Let us now pause to travel back in time to that historically notable point of the 2014 MLB season -- wait, it was only about 10 weeks ago; the trading deadline, to be exact -- when Brian Sabean, the general manager of the Giants, said the following of his own club:

Nope. Not happening this time.

Well, Sabean didn't use those precise words. But he came close; he danced around that essential truth. Sabean came as close, really, as any GM rightfully can to staring down his own team while still allowing enough wiggle room to double back later and declare the whole thing a retroactive hit.

The moves Sabean didn't make at the deadline worked out this summer. AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

He won't do that either. Sabean isn't the crowing kind, not even with San Francisco having played itself to within three victories of a third World Series appearance in five years.

But if you're looking for solid subplots in an NLCS that, only two games in, already has a fascinating enough main theme to keep folks riveted well past their bedtimes, go with this: This was the summer that Brian Sabean dared the Giants to prove him wrong.

And lived to smile about it.

Oh, it happened. Sabean may not recall it exactly that way, but when the trade deadline came around on July 31, he made it perfectly clear what he was thinking about a San Francisco team that had just hacked and sputtered its way through a 12-14 month and -- especially galling -- a 1-5 homestand lowlighted by a sweep at the hands of Don Mattingly and the Dodgers.

"I don't know how close we are to winning a division title or a wild card," Sabean said that day, his club only three games out of first place in the NL West at the time. "We haven't played too well."

He backed up his words with inaction. Sabean resolutely declined to pull the trigger on any deal to bring the Giants the infield help they appeared to need desperately -- specifically, the sinkhole at second base. To Sabean, the cost of any potentially available player (Chris Denorfia, Ben Zobrist) was well beyond what his club's recent performance suggested he should be willing to risk.

Matt Duffy? He joined the Giants from Double-A. Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

"There were a lot of bad deals to be made," Sabean said, "and we weren't going to do that."

And that was that. But Sabean went one further.

Rather than mortgage a future for a present that wasn't clearly promising, the GM went the other way. He promoted two kids directly from Double-A who met the team on the road in New York. One of them, Matt Duffy, looked at the lineup card on his first day as a Giant and discovered that not only was he starting at second base against the Mets, but he was batting second.

And that was your SF squad right around the start of August. To the major leaguers, the message looked clear enough: Do it on your own this time or you'll be seeing more Double-A prospects up here soon.

It's interesting how things play out. Sabean has always operated on the "give me a reason" plane of deadline deals, with predictably mixed results. He gave up top pitching prospect Zack Wheeler for the promise of Carlos Beltran's bat in 2011, but the beat-up Giants faded down the stretch anyway. He made a big deadline splash in 2012 by acquiring Hunter Pence, but it was a low-key deal for Marco Scutaro that proved to be magical in a World Series title run.

At deadline week this July, Sabean's trade for Jake Peavy from Boston was seen more as a no-choice deal than a preferred one. San Francisco's scouts broadly agreed that Peavy was pitching better than his numbers showed, but he was still considered a fourth starter -- and, nominally, the guy to fill in for the injured Matt Cain, which meant, at best, a wash. Somebody had to pitch.

Jake Peavy came over from Boston, but it didn't feel like a major move at the time. Rich Schultz/Getty Images

But Peavy was tremendously competitive, the Giants won eight of his final nine starts, his excellent working relationship with Bruce Bochy was renewed, and you know the rest.

As for Duffy, the right-handed hitter was brought in partly to give Bochy a platoon option with the left-hitting Joe Panik, who was already with the big club. Instead, Panik got red-hot at the plate, put the second-base job on lockdown and finished his rookie season with a .305 batting average. The sinkhole was filled.

And the Giants? Well, let's not mythologize. They were playing .541 baseball at the trade deadline; they played .547 the rest of the way. They eventually got injured/concussed first baseman Brandon Belt back on the field, but leadoff hitter Angel Pagan returned only briefly before ongoing injuries ended his season. As for this playoff run, go figure, because there is no single explanation.

Still, the net result is this: With third baseman Pablo Sandoval, left fielder Michael Morse and reliever Sergio Romo, among others, hitting free agency this winter, Sabean walked a tightrope at the deadline, avoided taking on a fat contract or multiyear commitment (Peavy will be a free agent) and will reach the offseason -- whenever it arrives -- with some financial flexibility he might not otherwise have enjoyed.

He did it, essentially, by saying no to his club. His club answered yes anyway. It's a beautiful thing when it works.