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		Can the Giants win 12 of 18 down the stretch? By Morris Phillips September 13, 2010

	The Giants still have work to do. Since a pair of embarrassing losses to Arizona at the end of August, the Giants have won 10 of 14, including seven of ten on the just-concluded road trip, and solved the riddle of the Padres, with three wins in a four game set at Petco Park over the weekend. While the Giants surged, San Diego collapsed with a 10-game losing streak, finally saw phenom Mat Latos look ordinary, and before Monday night, the punchless Pads hadn’t scored more than four runs in a game since August 26. Still, the Giants are looking up--in the NL West and the wild card race-- just outside the playoff picture with 18 games to go. In a four team party, the Giants remain the odd man out, by the narrowest of margins. On Monday, while the Giants got a night off, the Padres, Phillies, Braves and Reds, the four teams with better records in the National League, all won. When play commences on Tuesday, the Giants will trail San Diego by ½ game in the NL West and Atlanta by 1 ½ in the wild card. In this final stretch, the Giants maintain all the obvious edges. Now the question is can they take advantage of their favorable schedule and get past the Padres or Braves for a playoff spot? The biggest advantage the Giants hold is their 12 remaining home games, the most of the six remaining playoff contenders. Also the Giants have a favorable schedule with just six games against teams with winning records, and the next nine games on their schedule against the Dodgers, Brewers and Cubs, are all against sub .500 ball clubs. Because of these two advantages, the website coolstandings.com, a site that does probability studies of professional sports, gives the Giants a slightly better odds—58 percent to 55 percent—to make the playoffs than the Padres, despite San Diego’s current lead in the standings. Coolstandings.com predicts the Giants will win 10 of their final 18 games and land in a one-game playoff with the Padres for the NL West crown. The challenge for San Francisco will be to win at least 12 of the final 18 to put pressure on the Padres, who have just one day off, 12 of 19 on the road, and a critical finish in San Francisco on October 1-3. Of course, in this scenario, it’s still one game at a time, and a veteran team like the Giants know that nothing can be presumed. To that point, the Giants must gear up to face Chad Billingsley, Clayton Kershaw and Ted Lilly in the next three days, pitchers that can draw on their previous success facing the Giants’ hitters as well as the added motivation of possibly knocking their rival out of the playoff picture. WITH TORRES OUT, THE GIANTS SCRAMBLE: Andres Torres has arguably been the Giants’ MVP with his consistency at the plate and patrolling center field, as well as providing the Giants only base stealing threat. But after an emergency appendectomy, Torres likely will miss the rest of the regular season. Luckily, the Giants have options in Aaron Rowand, Cody Ross and Nate Schierholtz, who can all play center, but the greater challenge will be replacing Torres in the leadoff spot for a team that needs all the help possible in manufacturing runs. It will be interesting to see how Bruce Bochy handles Torres’ absence on a daily basis down the stretch, especially since his lineup had really began to stabilize in the recent weeks.