Darvish returns to form in S.F.
The Giants and their fans have had little trouble seeing signs of how awful 2017 has been. The sight of a bullpen catcher/coach hollering at the players after an excruciating inning has to count.
The TV cameras caught an animated Eli Whiteside expanding his lungs in the home dugout at AT&T Park on Wednesday night after a sequence one would expect to see from the team with the worst record in the majors.
The Giants achieved that lofty distinction for the second time this month after their 4-1 loss to the Dodgers, who came to San Francisco gasping for breath and left with their first series win at AT&T since 2014.
After a brief August stretch that seemed to put the issue of 100 losses aside, the Giants have 91 with 14 games left, which means they need to finish 6-8 to take a far more attractive 63-99 record into the winter.
A TV image alone could not settle whether Whiteside was tanning some hides or offering encouragement, but his mood did not look cheery.
And why should it? The Giants made enough mistakes for a week in the first two innings. Most notably, Hunter Pence and second baseman Kelby Tomlinson let a can-ofcorn Yasiel Puig pop-up fall between them in the second inning, a misplay nearly identical to one from Tuesday’s loss, with the same Dodger at bat.
The only differences were the second basemen — Joe Panik was in there Tuesday — and
Puig’s decision to stop at first base instead of going for two.
“You hate to play like this, especially this series,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “You’re playing a good team. You’ve got to play your best ball. It is frustrating. We’ve got to clean this up and play better and communicate better.
“It’s not a matter of effort, but it’s happening too often. It shouldn’t happen at the majorleague level. You hope this season is a learning season, a teachable season. We’ve got to get better.”
Pence said he misjudged both balls and confessed to the mistake.
“Our system is, I tell them I’m going for it as hard as I can,” Pence said. “I’m going to call it super early and scream bloody murder. And I won’t stop screaming and get out of the way. This way, we won’t both go for it. Neither (second baseman) said anything and I scared them both off.”
Beyond that, Pence and Jarrett Parker each ran into outs after singling — two of the three hits, all singles, that Darvish allowed in seven shutout innings. The Giants scored their run on Parker’s ninth-inning single against rookie Walker Buehler.
The Dodgers, who got a tworun splash homer by Cody Bellinger off Matt Moore, reduced to seven their magic number for clinching the National League West. They also left for Washington with a bit more confidence in their big July pitching acquisition.
Darvish had lost three in a row and pitched so poorly after the trade from Texas that he was not even slotted into Wednesday’s game until Monday. But the Dodgers decided to pitch Darvish here so potential playoff opponent Washington would not see him this weekend.
Moore and the Giants were down 2-0 after one inning, and it easily could have been 8-0 by the end of two.
In a 32-pitch first inning, Moore allowed consecutive RBI extra-base hits by Bellinger and Logan Forsythe for the runs before one of the worst Giants sequences in recent memory.
After Pence and Denard Span ran into a double play on a comebacker in the bottom of the first, the Giants played a defensive inning for the ages — not in a good way.
After the Puig popup that fell and a sacrifice, Chris Taylor reached on a Pablo Sandoval throwing error and the two runners executed a double steal when Nick Hundley threw wide to third when he had a chance to get Puig.
Moore escaped by striking out the Dodgers’ two big lefthanded hitters, Corey Seager and Bellinger, but Bellinger’s fifth-inning homer and the Giants’ inability to solve Darvish doomed S.F. to the loss.