What more do you need to see from the San Francisco Giants?
What more could they possibly do at this point to make you believe?
We’re more than 40 percent of the way through the 2021 season and no team in Major League Baseball has more wins or a better winning percentage.
All the Giants seem to do is win.
Does it make perfect sense? No sir.
But there have been a number of moments this year when the Giants have told us what they are about. It’s time to believe them.
And if you’re still holding on to your preseason expectation of mediocrity, it’s time to drop it — unlike that other shoe you think will hit the ground.
While I doubt that the Giants are going to win the 103 games they’re currently on pace to claim, I do think that they can play .500 baseball from this point forward. And if they do that, they’ll win 90 games.
Honestly, who saw that coming?
I can appreciate that some will view this column as ill-timed. It’s easy to say nice things about a team when they’re coming off a four-game home sweep of the absolutely worthless Diamondbacks.
But it’s not like the Giants are creating their own schedule like a college football team. And it’s not as if they don’t have 13 games left against Arizona this season.
And don’t forget that one of those games against Arizona this week was lost. An experiment with an opener failed miserably and put the Giants in a 7-0 hole before they came to the plate in the bottom of the second inning.
Five runs and Mike Yastrzemski’s eighth-inning grand slam later, the Giants won.
There’s a gumption to this team — a belief that might not exist on the outside but appears unimpeachable from the inside.
Think back to the Giants’ series with the Nationals last weekend. The San Francisco offense was reeling — they looked hapless. They scored three runs in four games. And yet the Giants left Washington with a four-game series split.
That’s what good teams do. They might not have everything working for them, but they find ways to win games. They find ways to not lose series.
I could go on about how great the Giants’ starting pitching has been or how they lead the National League in home runs. I could explain how the team’s bullpen has turned it around and how outstanding a job Farhan Zaidi and Scott Harris have done in finding depth for this team that has been ravaged by injury. I might not think that managers matter much in baseball, but Gabe Kapler certainly not doing a bad job at the helm — he’s Secretariat at the Belmont Stakes right now in the Manager of the Year race.
But I think it’s a bit more fun to keep a bit of mystique around the Giants’ success. There’s something distinctly Giants about having a great team that no one can quite understand. After all, three World Series champion banners fly in center field at Oracle Park for teams that defied all expectations.
I’m not saying anything like that is in the cards for the Giants this season, but there is, without a doubt, some strange voodoo inside that stadium.
Whether that or something else entirely is at play, I say it’s time to give in. It might not be totally explicable and they might not keep winning at a rate this exceptional, but there is something special happening with this team. Embrace it and this strange, winning summer ahead.
