Memorable hit in loss to dominant Kershaw
The baseball that Christian Arroyo sent into left field for his first big-league hit surely will be placed in a display box, with a brass plate noting the date, inning, where the ball went and the pitcher who threw it.
Arroyo and his family would have cherished the shrine even if the pitcher’s name had been Heath Dinglefroom. How wonderful for them that it actually will read “Clayton Kershaw.”
Arroyo’s family was in the stands to see his first-inning hit against one of the greatest ever to take the mound. They stuck around to see another ho-hum Kershaw triumph at AT&T Park, a 2-1 Dodgers victory that — believe it or not — cost the Giants another player.
Brandon Crawford strained
his right groin as he rounded first on an eighth-inning single that sent Buster Posey to third with two outs. Crawford left the game with no idea when he will return, before Kenley Jansen struck out pinch-hitter Brandon Belt to end the Giants’ final threat.
“I’ve never had anything like that before, so I can’t tell you how bad it is,” Crawford said. “It just felt tight. I didn’t feel a pop. That’s good news from what I hear.”
Crawford was to miss the next three games on bereavement leave, anyway. Manager Bruce Bochy said he hoped Crawford could get an MRI exam before he leaves for Southern California on Wednesday morning, but Crawford did not think that would be possible.
He got hurt during the first of many turns that Madison Bumgarner will miss after his dirtbike crash. Replacement Ty Blach allowed two runs in five innings. He threw 75 pitches, 50 more than his season-high out of the bullpen.
The runs scored in the fourth, after Blach ran his career-opening shutout streak against L.A. to 14 innings.
The Dodgers tied the game 1-1 on Yasiel Puig’s no-out single. The winning run scored on an Adrian Gonzalez grounder to Posey at first base. Posey looked Justin Turner back to third and threw to second to force Puig. Turner made a delayed dash home and Crawford fired a throw to Nick Hundley, who was not able to pluck the ball out of the dirt.
It would have been a “great double play,” in Bochy’s words.
“It short-hopped him,” Crawford said. “It’s not an easy play with a catcher’s glove on, trying to make a tag and catch a ball in the dirt. I’d like to say I should have made a better throw, but I put all I had behind it.”
Once Kershaw got the lead, he sniffed his 19th career win against the Giants and dominated through the seventh.
Arroyo batted second in place of Belt, who sat with a career 3-for-51 against Kershaw, In his first at-bat, Arroyo attacked a first-pitch fastball and grounded it sharply through the hole.
Asked if that was how he envisioned his first hit, Arroyo said, “I didn’t think I’d get it off Kershaw. In the moment, I was ecstatic. Hopefully, there are many more where that came from and I look forward to competing against him again.”
Nobody gave Arroyo a Kershaw a scouting report. He watched video and remembered what he saw on “SportsCenter.” He said he went into “battle mode” after getting his first hit and was disappointed to strike out in the third with two runners on.
Blach did get a scouting report before he blasted a double to left-center to lead off the third inning, his third career hit in five at-bats against Kershaw.
The only pitcher with more hits against the Dodger, Bumgarner, approached Blach in the dugout and told him to look for something up and away because Blach had beaten him on an inside pitch the time before. That is exactly what Blach got.