It’s time for the baseball world to give these Nobody Giants respect they deserve
I understand the skepticism about the San Francisco Giants’ success this season.
I had plenty of it.
After all, this San Francisco roster is filled with a bunch of randos and nobodies — guys who came to the Giants because no one else wanted to give them a chance. And the guys fans do know — Buster Posey, Brandon Crawford, Evan Longoria — well, they were supposed to be washed up. On top of that, this team has been all sorts of banged up all season. In their four-game series against the Dodgers this week, they were missing their starting third, second, and first baseman — their shortstop, too.
Yet the Giants kept doing what they’ve done all season: they won.
Every game the Giants play with the Dodgers feels like a playoff contest, so winning three out of four in Los Angeles was always going to be a big deal, even if it’s July.
But I think that series win carries even more weight than rivalry and an expansion of their lead in the National League West to three games.
That series should end the skepticism about the Giants once and for all.
These Giants aren’t an early-season (or mid-season) flash in the pan. They have the best record in baseball and that’s no fluke.
Seriously, where’s the weakness of this Giants’ team? You’d have to get pretty granular to find it.
Those nobodies in the Giants’ lineup are tied for the major league lead in home runs (144) with the bopping Toronto Blue Jays, who have played home games in submajor league bandboxes at home all season.
The rotation is one of the best in baseball, posting a 3.23 ERA on the season and eating up a bunch of innings, too — San Francisco starters are second in the National League in innings pitched. That rotation is only getting better, as well. Young Logan Webb has been fantastic since returning from his shoulder injury.
And the bullpen — the area I thought would be the Giants’ undoing — has been the best in baseball since June 1. There might be only two mainstays in the ‘pen, and they might be a lefty with one pitch and a submarining righty whose fastball maxes out at 84 miles per hour, but the job has consistently been done this summer.
That’s been the Giants’ story all season.
The Giants have something else going for them, too: As much as baseball is an individual sport with minimal teamwork, this San Francisco squad has a rare connective tissue. Add whatever oft-used sports cliche you want — “next man up”, “keep the line moving”, whatever — there is something about these Giants that pulls them through in tough moments.
We’ve seen it a few times before this season. The Nobodies’ four-game split in Washington last month showed us something — their offense was a joke for four straight games, yet they found a way to not lose that series.
This week’s series against the Dodgers showed that same sort of gumption — the kind that’s hard to develop but necessary to win in October.
Frankly, I thought the Giants’ loss on Tuesday night could have been a pivot point in their season, and not for the better. It was, after all, the kind of loss that should demoralize a team and send them into a funk. At the same time, the Dodgers moved one game back of San Francisco in the standings. If ever there was a moment for the Giants to fade and the so-called inevitable juggernaut to overtake them in the standings, it was the next two games of the set.
Instead, the Giants rallied in back-to-back games off Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen to win the series 3-1. So much for fading.
The ’21 Giants find ways to win games. It’s as simple as that. They’re not a perfect team, but they’re a real team, and that makes them special.
That best record in baseball might not have been foreseen at the beginning of the season, but it, my friends, is no fluke. Look into why and you’ll realize that the Giants are a team that’s worthy of the top spot at this juncture in the season and a team that could well hold onto it for the rest of the campaign and perhaps the postseason as well.
Not only are the Giants the best team in baseball, but the Dodgers aren’t an inevitable juggernaut who will eventually overtake these plucky upstarts and re-starts. No, these Dodgers have proven to be mortal. They are equals to these nobodies. And after that series in Los Angeles and the Dodgers’ meltdowns both on the field and off (this team is cracking under the weight of missed expectations, folks) it’s hard for anyone to say that this bunch of nobodies isn’t a better squad than the presumed superteam.
It’s time that the baseball world lets go of past biases and presumptions and fully acknowledges what’s happening in San Francisco. This isn’t a flash in the pan or a summer-feel good campaign — this Giants team is the real deal and they’re here to stay.