San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
S.F. plays well until collapse in the 8th
Back-to-back bases-loaded walks are costly
Strangely, there’s something about the Dodgers that brings the best out of the Giants.
The Giants have played some of their best baseball against the National League’s best team, and Saturday afternoon at Oracle Park provided the latest example.
At least until Dereck Rodriguez issued back-to-back bases-loaded walks in the eighth inning.
The Dodgers won the game 7-2, but the Giants played well enough and stayed close enough to keep the crowd, announced at 37,784, captivated into the late innings.
The score was 3-2 entering the eighth, but the Dodgers scored four runs, all charged to Rodriguez, to make it a laugher and send fans marching toward the exits.
“The story was, we had traffic out there all day and couldn’t figure out a way to get a run in,” said manager Bruce Bochy, whose hitters went 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position. “Bases loaded, nobody out. Bases loaded, one out. Really, all day. That’s not going to work.”
The fifth inning hurt the most. The first three batters reached base, but Kevin Pillar
“The story was, we had traffic out there all day and couldn’t figure out a way to get a run in.”
Bruce Bochy, Giants manager
fouled out and Brandon Crawford bounced into a double play.
Still, the Giants hung close. In fact, almost all of this year’s Giants-Dodgers games have been tight, which hadn’t been expected. The Giants have the National League’s worst run differential (minus-85) while the Dodgers have the best (plus-108).
Yet, most of the time when they face off, it’s tough to tell which NL West team is in first place and which is in last.
The Giants have split the eight games, winning by scores of 4-2, 3-2, 2-1 and 2-1, and two of the losses were 6-5 and 5-3. The only one-sided losses were 10-3 (Ty Blach coughed up seven runs) and Saturday’s.
Which wasn’t one-sided until the end.
“It’s heightened,” Bochy said of Giants-Dodgers get-togethers. “You feel it in the crowd. I think you look at the pitching, these guys have done a good job. They have such a goodhitting ballclub. It’s not like we’re scoring a lot of runs off them.”
The Giants had a 2-1 edge through four innings, but the Dodgers tied it in the fifth and went ahead in the sixth, starter Jeff Samardzija’s final inning.
For the second straight day, a Giants pitcher loaded the bases in the first inning without yielding a run, Samardzija following Drew Pomeranz’s lead.
The Giants scored their runs on Aramis Garcia’s home run down the right-field line, a rare display for a right-handed batter in China Basin, and Donovan Solano’s single, both off lefty Rich Hill.
Down a run in the seventh, pinch-hitter Pablo Sandoval came to the plate with two outs and two on. He grounded out, and the Dodgers erupted shortly thereafter.
Samardzija had issues with plate umpire Andy Fletcher, barking at him as he walked to the dugout after the fifth inning. Samardija thought he had strike three on Corey Seager, but Fletcher called the pitch a ball, and Seager followed with a game-tying double.
Samardzija lasted three batters into the sixth and argued that his final batter, Joc Pederson, allowed himself to be hit. A review confirmed it was the right call, but Samardzija’s beef was that there was no attempt to avoid the pitch.
“He did a hell of a job of not getting out of the way,” Samardzija noted.
Bochy summoned Derek Holland, but Holland walked Max Muncy to load the bases. Trevor Gott was the next pitcher, and Justin Turner’s sacrifice fly to right-center broke the tie.
Turner played with a sore hamstring and didn’t run well on the bases, but he was 3for-3 with two runs and two RBIs. Seager had four hits, three that immediately followed intentional walks to Cody Bellinger.
Seager’s final hit was a tworun double off Mark Melancon (Rodriguez’s replacement) that broke the game open in the eighth.