Playoff chase is taking a wild swing
Giants’ rise has blurred NL picture and is making the trade market murky.
The absurdity of the National League wild-card race can be summed up in one sentence, which was not applicable as recently as a week ago: The San Francisco Giants are in it.
Yes, the Giants. They have surged into contention through a combination of an extended winning stretch and the general mediocrity of the senior circuit. Heading into Saturday’s games, the Giants did not have more victories than defeats. They stood at .500, which in the NL meant they were only two games behind the Philadelphia Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals for the second entry into the wildcard game.
The rise of the Giants provides an unexpected wrinkle for a playoff situation that did not appear to be accepting new applicants. By winning 14 of their last 16 games before Saturday, the Giants had complicated the playoff race and the trade market before the July 31 deadline.
About two weeks ago, the picture looked clear. Farhan Zaidi, the former Dodgers general manager now at the helm as San Francisco’s president of baseball operations, would trade starting pitcher Madison Bumgarner and closer Will Smith before August. Bumgarner, the 2014 World Series most valuable player, offered a postseason pedigree unmatched by any other player available. Smith, a lefthanded All-Star who has struck out six times as many batters as he has walked this season, might be the best reliever on the market. The Dodgers, certainly, would be one of several teams making inquiries. Except ... The Giants still retain several members of their championship core from
2010, 2012 and 2014. Manager Bruce Bochy has announced he will retire after this season. The players and the fan base sound uninterested in a fire sale. Bumgarner made his point clear after pitching in a victory over the New York Mets on Friday.
“I’m trying to win games for the Giants, and we’re trying to get into the postseason,” Bumgarner said. “And we’re making a push. We’re coming.”
He added: “If we manage to keep this going and sneak in, I don’t think anybody will want to match up with us.”
That bravado might sound silly, but it was the same internal logic that carried San Francisco to its three titles this decade. It certainly plays better in the NL than the American League. If the season had ended Saturday, the Cleveland Indians and the Oakland Athletics (both 15 games above .500) would meet in the AL wild-card game. The NL features a bunch of teams much closer to the waterline.
The Giants, by most objective standards, should not be considered a good team. They had given up 36 more runs than they had scored before Saturday, and their Pythagorean win-loss record, which estimates how a team should perform based on run differential, was eight games below .500.
Among their hitters with at least 150 plate appearance, Pablo Sandoval leads with an .809 onbase-plus-slugging percentage; the Dodgers, in contrast, have six hitters with an OPS above that, plus Corey Seager and Chris Taylor close to it. In a season of heightened power, no Giant has hit more than 13 home runs.
Bumgarner, the Giants’ best starter, has a 3.65 ERA, the worst since he debuted in 2009. The bullpen ranked fifth in the majors in ERA entering Saturday but the rotation sat at 20th.
Yet, the team has taken flight thanks to a series of shrewd acquisitions by Zaidi. He reshaped the roster on the fly, taking chances on unheralded players such as outfielder Mike Yastrzemski (acquired from Baltimore in March) and outfielder Alex Dickerson (acquired from San Diego in June). He brought in veteran outfielder Kevin Pillar from Toronto in April. A minor league deal for catcher Stephen Vogt has paid dividends, with Vogt slugging .512.
Zaidi has not tipped his hand about what he will do as the deadline approaches. He offered an equivocal answer to San Francisco radio station KNBR last week.
“Not every trade that’s made leading up to the deadline is a pure buy or sell deal,” Zaidi said. “Sometimes it’s a need-for-need deal. That might be the direction we go.”
To enter the race, the Giants have feasted on the other wouldbe contenders. The hot streak started with a sweep of San Diego to open the month. The Giants took two of three from St. Louis and then two of three from the Milwaukee Brewers. After a fourgame sweep of the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field, the Giants returned to Oracle Park to face the perpetually struggling Mets.
The Cardinals and Brewers have played below expectations. The Brewers are on pace for an 83-win season, a significant dip from their 96-win campaign last season. The complementary pieces around reigning NL MVP Christian Yelich have regressed, and the team has yet to pick up the pace since losing six of seven games before the All-Star break.
St. Louis continues to wait for the arrival of the version of Paul Goldschmidt who tormented opposing pitchers while playing for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Goldschmidt, a 31-year-old first baseman, has a .759 OPS, nearly 150 points below his career average.
If the season had ended Friday, the Cardinals and Phillies would have played in a one-game playoff to see who would face the Washington Nationals, who have revived themselves after a wretched start to the season.
The Phillies salvaged a split with the Dodgers last week despite a series of rain delays and bullpen collapses. Philadelphia looked lackadaisical during a 16-2 thrashing in the first night of the fourgame set, but recovered to win a walk-off game against closer Kenley Jansen on the second night and pummel the Dodgers bullpen again in the series finale.
The season has been challenging for second-year manager Gabe Kapler. He has weathered criticism for the Phillies’ early-summer swoon, in which they fell from first place in the NL East to third. But thanks to the mediocrity of the league, the Phillies — like, improbably, the Giants — are in the race.
“You go through periods of time where that doesn’t look like the strongest possibility,” Kapler said. “We know that we have the talent to go after that prize. And we’re going to keep fighting for it. We’re going to fight for it relentlessly.”