Bullpen falls short with starters missing

by other teams.

This Farhan Friedman Factor — or Friggin’ Farhan Friedman Factor, depending on your emotional connection to this fascinating moment in time — is driving the greatest rivalry in baseball history and greatest playoff race of 2021.

The best thing for fans up and down the state is, there’s no reason this trend shouldn’t

So far, the bullpen games aren’t leading to success in this marquee series between the Giants and Dodgers.

Los Angeles needed 11 pitchers Friday and lost in the 11th inning; San Francisco fell behind by three runs in the first Saturday with reliever Jay Jackson making his first big-league start and wound up on the wrong end of a 6-1 score.

And with that, the Giants and Dodgers are tied again atop the NL West. And San Francisco had one good development despite the loss and the re-knotted lead — Buster Posey had a three-hit night and nearly made it four with a liner to right in the eighth that Mookie Betts had to catch from his knees. The Giants’ catcher was 7-for-56 with 18 strikeouts over his previous 15 games, and his average dipped from .336 on Aug. 11 to .298 entering Saturday.

continue. Zaidi is at the top of his game, which means the Giants are at the top of their game, and Friedman’s club is showing no signs of going away after winning eight straight division titles and the 2020 World Series.

The rivalry is hitting a new peak that should continue for years to come, and apologies to all of those who wrote in spring training that baseball’s best rivalry was Dodgers-Padres. Does anyone know whether the Padres still play in the NL West?

Zaidi has the wherewithal, bandwidth and farm system to make this a prolonged run, and you probably notice his daily transactions that provide in-the-moment flexibility. Including Saturday, he made roster moves in nine of the past 10 days.

Zaidi’s background extends further back than the Dodgers, of course. His first baseball gig was with the A’s, so he comes from the Billy Beane family tree, which is an extension of the Sandy Alderson tree, which is an extension of the Bill James tree.

Which means Zaidi thinks a lot differently and tends to outsmart his rivals with analytic-driven schemes. He took what he learned as an assistant in Oakland and Los Angeles and applied it as San Francisco’s No. 1 boss to what is reaching fruition.

Friedman’s roots are with the Rays, who have evolved into Moneyball on steroids for the way they’ve reinvented the game and beaten up on the historic bullies of the AL East, the Yankees and Red Sox, with a fraction of their payrolls.

With the Dodgers, Friedman experiences the best of both worlds, the combination of a Tampa Bay education and an exorbitant payroll, and handed massive contracts to Mookie Betts and Trevor Bauer, neither of whom was exactly undervalued. The Dodgers absolutely blew it by signing Bauer, who has forfeited his privilege of standing on a majorleague mound, but their roster and resources are so deep that it hardly matters.

Unfortunately for Giants fans, not only has Zaidi constructed the Giants’ roster, but his fingerprints are all over the Dodgers’ roster. Max Muncy, the new holy grail of undervalued players, was a Zaidi discovery. As was Chris Taylor. Zaidi knew of Muncy from their A’s days. But back then, Muncy was so bad that if he were on your rec softball team, you’d bat him seventh and try to hide him in the outfield. Muncy entered Saturday with 30 home runs this year, eight against the Giants.

Zaidi has done more of the same with the Giants, snagging players other teams gave up on, albeit no one quite like Muncy. Still, Mike Yastrzemski, Darin Ruf, LaMonte Wade Jr., Donovan Solano and Alex Dickerson are reasons the Giants have risen from the ashes.

Zaidi provided opportunities they weren’t getting elsewhere, and that carries over to the pitching staff with the likes of Kevin Gausman and Anthony DeSclafani, who were given one-year deals to prove themselves and re-enter free agency.

Furthermore, Zaidi brought in a Gabe Kaplerled coaching staff that helped turn the Final Three of Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford and Brandon Belt into primetime players once more, a special subplot that links this team to the championship era. Crawford is a legitimate MVP candidate.

It’s a formula for success, and even with just three-fifths of the rotation available and nothing but relievers hurling this weekend, the Giants remain front and center in the division race. Whether they can sustain that four more weeks is the beauty of the great September unknown. Certainly, the Dodgers are believers and realize the stakes — the NL West winner cruises into a best-of-five Division Series while the runner-up is forced to play a do-or-die wild-card game.

Friedman was so wary of Zaidi’s Giants at the trade deadline that he made sure to win the Max Scherzer sweepstakes, landing the biggest available prize while assuring neither the Giants nor Padres would get the three-time Cy Young Award winner.

With Clayton Kershaw joining Scherzer, Walker Buehler and Julio Urias in mid-September, the Dodgers have an obvious rotation advantage, especially because Zaidi didn’t add a starter at the deadline. But they’ve supposedly had an advantage all season and haven’t rid themselves of this little band of overachieving outcasts.

This rivalry is at its best when both teams are thriving, each putting pressure on the other to do better, and that’s exactly what’s happening. What’s more, the familiarity between them heightens the competitiveness because the Farhan Friedman Factor has them playing a game within the game.

We’re experiencing one of the most glorious moments on the GiantsDodgers rivalry timeline, and all signs suggest it’ll endure. Let’s get used to it.