The Giants have to sweep the White Sox

Two to go!

The Giants opened a 3-game series with the White Sox last night, winning 5-3 behind a strong start from Kyle Harrison and a four-run fifth inning. It wasn’t a particularly pretty game, but it was a win, and it pushed the Giants a game above .500 on the season. As they are still making a playoff push — only 3 1/2 games back of Atlanta for that last wild card spot — it was a win they had to have.

You can, and probably should, complain about how this team hasn’t lived up to its potential, but they are currently in a spot where they could make a move. But since we’re in late August, the time has to be now. The 2024 Giants no longer have the time to say, “We’ll turn it around. We’ve still got time.” There is no time after now to make a move.

None of this is to say that the Giants have to win every game the rest of the way — it would be great if they ended up 99-63, but that’s probably a bit improbable — but when they’re facing bad teams, they absolutely have to bank as many wins as possible. The 2024 White Sox are as bad as it gets, and if the Giants can’t get two more wins against them, they have no business calling themselves contenders. The Giants have to sweep.

We’ve talked about the Giants a lot, so let’s talk about their opponents a bit. The Chicago White Sox have a really good chance to be the worst team in major league history. We said this about the A’s last year in May, but starting in June they ralled to be just a garden variety bad team for the rest of the year, and finished with 50 wins. This year, they are still a garden variety bad team. Progress!

The 2024 White Sox have a record of 30-96, which is a winning percentage of .238. We are in late August and they are on pace to be the worst team since the 1917 Philadelphia Athletics (who had a .235 winning percentage), and another couple of losses will drop them below even that couldn’t-be-more-opposite-of-storied team. They were terrible, then they traded a few players and fired their manager and they’re still terrible. The Giants should beat them.

But it gets worse for the South Siders! While they’re a miserable 18-44 at home (.290 winning percentage), they currently have a road record of 12-52, and just to make sure that you all know that wasn’t a typo, that’s twelve wins and fifty-two losses. Number of months in the year wins, number of playing cards in a deck losses. That’s a .188 winning percentage, and over the course of a 3-game series against an average opponent, you would expect them to win about a half of a game.

Hell, let’s talk a little more about how bad the White Sox are, as a treat. Their position players have been the worst hitters and the worst defenders in baseball for the entire season, and their pitching staff is 27th in fWAR. Since the All-Star Break, somehow they’ve gotten worse. They still have by far the worst offense in baseball, and while their team defense isn’t 30th of 30 teams, they’re still 27th and not much is separating them from being 30th. But their pitching has dropped to 29th in baseball since the break, which explains their spectacularly awful 3-25 record since July 19.

And so, since we’ve gone through all that, the Giants simply have to be able to beat that team in San Francisco 100% of the time. Since the break, the Giants pitchers and position players have both been completely average, and that’s obviously no great shakes, but it’s a lot better than making your fans want to die every second of every game. This is the only time I’ll be able to write these words for the rest of the season: the Giants are much better than their opponent in every facet of the game, and they should win every game. Full stop. Taking 2 out of 3 in this series would be a failure.

That’s an argument based on talent differential, which is completely valid, but also: imagine the vibes after losing to the White Sox in the second half of 2024. It would be unacceptable. That team is so unbelievably bad that one loss would have to make you question what’s wrong with your team. How could those guys, who are basically not a major league team, win even once against these guys if these guys are competent? Couldn’t happen. Therefore, these guys can’t be competent.

And the final problem is that the Giants schedule is about to get a whole lot harder. Coming up after this series, they have a road trip to Seattle and then to Milwaukee. Those are two strong home teams, and the Giants are a very weak road team. After that, the Marlins come to San Francisco, and the Marlins aren’t very good either, but then it’s contenders for pretty much the whole month of September.

Starting September 3, the Giants have series against the Diamondbacks, Padres, Brewers, Padres, Orioles, Royals, Diamondbacks, and then they finish against the Cardinals. The only one of those teams who hasn’t been clearly better than the Giants this year is the Cardinals, and they’re not good, but they’re not that bad (they did take the Rickwood Field game and then the two in St Louis against the Giants earlier this year). Wins will be at a premium, and that means that the Giants just have to bank as many as possible now.

Yes, it’s possible for the White Sox to win a game. Within the last 8 days, they’ve beaten both the Yankees and the Astros, two teams that are almost certain to make the playoffs. But those teams had losses to spare. They could drop one and still be in good shape. The Giants aren’t in that position, and won’t be in that position for the rest of the season. They don’t have a lot of outright bad teams left on the schedule, and if they don’t beat up on this one, it’s hard to see how they slip past the Braves.

The Giants have to win tonight and they have to win tomorrow. Those are prerequisites for even being in the playoff picture. Otherwise, there’s no point even talking about it. They’ve been pretty disappointing this year, and there might already be no point in talking about it, but a loss over the next couple of days will make it official.