The San Francisco Giants have been desperately trying to keep in step with their peers in the NL West. They have been doing everything they could to recapture the magic of their stunning 107-win 2021 season, but since then, they haven't finished with a record better than 81-81 or worse than 79-83 — a remarkable show of consistent mediocrity.
Every season, the Giants have been adding pieces that they believe would help them be on par with the likes of the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. They signed Matt Chapman and Willy Adames, believing them to be cornerstone pieces for their position player core, and they also added Rafael Devers via a blockbuster trade earlier this season. They have pitching talent, with Logan Webb fronting a rotation with Robbie Ray, Justin Verlander, and promising 27-year-old Landen Roupp.
Alas, it just hasn't clicked for the Giants, and in a year where the NL Wild Card contenders were playing a game of “the third wild card spot is lava”, it's all the more heartbreaking for Chapman that they couldn't get the job done — finishing two games behind the eventual third wild card entrant, the Cincinnati Reds.
“It stings more. It makes you think about some of those stretches we went through and some of those games we dropped,” Chapman said, per Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area.
There was a time earlier in the month where the Giants were looming as the biggest threat to displace the Mets from the playoff picture. On September 12, following a 5-1 win over the Dodgers, San Francisco had a 75-72 record. Alas, they proceeded to lose four consecutive games after that to fall below .500, never recovering in the process.
The building blocks of a playoff team are there for the Giants. They simply have to piece it together come 2026.
Giants could not get the job done when it mattered the most
The Giants' run of games to end the season was very difficult. But playoff teams have to rise to the occasion, and suffice to say, San Francisco did not. Those losses to the Arizona Diamondbacks towards the end of the season will go out and haunt them from now until the start of next season.
Nonetheless, the Giants still would have had to thread the eye of a needle for them to have qualified for the postseason. They did lose the season series to the Mets, so they would have had to finish with a better record than them, which they failed to do anyway.
