At least we can give up on the postseason
I mean, some of us gave up months ago, but now everyone's gotta be on board
Look, they fucking suck, okay?
When you get to the end of the season, and your favorite baseball team collapses and refuses to allow you even the smidgen of hope gifted to you by the incompetence of other baseball teams, you can just give in and admit it. It’s fine. I mean, it’s not fine that they’re awful and can’t do one single thing right and are wasting a very nice year from Logan Webb and are completely collapsing in almost every non-Webb way, but it’s fine to look at a bad baseball team and say, “Hey, they’re bad!”
Now, there are obviously a lot of negatives here. Watching the Giants has been actively unpleasant for a while now. If you happen to buy into a hot streak and enjoy the ride, the immediate disillusionment will be twice as painful. You have no comebacks whenever anyone tells you your team is trash and you’re an idiot for supporting them. A better future seems like an impossibility; there is only this moment, this hopelessness, this monument to apathy.
But we’re not here to talk about any of that! We all know the downsides of a baseball team playing baseball like a rhino trying to drive a Prius. But what about the upsides? What about the optimist’s view? Why not take a walk on the sunny side of the street for once?
For example, we don’t have to worry about the Giants’ postseason odds. Because they’re zero!
Now, technically they’re not zero, right? Baseball Prospectus had them at about a 3% chance yesterday, and while that probably went down to around 1% after their embarrassing, uninspired loss, that’s not technically nothing. If you had a computer simulate the rest of the season a million times, the Giants would make the wild card round several thousand times.
But we all know that this team is dead. They are flat, lifeless, hopeless, and bereft of any redeeming qualities. And that’s okay. We don’t have to worry about it anymore! Sure, it’s unpleasant, but it’s regular unpleasant, not mini-existential crisis unpleasant. We’re watching a death rattle, and there’s something freeing about that.
Other fans are worrying about the postseason. Imagine being a Marlins fan or a Reds fan. Your team is so close to making it, but they probably won’t. Imagine being a Diamondbacks fan, desperately hoping your guys can stave off two incredibly mediocre teams just so you can say you made it to the playoffs. Who needs that kind of stress? Who wants to be on the edge of their seat for a season that will, inevitably, end in disappointment?
Because even in the universe where the Giants use black magicks to sneak their way in, and they win a hard-fought series against the Brewers in the opening round, they still get absolutely trucked by the Braves. There’s just no possible world where the Giants win three games out of a five-game series against Atlanta. Yes, a month ago, the Giants were right there with the Braves when they played that three-game set, but the Giants have only gotten more injured and worse. The Braves have remained a dominant force that never looks back and wouldn’t need to anyway. They would stomp on the Giants without a second thought.
But now it’s okay! Because it won’t happen! And that’s a good thing, because I wouldn’t enjoy seeing the Giants play this brand of baseball on a national stage. I wouldn’t enjoy them being the patsies who get the condescending, “They’ll be back” treatment as they’re losing 13-4 in their final game of the season. I wouldn’t enjoy watching the announcers marvel about How Did This Team Do It when the answer is overly expanded playoffs and weak competition.
I don’t want to say it’s better this way, because I wouldn’t say the 2023 Giants are better than anyone or anything, including intangible concepts and hypothetical scenarios. But that particular hypothetical scenario would be deeply stressful with no possible payoff. This is not a World Series team. This is not even an NLCS team. This is a team whose ceiling is a painful loss in the Division Series, and would probably settle for dispiriting loss in the Wild Card series.
So why bother? As a great philosopher once said, “You tried your best and failed. The lesson is, never try.” This team shouldn’t try. They’re not good enough. Their best month, June, was built entirely on an unsustainably high BABIP and great cluster luck. That’s not really who they are. This team, right now, this is who they are. And not only should they not get to the playoffs, but they shouldn’t even threaten it. They don’t deserve it and it’ll just lead to more embarrassment down the line.
It’s better this way, then. It’s better to, halfway through the party, light yourself on fire and die. Nobody likes the uncertainty that comes with an Irish goodbye. They want clarity, and the Giants are providing that. The Giants are loudly proclaiming to the world that they don’t deserve the playoffs, and will have nothing to do with them. And that is, in its own way, a relief.
Because they fucking suck.