Stan Szeto-USA TODAY Sports
PHILADELPHIA — After game 107, the Giants can exhale. Their furious push is over, for the moment at least. They first gave Farhan Zaidi options by going on a tear, and they hope they have now given him no option but to believe.
They captured 19 of their final 25 games before the July 31 trade deadline. They have closed to 2 1/2 games back of the second wild card. Whether the clubhouse transformed before or after the winning is a chicken-or-the-egg fight, but the before and after pictures are stark.
Here’s another “before” picture, in a Giants locker room that was quiet after a loss Tuesday. Brandon Belt did not much flinch or look around as he gave voice to what the team has rallied around.
“For me, we just hope everybody stays here,” Belt said after the 4-2 loss dropped the Giants to 54-53, following a first half that cratered at 12 games under .500. “Let’s ride this thing out. We really think we can do something special.”
He wasn’t the only one to use that word.
“We obviously have a special thing going here with the group that we have,” Tyler Beede said after taking the loss and allowing four runs in five innings. “So it’s been cool to see guys stay focused on [the games, not the deadline] and keep their attention here and try to win games for this ballclub.”
What’s the “after” picture? It will clarify itself 1 p.m. PT Wednesday, when Zaidi’s final decisions will be made about a team that had been billed a definite seller until this month.
Tuesday’s series-opening loss to another wild-card contender did not much bother Bruce Bochy, who has seen a lot of wins (1,029) and a lot of losses (1,022) with San Francisco.
He knows how to stay even-keeled, and insisted the final bit of data they gave to ownership would not sway things.
“Come here against a good team and, hey, we lost a game,” Bochy said after pinch-hit home runs by Belt and Stephen Vogt accounted for their only runs. “That’s going to happen. I don’t think anyone here looks at one game as a difference-maker right now.”
Several Giants spoke about being eager for the deadline to finally hit, for the nagging to stop, for the questions to cease. There are no August deals this season; apart from call-ups, DFAs and injuries, the Aug. 1 Giants will be the Giants who hope to play in the wild-card game.
Now they wait.
“Once we pass that deadline tomorrow, and everybody’s still in here hopefully, we can stop worrying about it and go out there and take care of business,” Belt said. “Although that hasn’t seemed to hurt us any up to this point. But you just get it out of the back of your head and just move on.”
