With one with week left in the 2015 MLB regular season, the San Francisco Giants are practically eliminated from playoff contention. The last few weeks served just as a formality for a team that hadn’t been in any serious consideration since late August, when they were brutally swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers (all 3 games were decided by one run), and so fell behind their rivals by an insurmountable amount of games in the NL West. As the Cubs and Pirates continued to win in bunches, the wild card was also left well out of reach of the Giants.
This means that we will have another year without a franchise winning consecutive World Series titles (the 1999-2000 Yankees were the last to do it), while the last defending champions to at least win a playoff series were the 2012 Cardinals. This is nothing new for the Giants, who have won 3 of the past 5 World Series, but have gone 0-for-3 in their attempt to at least make the postseason following their title. It has left San Francisco’s year-to-year ledger in a very weird state:
2010
92-70 1st in NL West
Won World Series vs. Texas Rangers
2011
86-76 2nd in NL West
Missed Playoffs
2012
94-68 1st in NL West
Won World Series vs. Detroit Tigers
2013
76-86 3rd in NL West
Missed Playoffs
2014
88-74 2nd in NL West (won Wild Card)
Won World Series vs. Kansas City Royals
2015
81-74 2nd in NL West
Missed Playoffs
While we could chalk this to #EvenYearMagic or just an amazing string of coincidences, the fact is that we are now witnessing how the Giants have again failed to pose a serious defense of their title. It is understandable that any championship team in any sport is almost doomed to suffer a pullback due to a combination of roster rotation, natural regression, or plain old luck; however, seeing the Giants fail again at reaching October just a year after winning it all has led me to wonder if there are any key factors in this extreme run of success and futility.
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