San Francisco Giants: So, Are They A Playoff Team?

There’s a little over a month left in the season, and the San Francisco Giants have struggled mightily in recent weeks. So are they a playoff team or not?

It’s been a long, tedious six weeks for the San Francisco Giants. They entered the All-Star break with baseball’s best record and things were fine and dandy. But that break, which normally fans beg for so players can get some much-needed rest for the final months, turned out to be disastrous for the Giants.

Their offense was stolen by awful, mean fairies likely hired by the Los Angeles Dodgers. The pitcher’s ability to keep balls in the ballpark disappeared faster than a volunteer at a magic show. Fundamentally, they looked like a group that had just come together for the first day of Spring Training.

On July 11th, the first day of break, the Giants stood at 57-33 and were 6.5 games ahead of the Dodgers in the division. When they wake up on August 30th to begin a two-game series with the Arizona Diamondbacks, they’ll be 71-59 and 1.5 games behind the Dodgers. An eight-game swing in the division and a record 12 games under .500 in such a short span are about as ugly as things can look for a team that still isn’t out of it.

The 2016 Giants have been such a weird team. They played like the best team in baseball for a long time. They certainly didn’t go 50-23 from April 22nd to July 10th, right? But on the flip side, they’ve played like the worst team in baseball as well. That 14-26 record since the break is still the worst in baseball. They’ve played so poorly that taking a series at home against the lowly Atlanta Braves is cause for celebration. So where exactly is the middle ground?

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As long as the Chicago Cubs continue like the “Murderer’s Row” Yankees, they’ll be called the best team in baseball. As long as the Atlanta Braves continue to play like, well, whatever the hell they’re doing, they’ll be called the worst team in baseball. The Giants definitely aren’t those two teams. So the question becomes, are they good enough to be one of the 10 teams that find themselves playing meaningful October baseball?

Right now, they are in that position. They hold the first wildcard spot over the St. Louis Cardinals by two games, and if the season ended today, they’d host those Cardinals in a one-game, do-or-die, win-or-go-home playoff. The problem is, the season doesn’t end today. There’s still an entire month to go, plus a couple of games. The Giants have to hold on to that spot for another 32 games.

They definitely are not out of the division race either. Calling a two-game deficit out of reach with 32 games to play is just insanity. Bigger deficits have been overcome, and bigger leads have been blown.

The Giants have the pieces to be a playoff team. They’ve got the leadership, with Buster Posey, Hunter Pence, and Madison Bumgarner providing the all-important veteran presence. On paper, their lineup looks better than it has in any of the team’s last three World Series runs. The pitching has improved, with Bumgarner still leading the way, and Johnny Cueto, Matt Moore (so far), and Jeff Samardzija (sometimes) backing him up. The bullpen – well, the bullpen shifts between really good and really bad, but they have the potential.

But those pieces have to come together. There haven’t been many of those complete team wins lately, where everyone carries their weight and they look like a contender. Two of those wins came in the team’s last series, when they had a 7-0 win and a 13-4 win. Even that needs to be taken with a grain of salt, because the Braves are still really not good at the whole baseball thing right now.

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They need Pence to stay healthy and start being the big bopper in the lineup again. They need Posey’s sore back to hold up and start getting better so he can start driving the ball with more authority again. It’s hard to buy him time off at this point in the year, because of how important he is to the pitching staff. They need Joe Panik to look like the guy who stole hearts and stroked basehits the past two years (he’s already begun to do so). They need the starting pitchers, and that includes everyone from top to bottom, to string together good starts to give the team a little bit of momentum. And that bullpen. It’s been better lately, but things look a bit more bleak with Derek Law and his 1.94 ERA on the disabled list.

There’s not really one person that can be pointed to as the root of the problem. It’s a team-wide thing where things just aren’t clicking. And they need to start clicking soon. After the series in Arizona, the Giants head to Wrigley Field for a key four-game set with the world-beating Cubs. But the schedule isn’t exactly easy after that either.

The Giants have to play six games with the Colorado Rockies, including three at the always-treacherous Coors Field. They host the team chasing them in the wildcard, the Cardinals for four games. And of course, there’s still six games against the team they are pursuing. , the Dodgers. There’s another three games with Arizona and seven games with the San Diego Padres, but the Giants will need to earn their way in to October.

Next: Giants Morning Minute: Potential September Call-Ups

The Giants have the look of a playoff team, but looks can be deceiving. The results have to start matching the “what this team should be”. So are they a playoff team? You decide.

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