SLIDE BREAKER
Bullpen implodes again but Dozier’s sacrifice fly in 12th drives in winning run, ending losing streak.
Kenley Jansen wandered into the press box as the game turned to the eighth inning. Surely, this game finally would be the one in which the Dodgers would not suffer another painful bullpen failure, with their All-Star closer confined to the disabled list.
Jansen said hello, asking if the press box was the ugly section. There were smiles, and laughs, and then he departed.
Within minutes, there were no more smiles, and no more laughs, at least not in the home dugout. The Dodgers were six outs from victory, with a three-run lead.
Andrew McCutchen hit a threerun home run against rookie Caleb Ferguson in the eighth inning, and surely this game would be another one the Dodgers would lose.
Or not: Brian Dozier delivered a sacrifice fly for the winning run with one out in the 12th inning, scoring Yasmani Grandal and lifting the Dodgers to a 4-3 victory over the San Francisco Giants. The hit ended the Dodgers’ losing
streak at five games.
The Dodgers got the potential winning run into scoring position in the ninth inning, but they had run out of position players by then, so they used Kenta Maeda as a pinch-hitter. Maeda struck out. For the seventh consecutive game, the Dodgers bullpen had imploded in the late innings. The roll call: Pedro Baez last Thursday; Zac Rosscup on Friday; J.T. Chargois on Saturday; Dylan Floro on Sunday; Scott Alexander on Monday; Maeda on Tuesday; and Ferguson on Wednesday. Ross Stripling, an intended solution, went on the disabled list Wednesday.
Ferguson had faced 93 batters in relief this season. He had given up three earned runs.
The Dodgers entrusted him with a 3-0 lead in the eighth inning. He gave up three earned runs to the first four batters — single, walk, strikeout and the three-run home run by McCutchen.
The Dodgers batters can point no fingers at the bullpen.
The Dodgers had scored one run in their previous 17 innings when Brian Dozier led off the fifth inning with a double.
Matt Kemp has gone so cold — he entered play Wednesday batting .094 in August — that the Giants walked Manny Machado intentionally to put two men on base for Kemp, the Dodgers cleanup batter.
Kemp swung and broke his bat but — could the fates be turning? — managed to flare a single into center field. Dozier charged around third base, propelled himself toward home face first and extended his left arm to tag the plate.
Could the fates be turning? Not then, because the umpire called Dozier safe but the replay officials called him out, erasing the run.
In the sixth inning, the Dodgers finally scored, on an out. Yasiel Puig doubled to start the inning, and Yasmani Grandal and Joc Pederson followed with successive fly balls to right field.
Puig took third base on the first one, scored on the second and the Dodgers had a 1-0 lead.
In the seventh, they broke out. Two more runs, on a double by Machado and a single by Kemp, and the Dodgers led, 3-0.
For the better part of a week now, anguish about the pitching staff has permeated Dodgers talk on the radio, online and in a Starbucks near you.
But the statistics do not lie: The Dodgers’ pitching staff has the best earned-run average of any staff in the National League.
The late innings have been a disaster, with Jansen on the disabled list. No lie there.
But the starters have been terrific, with a 3.24 ERA. The only major league team whose starters have a better ERA: the Houston Astros, the team that sent three-fifths of its rotation — Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and Charlie Morton — to the All-Star game.
In his first appearance since suffering a groin injury May 2, Ryu set down the Giants, efficiently and relentlessly.
The first batter grounded out, the second tucked a bloop double inside the foul line. Ryu retired the next 12.
Then, with one out in the fifth inning, the Giants got consecutive singles. Ryu coolly struck out the next two batters, Alen Hansen and Derek Holland.
Ryu worked six innings in all. He gave up no runs and no walks, and he struck out six.