SAN FRANCISCO — The improbable, the inconceivable, and the unprecedented became reality Sunday. A team comprised of players cast off, supposedly washed up, unproven, and unknown, were the best team in baseball over the seven-month haul that was the 2021 regular season.

But why stop there?

What’s to say the postseason can’t end the same way the regular season did, with a Giants win?

The Giants’ National League West title — clinched Sunday in the final game of the regular season with an emphatic 11-4 win over the Padres — was so far-fetched at the beginning of the season that it still seems as if it didn’t actually happen.

This is just a simulation, right?

But the fashion in which they won their first division title since 2012 makes the story even more special. Everyone loves an underdog — especially when they hold off a juggernaut for months.

And the coolest aspect of it all is that the story is still being written. The best part might be yet to come.

“Going into spring, it was our goal to win the West,” Giants shortstop and MVP candidate Brandon Crawford said. “We knew that could be a kind of lofty goal and we knew where the projections were and everybody thought we were gonna end up, but that was our goal.”

“Being able to play as well as we did, especially in the second half, to be able to hold off a team that gets to 106 wins and still win the division — it’s pretty awesome.”

Belief in the Giants has washed over the Bay Area and the sport of baseball like a tidal wave.

This was supposed to be a rebuilding season, but the Giants won 107 games, a franchise record.

Why would you put a cap on what this team can achieve now?

(Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group) 

While they needed every single one of those wins to claim the division, that felt appropriate. Their rivals in Los Angeles, the Dodgers — the second-best team in baseball — pushed them until the final day of the season. The Giants needed a win Sunday to claim the West. They took it behind Logan Webb’s tremendous start on the mound, his two-run home run a the plate, and an offensive explosion from his teammates in the middle innings.

“It felt like we had to win every game for the last month,” Buster Posey said. “It was a grind… It makes it all the more special.”

The Giants’ 2021 season was beyond reproach. You can’t attribute their success to luck, a fluke, or level of competition.

San Francisco enters the postseason battle-tested. And they’re in a groove, too, having won eight of their last nine games to hold off the Dodgers and claim the division title.

You have to like that combination.

Ahead of the playoffs, which will start for the Giants on Friday at Oracle Park, there will be plenty made of the Dodgers’ success and star power, the Braves’ bats, the Cardinals’ incredible hot-streak at the end of the season, and the Brewers’ starting pitching, but the San Francisco should enter the postseason as the favorites in the National League to win the World Series.

After all, every team has flaws — even the Dodgers, who won fewer games than the Giants but had a payroll that exceeded San Francisco’s by $100 million. (That’s not even to mention their desperation trade for two star players at the trade deadline, which netted them two games in the standings over the last two months.) But no team does a better job of covering their weaknesses than the Giants.

It’s gotten to the point where it must be asked: What exactly are the Giants bad at on a baseball diamond?

(Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group) 

San Francisco led the National League in home runs and OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage — the top statistic for hitting impact in this longball-and-walk era).

Their starting pitchers had the third-best ERA in baseball this season and were the best in the game over the last month of the campaign.

Their bullpen was the best in baseball this season, per ERA. They too were the best in the final month of the season, in part because of their new closer — the Iceman, 24-year-old Camilo Doval.

The Giants were also second-best in the National League this season in outs above replacement — a range-based fielding metric.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – OCT. 3: San Francisco Giants pitcher Logan Webb (62) pitches against the San Diego Padres in the first inning of their game at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group) 

Seriously, what’s to dislike?

Baserunning? They looked pretty good on Sunday as they took at least bases that didn’t belong to them during their hit parade.

Yes, the loss of first baseman Brandon Belt, the self-appointed captain of the team and one of baseball’s best hitters in August and September, was a tough blow — he’s likely out for the remainder of the season — but San Francisco has the talent to overcome and a style of play that has demanded flexibility all season.

It’s just one more thing for Giants fans need to believe — if any team can handle the absence of a middle-of-the-order hitter ahead of the postseason, it’s San Francisco, whose Nos. 6, 7, and 8 hitters Sunday were former National League MVP Kris Bryant, All-MLB outfielder Mike Yastrzemski, and two-time Silver Slugger winner Evan Longoria.

These Giants are deep and they’re scrappy. They’ve been playing in high-stakes games for weeks — no, make that months. They know exactly what they’re doing and what they’re about as they head into the postseason. And with their combination of youth and experience makes them even more dangerous.

This team’s perceived weakness at the beginning of the season? They’ve turned out to be strengths.

“We thought we were a competitive team,” Giants president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi — the architect of the Giants — said after the game. “You never know how that translates… but we felt we were going to be tough out and we were going to be playing meaningful games late to the season.”

For that vision to come to fruition?

“It’s emotional for a lot of people — everything this organization has been through, the world has been through,” Zaidi said. “Not to get overly dramatic — we have a lot of baseball still to play — but there was a lot of emotion in there.”

The results of the experiment that was the 2021 regular season are in. They were unexpected, but take the emotion out of it and the data is undeniable: These Giants are a juggernaut.

As such, they have nothing left to prove, but everything remaining to celebrate.

And if they win the whole thing, don’t be surprised.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – OCT. 3: San Francisco Giants pitcher Logan Webb (62) is congratulated by teammate Tommy La Stella (18) after hitting a two-run home run in the fifth inning of their game at Oracle Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Sunday, Oct. 3, 2021. This was Webb’s first major league home run. (Jose Carlos Fajardo/Bay Area News Group)