It was 1993. Barry Bonds won MVP in his first season in SF. Will Clark had the worst year of his career but you just knew he’d be ready to come up clutch in the playoffs. Matt Williams finished 6th in MVP voting and Robby Thompson finished 15th in MVP as he exploded for his career year.

Rod Beck emerged as an elite closer with 48 saves and finished 12th in MVP voting. Beck somehow got no votes for Cy Young, but Bill Swift finished 2nd and John Burkett finished 4th.

Giants sprinted out the gate and had the best record in the NL for pretty much the whole season. The Phillies, led by Lenny Dykstra (2nd to Bonds in MVP voting) and powered by some of the most curiously muscular specimens of the budding steroid era in Darren Daulton and Pete Incaviglia, were the best in the east. The Giants-Phils regular season matchups were extra dramatic, with batters getting plunked and leading to bench-clearing shenanigans. These two teams were on a crash course to the NLCS, until…

The Padres handed Fred McGriff to the Braves for essentially free at the trade deadline, and the new expansion Rockies rolled over to the tune of 0-12 against Atlanta that year. The Braves caught fire and won 74% (!) of their games after the all-star break (a 120-42 pace over 162 games).

Giants didn’t even crap the bed, they won a very respectable 60% of their games in the second half (a 98-64 pace) but that Braves pitching staff with Maddux, Glavine, Smoltz, and Steve Avery combined to go 75-33.

And of course, this was the final season before the Wild Card was introduced. So the 103-win Giants, the second best record in all of MLB that season by one measly game… missed the playoffs.

I still think that team was the best Giants squad of my lifetime. Better than the 2010, 2012, 2014 championship teams. Better than the NL Pennant winners in 2002 and 1989. And even better than the 2021 team that had the best regular season record of them all. In my opinion, the biggest coulda/woulda/shoulda in San Francisco Giants history.

18 comments

  4. Agreed, probably the best. They often won big, I think they scored double digits in every game on an east coast trip except one they got blanked by Rueter. Had the Phillies’ number that year too, we would have faced Toronto.

  5. Everything fell apart after that year. Losing Clark to the Rangers and the strike set them up for a few bad years.

  9. It also looks straight out nuts that Atlanta and Cincinnati were in the West while Chicago and St. Louis were in the East. There were reasons of course, and baseball wasn’t the only sport with that silliness (hello NFC East Phoenix Cardinals and NFC West Atlanta Falcons), but it still looks bizarre.

  12. All the Rockies had to do was beat Atlanta one time. ONE TIME!

    Also, Trevor Hoffman hitting Robby Thompson in the face in September didn’t help.

    Edit: added the bit about Robby.

  15. Oh crap, I remember games 160-162. The Rockies let Atlanta sweep them. We took the first 3 from the Dodgers, but our starters were used up and we went with Salomon Torres. I’ll never forget LaSorda celebrating like he just won the Stanley Cup.

  16. I have a memory of Will Clark flying out against the dodgers in the 9th inning of that last game, but I have never looked to see if that’s what actually happened. I just know we lost.

    I remember hearing the Giants had won a couple days later, but my dad had to put my delusional ass in check when he let me know (softly) it was the New York football Giants, and we were still eliminated.

    That year I put all my love for my team into the Blue Jays, for whatever reason. Watching Joe Carter hit that walk off gave me some strange sense of relief after utter devastation.

    It’s been 30+ years since then, but I’m looking at you again, Toronto. I hope to see you turning down a whiteHouse invitation shortly

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