Giants and Phillies trying to stay in races

The San Francisco Giants (41-40) finally won a game on Saturday night, but still dropped three of four in Denver to the Rockies (44-38). The Giants have now lost eight of their last nine games as well as ten of their last twelve. They are now solidly in fourth place in the National League West, trailing first place San Diego (49-33) by 7 1/2 games.

The Giants are now on the periphery of the race and simply cannot have this type of play continue or they will fall out of the division race altogether. The team has shown some resiliency in the last two games that is encouraging, so I'm hoping that will lead to a solid four games series in Milwaukee (37-45) this week. The first game of that series is tomorrow at 2 p.m. MT.

One thing I'm hopeful about is that the Giants are still only 4 1/2 games behind in the Wild Card race that the New York Mets (46-36) lead. The bad news is they are in sixth place in that race. Hopefully this resiliency they've shown in winning last night despite blowing a six run lead and today where they scored three in the eighth to tie the game before losing in 15 innings will come through.

My second favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies (42-38) are just ahead of the Giants in the Wild Card race and trail the Mets by three games. They trail division leading Atlanta (48-34) by five games with a big series featuring the two starting tomorrow night at 5 p.m. MT on ESPN. The key for me is the Phils only trail the Mets by two in the loss column and the Braves by four. So they are right in the race. I'm much more optimistic about Philadelphia because they have won the last two National League Pennants and came from behind in September to win the NL East from the Mets. Once Chase Utley and Placido Polanco come of the disabled list, I think they will be playing even better. I think they will be able to hang in the race until then and maybe even do some damage -- even without those players the Phillies are still a dangerous team.

The Giants need to do much better on the last seven games of their current road trip which will take them up to the All Star break. They then have a big series at home against the Mets right after the break that could really push them into the race, or push them out altogether. The key is keeping things relatively close over these next seven. I think they need to go at least 5-2 for me to consider it a success as they are visiting two teams with sub .500 records in Milwaukee and Washington (36-47). I think 4-3 is the more likely scenario, however and I wouldn't even be too surprised at 3-4 the way they have been playing. The Giants are exactly halfway through the season today and as such I'll try and get back on later tonight for a sort of mid-year review of baseball.