Rodon is hurt by two walks in opener in L.A.
LOS ANGELES — Walks: poison to pitchers, kryptonite, the bug in the system.
On Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium, they were the rare blip in the fine-tuned mechanism that is Carlos Rodón. The Giants’ lefty walked two men in the second inning, advanced them with a wild pitch, and with two outs and two strikes, Chris Taylor stroked a single to send in both runners. The Dodgers won 3-1.
On the other side of the equation, Julio Urías, always a tough customer, issued no walks as he crisply marched through the Giants’ order, allowing two singles by Austin Slater, a double and single by Thairo Estrada and nothing else in his six slick innings of work.
That makes for a pretty simple summation: Walks kill. Wild pitches, ditto.
“I walked two lefties, those are guys I need to get,” Rodón said. “I was pretty bad that inning. The walks hurt.”
Asked what happened that inning, Rodón responded flatly, “I just sucked.”
“I think Carlos will tell you and every one of our pitchers will tell you that this is a really tough league when guys get on base via the walk, particularly when you have strong hitters up and down the lineup like the Dodgers do,” Giants manager Gabe Kapler said, adding later, “That’s one of the best lineups in baseball if not the best lineup in baseball. I thought Carlos came out and and did a fine job for us.”
The Giants scratched out a run once Urías was out of the game — surprisingly, only 65 pitches in. Wilmer Flores reached on an infield single off Brusdar Graterol in the seventh and went to second on an error by Justin Turner. Brandon Crawford walked — San Francisco’s first — and both moved up on a tapper by Estrada.
Luis González pinch-hit for just-called-up Kevin Padlo and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts swapped out Graterol for lefty Alex Vesia, who played at Cal State East Bay. González, with two strikes, delivered a sacrifice fly, then Luke Williams struck out to end the inning.
The close game was a fitting opening to the season series. The two teams were separated by one game — the Giants won 10, the Dodgers nine last year — and by two runs total, with L.A. scoring 80 and San Francisco 78. The Division Series went the full five games, Game 5 was a 2-1 Dodgers win. Kapler called those playoffs “challenging” and “exciting” on Tuesday.
“As a fan, it’s cool that the Dodgers and the Giants are going to play a lot of baseball this year,” Kapler said. “So we’re looking forward to all those moments.”
Rodón had won his first three decisions with the Giants and had struck out at least eight in each of his first four starts with the team (a post-1901 team record) while putting up a 1.17 ERA. He struck out three in his six innings Tuesday. He has yet to allow more than three hits in an outing.
Upping the pace: After leaving Friday’s game with knee soreness, Slater was back in the lineup. Along with his two hits, his night included a ball smoked to center in the sixth and a walk in the eighth against a right-hander, Daniel Hudson. Slater entered Wednesday with nine hits — including two homers — in his past 22 at-bats, and over the past two seasons, he was 9-for-22 with three homers at Dodger Stadium.
“I can remember several Austin Slater line drives in this ballpark,” Kapler said before the game. “So it’s exciting to have him back. He’s instrumental to our success against left-handed pitching, I don’t think that’s any secret.”
Darin Ruf had started to see better results lately after season-long good at-bats and hard contact, with five hits in his previous 14 at-bats entering Tuesday. In the first of the two games against the Dodgers, it was back to misfortune: He hit two scorchers — one at 107.8 mph, the other at 105 mph — in his first two at-bats; one was converted into a double play and the other was a groundout.
The Giants were without numerous regulars, with Evan Longoria, Tommy La Stella and LaMonte Wade Jr. on the injured list and Mike Yastrzemski and Brandon Belt among those on the COVID-19 list.
“It’s always nice to have a full lineup, a full roster,” Kapler said. “There are very few teams around baseball who have that luxury all the time. It’s not a surprise that we’ve struggled a little bit without some of our best guys and since we’ve had this little COVID instance but again, that’s just baseball. Every team deals with it. We have to find ways to weather the storm.”