The Giants are one of the best teams in baseball. Look no further than the five World Series championships won as the New York Giants (1905, 1921, 1922, 1933, 1954) and the much more recent three World Series championships won as the San Francisco Giants. The latter championships occurred three times in just a five-year span: 2010, 2012, 2014.
During my lifetime, I know the Giants best for three things:
1. Barry Bonds. During his time with the Giants (1993-2007), Bonds won five of his MLB-record seven National League MVP awards. That included four in a row (another MLB record) from 2001 to 2004. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Bonds, Mark McGwire, and Sammy Sosa were chasing and/or setting home run records. If you watched any ESPN, you probably saw some of it. Bonds set the current single-season home run record with 73 home runs in 2001. He also has the most career home runs. However, as baseball fans know, PEDs/steroids were part of the game at the time.
2. The early 2000s Giants. Those Giants were managed by Dusty Baker, who was with San Francisco from 1993 to 2002. Baker had the Giants in the playoffs three times in six years, from 1997 to 2002. In his final year, Baker led the Giants to the 2002 World Series. The result was a 4-3 series loss to the Anaheim Angels. As a Braves fan, I remember the '02 Giants because the Giants' path to the World Series that year went through Atlanta. The Giants escaped Turner Field with a 3-1 Game 5 victory and a 3-2 NLDS win over the Braves.
I will say we kind of got our revenge on Dusty this past season by beating the Houston Astros, who Baker has been managing since 2020, to win the 2021 World Series. Go Braves!
3. The Giants' World Series dominance in the 2010s. Manager Bruce Bochy (2008-2019) was behind San Francisco's titles in 2010, 2012, and 2014. Several great players were on all three of those title-winning teams managed by Bochy. They included pitchers Tim Lincecum and Madison Bumgarner along with third baseman Pablo Sandoval and catcher Buster Posey.
Lincecum won back-to-back Cy Young Awards in 2008 and 2009 and Bumgarner won both the NLCS and World Series MVP Awards in 2014. Sandoval was the World Series MVP in 2012 (and his last stop in MLB was with the Atlanta Braves in 2020-21). Posey spent his entire MLB career with the Giants. He won NL Rookie of the Year in 2010 and NL MVP in 2012.
Since Bochy's retirement after the 2019 season, things are already looking up for the Giants under still-relatively-new and current manager Gabe Kapler. Kapler came over from Philadelphia. In just his second year as the Giants' manager, Kapler led San Francisco to a franchise-record 107 regular season wins and the 2021 NL West Division championship. As a result, he was named 2021 NL Manager of the Year and given a two-year contract extension that will see him through the 2024 season. read more