103 Wins and No October: The 1993 Pennant Race and Dusty Baker's Salomon Torres Gamble

The 1993 Giants won 103 games, chased the Braves to the season's final afternoon, and still went home. This is how the last great pennant race ended, and why Dusty Baker's choice of a 21-year-old rookie to start the biggest game of the year still gets argued about in the Bay.

Here is a sentence that should not be possible. The 1993 San Francisco Giants won 103 games and did not make the playoffs. Not 83. Not 93. One hundred and three. In almost any other season in baseball history that is a division title, a parade route, a banner. In 1993 it was a franchise's heart getting ripped out on the last day of the season, and it happened during what a lot of people who lived through it will tell you was the greatest pennant race the sport has ever produced.

This is the story of that summer, that final afternoon, and the decision Dusty Baker made on the mound that Giants fans have been chewing on for more than thirty years.

The winter that lit the fuse

It started in December of 1992, when the Giants signed Barry Bonds to a then-record six-year, $43.75 million contract and brought the Bay Area kid home. Bonds delivered exactly what that money was supposed to buy and then some, hitting .336 with 46 home runs and 123 RBIs on his way to his second straight MVP award. He was the best player in baseball and he was playing like it every single night. With Bonds anchoring the lineup and a rotation that found its legs, the Giants were not just good. They were a machine.

And it was Dusty Baker's first year running the club. A rookie manager, a superstar signing, and a team that came out of the gate looking like it might run away with the whole thing. For most of the summer, that is exactly what it looked like.

A ten-game lead, and the team chasing them from behind

By July 22 the Giants led the National League West by ten full games. Ten. That is the kind of cushion that is supposed to let a team coast into September and rest its regulars. But the team sitting behind them was the Atlanta Braves, and the Braves were not the kind of team that let a division go. At the trade deadline Atlanta went out and added Fred McGriff, and from that point on they played like a team that refused to lose. All year long the Braves were Javert to the Giants' Valjean, relentless, always a step behind and closing, never going away.

San Francisco's ten-game lead was seven and a half by August. Then the Giants hit the wall every contender fears, a 6-15 stretch at the worst possible time, and suddenly the enormous cushion was gone entirely. Atlanta had run them all the way down. What made it so cruel was that the Giants did not collapse down the stretch the way losing teams do. They caught fire again, ripping off a 14-2 run in the final weeks just to claw back even. They did nearly everything right. It still came down to a tie.

Even, with one game to play

The two best teams in baseball walked into the final day of the regular season with identical records. Both had already won 103 games. There was no wild card in 1993, no safety net, no second chance waiting in a play-in. One team was going to the playoffs and the other was going home, and it would be decided by what happened on a single Sunday afternoon. The Braves were in Atlanta hosting the expansion Colorado Rockies. The Giants were at Dodger Stadium, in front of a Los Angeles crowd that wanted nothing more in this world than to end their rivals' season.

Win, and at worst you force a one-game playoff for the division. Lose, and 103 wins means nothing. That was the math. And that is where Dusty Baker had to make his call.

The Salomon Torres decision

Baker handed the ball to Salomon Torres. Torres was a 21-year-old rookie, a highly touted prospect who had been called up in late August and had flashed real promise in his handful of big-league starts. On paper there was a case for it. He had good stuff, the rotation was worn down from a pennant race, and his turn happened to line up with the final day. Baker went with his young arm and trusted him with the season.

It did not go the way anyone in orange and black hoped. Torres matched zeros with Dodgers starter Kevin Gross for two innings, and for a moment it looked like it might hold. Then the third inning came apart. Los Angeles pushed across two runs on an RBI single by Dave Hansen and a run-scoring double by Eric Karros. In the fourth, Torres walked two of the first three men he faced, and a Jose Offerman pop-fly single chased him from the game. The kid was gone, the lead was gone, and the Dodgers were just getting started.

The bullpen could not stop the bleeding either. Los Angeles poured it on and buried the Giants 12-1. A team that had won 103 games got run out of the building on the one afternoon it could least afford to, by an 80-81 Dodgers club that finished the year under .500 and treated beating San Francisco like its own personal World Series.

The ending nobody in the Bay has forgotten

While the Giants were being routed in Los Angeles, the Braves handled Colorado and clinched the National League West by a single game, 104-58 to San Francisco's 103-59. The Giants became the only National League team in the division-play era to win 100 or more games and miss the postseason. All those wins, the MVP season from Bonds, the summer-long lead, the furious rally to force a tie, and it ended with a rookie on the mound and a 12-1 beating.

The Torres decision has been second-guessed for three decades, and it always will be. Fair or not, when you hand a 21-year-old the most important start in franchise history and it goes sideways, that is the image that sticks. But it is worth remembering the whole picture. Torres was not the reason the Giants blew a ten-game lead. The Braves were a 104-win juggernaut who added Fred McGriff and simply would not lose. And the very next year, baseball adopted the wild card, which means the exact same 1993 Giants, in almost any season that came after, are a playoff team with ease. They were born one year too early.

That is what makes 1993 hurt in a way that ordinary losing seasons never could. This was not a bad team that fell short. This was one of the best teams the franchise ever fielded, wasted by a calendar quirk and a rival that would not blink, its season ending on a warm Sunday in Los Angeles with a young pitcher's shoulders carrying more than any 21-year-old should have to. The last great pennant race, and the Bay Area came out on the wrong side of it.

• Dec 1992Giants sign Barry Bonds to a record $43.75M deal
• Jul 22San Francisco leads the NL West by ten games
• AugustA 6-15 skid erases the lead as Atlanta surges with McGriff
• Late SeptGiants rip off a 14-2 run to pull even entering the final day
• Oct 3Torres starts, Giants lose 12-1 in L.A., Braves clinch by one game

• Bonds hit .336 with 46 homers and 123 RBIs to win NL MVP
• The Giants led the division by ten games on July 22
• San Francisco finished 103-59, one game behind Atlanta's 104-58
• They remain the only NL team of the division era to win 100+ and miss the playoffs

More Giants history: Barry Bonds, the Loudest Bat SF Ever Saw · Even-Year Magic · History hub