Long wait for chance to end skid
Monday night at AT&T Park was flat weird, not only because of the tropical thunderstorms that played havoc with the Dodgers-Giants series opener.
The game started after a 42-minute delay, lasted long enough for Chris Stratton to strike out Curtis Granderson, then went into another, nearly three-hour delay before the game resumed at 10:50 p.m.
But it felt even stranger that the Dodgers had come to China Basin on a 10-game losing streak and a run of 15 losses in 16 games. On Aug. 25, they led the National League West by 21 games. By the time the game resumed Monday, the lead had shrunk to 9½ games.
Manager Dave Roberts is not even hiding his players’ unease with what has been an unreal collapse for a team good enough to warrant “Are they the best ever?” articles in the Los Angeles Times and Sports Illustrated.
“Right now, they’re probably wavering a little bit,” Roberts said, “but these are the same guys we had when we played winning baseball.”
Does the Giants series come at a good time for the Dodgers? Their ancient rivals are not only one of the worst teams in baseball, but these teams bring out the best in one another. The Giants, after all, have ended some pretty rotten runs with good series against the Dodgers.
“I think that’s fair,” Roberts said. “The fan bases are very passionate. We like to beat the Giants, and they like to beat us. In a vacuum, you want to keep every game the same, but under the circumstances, playing the Giants, you’d like to think we’ll come out and dig a little deeper and beat these guys.”
Whenever the Giants and Dodgers play, someone asks Bruce Bochy if the games hold more importance. He usually says no, that all games are important, but he emphasized the point after the Giants lost to the White Sox on Saturday
“Under the circumstances, playing the Giants, you’d like to think we’ll come out and dig a little deeper and beat these guys.” Dave Roberts, Dodgers manager, on whether playing the Giants might help end his team’s skid
and Sunday by scores of 13-1 and 8-1.
“We just played two games back to back that could have been our worst of the year,” Bochy said. “We had two good starters (Jeff Samardzija and Madison Bumgarner) out there trying to win the series, and we couldn’t do it. What happened the last two games is not going to work.”
Roberts acknowledged the past two weeks have been the worst of his professional career “in any capacity, but you see what you’ve got when you get into tough times.”
Asked for the zillionth time what he thought the main problems were, he said pitching and situational hitting, which is probably true of any team that loses 15 of 16.
“They’re certainly geared up to turn this around,” Roberts said, “and they should be.”
Bochy rearranged the deck chairs for Monday’s opener, having Hunter Pence lead off for the first time since April 27. Denard Span, who ordinarily leads off, batted third for the second time in his big-league career. He last did it in 2011 with the Twins.
The Giants entered the series 6-7 against the Dodgers this year but 4-3 against them at AT&T Park. The Giants had beaten the Dodgers 20 of the past 27 times at AT&T.