SF Giants Elimination Number after a tough week of games

The Giants are in real trouble when it comes to their playoff chances in 2023.

Sep 15, 2023; Denver, Colorado, USA; San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Logan Webb (62) leaves
Sep 15, 2023; Denver, Colorado, USA; San Francisco Giants starting pitcher Logan Webb (62) leaves / Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports

While the San Francisco Giants are hanging around in the National League wild card race, they have been definitely trending in the wrong direction lately. Since 9/12, the Giants are 2-5 including an embarrassing series loss to the Rockies with their postseason chances hanging by a thread.

The Giants falling on their faces could not have come at a worse time. With the Dodgers essentially locking up the division a while ago, San Francisco had to keep pace with the rest of the NL wild card field to have a chance and as we will see, they have instead done anything but that.

SF Giants Elimination Number and Playoff Odds - 9/20

That was a long-winded way of saying that at 3 games out of a playoff spot with both the Marlins and Reds ahead of them in the quest to steal the last wild card spot from the Cubs. Anything that is a "magic number" sort of thing is a little tricker to parse with multiple teams to compare against, but the simple version is that the Giants' wild card elimination number is 9. That doesn't account for tiebreakers which isn't great news for the Giants as the Cubs handily won the season series with San Francisco, although they do hold the tiebreaker over Miami and Cincinnati.

The end result is that the Giants' playoff odds are looking very grim. Fangraphs has San Francisco with just a 5.3% chance of making it to the playoffs while Baseball-Reference likes their chances even less in giving them just a 1.6% of making it to the postseason.

In short, the Giants are going to have to figure things very soon and still probably need some help ahead of them in the standings. If they can't, they be watching the playoffs from home wondering what might have been.

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