Giants not letting reality of playoff situation overwhelm them

Giants not letting reality of playoff situation overwhelm them originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

SAN FRANCISCO – One of the biggest challenges facing the Giants over the final month of the 2024 MLB season will be trying to insulate themselves from the outside noise.

With 25 games remaining before the playoffs begin, San Francisco still has a dim and slim chance of squeaking into the postseason after its 4-3 loss to the Miami Marlins on Saturday night. It will take a lot of solid play and good fortune for that to happen, two things that the Giants haven’t had a lot of in their first season with Bob Melvin as manager.

The issues that have prevented the ballclub from making much headway late in the season are the same ones that have plagued the Giants all year – sporadic starting pitching, even more sporadic offense, especially with runners in scoring position, and a lack of quality situational hitting.

They have four weeks to figure it out and get everything pointed in the right direction. With the finishing line getting closer with each game, the pressure from both inside and outside of the clubhouse will increase on a daily basis.

Keeping that pressure at bay now becomes just as important as getting runners home from third base with less than two outs.

“We just got to show up every day, put the work in, control what you can control and play hard,” Giants catcher Patrick Bailey said. “At the end of the day, whether you’re 6 1/2 back [or] 6 1/2 up, you got to show up and play your best baseball.”

That’s a challenge in itself for San Francisco.

Since the MLB All-Star break, the Giants have won more than two games in a row just three times. They had a four-game streak in late July then did it again in early June. They also won three in a row two weeks ago, but that was the last time Melvin’s ballclub showed much signs of life.

San Francisco has gone 3-6 since then, and is now entering arguably the toughest portion of their schedule. Twenty of the final 25 games are against teams that are .500 or better.

Navigating through that stretch will undoubtedly be tough enough and will get even more difficult if they let chatter about their playoff position become an overwhelming issue.

“That’s a great question,” Giants shortstop Tyler Fitzgerald said when asked how the Giants prevent that from happening. “We haven’t really been doing a great job of that. Just try and keep playing hard, and hopefully we can get on a run. Just try to stay together as much as we can, keep the clubhouse close together. Just have each other’s backs.

“We’re still tight, we’re still a good group and getting along. It’s just that we haven’t been able to get over that hump. We still haven’t been able to put that string of two weeks of good ball together. We just really need to put a good string of games together, not just two or three.”

Sounds simple enough. But if we’ve learned anything from these Giants, saying and doing are two very different things.

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