SAN FRANCISCO — As the Giants streaked toward the finish line, taking their postseason chances from seemingly impossible to only highly improbable, some considered it a good omen for 2023, while others regretted not playing at this level all season.
Mostly, though, they remained realistic.
Their odds were long, and their fate was out of their hands.
On Saturday, it was sealed.
The Giants lost to the Diamondbacks, 8-4, officially eliminating them from postseason contention.
What seemed inevitable even two weeks ago, after four straight months of underwhelming play, took until the final weekend of the season to become official. The sun rose Saturday morning, marking the start of October, and the Giants were still alive, even if it was only in the most technical sense.
They remained alive for much of the morning and into the early afternoon.
Around the same time the Giants opened a 1-0 lead in the third inning — Thairo Estrada beat out a double play, driving home Joey Bart, who led off with a walk — the Phillies’ sixth loss in their past seven games went final, a 13-4 walloping in Washington, the NL’s worst team.
Maybe, possibly, they would live to see another day.
But their odds (which, according to FanGraphs, haven’t budged above 0.1% since Sept. 8) took a death blow in the top half of the next inning, when Arizona rallied for three runs against Jakob Junis and took a lead it wouldn’t relinquish.
The Giants got solo home runs from J.D. Davis (in the sixth) and Mike Yastrzemski (in the eighth) but otherwise couldn’t muster the offense against Arizona rookie starter Drey Jameson to match the D-backs’ eight-run onslaught.
Of Jameson’s four major league starts, two have come against the Giants, limiting them to two runs (both Saturday) over 11 1/3 innings.
Christian Walker had already tripled and tied the score 1 when Corbin Carroll came to bat in the top of the third, with the bases empty and two outs. A possible one-run frame, however, turned into three when Carroll’s pop fly to left landed in front of a diving Jason Vosler. Cooper Hummel walked, and Sergio Alcantara, the No. 9 hitter, doubled them both home.
The D-backs blew the game open in the seventh against Jarlín García, who was reinstated from the paternity list before the game and took over for Junis with one on and no outs in the seventh.
Davis had pulled the Giants within one run, 3-2, in the sixth with a line-drive home run to dead center that had the velocity (107.9 mph), the trajectory (22 degrees) and the distance (436 feet) of a jetliner at cruising altitude.
But Junis served up a single to Jordan Luplow to lead off the seventh, and García allowed the next four batters to reach before he recorded an out. Once again, it was Alcantara with a fly ball to left that caused issues.
Joc Pederson was left laying face down in left-center after his pursuit fell short, while Alcantara chugged into second base for his second two-RBI double of the game and the final blow of a five-run rally.
Yastrzemski’s home run was his second in as many days and his fifth this month, one behind David Villar for the team lead. Like the Giants as a whole, Yastrzemski has ended a difficult season on a nice note. All five of his home runs this month have come in his past 11 games, while hitting .310 over that stretch.
Overall this September, Yastrzemski is batting .260, his first month since May with an average above the Mendoza line.
For Davis, the home run was his eighth since joining the Giants, twice as many as he hit this season with the Mets, despite playing 21 fewer games with San Francisco. The ball had an expected batting average of 1.000, and Davis clearly knew it was gone off the bat. It took until about halfway up the first-base line to change his gait from a walk to a trot.
However, like this Giants season, it proved to be too little and too late.
The Giants have three World Series trophies to show for the past two decades. They won 107 games and the NL West last season. But they are still searching for their first consecutive postseason berths since 2002 and 2003.
