How They Got Here: The San Francisco Giants is a
one-by-one look at how each member of the 2012 World Series Champion San
Francisco Giants found their way to the squad. We'll look at all of the
players on the roster, as well as notable players who did not make the
postseason roster for whatever reason and the coaching staff and general
manager. Part twenty-two tells us of young right fielder Hunter Pence.
Hunter Pence was born on April 13, 1983, in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended Arlington High School in Arlington, Texas, where he played in the outfield before playing shortstop in his senior year. He went to Texarkana College for one year before transferring to University of Texas at Arlington, where he was a star playing in the Southland Conference. In his junior year, he was drafted by the Houston Astros in the second round, and signed this time (Pence previously refused to sign as a 2002 draft fortieth round selection of the Milwaukee Brewers). He ended the 2004 season playing in the Class A Short Season New York-Pennsylvania League with the Tri-City ValleyCats of Troy, New York, where he hit to a .296 batting average with eight home runs and thirty-seven runs batted in. In 2005, he moved up to the Class A Lexington Legends in Lexington, Kentucky of the South Atlantic League, where he hit .338 with twenty-five home runs and sixty runs batted in over the course of eighty games. He was promoted to the Class A Advanced Caroling League to play with the Salem Avalanche of Salem, Virginia. Pence played another forty-one games here, hitting .305 with six home runs and thirty runs batted in. For the 2006 season, Pence earned another promotion, up to the Class AA Corpus Christi Hooks in the Texas League. His numbers dropped a bit at this level, as he hit only .283 with twenty-eight home runs and ninety-five runs batted in for the full season. It was enough to earn him a short stint in 2007 with the Round Rock Express of Round Rock, Texas, in the Class AAA Pacific Coast League. He spent most of April here, hitting a sterling .326 batting average with three home runs and twenty-one runs batted in, before earning a call up to the Houston Astros. His debut was against the Milwaukee Brewers on April 28th, and he stuck with the Astros, playing center and right field, for the whole season except for from July 23rd to August 20th, when he was out with an injury. His rookie season concluded with him hitting .322 in batting average, as well as seventeen home runs and sixty-nine runs batted in. Pence played the full season with Houston in 2008, hitting to a .269 batting average as well as twenty-five home runs and eighty-three runs batted in, which was a slight regression. The 2009 season treated Pence a little bit better, as he made his first All-Star game en route to a personal line of .282 in batting average with twenty-five home runs and seventy-two runs batted in. He came into 2010 and left very similar results, cementing himself as a key player for the Astros by hitting .282 with twenty-five home runs and ninety-one runs batted in. His time as the face of the franchise was short though, as he began 2011 with the Astros and put up a .308 batting average with eleven home runs and sixty-two runs batted in before being traded during a firesale to the Philadelphia Phillies with cash in exchange for Jarred Cosart, Jonathan Singleton, Josh Zeid, and a player to be named later (Domingo Santana), all minor league players. None have broken into the major leagues yet. He closed out the season manning right field for the Phillies, where he hit .324 with eleven home runs and thirty-five runs batted in. He was primarily brought in with the intention of being a long-term solution in the outfield, as well as a short-term push in the playoffs, but the Phillies collapsed against the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Division Series, and Pence hit only .211 with four runs batted in during the postseason. Nevertheless, he held the job for Philadelphia, and began the 2012 season there, hitting to a disappointing .271 batting average and seventeen home runs with fifty-nine runs batted in. In another deadline deal, the Phillies decimated their outfield while looking far away from the playoffs, making two deals in the same day. One was with the Los Angeles Dodgers, but the Pence deal sent him to the Dodgers' rivals, the San Francisco Giants, in exchange for minor league players Seth Rosin and Tommy Joseph, as well as established major league player Nate Schierholtz. While the Dodgers were thought to have made the best deadline deals by acquiring big names and larger contracts, the Giants excelled even as Pence struggled in the orange and black, where he hit .219 with seven home runs and forty-five runs batted in to close out the season. In the end, the Giants made the playoffs while the Dodgers unraveled, and it was Pence who brought something immeasurable to the table in the postseason. When down 2-0 in the National League Division Series to the Cincinnati Reds, Pence gave a speech to his teammates, firing them up, and they won the next three games to advance to the National League Championship Series against the St. Louis Cardinals. Here, he had one of the quirkiest moments in recent memory, when he hit a third inning double in Game 7 that hit his breaking bat three times, causing a very unusual spin to be applied to the ball. The hit resulted in two earned runs and an additional unearned run, and put the nail in the coffin on the Cardinals, allowing San Francisco to reach the World Series against the Detroit Tigers. He added the last of his four runs batted in during Game 2 of the World Series, a critical eighth inning insurance run to give the Giants a 2-0 series lead before heading to Detroit, where they finished off the Tigers with a four game sweep. While Pence's one home run and .210 batting average were nothing special, his fiery pregame speeches were recognized by teammates as a huge influence and motivation on them to win the championship, earning Pence his first World Series title.
Follow me on Twitter @KipperScorpion.
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