Can san francisco giants make playoffs

The Giants. The playoffs. We waited a century for the first postseason clash between the Dodgers and Giants — all the anticipation, all the loyalty, all the hostility. The Giants dominated the first half of the last decade , with three World Series championships in five seasons.

The Dodgers dominated thereafter, with three World Series appearances in four seasons , capped by a title of their own. That the Giants are this good, this soon, conflicts with the timetable popularly associated with the takeover of Farhan Zaidi after the season: Run out the contracts of somethings Buster Posey, Brandon Belt, Brandon Crawford and Evan Longoria; and in the meantime rebuild the farm system, collect spare roster parts and gain the financial flexibility needed to win.

Dodgers vs. It is also how the Giants do business. It did not go well in the second half of the last decade — that is why the Giants hired Zaidi away from the Dodgers, after all — but the Giants have shown that teams need not tank in order to rebuild. Nothing wrong with L.

Not that Dodgers fans should care, except for this: The Giants already rank among the top five among major league teams in revenue, and Mission Rock will bring them even more money.

Whatever the Dodgers can spend, the Giants can spend it too. With 18 games left, the Giants and Dodgers have the two best records in baseball, and are only separated by 2. The other will play a single-elimination Wild Card playoff game — extremely different scenarios for the two best teams in baseball. With 18 games remaining, the Giants are favored to lock up the division.

Regardless of their win count, the Giants are not getting much respect when it comes to World Series futures. SF currently has the sixth-best title odds, behind four of the five division leaders, and the Dodgers. Since San Francisco won their last World Series title in , four of the last six WS winners finished with the most wins in their conference. Leave a comment. Click the link we sent to , or click here to log in. Even The Odds Subscribe.

About Archive Help Log in. It's cool, and fitting, that they get the entire stage to themselves. Gonzalez: How good Gavin Lux has looked. He nearly tied the game with two outs in the ninth inning of Game 3, sending a deep drive to center that was knocked down by the wind, then got the start in Game 4 and reached base four times, drawing a couple of walks and lining a couple of singles.

Lux, 23, has been one of the Dodgers' most heralded prospects over the past handful of years, a future cornerstone the team refused to trade in multiple instances.

But he struggled mightily through infrequent plate appearances in and didn't take advantage of an opportunity for semi-regular playing time in Lux made two trips to the injured list, was demoted to the minors in late August, then learned to play the outfield in a desperate effort to contribute.

When he came back up on Sept. It began to translate into production that spilled into the postseason, assuring that Lux will start in the winner-take-all Game 5. Keown: How much the Giants have missed Brandon Belt's production in the middle of the order. When Belt and Max Muncy were declared out for this round of the playoffs, the depth of the Giants' roster seemed like a major advantage.

It hasn't turned out that way. It's clear Bellinger has been gaining confidence with each at-bat, and Lux is turning himself into a problem for San Francisco. Evan Longoria has looked good just once, but it won Game 3. The lack of production from LaMonte Wade Jr. During the Giants' hero-of-the-day regular season, that was rare.

Gonzalez: This series is completely different if not for the leaping catch Brandon Crawford made late in Game 3. The Giants led by a run in the bottom of the seventh, with runners on first and second and two outs. Mookie Betts smoked a mph line drive with an expected batting average of nearly.

It wasn't just that Crawford was athletic enough to catch it, but that he was positioned perfectly to do so, a fitting representation of what has made the Giants such an impressive defensive team this season.

Keown: We're going to differentiate between aesthetics and importance here. The double play turned by La Stella and Crawford on Justin Turner in the fourth inning of Game 1 was among a handful of the best defensive plays of the entire season.

La Stella fielded the ball on the third-base side of second with all of his momentum heading toward left field, made a backhand flip to Crawford, who glided over the bag like a speed skater and made a cross-body throw to first.

Each runner was out by the length of a shoelace, making it obvious how perfect all of it -- the flip, the turn, the throw -- had to be. However, the most important play was Crawford's catch of Betts' liner in the seventh inning of Game 3, but here's where Crawford's ho-hum brilliance comes into play: If you've watched him closely this season, you would have been surprised if he didn't make that catch. Gonzalez: For the Dodgers, it has undoubtedly been Buehler.

He took the loss in Game 1, but he gave his team a chance to win despite Webb's dominance on the other side. More importantly, his taking the ball on short rest in Game 4 assured that the Dodgers would navigate through this series with their top three starters Buehler, Max Scherzer and Julio Urias. Their key to advancing through October will be for Buehler, Scherzer and Urias to absorb as many of the starts as possible, if not all of them. Any other circumstance could exhaust the Dodgers' bullpen.

Keown: Dodger hitters rediscovering their patience after flailing at everything Webb threw at them in Game 1.

Webb pounded the zone early, got the Dodgers in swing mode and then used his off-speed pitches to expand. After the game, he was shushed by Posey in the interview room when he suggested that was the game plan.