The significance of closers in baseball is too often minimized. They are longshots to win a the Cy Young award because they throw maybe 70 innings as compared to starters, who throw more than 200. They are rarely serious candidates for an MVP award because they play in less than half a team's games. And when it comes to the Hall of Fame, few have been deemed worthy.But if any season has shown us just how important closers are -- how critical getting those last three-to-five outs are to protect a lead -- surely it is this one.Closers seem to be shaping the 2016 playoff picture more than any other factor. Take the San Francisco Giants, for example. They dipped a toe into the closer market before the Aug. 1 non-waiver trade deadline. The asking prices were steep. They decided against it. Their major acquisitions were starter Matt Moore from Tampa Bay and All-Star infielder Eduardo Nunez from Minnesota.They might have done something differently if they saw what was coming.The Giants decided to stick with Santiago Casilla and a fleet of others including Sergio Romo, Javier Lopez, Hunter Stirckland and rookie Derek Law as backup. Casilla was the closer when they won the World Series in 2014. Romo was the closer when they won the World Series in 2012.The club has blown five ninth-inning leads in September and have a league-high 29 blown saves on the season. It is a stat that doesn't tell the whole story, but it does say something. Since the deadline, the Giants are 20-28 and have slipped from the NL West division lead to a dogfight for the wild card.Casilla has done enough damage to cost him the job. Romo hadn't fared much better until his last two appearances. Manager Bruce Bochy is doing matchups to try to get through games. And the bullpen-by-committee approach is pretty much a proven loser. These games they have lost may cost them a spot in the postseason."It isn't lost on us. I wear it every day," general manager Bobby Evans told Job Heyman of MLB Network on Wednesday. "Every time we lose, I think, 'What a knucklehead am I?'"The Giants are the team most emblematic of this phenomenon, but they are not the only ones with issues. The Yankees arrived at the 2016 season with a plan to shorten game to about six innings with the best bullpen in baseball with Aroldis Chapman, Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances. But when it appeared the team couldn't keep up, the Yanks had a fire sale for the first time in a generation. Chapman ended up with the Cubs, Miller with the Indians and the Yanks got great prospects in trade. But what no one expected was that the Yankees' call-ups would lead a resurgence. That resurgence was been undercut in recent days by a lack of quality relief pitching.As the Yankees' bullpen wasted key opportunities against the Red Sox last weekend, one had to wonder if this would be happening if Miller or Chapman were around?The three big closer-level relievers, who were dealt before Aug. 1 were Chapman, Miller and Mark Melancon, who went from Pittsburgh to Washington. The Cubs, Indians and Nationals all are in good shape to make the postseason and thrive there because of those moves. The Yankees are likely to miss out, even though they added Tyler Clippard to backup Betances. Pittsburgh sits only on the fringe for the wild card and has the slimmest of chances of returning to the playoffs for a fourth straight year.Before the Aug. 1 deadline, the Giants made inquiries about Chapman and Miller as well as Melancon. They over-estimated their hand and considered the asking price too high.There was a reason for the premium pricing. Since the deals, Melancon has a 1.99 ERA and is 12-for-12 on save opportunities. Chapman has a 1.19 ERA and is 15-for-17. Miller has been deployed as both a set-up man for Cody Allen and a closer and is 3-0 with a 1.80 ERA and 38 strikeouts in 25 innings.The Giants aren't the only ones in the NL wild card race whose fate could lay with its closer. The Mets' Jeurys Familia has been one of the best, but may be suffering from overuse having pitched in 74 games already. In his last five outings during this critical stretch, he has one save, two blown saves and allowed the opposition to gain the lead two times. Unlike the Mets, the Cardinals had to change closers at midseason because Trevor Rosenthal was battling injury and became ineffective; Seung-hwan Oh has saved their bacon by going 18-for-21 on save opportunities.Reliable closers are clearly a commodity. What happens with the Giants could prove one of the most compelling stretch-run stories. It could also be a precautionary tale about what it takes to protect a playoff spot.