Monday, September 21, 2020

                  W-L     GB

Philadelphia 27-26     Trail Miami by one game

Cincinnati 27-27     Hold WC tiebreaker for now

GIANTS         26-26 …     8 division games left

Milwaukee 26-26 …     Open series with Reds

New York 24-29 2 1/2    On the edge of irrelevance

Colorado        23-29 3     Not irrelevant to Giants

Yesterday

Giants bombarded Oakland, 14-2.

Philadelphia lost to Toronto, 6-3.

Cincinnati defeated the Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee defeated Kansas City.

New York was shut out by Atlanta and Colorado got a win against LA.

Today

Giants at home against Colorado, 6:45 PM PDT, the first of four big games. Johnny Cueto, on eight days' rest, faces German Marquez.  The Rockies are pretty much out of it, but they can do big damage to the Giants here. 

Philadelphia is at Washington, the first of four with a doubleheader tomorrow.

Cincinnati and Milwaukee play each other at the Great American Ballpark. It would help if the Brewers do well here, as we will discuss later. 

New York is at home against the Tampa Bay Rays, who are in the playoffs and trying to head off the charging Yankees for the AL East division. Tampa also has the best record in the AL and currently hold the top seed. 

Yesterday's Game

22 scoreless innings ended with a bang when Chadwick Tromp blasted a two-run homer off Mike Minor in the third, and the Giants then uncrated the big lumber in a hurry. Darin Ruf added a two-run shot one inning later, and in the sixth Brandon Crawford (.283, .835, have you noticed?) launched a grand slam off J.B. Wendelken. The Giants, letting loose some pent-up frustration, kept pilin' on with runs in each of the last three. Meanwhile, Tyler Anderson showed no sign of umpire fatigue as he pitched into the sixth, allowing four hits and getting his third win. Brandon Belt was on base four times (three walks) and scored twice, while Austin Slater had two hits and a walk and also scored twice. Ruf, who is a destroyer of left-handed pitching, had 4 RBI, was on base four times, and he also scored twice. How sweet it is to run down a Giants lineup that doesn't include Mike Yastrzemski and Alex Dickerson and still see a bunch of 900+ OPS.

The Rundown

The Giants' chances for a wild-card spot may come down, as they stand today, to tiebreakers with teams in other divisions. With no head-to-head competition, that tiebreaker is intradivisional record-- that is, how the Giants do against their own division versus how the Phillies, Reds, and Brewers do in theirs. 

As we noted above, the Giants' final eight games are all intradivisional. The Brewers also finish with eight division games-- the upcoming three against Cincinnati, and five, yes five, at St Louis to conclude the season. Philadelphia, though, plays only the upcoming four at Washington, and Cincinnati only has these three with Milwaukee. Both the Reds and Phillies finish with weekend road series against top AL teams (Minnesota and Tampa). As it stands today, the Giants' division record is 15-17. Philadelphia is 20-16; the worst they can do is .500.  The Reds are 19-18 and Milwaukee 16-16, with St Louis 19-16. The Cards are in Kansas City for three this week.  

San Diego became the second NL team to clinch a playoff spot this weekend. They still trail LA by four, though...  The Braves and Cubs have identical 31-22 records and three-game leads...  In the AL, the East and Central division top spots are decided (Tampa, New York, Chicago, Minnesota) but the orders have not been decided... Had Oakland beaten the Giants yesterday, they'd have clinched a tie for the AL West division... Cleveland is sure to be one AL wild-card; Houston will battle it out with Toronto for the other... The Indians' Shane Bieber (8-1, 1.74, 0.86) is the top pitcher in MLB statistically. Also near the top is San Diego's Zach Davies (7-3, 2.69, 1.01) who beat the Giants back on July 28 and will get another chance this coming weekend... Luke Voit of the Yankees has 21 homers in 49 games. Do the math... 21-year-old Juan Soto leads the majors in OPS, Mike Trout is 8th and Mike Yastrzemski 20th. The eternal, 40-year old Nelson Cruz is sixth, and on his way to another postseason, with Cooperstown visible in the distance.