The A’s and Giants play each other only a few times a year, but when they do, it’s always appointment viewing in Northern California. The fact that each Bay Area rival also looks like a postseason contender ups the ante even more.

Fans can watch these two West Coast teams square off for some day baseball when the Giants visit the A’s on Sunday at 1:07 p.m. PT in MLB.TV’s Free Game of the Day. (Blackout restrictions apply, although live audio still will be available through MLB.TV in local markets.) Here’s a quick breakdown of the matchup:

• Stream FREE here: Giants, A's renew Bay Area rivalry

How they’re doing
Giants (79-44, 1st in NL West)
A’s (70-54, 2nd in AL West)

The Giants, if you’re not aware by now, are far and away the biggest surprise team of 2021. Not only that, they’re MLB’s best team with a .642 win percentage and would become MLB's first team to 80 wins with a victory on Sunday. This is the Giants’ second-best start through 123 games since the franchise moved to San Francisco, trailing only the 1993 team (82-41).

The A’s have treaded water of late and find themselves in a familiar position from the past few years: playing strong baseball, but looking up at the Astros in the AL West and fighting for an AL Wild Card spot. Right now, it’s a three-way battle for two Wild Card spots in the Junior Circuit between the A’s, Yankees and Red Sox.

The matchup on the mound
Giants: Logan Webb (7-3, 2.92 ERA)
A’s: Frankie Montas (9-9, 4.04 ERA)

Webb is one of the Giants’ many surprise contributors, and he’s actually the youngest full-timer on San Francisco’s savvy veteran roster. The 24-year-old righty is coming off a gem against the Mets on Tuesday that saw him allow just two runs across a career-high 7 1/3 innings. Webb, who carried a 5.36 ERA across his first 21 career big league outings entering 2021, owns the Majors’ fifth-lowest ERA (1.53) among pitchers with 40 innings since May 5 as he emerges as a young stud to watch.

Montas has been solid himself, with his 3.44 FIP suggesting he’s pitching more like the front-end starter the A’s expected him to be. Watch out for Montas’ high-80s splitter; batters have missed on nearly 54% of their swings against that pitch, putting it virtually even with Shohei Ohtani’s splitter atop that pitch type’s whiff rate leaderboard.

The player to watch
Brandon Crawford is having an excellent August in a season full of superb months, as the Giants’ resurgent veteran keeps himself in the NL MVP Award conversation. At 34 years of age, Crawford is putting up career-best marks in average, OBP and slugging, and he’s on pace to do the same in homers and RBIs, too, earning himself a two-year contract extension.

Crawford is clubbing the ball and fielding his position superbly -- and not just by his own standards. He is one of only six players that rank within MLB’s top 20% of qualified players in both Statcast’s offensive expected slugging percentage (based on quality of contact, plus strikeouts) and defensive Outs Above Average metrics, alongside Kyle Tucker, Juan Soto, Pete Alonso, José Ramírez and Bryan Reynolds.

Advanced stats aside, Crawford is somehow still doing this:

Don’t forget him
Speaking of MVP Award candidates -- Shohei Ohtani and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. are deservedly taking up all the airspace in the AL conversation, but don’t sleep on A’s first baseman Matt Olson for that third-place slot. Olson has already accumulated a career-high single-season WAR total, per FanGraphs, and has a shot to reach 40 homers for the first time while also remaining a supreme defender at first base.

Perhaps Olson’s biggest development is that he’s also setting career highs in batting average and OBP, and that’s by virtue of slicing his strikeout rate by 15 points. That’s on pace to be the largest year-to-year drop by any hitter (min. 200 PA in each year) across the last 10 seasons.

Picture this
Outfielder Starling Marte might be the single-best player acquired by any club around this year’s Trade Deadline, especially after the A’s lost center fielder Ramón Laureano to an 80-game suspension for testing positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance. Marte entered Saturday hitting .337/.376/.465 since putting on an Oakland uniform, and beyond that, he’s brought speed to the A’s lineup with 15 steals.

Those 15 swipes in just 21 A’s games put Marte, remarkably, right on the cusp of the AL’s top 10 list for stolen bases. If you scroll over to the NL top 10 list, Marte is there too, thanks to the 22 bags he stole for the Marlins. Per the Elias Sports Bureau, Marte could become the first player in AL/NL history to finish among each league’s top 10 leaders in steals at the end of a season.

Number of note
261 -- the MLB-leading number of at-bats racked up by Giants pinch-hitters entering Saturday. The D-backs were the next-closest team at 216. Manager Gabe Kapler has brought the “line change” approach from hockey to the baseball diamond, sometimes replacing all three hitters due up in an inning with players off the bench. Subsequently, the Giants also enter Sunday leading the Majors with 13 pinch-hit homers, the most recent a decisive ninth-inning drive by breakout outfielder LaMonte Wade Jr. in Saturday's win.

Depth is a huge part of San Francisco’s success (nine Giants have knocked 10 or more homers, with Austin Slater sitting on nine dingers), so expect Kapler to use anyone and everyone at his disposal if this game stays close in the later innings. The Giants have sent 23 different men to the plate in two games this year (including Wednesday against the Mets), tying the Dodgers for the most used by any club in one contest.