Final National League West Standings
GIANTS 107-55 Best OPS, 2nd-best ERA in NL.
LA 106-65 1 GB Won wild-card game on walk-off.
San Diego 79-83 28 GB As expected, Tingler gets the axe.
Colorado 74-87 32.5 GB Last in NL in intentional walks.
Arizona 52-110 55 GB Will Lovullo get another chance?
As noted above, it's no mystery why the Giants won so many games. They hit better than any team in the league and pitched better than any team in the league but one. That they did it with a lineup and pitching staff built on depth and breadth is what throws many people off. Nobody on the 28-man roster that finished the season had a "bad" year, and a few-- not just Brandon Crawford, but say, Darin Ruf, who was playing in Japan two years ago, or Kevin Gausman, who toiled in obscurity in Baltimore for several seasons-- had career years.
And all that means exactly nothing as the Giants prepare to make history again. For the first time in this legendary, hundred-year-plus rivalry, a rivalry that's seen just about anything that can happen on the baseball field, the Giants and Dodgers will meet in a postseason series. LA made sure of it last night thanks to stout pitching by Max Scherzer and Kenley Jansen, and a walk-off homer by Chris Taylor that followed a two-out nobody-on walk to Cody Bellinger.
It will be Logan Webb for the Giants and Walker Buehler for the Dodgers, and it gets underway tomorrow night at 6:37 PDT (9:37 EDT), about 90 minutes too late for good common sense. But with television dictating the starting times--- all four division series are in action that day-- that's no surprise. Buehler faced the Giants six times this year, and five of those starts were excellent. We remember the last one, though! He did not face Webb in any of them. Webb himself started three games against LA and pitched well every time. For those of you looking ahead, it'll be Kevin Gausman and Julio Urias Saturday night, same time.
A number of people are waxing wroth about the two best teams in the league meeting in the preliminary series, while presumably Atlanta and Milwaukee will fight it out in the Mediocrity Bowl. This is due to MLB having scrapped the notion that intradivisional postseason matchups should be saved for the League Championship Series, as was the case from 1995-2011. We're unclear why that rule was changed, since the wild-card elimination game ensures that three teams from the same division can never get to any of the series. Without getting too worked up about it, we'd favor a reinstatement of that rule. Had it been in place, the Giants would be playing Atlanta tomorrow, with LA going to Milwaukee.
But that's not what's happening, so let's get over it and watch history in the making. Will there be any bench-clearing brawls, any "brushback" pitches and warnings? Will the five-game series end with a dramatic rally for the ages? Is there any chance at all the whole thing can avoid controversy, which seems to be drawn to this rivalry like a moth to a flame? As somebody once said, "Well, folks, that's why we watch the games." To which we add: GO GIANTS!
Almost unnoticed, around these parts, anyway, was the Tampa Bay Rays joining the 100-win club with another fabulously unusual season. They are the anti-Giants in many ways, and what a terrific matchup that would be, should it happen. The Rays will now face Boston, who defeated New York in the AL wild-card game, a rather perfunctory win given that rivalry's rich history. Still, you gotta see that play in the top of the sixth, where Aaron Judge was thrown out at the plate after a line dive off the Wall by Giancarlo Stanton; the Yankees had a chance to make it a one-run game and failed, and Boston put it away in the seventh. In the other AL division series, the game's most venerable managers, Dusty Baker and Tony LaRussa, face off in the postseason for the first time since 2002 as Houston hosts the Chicago White Sox. Nineteen years ago, Dusty's Giants defeated LaRussa's Cardinals in a NLCS we remember well.
The Rays, the Astros, and the Toronto Blue Jays, who missed the postseason by a game, were 1-2-3 in runs scored across MLB; the Giants were sixth, behind LA and Boston. Toronto finished eight games worse than their projected record; they outscored the opposition by 183 runs, way more than Boston, the Yankees, or the White Sox. The Seattle Mariners, who won 90 games, their best season in over a decade, were 51 runs to the bad (expected record 76-86), a 14-game swing, largest in MLB. And as we all know, the Dodgers' expected record was 109-53 and the Giants' 103-59, which helps explain why LA is favored in the upcoming series. Atlanta, meanwhile, underperformed their expectation by six games (according to ol' Pythtagoras, the NL East should have been a walk in the park for the Braves by 14 games), while the just-excused Cardinals rode their magnificent 17-game September winning streak to finish five games better than their projection. All the American League teams had best watch out for those perennial Astros; they projected to 101 wins.
Much has been made of the Giants' ten players with ten or more homers, and so, whaddaya say, we'll make a little more: Brandon Belt (29), Mike Yastrzemski (25), Brandon Crawford (24), Wilmer Flores (18), Buster Posey (18), LaMonte Wade (18), Darin Ruf (16), Alex Dickerson (13), Evan Longoria (13), and Auston Slater (12). Kris Bryant had 25, seven with the Giants. Belt, Ruf, Flores, Dickerson, and Longoria all missed significant time with injuries. Nothing personifies the "next man up" attitude better than that-- or is it "one man gathers what another man spills?" (It's about time we included a Grateful Dead reference, hah?)
Quality starts: Gausman 25, DeSclafani 22, Webb 18, Wood 18, Cueto 5, Sanchez 5, Kazmir 2. Cheap wins are almost extinct today; no starter lasts long enough to earn 'em. Webb had the only one for the Giants, and it wasn't that bad: a 45 Game Score in a 5-3 win at Wrigley Field on September 12. There were nine Tough Losses: Wood 3, DeSclafani 3, Gausman 2, Kazmir. The toughest loss was Gausman's on July 5 at home against the Cardinals: Game Score 69.
The two best starts of the year were both by Anthony DeSclafani. One June 11 at Washington he pitched a two-hit complete-game shutout in a 1-0 win, Game Score 90. On April 26 against Colorado at home it was another complete game in a 12-0 blowout, Game Score 89. And "Des" also had the worst start of the season, that memorably awful afternoon at Oracle Park when the Dodgers shelled him in the first inning to the tune of a big fat zero Game Score.
Opponents? Masterpiece Theatre was on June 27 at home as Oakland's Cole Irwin pitched to a 82 with eight shutout innings. None of the opponent starters got a zero, but Colorado's Austin Gomber (0-3 against the Giants this year) was saddled with a 4 in the same 12-0 blowout that DeSclafani pitched.
We already noted Walker Buehler faced the Giants six times this year (3-1, two ND). So did Arizona's Merrill Kelly, a good one (1-2, 3 ND). The Giants saw Urias five times (2-1, 2 ND), San Diego's Joe Musgrove five times (also 1-2, 2 ND), and Zac Gallen of Arizona (0-3) and Jon Gray (0-2) and German Marquez (0-4) of Colorado four times each.
It was generally hard to beat the Giants this year under any circumstances, and it was especially hard for any pitcher to win two or more games against San Frajcisco in 2021. Buehler won three, Urias two, the suspended Trevor Bauer won both his starts early in the year, and St Louis' Kwang-Hyun Kim won both of his. That's it.
In addition to the multiple losing pitchers mentioned above, the Giants beat Jake Arrieta twice, once with the Cubs and later with the Padres. Against former Giants, they had a loss and a no-decision to Madison Bumgarner and a no-decision against Zack Wheeler.
Gausman's four wins over Arizona were the most against one team by any Giants starter. Interestingly, the Giants' only two losses to the Diamondbacks were both Cueto's. Then again, the Giants won all seven games against Cincinnati and former Red Cueto won two of those. And although the Giants beat LA ten times this year, seven of those were bullpen wins.
Roll the Statistical Parade
Brandon Crawford, MVP candidate, is sixth in the NL among position players with 6.1 WAR. Juan Soto leads the league at 7.0... Soto is a truly amazing player, and not just because he's still only 22. Alone among qualifiers, he walked more than he struck out in 2021: 145 walks to 93 K's, a BB/SO ration of 1.559. Even certified walk machines like Joey Votto are below 1.0; the Giants' best is Crawford, 20th at .533, just ahead of Nolen Arenado... Arenado, by the way, drove in 105 runs at hit 34 homers for the Cardinals... Had they enough PAs to qualify, Brandon Belt would be third in the NL in OPS, tied with Fernando Tatis junior at .975, while Darin Ruf would be 10th and Buster Posey 15th, right behind Crawford... Mike Yastrzemski was the only other Giant with enough PAs to qualify... Not a big year for triples; our former prospect Bryan Reynolds tied for the league lead with 8... Bryce Harper has to be in the MVP talk with a 1.044 OPS and .615 SLG, both tops in NL, and would certainly get it had the Phillies caught the Braves... One thing young Soto can't do is steal bases: 9 out of 16 is terrible... Tatis fared much better, with 25 steals against 4 caught. The top three are all high-percentage: Trea Turner (also a MVP candidate, we think) and Tommy Edman of the Cardinals, as well as Tatis. All are 6-1 or better... Trea Turner scored 107 runs, but Freddie Freeman scored 120 and Soto 111... Paul Goldschmidt, again, does everything well: average, walks, power, OBP, OPS, a fine first baseman and his team made the playoffs. He's finished second in the voting twice and third once, and if we had a vote this year, we don't know that we wouldn't vote for him... Zack Wheeler leads all pitchers with 7.6 WAR, ahead of Walker Buehler and Max Scherzer and two full wins ahead of Corbin Burnes. He's fifth in ERA, in a much closer concentration, and tops with 247 strikeouts. His 14-10 record just doesn't tell the story. He ought to win the Cy Young Award, and of course he's a former Giant prospect traded away... To be fair, that was ten years ago and it took seven years for him to become a top starter... Luis Castillo of the Reds is your ground-ball pitcher deluxe: almost 2-1, and he induced 20 GIDP. Max Scherzer is the fly-ball king, at 0.59 ground balls per fly balls.... One the batting side, Milwaukee's Eduardo Escobar, Arenado, former Giant Adam Duvall of the Braves, and teammate Ozzie Albies have mastered the launch angle: along with Justin Turner they have the lowest ground-ball ratios in the NL. Colorado's Raimel Tapia is the throwback. He hits 'em on the ground half again as much as anyone in the league, a 2.96 GO/AO ratio... Shohei Ohtani, the likely AL MVP, leads everyone in isolated power (.335)-- along with 46 homers, 103 runs, 100 RBI, and .965 OPS, plus 156 strikeouts in 130 innings and a 9-2, 3.18 when he's pitching. Can he keep this up? Regardless, it's a monumental season and we've never seen a more deserving MVP candidate... There are no large or hilarious outliers this year, no 25-wild-pitch or 12-balk dubious-achievers, nobody grounded into 40 double plays, no one was caught stealing 20 times. Joey Gallo personified the Yankees with a MLB-leading 213 strikeouts; our friend Ohtani was fourth with 189... The colorful, entertaining, and playoff-bound Tim Anderson, who absolutely won't take a walk (22 BB in 572 AB), hit .309 overall and .372 on balls in play. He would score a lot more than 94 runs if he tripled his walk count, but that's just not his game. Only 5 GIDP, fine defense-- sure, we'll take him... Eugenio Suarez of the Reds, meanwhile, was at .224 on balls in play... Pirates shortstop Kevin Newman, whom we saw back in May, struck out only 7% of the time. The Yankees' Gallo whiffed at a 34% rate, just ahead of former Cubs world champion Javier Baez, now poster boy for the star-crossed New York Mets.
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