Giants Must Strike Now, While Window Still Open

The San Francisco Giants have been consistent contenders in the National League West Division for much of the last eight years, but the club’s window of opportunity may now be closing.

It’s always a difficult decision when a club such as the Giants begins to hit a crossroads. How do you continue to win while restocking your big league team and your farm system with quality young players?

Few teams are able to pull off the feat well. Most who undertake the attempt have failed for a couple of seasons before realizing they simply have to cash in as many of their aging, higher priced veterans as possible in exchange for that younger talent.

The Giants have reached that crossroads. Their decisions are especially difficult because they do remain legitimate contenders who have division rivals with significant weaknesses. The window of opportunity to contend remains open, but general manager Bobby Evans needs to be aggressive this offseason.

Bryce Harper's Coming Out Party

In writing up my final MLB Power Ranking last week, I finished up the Washington Nationals comments with this line: "I believe that this postseason could very well be Bryce Harper's true launching pad to on-field stardom."

The Nats finished 2nd in the Power Ranking and were the team that I believed were best positioned to win the World Series. The San Francisco Giants killed that possibility by dumping Washington in four games in one of the National League Division Series.

But the postseason performance of Harper, limited to those four games as it was, may indeed have been that launching pad. Harper launched a few himself, blasting 3 homeruns. He also scored 4 runs and knocked in 4. He hit .294, registering a .368 on-base percentage, an .882 slugging percentage, and had an OPS of 1.251 as well.

Harper began his assault on Giants pitching in the bottom of the 7th inning of Game 1 with the Nats trailing 3-0. Against reliever Hunter Strickland, Harper led off and absolutely crushed a titanic shot into the right field upper deck at Nationals Park to get the Nats on the board.

Harper, who appears to thrive under pressure in dramatic situations, sensed the importance of getting the Nats crowd back into the game: "Get some runs on the board, get this crowd back into it. Getting them going was very exciting." It wouldn't ultimately be enough, as San Fran held on to win 3-2, going up 1-0 in the series.

Game 2 would prove to be historic, the longest postseason game by time in MLB history, tied for the longest by innings.