For Bruce Bochy and the San Francisco Giants, It Had To Be This Way

As bleak as it may be, the San Francisco Giants still have a chance to make the postseason.

On an eight-game win streak, they still will likely have to win the rest of their games and hope the Diamondbacks (or Braves and Cardinals) have a catastrophic collapse.

Still, I like their chances to repeat as World Champions better this way than if they held their beginning-of-August division lead all the way to the playoffs. The mentality would have been all wrong.

Let's face it, had the Giants held their lead, making the playoffs would have been viewed as a tremendous accomplishment. They would have overcome the loss of two of their top three hitters (Buster Posey and Freddy Sanchez) in the first few months of the season, and might have been in a position where they didn't have to make a trade for Carlos Beltran.

That team would be bounced in the first round of the playoffs—guaranteed. They might scrap out a game, scoring three runs once, but that's about it. The defending World Champions would have been happy (or relieved) just to have made the postseason.

Not this team.

This team is hungry.

This team scores runs.

This team picks each other up.

This is still the team with a scary good pitching staff, who now must feel like the weight of burden has been lifted from their shoulders.

As weird as it sounds, so much had befallen the Giants that they had to feel out of the race before they could get back in it.

Too many guys were pressing.

Too many young players felt the burden of producing runs.

Too many pitchers felt that one mistake was one too many. 

However, when they fell eight games back, nine games back, they finally started playing the game again.

The San Francisco Giants may be too late, but they finally look like a team worthy of defending a world championship.

Five back in the division, three and a half back in the Wild Card. This team may not make the playoffs, but if they do—watch out.