Giants’ big problem is that Dodgers just won’t go away
One game. That’s all that separated the Giants and the Dodgers in the National League West when play began Friday night.
That sound you hear is millions of Giants fans gulping at the same time.
These are going to be an excruciating final two weeks, isn’t it?
Yes, the Giants were winners of nine straight games until losing Wednesday to the Padres. Then they lost again. And now here we are.
There’s absolutely no reason to panic about the Giants. They have won 95 games. They’re not infallible. Baseball teams lose games. San Francisco didn’t do anything to disqualify itself from anything over the last two days. They’ve clinched at least a spot in the wildcard playoff.
But to feel a bit of frustration? That’s fair if you’re a fan.
And that has more to do with the Dodgers than it does with the Giants.
Yes, it’s a good thing that the Dodgers are keeping the heat on the Giants. Iron sharpens iron. But this much heat?
How is it possible that the Giants were able to go on an in
sane run like the one that just ended and yet after the smallest of setbacks find themselves in no different a place than when they started that winning streak?
Gone is the Giants’ margin for error.
That simply doesn’t seem fair. The game feels rigged.
Not long ago, I wrote that it might take 105 wins to win the National League West — a laughable number, but a number I believed at the time was a fair assessment.
But with the way the Dodgers are playing — they just don’t lose — I have to reassess.
If the Giants go 10-5 over the final 15 games, does that get the job done?
I’m not so sure anymore. It might be 106, 107 wins. It might take an extra win in purgatory — Game 163 — to finish the job.
How is any of this reasonable?
Even more frustrating: If the Giants were to end up in the wild-card game, they’d likely face the Cardinals or the Padres.
Yes, the Giants would be favored in either game, but:
If the Padres make it, they’ll have actualized all that talent that was expected to win 100 games this season in the final days of the campaign. Perhaps the last two days were the start of that.
As we saw Wednesday and Thursday, that’s not something you want to face.
And if it’s the Cardinals — who are playing their best baseball of the year right now — the Giants would face off with a team chock-full of Giant-killers.
Paul Goldschmidt would have a strong, MVP-caliber season if his 147 career games against the Giants all happened in one campaign — he has 26 home runs, 97 RBIs, and is slashing .293/.406/.528. He’s a Giant-killer.
But he’s no Nolan Arenado, who has 32 homers and 108 RBIs in 138 career games against the Giants, with countless great defensive plays.
The guy who would likely start a wild card game for the Cardinals would be Adam Wainwright, Giantkiller.
His batterymate? Yadier Molina — who isn’t quite a Giant-killer, but is certainly a pain in the rear.
All this to say that if the Giants didn’t already want to avoid this unfair, unjust, in-no-way-proportional onegame playoff, the possibility of the Cardinals — as I’ve alleged for months was uncannily built to beat the Giants — should scare them off even more.
Alas, a little bit of extra fear won’t do anything for the Giants at this juncture.
No, this team doesn’t need motivation or rationale for finishing the job and winning the National League West.
What they need is for the Dodgers to stop winning every single night.
What they need, after playing months of exceptional ball, is to find their best baseball of the season in the final two weeks here.
No one said it was going to be easy.