Why they lost - San Fran

The checked swing.

 

 

 

Ok you want some more.

Half the offense checked out - San Fran scored the second most runs in the NL this year mostly through a "no-one be bad" offensive strategy. Not that you'd get above average performance from everyone every week, but when someone was bad, some one else was great, and most everyone else was still ok. There wasn't a 3 or 4 or 5 guys all slumping at the same time.  Well in this series there were.  Solano (0-8) Yaz (0-13) Flores (1-12). Wade (1-10) Longoria (2-17) Ruf (1-11 yes the homer was his only hit)  Dickerson and Duggar a combined 0-7 all had rough series and it showed with the Giants scoring 6 runs in the last 4 games.  The whole replacement part theory doesn't work in these instances. Only Bryant was above a .900 OPS for the series.  A lot of bad, very little great.  Compare this to SF vs LA in the regular series. Crawford, Flores, Posey, Wade, Slater all OPS'd over .900 so Yaz, Belt, Rug , Dickerson could all OPS under .650.  That's the way the team worked all year, players picking up players, until this series 

Power outage while standing still - You can maybe survive getting no hits, which LA's staff was the best at keeping you from, if you can walk and/or homer. The LA staff was good at keeping you from those too, just not as much. The Giants had the most homers in the NL this year and the second most walks.  After G1 where they hit 3 homers, it looked like they'd slug their way to the series win. They hit two more the entire series. They only walked 6 times. The Dodgers pitching won the battle against the Giants hitting. With ease. 

Not pitcher perfect With the offense not performing the Giants were gonna have to pitch like crazy and let fate help them win the close games. They did not all pitch like crazy. Gausman had second half issues and DeSclafini showed some inconsistency during the year. Both had bad outings. That was bad but it wasn't a surprise. Leone - lights out since coming back in June and sort of the "next guy up" after Rogers, Doval, and McGee - being terrible was. The Giants had a little margin for error with Webb being so good, but they couldn't take advantage of it.

Taint funny McGee - Jake McGee was the Giants closer all year long, but he sputtered a little late and missed a couple weeks in September putting his post-season use in question. Kapler decided to use Doval, a guy with lights-out stuff, as the closer and McGee as another arm. Looking at the ERAs it's hard to argue but Doval looked pressured in his one "have to win or the season is over" chance in a way a vet like McGee might not have been. Of course use McGee and fail and the complaints are even more obvious. Still we can only know what did happen and Doval was wild and left pitches up.

If you want it in short - this was a world class battle between the best hitters and pitchers in the NL and the Dodgers pitchers bullied the Giants bats. The other battle being more even (Dodgers bats were alive in 2 games, absolutely dead in 3) meant the Dodgers would take this series.