What SF Giants have to do to avoid worst season since moving to San Francisco

If things had gone well this season for the SF Giants, we’d currently be envisioning scenarios that allowed them to make the playoffs for the first time since 2021. Which team might they play in the Wild Card round? How will their pitching match up against other teams?

Alas, the 2026 Giants stink real bad and we are left to ponder how they can avoid the worst season since moving to San Francisco back in 1958. They’ve had some real bad ones. Chances are you’ve watched some of them.

As a younger fan, 2017 springs readily to mind. The team went 64-98 that year and even early on this season the signs were there to suggest that’s where this iteration of the club was headed.

2017 was only the second-worst year since the move to San Francisco, though. 1985 takes the cake as that’s the year the Giants went 62-100. Losing 100 games is hard to do, but the Giants are very much in danger of that right now.

Their current record is 51-74. That means the Giants have to win 12 games to ensure they eclipse the 1985 team’s record. Can they really win 12 out of their next 37 games? It seems impossible, but let’s dig into the upcoming schedule.

Right now they are playing the Cleveland Guardians, a team fighting to keep its playoff hopes alive. Next they face the Boston Red Sox, another team in the thick of the playoff hunt. Neither of these teams are going to go easy on San Francisco.

Giants do not have a very easy schedule the rest of the season

The rest of the month they will play the Cincinnati Reds who are out of it, the Arizona Diamondbacks who have a chance at the playoffs, and a make-up game against the Atlanta Braves who are a playoff team.

September sees them play two teams that are out of it in the New York Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates, but everyone else is either a lock for the playoffs or is in the hunt.

Not counting the makeup-game in Atlanta, the Giants have 12 remaining series including the current one in Cleveland. That means the Giants just need to win one game in every series they play the rest of the year and they will finish with a record of 63-99, right in the middle of the 1985 and 2017 teams.

This certainly won’t be the the 1951 or 1962 pennant races, but it seems like it’s going to come down to the wire for the Giants as they try to avoid having the worst 162-game record in the history of the franchise. 

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