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The Giants went all-in with arms and one tremendous bat, while the Tigers have had a luminary pitcher (who's getting some help) and a bunch of great bats.
SF's plan was more risky, because arms are inherently more risky. You keep bringing up how the Tigers "lost" 7 games after adding Prince Fielder, while ignoring that the Giants don't make that first WS (or even the playoffs) if they call up Posey a week later, or Bumgarner, or if the Padres don't do a pratfall down the standings. The master plan was to hope that their 1st round draftpick was ready to be an MVP after 600 ABs in the minors and their 20 year old arm could throw 220+ innings to help them run down the Padres in a 163rd game and then make a playoff run to the title? That's a really good lightbulb right there.
All that said, another axiom for 100 years has been that "good pitching beats good hitting" so I wouldn't call what SF has done recently to be revolutionary. They cashed in on some career years from some vets in '10 as well as some amazing performances from rookies promoted mid-season. They had a great steroid performance from Cabrera in '12 to complement Posey, built an OBP team that got "lucky" (+6 Pythag) and overcame a collapsing pitching staff but managed to put it together in the postseason by juggling the rotation and getting some timely performances.
Why did the Tigers lose 7 more games? Avila and Peralta came back to earth, and Young was no V-Mart (who missed the whole year). Without that Fielder signing to help hold up the offense, they would have missed the playoffs. It's not like moving Cabrera to 3B hurt the staff - they were better than in 2011.
Why did SF win? Detroit sat around for a week and a half waiting for San Fran to finish their NLCS and came out ice-cold, then never recovered. These things happen in baseball. It's not a sign of a better master plan in SF or more lightbulbs on the west coast, it's just baseball.
Detroit did what they had to do to get there, and SF did the same. If SF had won their CS in a sweep while Detroit took 7 games to kill the Yankees, it could easily have gone the other way. Or not.
# of teams relying on a bat-first catcher to lead a batting-average-driven offense to a world series title while investing $75 mil (2/3 of the payroll) in the staff? Not a large number. Do I expect teams to copy the Giants' formula going forward? Not really.
Why? Because it's very risky, and getting that many quality arms to stay healthy long enough to make this work is difficult.
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You know who might be trying a variation on that formula?
The Mariners. Felix = Cain, Zunino (or Montero) = Posey, we have a couple of one-year fliers on vets who should have a good batting average (with power), we have a ton of young arms who could surprise...
The Giants built their team from within, and had most of their expensive FAs crash and burn. They came up aces on farmhands Cain, Lincecum, Bumgarner, Posey and Sandoval, put together a pen that could withstand the loss of their closer and still be great, and eked out the rest even when some of their choices crashed and burned spectacularly.
Is Seager, Saunders, Zunino, Montero, Felix, some of the Big However Many, and a deeeep pen enough to work with, if the one-year-bats work out?
Maybe. It might actually be. We have a LOT of straws to draw in an attempt to get real contributors.
But I wouldn't recommend too many other teams try to repeat that formula either, because, "Step one, suck for a decade, step two hire the best minor league mind around, step 3 keep your home grown Cy Young winner in town, step four..." is not the easiest blueprint to find success with either.
When you can't draft or sign sluggers, though, necessity becomes the mother of invention.
I'm curious to see how many young arms we're willing to roll out there while trying to catch lightning in a bottle - or get some lightbulbs to turn on.
~G