In a three month stretch that can only be described as torturous, the last two days have been a breath of fresh air for the San Francisco Giants.
It started on Monday’s day off, with both the Mets and Cardinals losing, allowing San Francisco to gain ground in the NL Wild Card by just sitting at home. Days off have become events to look forward to for Giants fans recently, as they’ve been far more likely to make progress in the playoff race when they don’t take the field, something their 25-41 post-All Star break record reinforces.
The Giants were able to take that progress onto the diamond yesterday, however, blasting the Colorado Rockies 12-3, in a 19-hit performance, their best this season at AT&T Park.
The problem? In a bizarre twist of bad luck, the Mets and Cardinals also each scored 12 runs on Tuesday night, rendering San Francisco’s offensive awakening moot.
Still, after falling into third place following another forgettable weekend series in San Diego, the Giants are back into the second Wild Card spot, a full game ahead of St. Louis and a half game behind the New York Mets with five games remaining.
Now for the bad news. The Giants are the only of the three Wild Card hopefuls to close the season against a team with a winning record, with the Los Angeles Dodgers coming to town this weekend. The Mets have one more game against Miami and then finish with a series against the lowly Phillies, who they recently blasted for 44 runs in a four game set last weekend. The Cardinals have a slightly tougher test after their next two games against the Cincinnati Reds, closing with a three game series at home against an average Pirates club.
The Dodgers have already clinched their playoff berth by winning the NL West, but are still in contention with the Washington Nationals for home field advantage in their first round matchup. What’s more, the Dodgers are still planning on trotting out the pitching buzzsaw of Rich Hill (ERA 2.05) Clayton Kershaw (ERA 1.65) and Kenta Maeda (3.28) in the final series against the Giants.
It’s safe to say San Francisco is not going to be able to stumble into these playoffs. Yes they’ve stumbled for a while and are still, somehow, in control of their postseason fate. But yesterday’s win must be the start of a turnaround, rather than a blip, if the Giants are hoping to avoid the most historic second half meltdown in MLB history. If they are unable to summon whatever they did last night in the final series against Los Angeles, they won’t have a chance.
There is still some room for optimism. Though it hasn’t been a topic of discussion, the Giants have been exceedingly unlucky in this second half. San Francisco is -16 in runs scored since the break. The Cardinals are -43, yet boast a 35-33 record since the halfway point. In the first half of the season the Giants were 20-10 in one run games. In the second half, they’ve gone 8-17.
This shows that even if the Giants were to continue playing at their below-average level, the numbers would indicate an improvement in results. There’s no denying that the’ve been bad, but part of the reason they’ve seemed atrocious has to do with some lousy luck that should correct itself as the sample size increases.
Regardless, the bottom line is that the Giants cannot count on the teams around them faltering. Barring a major choke job by either St. Louis or New York, San Francisco will have to take the reigns and play excellent baseball for the next five games to get into the postseason. Yesterday was encouraging, but it only matters if they can keep it going. If not, it will merely go down as a moment of respite in an otherwise catastrophic collapse.
