The 2022 Giants Played Non-Completely Meaningless Games Until the Very End
I was quite irked when MLB added the Wild Card following the 1993 season because I felt that it would
minimize the importance of the regular season. I was further dismayed when
MLB added a third Wild Card team before the 2022 season.
My displeasure over the Wild Card subsided a little bit with the 2022 season.
That year, the Los Angeles Dodgers won
111 games. That was
the most wins by an National League (NL) team in over 100 years. (The Chicago Cubs won 116 games in 1906.) My San Francisco Giants
belong to the same Division (NL West) and
the Dodgers
mathematically eliminated them from the NL West race on September 6 after doubling them 6-3 that day. The Giants had
twenty-eight games left in their season after that loss.
Because of the Wild Card, twenty-four (!!) of those twenty-eight games were not completely meaningless. They were (finally) eliminated from the playoff race in their 158th game of the season after
being doubled up by the Diamondbacks 8-4 on October 1 (nearly four weeks after being eliminated from the NL West race).
Despite losing the the NL West race to the Dodgers by 30 games (!!!) and being eight games under .500 on September 18 (69-77), the
Giants surprisingly played a non-completely meaningless game in the month of October (that aforementioned game against the Diamondbacks).
This unprecedented occurrence was due to a combination of a number of factors:
- As I mentioned, there was an additional Wild Card team instituted before the start of the season.
- As I also mentioned, the Dodgers had an all-time great season (111 wins).
- The Giants won ten of eleven games after September 18. The Philadelphia Phillies, the team that was leading the race for the third Wild Card spot,
lost five games in a row near the end of September.
- The Milwaukee Brewers, another team that was also ahead of the Giants, lost three of four near the end of the season.
- The 2021-2022 lockout delayed the end of the season
by three days.
I am still not a fan of the Wild Card, but in 2022 it provided Giants fans with hope for nearly an additional month.