Giants jostle for playoff position
SF hosts the Rockies and Padres this week
When Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi and new manager Gabe Kapler arrived at the Winter Meetings in San Diego in December, the team’s leaders refused to use the word “rebuild.”
After three consecutive losing seasons, the Giants were making significant changes to the organization and clearly eager to rely on younger and inexperienced talent in the year ahead, but Zaidi and Kapler never shied away from their desire to remain as competitive as possible.
With exactly one week remaining in the regular season, the Giants still have a chance to sneak into the postseason.
Following a resounding 14-2 victory over the A’s on Sunday in which shortstop Brandon Crawford, left fielder Darin Ruf and catcher Chadwick Tromp all enjoyed some of their best games of the season, the club is 26-26 and within striking distance of a playoff berth in an expanded postseason field.
“It’s really an exciting time and to know that pretty comfortably our destiny is in our hands —we’re going to be responsible for the outcome of this season— is a really good feeling,” Kapler said Sunday. “I think players always feel that.”
Under normal circumstances, a team in transition such as the Giants would likely be a year or two away from competing for a wild card spot and potentially two-to-three seasons from challenging the Dodgers atop the National League West.
2020, however, hasn’t unfolded the way anyone expected.
“I think we all have a pretty good idea that nobody expected us to be in this position,” Crawford said. “But I don’t think anybody really expected us to be in the position in the years that we won either. We go out with an attitude that we’re going to win every night and we’re going to battle until the final out.”
The Giants returned home to Oracle Park Monday for a four-game set against the Colorado Rockies and currently trail the 27-26 Philadelphia Phillies and 27-27 Cincinnati Reds in the wild card standings, yet one strong week could land the team in the playoffs for the first time since 2016.
“We can all taste it man,” Tromp said. “We’ve got a lot of veteran guys on the ball club that tell all the young guys how awesome it is to be in the playoffs.”
Major League Baseball’s decision to expand the playoff field has helped change the perception of the Giants’ season as the team has had legitimate postseason hopes throughout September. A .500 record typically isn’t cause for celebration, but the Giants have exceeded nearly every external expectation and remained relevant and entertaining in a year that’s provided no shortage of obstacles.
Third baseman Evan Longoria said Saturday the club knows it can’t “limp into the playoffs,” and given the jumbled nature of the wild card standings, watching the scoreboard at this time of the season requires a lot of time and an intricate knowledge of MLB’s postseason tiebreakers.
The Reds, Phillies and Brewers all currently hold a tiebreaker over the Giants because they have better records against their own division, but Kapler’s club finishes with eight straight games against NL West teams and will need to win anyway to remain in contention for a wild card berth.