The Giants and Mariners aren't far apart talent-wise on their rosters, but there's only one Cal Raleigh. Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images

October makes me feel like Jabba the Hutt. I spend most of my days and nights in the same place, eating whatever's closest to me and guffawing at the misfortunes of others. I've watched a month's worth of baseball in two weeks, and some of it was so hilariously cruel that I might have laughed like Jabba once or twice or several times. It's been great. I would have made a great Hutt.

You see the headline up there? The answer is almost always "good players." When the Giants miss the playoffs, and other teams are in it, that's because the other teams have better players. That should apply to future seasons, as well. Hope it helps.

However, this postseason has been different from a Giants' perspective. You don't want to hear it as the Dodgers steamroll toward their third championship in, sigh, five seasons, but the Giants actually had good players this season. They had a notable absence of bad players by the end, at least in the lineup.

So this is a look at what the current League Championship Series teams have that the Giants don't, with a couple of ground rules:

* There's no need to mention the bullpen in every capsule. The Giants traded away their best relievers at the deadline, and they'll need to rebuild their bullpen. There's no reason to pretend that their end-of-season bullpen was somehow representative of what they were trying to build.

* We'll start with the Dodgers because it's pretty freaking obvious what they have that the Giants don't. Let's pull that Band-Aid™-brand bandage right off.

The Dodgers had a weird season by their standards, but now that they're mostly healthy, they're an absurdly talented team. A healthy rotation of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow is ridiculous enough, but they also have Shohei Ohtani back and stretched out. He also happens to be better than any left-handed hitter since Barry Bonds.

They've kind of been falling up the stairs this postseason, though, so it's not unrealistic to hope that their sloppy play will catch up with them. But there's no mystery why they're seven wins away from another title. They're supposed to be better than everyone else. The Giants have some good players, but the Dodgers have a few of the best ones.

The Brewers have landed with their first-round picks and international signings in a way that the Giants are only beginning to mimic. Milwaukee's No. 2 hitter is a 21-year-old, and he's an international scouting success story. Their No. 3 and No. 5 hitters were both taken in the first round, more toward the middle than the top of the round. The Brewers already have Jackson Chourio, Brice Turang and Sal Frelick, and the Giants don't. The Giants have visions of a homegrown-heavy lineup, but it's been complicated so far.

Ideally, Heliot Ramos, Jung Hoo Lee and Patrick Bailey would combine to form a three-headed homegrown monster like that, but Ramos' defense took 15 steps back this season, and his overall offensive production was fine and nothing more. Lee's season was saved by torrid stretches toward the end of the season, but he ended up with comically similar numbers (.266/.327/.407) to Ramos (.256/.328/.400). And, of course, Bailey hit like Bill Bergen for about four months, which can really leave a mark on an offense. That trio has a ways to go before it can be considered the foundation of the next playoff team.

There might be other pieces starting to fit together, though. Bryce Eldridge should be a huge part of the 2026 Giants, and he'll rightfully get most of the attention, but don't forget about players like Luis Matos and Drew Gilbert, as well as old-young players like Casey Schmitt. Heck, Marco Luciano is out of options, so with a hot spring ...

The Brewers had other advantages over the Giants, too. They're faster, and they play cleaner defense. They mined the minor leagues and waiver wires for players who gave them tons of value, while the Giants hoped to do the same with Jerar Encarnación but his season kept getting interrupted by horribly timed injuries.

The Brewers have been doing this for years. They're a model franchise in almost every respect. The homegrown core is the biggest difference, though, and that's been what the Giants have been missing for several seasons now.

Before you answer "starting pitching," take a closer look at what the Mariners' rotation actually did this year: They were in a dead heat with the Giants in 2025, according to Wins Above Average. They had plenty of injuries and disappointments, too, and it's remarkable that they've done as well as they've done so far in the postseason.

This capsule has the potential to be just as short as the Dodgers', considering the answer is "the Mariners have a catcher who fields like Patrick Bailey but hits like Mark McGwire." That's a slight exaggeration, but not by much. Cal Raleigh had one of the greatest baseball seasons ever. Nobody in the Giants' lineup had a career-best season. That's a pretty, pretty big difference.

And while the Giants will never be able to replicate a 60-homer catcher, there's a chance that Rafael Devers and Eldridge can combine for 80 homers one of these years, even at Oracle Park. Part of me wants to delete that sentence and check the batteries in my carbon monoxide detector, but another, larger part of me thinks the Giants are owed a season or two like that. Willy Adames and/or Matt Chapman can join if they want. The 30-homer-season drought lasted for over two decades, and it was the sentence by the Baseball Gods for enjoying Barry Bonds (worth it). The sentence has been commuted, and it's time for the Giants to start acting like a normal team again. I can't wait.

Mostly, though, it's the part where the Mariners' Bailey hits like McGwire. The rest of the Seattle roster reminds me a little of the Giants, to be honest. So if the Giants can find one of those 60-homer catchers at Costco, or maybe figure out a way for Bailey to hit 60 homers, that'd be swell.

Let's combine everyone on the Blue Jays and Giants rosters with more than 400 plate appearances, then sort them by the most strikeouts.

Differences between two lineups don't get starker than that. The Blue Jays make contact, and the Giants don't, or at least not nearly as much. This can be a double-edged sword, though, with the Blue Jays letting the Mariners' bedraggled pitching staff off the hook by seeing only 100 pitches in Game 1 of the ALCS. Sometimes those balls in play become outs. Sometimes they become two outs. Strikeouts aren't all bad.

Strikeouts are mostly bad, though, and it's hard to see how the Giants wouldn't be improved with a little more bat-to-ball skills. It's also hard to see where those improvements would come from. Adames, Chapman and Devers will never be contact hitters, and it's hard to see either Ramos or Eldridge settling into even average strikeout rates.

The good news is that the other teams also don't have what the Blue Jays have (although the Brewers come close), so you know that it's possible for teams to win with a higher strikeout rate. It seems like so much fun to watch a team that excels at putting the ball in play. There are plenty of ways to enjoy a baseball team, though.

Like making the postseason, for one.

The biggest difference between the Giants and all of these teams is still probably related to the Giants getting exactly zero career seasons from their players, when most teams -- even the freaking Rockies -- had at least one player who had a career season. That, combined with LaMonte Wade Jr. possibly being the least valuable player in baseball in 2025, was too much to overcome. But with improvement from the homegrown core and a couple of power threats having some of their best seasons, the Giants won't be that far behind these teams.

Except for the Dodgers. Feel free to remain annoyed at them.

That isn't to say that anything's guaranteed. Just that the Giants feel about as far away from the Championship Series as these teams (sans the Dodgers) felt last season. Which is to say, pretty far away, but not impossibly so. There's still a lot of work to do this offseason, but not as much as there could have been.

What do the LCS teams have that the 2025 San Francisco Giants didn't?