The winner of this year’s Dodgers-Giants flagship race will compete in next month’s MLB playoffs as the National League leader.
The loser’s consolation prize could be an unwanted place in the log books.
Any team that settles for second place in NL West could end up with the most wins of any division division winner in MLB history. Only 10 second-place teams have won more than 100 games. Only the Chicago Cubs of 1909 and the Brooklyn Dodgers of 1942 won up to 104.
This year’s giants and dodgers seem poised to surpass 100 wins and perhaps surpass 104. San Francisco (95-50), incredibly deep and resilient, has secured nine straight wins this season to maintain a 2.5-leader lead of the game division over its longtime rival. The Giants are at a pace of going 106-56 and only have to finish above .500 in their last 17 games to rack up 104 wins.
Los Angeles (93-53), proven in the playoffs and talented, has won 30 of 40 since the trade deadline … and got a huge game against the Giants. The reigning World Series champions are about to go 103-59 and should close with 11 wins in their last 16 games to finish with 104 wins.
While the sprint to the finish isn’t done or die like the pennant races with wildcards were, the Major League Baseball playoff format gives the Giants and Dodgers an incentive to prioritize the division victory. The loser will have to survive a winning game of all, probably against the Cardinals, the Padres or the Reds. In other words, for both the Giants and the Dodgers, a brilliant six-month season will be reduced to nine random entries against an disappointing 80-year-old team.
If the Giants or Dodgers lose this game, the cry will be inescapable.
You will know that the wildcard game is a brazen fundraiser.
You will know that the single delete format is unfair.
You’ll know that one of the top three, at least, would be fairer so that a juggler’s 100-win season doesn’t fall apart due to a single questionable call or unfortunate rebound.
All that is right, of course. Still, it overlooks the many, many positive aspects of the playoff format that MLB adopted nine years ago.
Clashes with single-elimination wildcards have brought an instant energy shock to a sport that desperately needed ways to attract new fans and larger national television audiences. The final rounds of the MLB postseason may dazzle or scatter year after year, but the wildcard game has produced compelling moments.
Who can forget this epic of 12 A-Royals tickets? Or the little-known Conor Gillaspie, who expands the magic of the even year of the Giants? Or the PNC Park crowd chanting “Cueeeeto, Cueeeeto,” visibly sounding the Reds’ ace?
Even in years when wildcard games have been deficient, their existence has been a boost for the sport. Extending the postseason with the second wildcard has kept more teams relevant to the playoffs until the summer. And the threat of having to survive the round of play has invigorated division races that otherwise wouldn’t have made sense if there was only one wildcard per league and that team automatically switched to the division series.
The 104-win Dodgers or Giants facing the 84-win Cardinals or Reds will feel a little wrong, but so far this scenario is an anomaly, not the norm. Only once has a 100-win team appeared in a wildcard game: the 2018 Yankees have sent in 97 A-wins with few problems. So far this season, the biggest difference in the ranking between wildcard opponents has been six modest games.
Neither the Giants nor the Dodgers want their season to rest on the outcome of a game, but one pitcher seems more suited to handling the single elimination format than the other.
The Dodgers can line up their rotation to get Cy Young candidate Max Scherzer to throw a dying or dying game. Since joining the Dodgers in the trade deadline, Scherzer has won six of eight initiatives and has an ERA of 0.88. The Giants ’best option may be 24-year-old Logan Webb, who has been brilliant since the All-Star shutdown but has never played in the playoffs. As Webb has been unattainable, the depth of the Giants could shine more in a series of seven games than in a single mandatory confrontation.
Regardless, the stakes are high for both clubs and the pressure to win grows every day.
Never before had a team won 105 games without winning the division title. The way the Giants and Dodgers continue to accumulate wins during this captivating pennant race, one of which may soon be the first.