In the June drafts of 2002, 2006 and 2007, major league teams selected a total of 51 pitchers in the first round. Of those 51, 29 have pitched in the majors. Of the 29 who have pitched in the majors, 8 have pitched in the World Series.

Of those 8, 3 just won the World Series for the San Francisco Giants, making the Giants the first team to win the World Series with three of their own first-round picks in their rotation. It is the best and clearest evidence yet that growing one’s own pitchers is the antidote to the pitching plague that afflicts everyone and everyone complains about.

Not everyone can do it, but the Giants have done it: Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, baseball’s historic three musketeers.

They weren’t perfect – Lincecum, after all, gave up 4 runs in Game 1 – but they collectively allowed only 1 more run in 23 2/3 innings, with Cain and Bumgarner permitting no runs in their starts. It was the most dominant pitching performance in a World Series since the Baltimore Orioles shut out Los Angeles after the third inning of the first game of their four-game sweep in 1966.

The one flaw in the Giants’ pitching performance was the losing effort of Jonathan Sanchez in Game 3, but he was only a 27th-round draft pick. Yet he was a mainstay in the rotation during the season, making 33 starts, the same number as Lincecum and Cain.

One other pitcher started 33 games, and he provides Exhibit A of the proof that the Giants are better at plucking amateur pitchers from the draft and developing them than they are identifying major league pitchers and luring them to San Francisco for a lot of money.

Before the 2007 season the Giants decided they wanted to bring Barry Zito across the Bay from Oakland, where he won 102 games, including 23 in 2002, and a Cy Young award. The trip across the Bay was costly for the Giants in two ways.

They gave Zito $126 million for seven years, and they have endured the worst seasons of his career as he has compiled a 40-57 record for them. To no one’s surprise, the 32-year-old left-hander was not part of the World Series rotation or even the roster.

As for the historic nature of the Giants’ winning effort, two other World Series teams had three first-round pitching picks, according to the commissioner’s office, but the Giants surpassed them.

The 1972 Cincinnati Reds had three – Gary Nolan, Ross Grimsley and Don Gullett – but lost to Oakland. The 2008 Philadelphia Phillies had three first-rounders but only two of their own – Cole Hamels and Brett Myers (since departed as a free agent). The third, Joe Blanton, they acquired from the Athletics, who drafted him in the first round in 2002, seven selections after the Phillies chose Hamels and the pick before the Giants took Cain.

Growing one’s own pitchers is a long, tricky process. It starts with scouts identifying the right prospects and continues, after they are drafted, in the development phase of the process. Dick Tidrow, a former major league pitcher, runs the Giants’ scouting and development departments as the No. 2 man in the front office behind general manager Brian Sabean.

“It takes good scouting, good player development, good work by the major league staff, which is the last stage of development,” Tidrow said in a telephone interview hours before the Giants finished off the Rangers.

He credited Dave Righetti, the pitching coach, and Mark Gardner, the bullpen coach, for the last stage but also the three pitchers themselves, saying, “They had an understanding of what they needed to do.”

Not just an understanding but also the ability to make the changes that were necessary.

But while the young pitchers were learning, the Giants were learning, too.

“Matt got hurt halfway through his first full season,” Tidrow related. “He had a stress fracture in his elbow. We learned from that for Madison.”

Cain was the 25th player taken in the 2002 draft.

“We were picking toward the end of the first round that year,” Tidrow recalled. “We went in and saw him early, in April. We just thought he was going to get bigger and stronger. He had an electric arm, and he had the makings of a hard curveball. We thought we had the makings of a big league pitcher.”

They thought correctly. Though the right-hander hasn’t been a big winner in his 5-year career – his best season was 2009 (14-8, 2.89) – he sparkled in the post-season, winning two games and permitting only an unearned run in 21 1/3 innings.

Lincecum was the 10th player taken in the 2006 draft. “We said ‘you need to throw the ball on the corners and get an off-speed pitch,’” Tidrow said. From the mouths of the Giants’ instructors’ to Lincecum’s right arm, and only three years later, he owned two Cy Young awards.

A year after that he had four post-season victories of the Giants’ 11, including a World Series pair.

A year after Lincecum was the 10th player taken in the 2006 draft, Bumgarner became the 10th player selected in the 2007 draft. “Madison learned how to throw a really good changeup and to cut the ball, a little cut fastball,” Tidrow said. “It looked like a tight slider.”

In his first post-season the 21-year-old left-hander had a 2-0 record and 2.18 earned run average.

The Giants called up Bumgarner from the minors June 26, four weeks after Buster Posey, the rookie catcher, joined the Giants. I wrote during the season that by keeping Posey in the minors until May 29 the Giants seemed to be playing the game other teams have played in manipulating the major league service time of rookies with the idea of delaying their eligibility for salary arbitration and/or free agency.

I further suggested that by not calling up good young players teams were not doing everything they could to win, thus undermining their integrity.

Speaking of Posey’s situation, Tidrow said, “We saw him as a catcher, and he hadn’t called his own pitches. He needed brushing up on blocking balls. We called him up when it was time.”

I remain unconvinced, whether the explanation is coming from Giants’ officials or the Giants’ beat writers, who because they are on the scene think they know better but are really just echoing the company line.

I can more readily accept the explanation for the timing of Bumgarner’s recall.

“Bumgarner came to spring training with a job to win but was throwing 86 to 91,” Tidrow said, meaning his velocity wasn’t what it should have been. “We wanted him to stay down until he got on all cylinders and when he got on all cylinders we called him up.”

Whatever the explanations, the Giants will have Posey and Bumgarner for seven years instead of six before they can be free agents.

Nevertheless, even if the Giants are engaged in retrogressive practices, they are to be applauded for their foresight in planning the in-house construction of a pitching staff but even moreso for their successful achievement of building one capable of winning the World Series.

Not that the Yankees of George Steinbrenner would ever copy anyone else, but even they could benefit from trying it the Giants’ way. They could save hundreds of millions of dollars and not have to rely on overpaid busts like A.J. Burnett