It took a franchise-record 107th win in the club's 162nd game, but the San Francisco Giants on Sunday clinched the National League West in a thrilling race that came down to the regular season's final day.
The Giants secured the West title with an 11-4 win over the San Diego Padres in front of a raucous crowd at Oracle Park, capping an unexpected and improbable season in which pundits predicted no better than a .500 record.
Starter Logan Webb turned in seven innings, giving up four runs, while the Giants' offense did the rest – including a solo home run from Webb himself.
The victory comes after the Giants blew a late 2-1 lead over the Padres in Saturday's game, forcing San Francisco fans to wait another day for a division championship celebration as the Los Angeles Dodgers won late Saturday.
The win dethrones the Dodgers' stretch of dominance in the West, breaking a run of eight consecutive division titles.
The Giants last won the division in 2012.
The Giants' season has been nothing short of historic, claiming the division title with the best record in Major League Baseball and breaking the all-time franchise record for wins with Sunday's victory. In the divisional era, the National League record for wins is 108, held by the 1975 Reds and 1986 Mets.
On Wednesday, the team broke the San Francisco record for most wins in a single season with a 1-0 victory over the Arizona Diamondbacks; an achievement not previously reached since 1963. "It's a huge accomplishment," Manager Gabe Kapler said of the San Francisco record this week. "This team has done so many good things. To say that this club has won more games than any other San Francisco Giants team is quite fulfilling."
Until Sunday, the franchise record for wins was 106 – set in 1904 when the Giants played in New York and were managed by Hall of Famer John McGraw.
The team was the first in either league to clinch a playoff berth, doing so on Sept. 13. Kapler's top-seeded Giants will play the winner of the National League Wild Card game between the Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals in the Division Series, a five-game series slated for a Thursday start at Oracle Park.
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