On season's final day, Giants find way back into playoffs

Pitcher Jake Peavy grabbed the microphone and promised a sellout crowd more special October baseball, and who could doubt him given the Giants' recent history of even-year World Series success?

Ace right-hander Johnny Cueto tossed a baseball into the seats in celebration Sunday, then expressed his thanks to a higher power for putting him in another winning situation this season after last fall's World Series victory in Kansas City.

"That energy's back," Peavy said. "This isn't the last game we're playing at AT&T ballpark, there's no chance."

Yet the way the Giants played in the second half, when nearly everything seemed to go wrong at some point and the old reliable bullpen blew it over and over again, manager Bruce Bochy couldn't help but wonder if his team could pull it off in the end. With all that talent and depth, San Francisco nearly squandered a big chance.

Bochy never counted on the Giants getting any help to reach the playoffs, either.

On Sunday, he knew his club would have to get there on its own — and that's exactly what San Francisco did on the season's last day.

"It's a tough group. I kept saying, 'They've been through it, they're battle-tested,'" he said. "We stayed in it a lot longer than I thought. When they needed to answer the bell, they did it."

The Giants owned the best record at the All-Star break at 57-33, sputtered for months then all but needed to sweep the division champion Dodgers to return to the postseason. They did just that to wrap up the second wild card and headed East on Monday ahead of Wednesday night's game against the New York Mets for a spot in the Division Series against the Chicago Cubs.

Now, ace left-hander Madison Bumgarner will take the ball just as the 2014 World Series MVP did two years ago at Pittsburgh with the season on the line. Noah Syndergaard will oppose Bumgarner, whose '14 postseason was among the best ever by a pitcher.

"It comes down to that one game, all the work we've put in comes down to that," Bumgarner said. "... Early in the season things were looking real promising for us, then we went through a pretty good stretch when it wasn't looking too promising at all."

The Giants have momentum again. Things are clicking at the plate, with the pitching and on defense.

Nobody wanted to travel first to St. Louis for a potential one-game playoff to determine the last wild card.

"This game is hard to explain sometimes," Bochy said. "We just got in a funk between we were missing a couple guys and then we were sputtering offensively, we were trying to get this bullpen in order. For us to get there, and how we got there, I said earlier I felt we had to win out in this series. We couldn't count on somebody helping us. It was up to us to take care of business and these guys took care of business in a great way. Five runs the first two innings, they were on a mission."

The Giants (87-75) finished the regular season with their first four-game winning streak of the second half.

They have a chance to follow up those every-other-year championships the franchise has captured this decade: in 2010, '12 and '14. Many of the same faces have been around for them all.

"It's always fun to go to the postseason, especially with the core group of guys we have, some experience with the wild card and with the postseason," shortstop Brandon Crawford said. "It's going to be fun. We've done a good job of maintaining that belief that we would get here. Hopefully we can just keep it rolling. We've been playing good baseball the last few days."

Santiago Casilla lost his closer's job. Sergio Romo got healthy and stabilized the ninth inning, and everybody in the tight-knit bullpen stuck together.

"It's unbelievable," Casilla said. "This year, I believed 100 percent we'd win the World Series, no matter what anybody was saying or how we made it. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's hard. We played hard, we believed. Now, we can win the World Series and make the city happy."

Right fielder Hunter Pence has been telling Bochy for weeks how much he cherishes playing for something this time of year.

"This is October baseball," Pence said, "it's the best versus the best."

Diamondbacks fire Stewart, Hale after another losing season

The additions of pitchers Zack Greinke and Shelby Miller had the Arizona Diamondbacks facing upgraded expectations this season.

When the team took a step back instead of forward, something had to change.

General manager Dave Stewart and manager Chip Hale will not be back. Chief Baseball Officer Tony La Russa will be, though it’s unclear in what role.

Coming off a second disappointing season, the Diamondbacks parted ways with Stewart and Hale on Monday in the latest shake-up for an organization seeking consistency.

“We did not see the trend line moving in the right direction,” Diamondbacks managing general partner Ken Kendrick said.

The Diamondbacks won the World Series in 2001 and had a brief resurgence a decade later by winning the NL West.

Arizona has been in a steady decline since then, posting five straight non-winning seasons.

The Diamondbacks brought in La Russa in 2014 and among his first moves was bringing in Stewart and Hale, elevating them to positions they had never held at the big-league level before.

Arizona went 79-83 last season and was expecting better things after signing former AL Cy Young Award winner Greinke to a $206 million deal and trading for Miller.

Instead, the Diamondbacks took a step back. They started slow and never recovered, finishing with a 69-93 record to miss the playoffs for the fifth consecutive season.

Now the franchise will be searching for a fifth GM and fifth manager since 2010. The team is deciding on what role La Russa will have, but Kendrick said it will not be manager.

“We want to have more consistent baseball and championship-caliber baseball, year-in and year-out,” Diamondbacks CEO Derrick Hall said.

A four-time 20-game winner as a player, Stewart had previously worked in the front offices for Oakland, San Diego and Toronto before landing his first general manager’s job.

Hale played seven major league seasons with Minnesota and the Los Angeles Dodgers before getting into coaching. He worked as Bob Melvin’s bench coach for three seasons before being hired as a big-league manager for the first time with Arizona. He previously worked nine seasons in Arizona’s organization and spent two seasons with the New York Mets.

Arizona has made some questionable moves over the past couple of seasons, including an $8.25 million contract with Cuban right-hander Yoan Lopez, who has considered leaving the game.

The Diamondbacks also were criticized for the deal that brought Miller to the desert, which sent outfielder Ender Inciarte and shortstop Dansby Swanson, Arizona’s top draft pick in 2015, to Atlanta. Miller struggled his first season with Arizona, going 3-12 with a 6.15 ERA.

Arizona did pull off the most surprising offseason deal prior to the 2016 season, luring Greinke away from top teams that had been pursuing him. Greinke showed flashes of still being one of baseball’s best pitchers, but was inconsistent most of the season. He won a team-high 13 games, but also had a 4.37 ERA, second-highest of his career.

Arizona’s pitching staff struggled as a whole, finishing with a baseball-worst 5.11 ERA.

Rockies’ Walt Weiss out after team’s best season since 2010

The relationship between Walt Weiss and his general manager deteriorated over the last several months. He and Jeff Bridich certainly see eye-to-eye on this: The Colorado Rockies have quite a few of the pieces in place to be a contender.

Next step, finding a new manager.

Weiss is out as manager of the Rockies after four seasons. In a statement Monday, the Rockies said Weiss decided to step down.

However, he really didn’t have a job to come back to because his contract expired after the season finale. Bridich, who took over as GM two years ago, will now get to select his own manager.

The Rockies finished 75-87 this season, their best record since 2010.

“It was time to move on,” Bridich said in a conference call. “We both put in a lot of work to try to make the relationship work. I’m proud of that. It could’ve been different when changes were made in the front office two years ago. In our working together and conversations over those 24 months, we decided together that we were going to move forward and make a true effort at continuity, and making this thing work and creating a shared vision. In the end, it did not take place.”

Bridich said there is no timeline for a replacement. The team plans to interview external candidates as well as internal ones such as Glenallen Hill, who finished up his fourth season as manager of the Rockies’ Triple-A affiliate.

“One of the things important to relationships is all parties involved work hard to share a vision in how we’re going to move this process along,” Bridich said. “Be the best we can be at the major league level and start to turn ourselves into a playoff-type team. That doesn’t happen overnight. Those things happen over time. I think you have to be real realistic about that.”

Weiss took over a team on Nov. 7, 2012, that was coming off the worst season in franchise history. He was a high school coach at the time with no major league coaching experience. The former big league shortstop learned on the fly and concluded his managerial stint in Colorado with a 283-365 record.

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Weiss said he was pleased with the direction the team was heading.

“There’s a lot to look forward to here, especially from where we came from,” Weiss said. “Coming in right after the worst season in the history of the franchise, I feel like that if it wasn’t rock bottom, it was pretty darn close. But there’s a lot to feel good about.”

The players appreciated Weiss’ laid-back style, with All-Star third baseman Nolan Arenado giving Weiss credit for having the Rockies on the right track. Arenado said Sunday that Weiss is a manager that “every player respects, everyone around the game respects. You don’t find those people too often.”

The next skipper will be inheriting this: A batting champion in DJ LeMahieu, one of the game’s top leadoff hitters in Charlie Blackmon, an RBI monster in Arenado, another deep threat in Carlos Gonzalez, a star in the making in shortstop Trevor Story and a young but talented rotation led by Jon Gray.

“I do think we have a very talented team,” Bridich said. “Based on Walt’s comments over the last few weeks or months, he would agree with that and has agreed with that. There’s a really talented core at the major league level. We were able to graduate a number of young, very talented players and start their major league careers. There are certainly ways this team needs to improve.”

Chief among them will be shoring up a shaky bullpen that blew 28 saves chances. Colorado finished 24-36 in games decided by two runs or less this season.

“I like the group that we have. I think we are close,” said Arenado, who led the league in RBIs (133) and tied for the NL home run title (41). “I want fans to know that so they don’t lose hope. I feel bad. They come out every day, to see us lose the way we do sometimes. It upsets me. I want them to know that I truly believe we’re close.”

Weiss has long had strong ties with the organization, playing four seasons for the Rockies from 1994-97. He also served as a special assistant to the general manager for seven years from 2002-08.

On Sunday, Weiss made his way around Coors Field to say so long to Rockies fans for the season.

Turns out, his farewell was for good, too.

Barry Bonds out as hitting coach for the Marlins

Barry Bonds is out as the Miami Marlins hitting coach after just one season.

Sources have confirmed that Bonds was dropped from the coaching staff, as were third-base coach Lenny Harris and bullpen pitching coach Reid Cornelius.

Bonds — the majors’ all-time home run king — was hired before the 2016 season to bring improvement to an anemic offense that had ranked next-to-last in runs scored the previous season.

But the Marlins improved only marginally under the slugging great.

The Marlins this season scored 655 runs, which ranked ahead of only the Braves and Phillies in the National League.

Bonds had been handpicked by owner Jeffrey Loria to serve as the team’s hitting coach, replacing Frank Menechino