Posted By Jeff Fletcher on September 30, 2010 5:44 pm

Here at AT&T Park just finishing up. I actually wrote for FanHouse today, (and last night, on Brian Wilson). Today’s story will be posted here shortly. Anyway, since I’ve been doing some writing for the people who pay me, I’m not going to put as much here. (You guys don’t pay me squat.) But I do have a couple little random observations.

First, the Giants accomplished something significant by winning this game. They guaranteed that they need to beat the Padres only once over the weekend to win the division, regardless of what the Padres do today in San Diego. (It’s 0-0 in the 6th, as I write this).

The Giants also guaranteed that, if they win the division, they will have home-field advantage in the first round. (There is a really really really really small chance that the Giants could still win the division and lose out on home-field to the Reds, but it requires a pretty ridiculous set of circumstances. So the Reds are going to start at Philadelphia or at the NL West champ if the wild card comes from the NL West. If the Padres win today, they’d still be in reasonable shape for the wild-card. They’d be one game behind the Braves with three to play.

As I wrote before, my best-case scenario is the Giants win the division and the Padres get the wild card. Then it would be Padres at Phillies and Reds at Giants. I think it would still be technically possible for the Giants to get the wild card, but that would require a lot of things to happen, like the Giants losing all three to San Diego while the Braves lose all three to the Phillies.

Regarding the game itself, I was relieved to see Buster Posey have a nice day. Just when I officially gave him my endorsement as Rookie of the Year, he decided to go into a mini-slump. He had been 1-for-19 before his sixth-inning two-run homer.

OK, I had some more stuff, but I going to dinner with my pal Lowell Cohn.