Do the San Francisco Giants need rotation help to win the title?

As presently constructed, can the San Francisco Giants win the World Series? This is a tricky question, as there seems to be two different answers.

If the High God of Baseball himself came down and told us that the Giants will not make any moves but will still make the playoffs, then the answer is yes. This Giants team is well built for winning in the playoffs.

One would be hard-pressed to find a team that can rival the Giants’ top-three starting pitchers of Madison Bumgarner, Johnny Cueto and Jeff Samardzija.

Teams like the Chicago Cubs and New York Mets might be comparable, but those three can hang with anyone. Even if San Francisco got terrible performances from whatever pitcher they decide to use as the No. 4 starter in the playoffs, they’d be in with a great chance in three out of every four postseason games.

A team like that can absolutely win in the postseason.

As if that wasn’t enough, the San Francisco hitters have recorded a rather paltry 312 strikeouts. While the Giants have played in a league-leading 49 games, only the Los Angeles Angels have fallen victim to fewer strikeouts.

That puts the Giants in solid company, as teams that win the World Series put the ball in play.

Now, the playoffs always have an element of randomness to them. But this San Francisco squad is at least as well built for the playoffs as the ones that won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

That’s all well and good. But the problem here is that to win the World Series, you need to first make the playoffs. With a 30-19 record and a 4.5-game lead over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the National League West, the Giants look to be in decent shape in that regard.

Still, this is far from a flawless team.

One of San Francisco’s greatest flaws is what they’ve gotten from their No. 4 and No. 5 starters, Jake Peavy and Matt Cain.

That kind of performance from 40 percent of the rotation will simply not get it done.

As good as the Giants’ top-three has been, they are going to go through some slumps. Over the course of 162 games, every MLB player not named Clayton Kershaw will have a down run.

A down run for pitchers like Bumgarner, Cueto, and Samardzija may not show up in the form of terrible stats. Still, a bad run could be good starts with 1-2 pitches that costs the team a win.

That’s where rotation depth comes in. In the regular season, teams can’t simply hide their worst pitchers. When you play every day, you need consistent contributions from your entire pitching staff. Naturally, the pitchers in the bottom half of the rotation will not be as good as their top half counterparts, but they can’t be liabilities.

Now, it is worth noting that three of Cain’s four quality starts have been in his last three outings. Those have come at home against the strong hitting Toronto Blue Jays and Chicago Cubs with a good outing in Arizona’s hitter-friendly Chase Field mixed in.

Whether he’s really turned a corner or has simply had some good fortune remains to be seen. His Friday outing in Coors Field promises to be enlightening, as that’s not a park that pitchers can fake their way through.

On the other hand, Peavy has been terrible for most of the season. It just doesn’t seem like he can consistently get big-league hitters out.

At this point, it looks like the Giants will likely need to make some kind of move. That doesn’t mean that they need to acquire an ace, but San Francisco will need better production from its fourth and fifth starters to make the playoffs.

If Cain really has turned a corner and Peavy is the only true weak link, finding a replacement in a trade or even by way of a Minor League promotion shouldn’t be impossible or even that challenging.

If, however, Cain begins to regress again and they need to plug two holes in the starting rotation, it gets a little harder to project good things.

Remember, the Giants have won 13 of their last 14 games. Despite this, Los Angeles still sits only 4.5 games behind them in the standings, easily within striking range. It stands to reason that at some point San Francisco will begin to cool off. When that happens, the Dodgers will have a great chance to make the National League West a good race.

If the Giants are in a race, they’ll need reliable 1-5 starting pitching. Right now, they’re only getting reliable starts from the 1-3 starters with a fourth guy potentially on the upswing.

When the playoffs roll around, the Giants’ current roster is more than capable of making a deep playoff run. Unfortunately, they’re not as well built to make the playoffs as the current run and standings would suggest.

So while the Giants certainly can win another World Series, the road to that championship is at least somewhat murky.