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SAN FRANCISCO – The San Francisco Giants finally won National League West without having to wait for the result of rival Dodgers on the final day of the season, beating the San Diego Padres 11-4 on Sunday for a record 107th franchise victory to overtake the 1904 New York Team.
Logan Webb has gone out of his way to lead the surprising San Francisco to their Premier League crown since 2012, wowing a wacky, deafening crowd of 36,901. Buster Posey also had an amazing day.
Posey threw both arms in the air as Eric Hosmer swinging knocked to end it, and ran up the mound to hug reliever Dominic Leone.
“The first thing that comes to mind is how proud I am of this group and what they have accomplished,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler told fans on the pitch. “Part of the reason I feel this is because I think we all knew at the start of the season, or even at the start of spring training, what the projections are and what the industry was thinking about. sort of us as a club. What I realized is that there are intangibles that these projections and perspectives didn’t take into account. “
Webb gave a roaring standing ovation when he was substituted in the eighth after allowing three straight singles. He struck out eight batters and failed to produce a batter while pitching over seven stellar innings, and also hit a two-run homer in the fifth to break through fences for the first time in his career – a pretty line to the left.
Posey produced three runs on a pair of singles and had his 1,500th career hit as the San Francisco Division’s hopes dwindled on the final day. The Giants clinched the title in Game 162 after losing 3-2 in 10 innings a day earlier as Los Angeles won the night against NL champion Central Milwaukee.
According to ESPN Stats & Information research, the Giants – who have won 11,301 games in their 139 seasons, most teams in MLB history – had never won 107 games in a season until this year. year.
The Giants will host the winner of Wednesday night’s game between the Dodgers and the Cardinals in Game 1 of an NL Division series on Friday at Oracle Park. They are guaranteed to face at least a 90-game winner, as St. Louis and Los Angeles are not typical generic teams. The Cardinals, an afterthought in the race over the summer, went on a 17-game winning streak in September to force themselves into the equation.
San Francisco wanted to earn it that way to dethrone the defending World Series champions Dodgers who could have forced a tiebreaker on Monday with a Giants win and loss. The Dodgers had won the last eight NL West titles since the Giants last did so nine years ago.
San Francisco held the best baseball record for 125 days and won the final day of the regular season for the first time since 2017.
“This group always thought we were going to win the game. Always,” Kapler said.
Manny Machado briefly made things interesting with a sacrifice fly in the fourth against Webb, undefeated since May 5 at Colorado. He was 10-0 after the loss, but had just won three straight no-decisions since beating the Cubs at Wrigley Field on September 12.
There were so many big hits supporting the right-hander’s last gem. Mike Yastrzemski’s two-point brace in the seventh made it 11-1.
Webb walked to charge the goals with a strikeout in the fourth, and Tommy La Stella called with an RBI single before Wilmer Flores made two more runs.
This brought back memories of October 3 to the legendary franchise, now determined to create more in October, like the 2010 World Series champions, ’12 and ’14 with some of the same faces from today to Posey, Brandon Crawford and the injured slugger. Brandon belt.
Webb delivered just as Jonathan Sanchez threw the Giants past the Padres on the final day of 2010 to advance the club to their first playoff appearance in six years.
Or you could even go back to Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World”, as Willie Mays and the New York Giants beat Brooklyn 5-4 to win the 1951 pennant before ultimately losing the World Series.
These 2021 Giants completed a stunning turnaround in the second season of manager Gabe Kapler of a club that finished 29-31 for third place in the division in the coronavirus-shortened 2020 season.
Los Angeles and those Padres, after all, were the favorites to win the division when the season started six months ago.
Instead, it could have been Jayce Tingler’s last game, handling a disappointing San Diego (79-83), who had high hopes of competing behind stars Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. The Padres lost eight of their last nine and finished below 0.500 for the 10th. times in 11 years – they were 37-23 last year – after losing 13 of their last 15.
Padres starter Reiss Knehr (1-2) worked three innings in his 12th major league appearance and fifth career start.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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