San Francisco Giants: Crisis Averted For Second Straight Year

For the second consecutive year, fans of the San Francisco Giants have had the pleasure of watching the Los Angeles Dodgers lose the World Series.

While it may be fun to gloat, it’s clear just how close the Dodgers are to winning it all. San Francisco Giants can’t relax for long.

A team doesn’t reach the World Series in back-to-back years by accident. They have to be super talented and it doesn’t hurt if they have deep pockets either — the Dodgers have both. They have been arguably the best regular season team of the decade.

They have won every single NL West title since 2013. The only other sports team I can think of winning that many divisional titles in a row is the New England Patriots. Keep in mind that in football you only play 16 games a season.

Sure, it’s much more physically demanding, but the Dodgers have played more than 162 games for 6 straight years. To have that kind of prolonged success in baseball is pretty remarkable.

Part of me feels a little bad for the Dodgers — well, not really. I do genuinely feel bad for Clayton Kershaw, though.

While I hate seeing him dominate the Giants several times a year, he’s a heck of a pitcher and it’s a shame that he’s going to carry the “Playoff-Choker” moniker until he’s able to dominate in the postseason, more specifically the World Series, and deliver a title for his team.

His situation is very much like Peyton Manning’s was early in his career. Manning would put up incredible regular season numbers year-after-year but was unable to get it done in the postseason. That was, of course, until he finally got it done and the monkey was lifted from his back.

Madison Bumgarner could be Tom Brady in this analogy, but Bumgarner’s postseason record is actually better than Brady’s even though Brady has been to eight (!) Super Bowls.

Kershaw and the Dodgers are, you would think, just too good to not win a World Series eventually. While I would not be opposed to them becoming the Buffalo Bills of the MLB, that is, making it to four straight championships and losing all four, my gut says that they’ll get in done someday.

While I’m thankful I’ve been wrong the last two years, all that I, and we as San Francisco Giants fans, can hope for is that the third time isn’t the charm for the Dodgers in 2019.