This magical, best-record-in-the-majors season for the San Francisco Giants starts with catcher Buster Posey.
It has to, right? Tim Lincecum was the first star of those Giants teams that won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014, Matt Cain was the longtime stalwart in the rotation, and Madison Bumgarner became a legend in the 2014 postseason, but Posey was always the heart and soul. Rookie of the Year in 2010, MVP in 2012, sixth in MVP voting in 2014, Posey was the team's best hitter and the anchor for the pitching staff.
The past few seasons hadn't been much fun for him, however. After struggling to generate power in 2018, Posey finally underwent surgery that August to address a hip impingement and torn labrum. He returned in 2019 but had his worst season and elected to sit out the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. He began 2021 at 34 years old, and his most recent .300 season was back in 2017.
I watched the Giants' first game of 2021. They blew a 7-1 lead when the Seattle Mariners scored six runs in the bottom of the eighth and lost in the 10th inning when Jose Alvarez walked three batters in a row to force in the winning run. I texted my editor that night, something along the lines of, "Boy, the Giants are going to be terrible." There was one bright spot in that miserable defeat: Posey hit a home run. Then he homered again the next night.
He hasn't stopped. He's hitting over .300 again -- he has done it five times before -- with the second-best slugging percentage and adjusted OPS of his career, behind only his MVP season. Manager Gabe Kapler has done a great job of keeping him fresh. Note Posey's numbers against the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres: .317/.431/.617. The Giants are 13-12 against those key division rivals.
The Giants drafted Brandon Crawford in the fourth round in 2008 and Brandon Belt in the fifth round in 2009. Both reached the majors in 2011 and started for the 2012 and 2014 champions. Posey and the Brandons have spent a combined 41 years in the Giants organization. Despite all those years of tenure, it was possible, even likely, that this would be the final season for all three in San Francisco.
Entering 2021, Crawford, 34, and Belt, 33, were both in the final year of their contracts. Posey had a $22 million club option for 2022 with a $3 million buyout. Given his age, injury history and missing season of action, it was reasonable to speculate that the Giants would exercise that buyout. If the Dodgers and Padres ran away in a division race for the ages -- as many of us speculated might happen -- and the Giants stumbled to a fifth losing season, why bring those veterans back in 2022?
Keep those ages in mind as to why the Giants were the consensus fourth-place pick in the National League West before the season with an over/under of 75.5 wins. They were the oldest team in the National League in 2020. They had been the oldest in 2019 ... and 2018. Old teams don't usually get better, and the sport itself has skewed younger and younger in recent seasons -- yet the Giants were again counting on those three.
Here's another way to look at the Giants' age: Heading into the weekend, there were 36 position players in the majors with at least 200 plate appearances in their age-33 season or older -- and the Giants have six of them, with Evan Longoria, Darin Ruf and Donovan Solano also joining the 33-and-older club. This isn't the kind of thing the projection models like.
The Giants, now 80-44 and leading the Dodgers by three games in the loss column, have flipped the script. Crawford is having the best offensive season of his career and recently signed a two-year extension for $32 million. Belt has missed some time with injuries, but he has been excellent when healthy, with the second-highest OPS of his career (behind only 2020). Now there is speculation the Giants will look to sign Posey and Belt as well. While Posey has said he'll assess things after the season, Crawford has already made a pitch for his longtime teammates.
"To be able to get a couple of these guys back would be awesome," Crawford said recently on a Zoom call with reporters. " I would definitely love that. It'd be big for our team."
Those other guys also include Kris Bryant, the free-agent-to-be who has quickly found a home during his three-plus weeks in San Francisco.
"I know it's all super new to me, too, the whole being here and playing with these guys, but there's just something that feels a little different about it," Bryant said last week. "It feels right. Just really good people. They put their head down. They go to work. They're not flashy -- and I kind of see myself as that type of player, too. And I think that's kind of what the Giants' organization is all about."
The castoffs
The Giants were in a tough position when they hired Farhan Zaidi as president of baseball operations after the 2018 season. They had just lost 89 games. The team was old with an expensive payroll and a weak farm system (Baseball America rated the farm system 28th in the majors heading into 2019). Most problematic of all, they were in the same division as the Dodgers, who had just won a sixth straight division title and were coming off back-to-back World Series appearances.
It would have been easy to blow things up, like the Cubs and Astros did, but the Giants didn't even have many tradable assets. Posey was coming off surgery. Crawford and Belt were making big money and getting older. There was little to do but plow ahead -- and try to find some players. While with the Dodgers as general manager, Zaidi had been instrumental in acquiring players such as Chris Taylor and Max Muncy for little or nothing.
"I think where we are as an organization right now, we have to cast as wide of a net as possible and not put too many labels on what this process is going to be other than to make smart and sound decisions," Zaidi said at his introductory news conference.
He has done exactly that. Look at some of the key players he has brought in -- without giving up much (if anything) in return:
Label: too old to be a prospect
The grandson of the Hall of Famer had kicked around the Orioles' system for six years when the Giants acquired him late in spring training in 2019. Yastrzemski was entering his age-28 season and had yet to reach the majors. That kind of player rarely turns into a major league regular, but the Giants were collecting outfielders that spring and gave Yastrzemski a shot. He finished eighth in the MVP voting in 2020, although his numbers are down this season.
Darin Ruf
Label: 4-A hitter
Ruf had a .747 OPS over parts of five seasons with the Phillies -- an average hitter, but not quite good enough for a first baseman/left fielder. He went to Korea in 2017, mashed there for three seasons, and the Giants brought him in last year as a platoon bat. He's crushed it in a part-time role for two seasons.
Donovan Solano
Label: didn't hit enough his first chance in the majors
Solano was more or less the Marlins' regular second baseman from 2012 to 2014 and hit .264 but without any power. He kicked around in Triple-A for several reasons and raked, and the Giants gave him another opportunity in 2019. He has been a solid contributor with good contact skills at the plate -- exactly as his minor league numbers predicted.
Label: platoon player, no position
Flores had always hit lefties well in his career, but his range was limited in the middle infield, and platoon corner bats aren't in high demand. The Giants signed him as a free agent after the 2019 season, and he has produced an OPS around .800 while playing first base and third base.
Label: not enough power
Wade had a career .390 OBP in the minors, but his season high in home runs was 11 -- not what teams want from outfielders these days. Acquired from the Twins in February for pitcher Shaun Anderson (already waived by the Twins), Wade got a chance to play because of injuries and has mashed 15 home runs in just over 200 at-bats.
All these players had something to sell that warranted giving them a chance, and they had all produced to varying degrees in the minors. This isn't blind luck. Rebuilding teams usually eschew older players like this, preferring to roll the dice on underperforming -- but younger -- lottery tickets. Maybe there is a degree of luck in hitting on this many players at once, but Zaidi and his staff deserve credit for scouring all means of player acquisition and focusing on what a player might be able to contribute as opposed to what he can't do.
Same thing with the pitching staff. Kevin Gausman was coming off a bad season in 2019 when the Giants signed him as a free agent. Alex Wood and Anthony DeSclafani were coming off injuries. Tyler Rogers was a side-arming 28-year-old rookie in 2019 with an 82 mph fastball, but you know what? He gets batters out, so let's see what he can do. Jake McGee had struggled in Colorado but had 20 great innings for the Dodgers in 2020. Let's sign him and make him the closer.
Again, all these pitchers had been productive at some point in their careers. It doesn't usually work out this well, but they were all undervalued assets with a chance to contribute.
The second chance
Kapler managed the Phillies for two seasons, going 80-82 and 81-81 in 2018 and 2019, but the results were disappointing, with a big collapse down the stretch in 2018 and then not improving after bringing in Bryce Harper and J.T. Realmuto for 2019. Kapler was a polarizing figure with his intense style and devotion to analytics. "They're making it way too complicated," one Phillies player said at the time. "They need to simplify." The criticism ran rampant for two years. Philadelphia couldn't get rid of him quickly enough.
The list of managers who succeeded after failing in their initial opportunities is a long one -- Joe Torre with the Mets, Terry Francona with the Phillies, Bob Melvin after two seasons in Seattle, Casey Stengel going way back. Zaidi had worked with Kapler with the Dodgers when Kapler was the team's director of player development. Kapler, in fact, helped recruit Zaidi to the Dodgers from the A's, with whom he was the assistant general manager under Billy Beane.
When Bruce Bochy stepped down after the 2019 season, Zaidi interviewed several candidates but went with his old friend. Obviously, their mutual admiration for analytics was a big factor, but so was the comfort level with each other -- and Zaidi's belief that Kapler was the right man for the job, despite the difficult tenure with the Phillies.
Kapler recently told the San Francisco Chronicle that he learned from his mistakes in Philly.
"I went into my first manager gig with Philly pretty certain about the way things should be done: the way lineups should be constructed, the way pinch-hitting should be handled, the way conversations with players should work," he said. "I feel like I'm much more open to feedback in making small changes than I was; I guess my level of certainty is not as high now. And I think that's enabled me to listen better. I'm just more open-minded than I was."
Kapler has done a masterful job of managing the lineups, which change on a daily basis. He has used 10 different players in the No. 2 slot in the batting order, 10 in the third spot, seven in the cleanup spot, 15 in the fifth spot. As a reflection of his in-game maneuvers, the Giants lead the majors in pinch-hitting appearances by a significant margin.
Despite all the machinations and moving parts, the Giants have remained an excellent defensive team, ranking tied for third in the majors with plus-47 defensive runs saved. McGee and Rogers both have double-digit save totals, so Kapler has been flexible in his late-game relief roles. His top six relievers have ERAs under 3.00.
Everything has worked.
The miracle teams
There have been many surprise teams, although none of them had to beat a team as deep and talented as the Dodgers just to win a division title. My colleague Brad Doolittle found 32 teams in major league history that fit the following criteria: (1) Won the pennant; (2) improved by at least 15 games from the prior season; (3) finished under .500 in the "before" season. The last of these teams was the 2013 Red Sox, who improved from 69-93 to 97-65 and won the World Series.
Like many of the other teams on the list, however, the Red Sox had been good two years before -- they won 90 games in 2011. In my subjective accounting, there are six true miracle teams, all of whom reached the World Series: the 1914 Boston Braves, 1967 Red Sox, 1969 Mets, 1991 Braves, 2006 Tigers and 2008 Rays.
Each of those teams had lost 90-plus games the year before and had many consecutive losing seasons before coming out of nowhere to reach the World Series:
1914 Braves: 11 straight losing seasons
1967 Red Sox: eight straight
1969 Mets: seven straight (every year of their existence)
1991 Braves: seven straight
2006 Tigers: 12 straight
2008 Rays: 10 straight (every year of their existence)
The Giants' losing ways don't extend as deep as those six teams -- just four losing seasons in a row, and they were almost .500 at 29-31 during the shortened 2020 season. But like those teams, there were low expectations for 2021.
The Giants are very different from those teams in another way, however. Look at the average age for the position players and pitchers for each team, and the rank within the league for each category, via Baseball-Reference (which accounts for playing time):
Five of the six teams ranked as the youngest or second-youngest group of position players in their league. With the exception of the 2006 Tigers, the pitching staffs were young as well. These were young teams that came together all at once. Even the Tigers added rookie Justin Verlander, and Curtis Granderson played his first full season. Evan Longoria won Rookie of the Year for the Rays. The 1914 Braves and 1991 Braves acquired MVP winners in Johnny Evers (via trade) and Terry Pendleton (via free agency).
The Giants made no such similar star additions, unless you count the return of Posey. If they reach the World Series, this will be a miracle team unlike any other.
The stretch run
Can the Giants keep it going? The playoffs are a lock, but the Dodgers are still right there in the NL West race, matching the Giants with a 100-win pace. The Giants have shown no signs of weakening, playing at a .600 winning percentage every month. They lead the National League in home runs, they're fourth in the NL in runs per game, they're third in rotation ERA and second in bullpen ERA. They catch the ball. They've played the Dodgers to an 8-8 draw (both having scored 68 runs) with one three-game series left, in San Francisco in the first week of September.
The keys for the rest of the season and into October:
1. The back of the rotation. Gausman is a Cy Young contender who can match up in a playoff showdown against Walker Buehler or Max Scherzer, and DeSclafani and Logan Webb have been excellent as well. Johnny Cueto is on the IL with a lat strain, however, and Wood hasn't been as effective of late as he was early on. There isn't much depth after that group, and given the division race, Kapler won't be able to back off his top three at all.
2. The bullpen must keep it going. Kapler and pitching coach Andrew Bailey have plenty of depth to work with here as guys such as Dominic Leone and Zack Littell have stepped up. They acquired Tony Watson at the deadline, and he has yet to allow a run since the trade. McGee has scuffled a little bit in August with a couple of blown saves, although Kapler is sticking with him for now as the primary closer.
3. Posey. It will be tempting to play him more down the stretch. Other than one six-game stretch right after Posey came off the IL after a thumb injury, Kapler has resisted playing him more than three games in a row. The Giants have to hope the careful usage will lead to a strong finish. Keep in mind that Posey has not been a good postseason hitter in his career, with a .248/.323/.325 line and just four home runs in 53 games.
4. Bryant. He has played well since coming over from the Cubs, and with Longoria just back from his IL stint, Bryant should end up playing mostly in the outfield. In fact, the Giants are actually deeper and healthier in the lineup than they've been in months, with Belt and Tommy La Stella also recently returning from lengthy IL stints. Bryant adds another power bat, and given all the various platoon options at Kapler's disposal, the lineup should remain strong -- and the deep bench means it's hard for opposing managers to match up in the late innings.
5. The schedule. The nine remaining games against the Padres loom large -- although with San Diego suddenly falling apart, maybe those games won't be as tough as they appeared a few weeks ago. They have just three games left against Arizona, a team they've gone 14-2 against. They do have a tough homestand against the Brewers and Dodgers, and they end the season at home against Arizona and San Diego. The Dodgers, meanwhile, have six games left against both Arizona and Colorado and finish up against Milwaukee, which should have the NL Central clinched by then and should be resting its best pitchers. Slight advantage here to the Dodgers.
Winning the division is obviously huge. You do not want to get stuck playing the wild-card game and have to burn Gausman as opposed to having him ready to start twice in the division series. Remember as well, the wild-card winner will play the top seed, regardless of the records of the other division winners. All season, it looked like that would be an inevitable showdown between NL West teams, but now the Brewers do have a chance at the best record -- not that facing Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff is any easier than facing Buehler and Scherzer.
For now, the magical season rolls on. Let's see whether it ultimately turns into a miracle season.