{"id":665053,"date":"2026-04-05T18:49:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-05T18:49:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/665053\/"},"modified":"2026-04-05T18:49:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-05T18:49:18","slug":"are-the-giants-playing-for-2nd-or-3rd-place-in-the-nl-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/665053\/","title":{"rendered":"Are the Giants playing for 2nd or 3rd place in the NL West?"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past Wednesday, Brady posted<\/a> the latest SB Nation Reacts poll question of which of their non-Dodgers NL West Division rivals are the bigger threat this season, and now we have that result.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What are the motivations for this poll response? It\u2019s an important question. Do they see the Diamondbacks as a likely second place team or are they more likely to wind up third as they did last season? In that case, the Giants would be competing to avoid a repeat of fourth place. Or, did voters simply look at the field and vote based on which team they thought could be the biggest threat to the Giants clinching second place in the division?<\/p>\n

If we focus on the notion of fan optimism, then we\u2019re led to the conclusion that it\u2019s a battle for second place and, presumably, a Wild Card berth. I\u2019m not sure I can travel that far down the road of optimism, however, as the National League playoff field seems awfully competitive on paper. If you figure the Dodgers are the NL West champs (which is no sure thing, because baseball is usually not so predictable), the remaining five teams could be from an extensive group of teams: the Mets, Atlanta, Philadelphia, the Marlins Cubs, Brewers, Reds \u2014 heck, the Pirates are 5-3 of this writing. The Giants, Padres, and Diamondbacks don\u2019t seem to be on the same level as most of those teams (Pirates & Marlins being the most obvious exceptions for the moment).<\/p>\n

But after seeing San Diego up close, it makes sense that a lot of voters concluded (either just by watching the Giants play them or by their knowledge of the team\u2019s off-field situation in terms of finances, but also prospect capital) that they simply aren\u2019t the threat they once were and especially when compared to the Diamondbacks who\u2026 lost a game 17-2 this past week and were then shutout the next night. So, all three of these would-be runner up to the Dodgers have stumbled out of the gate.<\/p>\n

Remarkably, ZiPS projects<\/a> the Giants to land in second place, with the Padres third and Dbacks fourth. The Padres have also won the season series against the Giants in each of the last four seasons and five of the last six. Or, to put it another way, since 2020, the Giants have won the season series just once (2021). Arizona has won the season series in each of the last four seasons, too, though.<\/p>\n

But 51-49 is very close, and that makes a lot of sense. Arizona features Corbin Carroll, Ketel Marte, Geraldo Perdomo, Zac Gallen, and Eduardo Rodriguez while San Diego has Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Manny Machado, and Ramon Laureano to go with Randy Vasquez, Michael King, and Nick Pivetta. If you put those groups up against Devers, Adames, Chapman, Ramos, Lee, Webb, and Roupp\/Mahle there\u2019s a way to make them all roughly equivalent.<\/p>\n

Unless the Giants absolutely crater here in April, the battle for second in the NL West <\/a>should be an intense one for most of the summer.<\/p>\n

The poll questions that weren\u2019t team-specific had to do with viewing the games.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With MLB\u2019s media rights deals set to end after the 2028 season, Commissioner Rob Manfred appears to be gearing up to offer all of the teams media rights as part of a large streaming package. What will that mean for viewers in the future? Probably nothing good. And while this poll isn\u2019t a meaningful sampling of the sport\u2019s viewership demographics, it does speak to a truth that there are too many platforms, subscriptions, and plain ol\u2019 logins in this wacky world. MLB is careening towards this situation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Making it easy to watch games makes it easier to watch games for other teams. Part of the fun of baseball is knowing who all the dudes are.<\/p>\n

That question was asked as a follow up to this one. As you\u2019ll recall, the Giants hosted the Yankees for the very first \u201cOpening Night,\u201d which became the sole MLB game to kickoff the season. It was also hosted on a global streaming service which means everybody saw the Giants pantsed and run up the flag poll so that people could pelt them with produce and make fun of their appearance. If you\u2019re not a fan of either team or aren\u2019t into blowouts, you had no recourse other than to maybe look for something else to watch on the service. Unsurprisingly, fans weren\u2019t that into Opening Night:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s an overwhelming rejection of the league\u2019s idea, which probably means it\u2019ll stick around for next season.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in being a survey participant, you can sign up for SB Nation Reacts polls here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This past Wednesday, Brady posted the latest SB Nation Reacts poll question of which of their non-Dodgers NL…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665054,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2408],"tags":[5,162,4,378,66,81843,4343,4340,4344,4341,4342],"class_list":{"0":"post-665053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-francisco-giants","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-giants","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-san-francisco","12":"tag-san-francisco-giants","13":"tag-san-francisco-giants-analysis","14":"tag-sanfrancisco","15":"tag-sanfranciscogiants","16":"tag-sf","17":"tag-sf-giants","18":"tag-sfgiants"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116353603149905998","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}