SF Giants Gameday: Is it time to rethink what the 2020 Giants are capable of?

SAN FRANCISCO -- A week ago, the San Francisco Giants were in utter disarray. The club had lost five straight games, fallen to 8-16 on the season and had fans thinking about 2021 draft position instead of the rest of the 2020 season. The heartbreaking nature of the Giants' losses led to widespread frustration, but the ninth-inning collapses also obscured the improvements the club was making. The rotation was stabilizing, the defense was making strides and the offense had given the team late leads to play with. At the end of the first half, the Giants have won six consecutive games and have forced fans to recalibrate what the 2020 club is capable of. With an expanded postseason field that now allows for eight teams from each league to make the postseason instead of five, the Giants are starting to think one of the last playoff spots is a realistic target. On the shoulders of NL MVP candidate Mike Yastrzemski and a pitching staff that's limited opponents to just over two runs per game over the last week, the Giants see themselves as a threat. The red-hot Los Angeles Dodgers roll into town Tuesday for a three-game set at Oracle Park, but after a series against the top team in the National League, the Giants' schedule gets softer. Over the final four weeks of the season, the Giants will play four games against the Seattle Mariners and six against a fading Colorado Rockies team that has lost nine of 10. The Padres and A's present significant challenges, but the Giants have already shown they can handle the Diamondbacks and have demonstrated their plan of attack at the plate works against Arizona's inexperienced pitching staff. It's too soon to know if the Giants' hot streak is a legitimate sign of what's to come, but it's clear the team wasn't as bad as its record suggested a week ago. In a condensed 60-game season, all we can expect is chaos. For the Giants, that's probably a good thing.