The Giants Baseball Blog

Heading into the final weekend of the season, there is still plenty to be determined before the playfoffs begin. We do know one thing for sure, and that is that San Francisco Giants will be missing it for the 3rd straight season. However, the NL Wild Card, NL West and NL Central are all still very much up for grabs. The St. Louis Cardinals have had a terrible 2nd half battling injuries and bad starting pitching and they now find themselves with just a 1 game lead on the surging Houston Astros. As far as the West and the Wild Card are concerned, 2 teams out of the P hillies, Dodgers and Padres will be heading to October. As far as the scheduling goes, I think the Dodgers and Padres will both make the playoffs. The Phillies have to play the Marlins for 3 this weekend, and unless they take all 3, the likely won't make it to the playoffs. The NL Central is still very close as well, but even with all the tough breaks for the Cardinals this season, I don't see them being passed up by

I said in my last post that after losing 2 of 3 in Colorodo, the Giants must either sweep or at least take 3 of 4 from the Millwaukee Brewers this weekend at Miller Park. After Friday night's depressing loss, I have finally lost what little strand of hope I had for this year's San Francisco Giants. I was hanging on that last strand of hope due to the fact that the Giants play the last 3 games vs. the Dodgers and if they could have possibly gotten to that weekend 2 or 3 games back, anything could have happened. However, the Giants' pitching staff looks like they have already thrown in the towel and so am I. This has been one of the ugliest road trips I've ever seen the Giants take in recent years. It's just the teams that the Giants' are choking against that is really puzzling me. Even if the Giants aren't that good, they aren't as bad as the Rockies or Brewers, and you'd think that this being the most important part of the season and all, they'd

The San Francisco Giants are not mathmatically eliminated from the postseason quite yet, but they have put their own backs against the wall with a pair of ugly series' vs. Cardinals and Rockies. Luckily, the Giants barely squeaked out a victory Wednesday to salvage the series in Colorodo, but for a team that had to have a good road trip heading into the final week of the season it has been a horrible trip so far. After losing the 2 games in St. Louis, for the Giants to roll into Colorodo and get smoked in the first two games just shows that they aren't quite a playoff team this year. Playoff teams turn it on at this point in the year when it counts the most, and the Giants blew it vs. a team that they very well should have swept. The Giants threw their best 3 starters at the Rockies and all 3 did terrible. Noah Lowry had his worst career start, Matt Cain had his first bad start in over a month and a half, and Jason Schmidt continued his tough second half with another bad outing

We're about midway through September, and this is when things start getting really important. The Giants are 1.5 games back in the Wild Card race, and 3 back in the NL West race. They have finally leap frogged all other teams that where in between them and the Padres, and it is starting to look more and more like there will be two teams from the NL West in the playoffs. The Giants and Padres have been playing the currently playing the best ball in the division, but t he Dodgers are still hanging on to the lead. I 've gone on record already saying I think the Padres will make the playoffs. They have the best bullpen and the most speed on their team, and in the close games, that is what prevails. Nothing will likely be determined until the last weekend of the season when the Giants and Dodgers square off at AT&T Park while the Padres are in Arizona playing the Diamondbacks. After their series with the Rockies, the Giants will take off on their final road trip of the season wh

For the second straight year, the Giants are saving their best baseball for the last weeks of the season as they have finally gotten all their starting players healthy and rolling. The Giants have played the last couple weeks like most people including myself thought they would play all year long. I didn't expect this team to win 95+ games, but I definetly didn't expect them to be just a .500 team as they have been. It's no coincidence that Barry Bonds also happens to be playing his best ball of the season as well. Barry Bonds is the leader of this team and how he goes, so go the Giants. When Barry was hitting .235 with little power and run production, the Giants where a team playing well below .500 baseball. Bonds has raised his average to .260, and he's hit 5 home runs over the last 7 games. It just goes to show you that he still impacts a team that much, even at age 42. It doesen't hurt that the guy in front of him (Shea Hillenbrand) and the guy behind him (Ray D