange-true-postseason-feats

Here are a few of my favorite parts.

"And has it come up yet that, on the way to winning the World Series, the Giants went 12 days and 242 postseason plate appearances without hitting a single home run? True story. And in those 12 days (and eight games) in which they were hitting zero homers, they gave up EIGHT of them -- and still went 6-2 in those eight games.

" But who needs home runs when you lead the league in a pivotal new metric catchily described by their third-base coach, Tim Flannery, as RTIs (runs thrown in)? This team scored 20 runs -- yeah, 20 -- in this postseason on various phenomena that would not fall under a category known as "hits."

" Hold on. We're not done with this portion of our program. Speaking of RTIs, the Giants somehow went through a six-game stretch in the NLDS and NLCS in which they AVERAGED two runs a game on non-hits. Over those six games, they magically scored more runs on non-hits (12) than actual hits (10). Ladies and gentlemen, this is not possible. That is all."

Considering in games started by Madison Bumgarner, the starting line-up only had one player with a better slugging percentage than the pitcher, it's clear they knew how to win without the long ball.