The San Francisco Giants Can Still Win the NL West
By Neil Povio
After last night’s 4-2 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in the rubber match of the series, the San Francisco Giants are now three games back of first place in the NL West and three games up on the Pittsburgh Pirates in the NL Wild Card race.
The Giants had a tough assignment yesterday in facing Clayton Kershaw and trying to beat him to win the series, but the Giants virtually beat themselves rather than lost to Kershaw and the Dodgers with early mental mistakes and errors in the ball game.
In order to still have a chance to win the NL West, the Giants are going to have to learn from yesterday’s loss with the mistakes they made, but at the same time, they will have to put that series in the past, forget about it, and work on starting a new long winning streak. They must not dwell on that series loss, and they must regain momentum starting today.
The Giants now only have 13 games left in the season. Starting today, they play three against the Arizona Diamondbacks, three against the San Diego Padres, three against the Dodgers, and four games at home against the Padres to end the season.
"The key to the Giants winning the NL West is going to be this road trip that starts today."
The Giants have played great baseball all season on the road, which gives them an advantage based on the fact that nine of the last 13 games of the season are on the road. The Giants road record is 40-32 with a .556 winning percentage, which is actually slightly better than at home (42-35, .553 winning percentage).
This road trip also allows for the Giants bats to get hot again after only scoring two runs in their last two games at home. The Giants have scored 320 runs on the road compared to their 301 runs scored at home, so this road trip can really allow the Giants’ bats to get hot again, and Arizona is a perfect place for it to start with their live ballpark.
The Giants have played great against the Diamondbacks (11-5) this season. Sweeping the D-backs will be a must (again) in this series.
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The D-backs are not a good ball club this year, especially without their star first baseman, Paul Goldschmidt, who’s on the DL for the remainder of the season. The D-backs have also not been playing well as of late (3-7 in their last 10 games), so the Giants need to execute their opportunities and sweep the series from the D-backs.
After the Giants’ trip to Arizona, they’ll head to San Diego to take on the Padres. The Padres have also struggled as of late (and most of the season) going 2-8 in their last 10 games. However, the Giants have not played very well against the Padres. The Giants are only 6-6 against them this year so far. That will have to change when the Giants play them this coming weekend.
The biggest series of the season will then begin one week from today when the Giants and Dodgers play in a rematch for the final time this season in a three-game set in Los Angeles. Hopefully for the Giants, they will enter this series with a six-game winning streak, because if they don’t, the Giants will likely be far away from having any chance at winning the NL West due to the Dodgers’ even easier schedule to end the season (six against the Rockies who own the worst record in the National League, four against the Cubs who own the third worst record in the NL, and three against the Giants).
It would be great if the Giants can sweep the series in LA, but taking two of three will be critical at the minimum.
The Giants will end the season at home against the Padres with a four-game series, where hopefully for the Giants, they will only have to win three out of the four to take the NL West.
The chance to win the NL West is very much still alive for the Giants. They simply just have to keep winning. They do not want to be subject to just shooting for a Wild Card one-game elimination game, because their chances at proceeding any farther in the playoffs would look slim, given that the Giants didn’t look good against the Pirates (who they would likely play at this point) earlier in the season.