The San Diego Padres have been a thorn in the Giants side all year.
With the exception of the Giants winning three out of four against the Padres in San Diego last month, the Padres have an 8-2 record against the Giants in the other 10 games.
That’s why it’s not enough to just win the division and sit back while Atlanta drops three straight to the Phillies; letting the Padres sneak in as a wild card against a resting Giants.
The Giants must bring their A-game the last two games even if the division is already theirs.
Bay Area sports fans can all remember that one year this century that the Golden State Warriors made the playoffs.
That was a miracle in its own right and the magic continued when the Warriors won a six-game series against the heavily-favored No. 1 seed Dallas Mavericks who were coming off an NBA Finals loss to the Miami Heat a year earlier with the mantra, “Unfinished Business.”
Where the Mavericks went wrong and where the San Francisco Giants must go right is that with three or so games left in the regular season, the Mavericks faced the Warriors who were fighting for the last playoff spot with the Los Angeles Clippers.
Dallas rested their top players pretty much the whole game, and the Warriors won the game and the last playoff spot by one game over a furious Los Angeles Clippers club who owned the tiebreaker against the Warriors in the standings.
A couple weeks later the Warriors are sending the Mavericks home packing early from the playoffs.
Unfinished business indeed.
The Padres are currently a game behind the Braves with two games to play.
The Braves are playing the Phillies who would like nothing more than to see their division rival Atlanta Braves miss the playoffs by their own hands in the most disheartening of fashions.
The beautiful thing about this is that if the Giants are going to eliminate the San Diego Padres on their own, then it’s going to come down to the last game of the season where Jonathan Sanchez closes out the regular season for the G-Men.
Sanchez, for some reason, opened up his big mouth after he lost a game earlier this year just before a three game series with the Padres predicting a sweep and never looking back.
Well here we are with two games left to play and the Giants still don’t own the division and the ball will be in Sanchez’s as he either pitches Sunday to either win the West for the Giants or send the Padres home for some October surfing.
Barry Zito pitches Saturday in a game which will determine which one of those two things Sanchez will be pitching for—assuming a Braves loss.
The beautiful thing is, either we get to see the Giants eliminate a team that has owned them this year or we get to see a trash-talking Sanchez get a big slice of humble pie.
Either way, this will be an exciting weekend.
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