Why the Giants are the worst playoff nightmare for the Cubs
Ignore the curse, the Cubs are the favorites to win the World Series this year.
The North Siders were the best team in baseball in the regular season and they head into the postseason without a clear weakness. Why wouldn’t they be the favorites?
They have the best bullpen in the National League, the best rotation in the National League and the best lineup in the National League. They’ll probably have both the league’s MVP and Cy Young Award winner, too.
This has to be the year for the Cubs, right?
Well, that theory is going to be tested from Game No. 1 this postseason.
The San Francisco Giants were the best team in baseball in the first half of the season and one of the worst teams in the game after the All-Star Game, but thanks to a dominating pitching performance by Madison Bumgarner in the National League Wild Card Game Wednesday, the Giants will square off with the Cubs in the five-game National League Division Series.
The matchup with San Francisco should scare the Cubs — it’s the worst-case scenario for Chicago.
The Giants might have been terrible in August and September, but that doesn’t matter in October. A five-game series is a drastically different environment than the regular season, and it makes starting pitching paramount to a team’s success.
If you want to predict who will get three wins first, your best bet is to look at the pitching probables. There, you’ll see the Giants are the only team in the National League that can argue they have a better starting pitching staff than the Cubs.
The debate over which four-man rotation is actually better is for another time, but the Giants’ 1-through-4 of Madison Bumgarner (the best postseason pitcher in history), Johnny Cueto, Jeff Samardzija and Matt Moore is a tough group to beat.
The first name in that list is the most important. If the Giants can steal a game from the Cubs in Wrigley Field in Games 1 or 2, the Cubs will return to San Francisco to face Bumgarner with back-to-back elimination games looming should they lose.
And if the series goes five games, you can expect that Bumgarner is going to be on the mound — if not as a starter, then as a reliever. No one can say which is worse for opposing hitters, but all can agree that no opponent likes their chances in a game where Bumgarner pitches.
The Giants know how to win in the playoffs — the team has won the World Series in each of the even-numbered years this decade thanks to great starting pitching, defense and timely hitting that doesn’t strike out often.
The Giants might have limped into the postseason, but there’s no reason to think that winning formula has been abandoned in 2016.
The Cubs are the league's best — they should be favored to beat the Giants in the NLDS because they have great starting pitching and superior hitting and relievers, but should the Cubs not be playing to their full potential from the first pitch of Game 1, the Giants have the horses to trample their World Series dreams.
