The Giants woke up this morning in first place in the NL West, half a game up on the Dodgers, and if you thought that I’d miss what might be my last chance in 2021 to call them the first place Giants, then you’re a fool.
But, of course, that’s just heding my bets. This won’t be my last chance! Because the 2021 Giants are for real.
Let’s start with the obvious: In just four games, Mike Tauchman has become the clear frontrunner for NL MVP. He has a .915 OPS since Wednesday, and if you project that out over a full season, that means he’d have a .915 OPS all year. Sure, guys like Bryce Harper and Ronald Acuña have more “hype” and “talent” and “better stats” or whatever, but they haven’t taken a 15-9 Giants team and turned them into a 17-11 juggernaut with, according to Baseball Reference, a 53.3% chance of making the playoffs. Only Mike Tauchman could do that.
But more than being 2021’s Mike Yastrzemski — yes, four games is enough to make this judgment — Tauchman is also proof positive that Farhan Zaidi’s shit works. The Giants targeted him, acquired him for a left-handed reliever when they had a glut of left-handed relievers on the roster, and now they’re reaping — yes, four games is enough to state this outright with no qualification — the benefits of taking a shot on someone with potential.
Yes, that strategy got them Tauchman (and, in 2019, Yastrzemski), but it’s also how they built their pitching staff. Anthony DeSclafani, Aaron Sanchez, and Alex Wood all came over on cheap deals this year to try to get playing time and build value, and they’ve all been excellent through the first month of the season. Kevin Gausman signed a one-year deal before the 2020 season, and did well enough that the team kept him around for 2021.
The starting staff, which consists of those four plus Logan Webb (while Johnny Cueto is hurt, anyway), is the core of the team. It’s the main reason they’re in first place, and Zaidi acquired them for money, and other than Gausman, not that much of it. The Giants farm system has been miserable at developing impact starters for a decade now — apologies to Ty Blach and Chris Heston — and the front office just shrugged that off by signing a whole staff of pitchers who made it a non-issue.
This is how the Giants ended up in first place on May 4. The so-called “experts” didn’t see it coming, but only because the Dodgers and Padres are both better in every way on paper, just absolutely ridiculous baseball teams, totally unfair guys, and it won’t last. Also, the Dodgers happened to hit a cold stretch, going 4-10 over their last 14 games, which is possibly not going to continue forever? Don’t get me wrong; I think it should continue forever, and it probably will, but we’d be remiss to not even consider that maybe the Dodgers will be an over .500 team for the rest of the year.
If you’re a Giants fan, you should savor every second of this firstplaciness. Sure, you can and should expect that these seconds should last through the end of September — boy will that be a lot of savoring! — but for now, take what you can get and enjoy what you have The Giants are in first place, over the unbeatable Dodgers and the terrifying Padres, as well as the surprisingly decent Diamondbacks and the technically-a-baseball-team Rockies.
Have they done it by beating up on weak teams? Oh, gosh yes. They’re 5-1 against the Rockies (currently 10-18), and also have over .500 records against the Marlins (11-16), Phillies (14-15), and Reds (13-14). Now, they’ve gone 3-3 against the Padres in 6 surprisingly evenly matched games, but the point remains: the schedule has been soft so far, and it will not stay soft forever.
Those are worries for later, though. For now, the Giants are riding high, and proud we are of all of them. They got to take their place in this tweet:
That’s about as sweet as it gets at this point in the season. Congratulations to the Giants, then, for making it this far. We are more than one sixth of the way through the season, and the Giants are in first place. If you’re surprised, that’s normal. But for now, all you have to do is take a breath and smile.