But this one didn’t blow it.
Casey Schmitt goofed a grounder in the 9th inning of the Colorado Rockies series, allowing for their dismal division rivals to work a tables-turning comeback on Thursday and spoil a perfectly pleasant series.
Despite his performance at the plate that loss could be hung on Schmitt. That screaming baby of regret, of disappointment, of shame squirmed on his lap the whole plane ride from Denver to LA, from the tarmac to the hotel, from the hotel to Dodger Stadium on Friday.
The error is the kind of play that could crush a player like him. Cusp-y, quadruple-A, trying to get his foot in the door for years now, only to have it repeatedly slammed against his toes. First base was an opening; Matt Chapman’s injury, though temporary, is an opportunity to wedge another limb into the entryway. I’d expect a fielding error of such consequence, especially from a glove first player, would unravel the young player.
Instead, Schmitt shrugged it off. Schmitt happens. Baseball is a game of failure made palatable by the recurring chance for redemption. The moment always finds the man. And in his first at-bat since his bungle in the 9th, Schmitt came up to the plate with the bases loaded and two-outs against the toughest pitcher in the Major Leagues.
At this point, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was a bit gassed. The entire San Francisco Giants line-up seemed unified in their approach against the righty. They looked down in the zone, didn’t chase, took borderline pitches that frequently went their way, forcing him to work into deep-counts. Willy Adames beat a decent fastball up in the zone for the Giants first run in the 1st. So how the 3rd played out to that point was already a spiritual victory for San Francisco. Though no runs had been scored, or hits collected, Yamamoto had been forced to throw a fair amount of pitches in the frame. They wanted to make Yamamoto work. He had two strikeouts in the inning, but issued three walks, and dealt with a lot of full-counts. But the Dodgers ace wasn’t going to give in either. With his pitch-count ratcheting higher and higher and no place to put Schmitt, he still toyed with the edge of the zone.
Two cutters down and away were taken for a ball and a strike. The outside of the plate established, Yamamoto went inside with his signature splitter. It wasn’t a bad offering, down but still solidly above the knees, and Schmitt was clearly sitting on it.
The moment it left his bat, everyone knew. Yamamoto nearly spiked his Dooger-blue glove in disgust as the baseball rocketed over the left field wall. Schmitt didn’t even watch it, he just turned towards the dugout, stone-faced, like no big deal, so what if it’s my first career grand slam, shattering a 1-1 tie against a century-old rival in their home ballpark, like whatever…I guess, I’ll just run the bases now.
That screaming baby had been cooed gently to sleep. One swing and the cradle will rock.
That proved to be the defining blast of the game, providing the Giants a completely foreign experience of a comfortable win in a baseball game.
Yamamoto needed 40-plus pitches to get through the 3rd, then lingered on the mound until the 5th, but he couldn’t finish it. The five walks he allowed set a career high (in MLB). It was the second start of the season, and second in the month of June, in which he didn’t throw five complete innings. The five runs tagged off Yamamoto tied his season high, and in 10.1 innings pitched (2 games) against the Giants so far, the Dodger ace has allowed 9 runs on 11 hits and 3 homers.
While Yamamoto faltered, on the other side of the hill, Logan Webb rose to the occasion. In true ace fashion, Webb threw 7 complete, allowing just 2 runs on 2 hits (both by Teoscar Hernández). While Webb also had to manage the tight zone and military discipline of the LA line-up, he was able to work around 3 walks and most importantly subdue the big-3 of Ohtani, Betts, and Freeman while staying diligent against the rest of the Dodger line-up gauntlet.
The first run scored came in the 2nd after Webb walked Will Smith and Hernández, but he limited the self-inflicted damage by coaxing a groundout from Max Muncy and nearly kept LA off the board entirely, when Mike Yastrzemski appeared to throw out Smith at home on a sac fly. The throw beat the runner, and Andrew Knizner, for a moment, seemed able to handle the short-hop and throw his body out to apply the tag, but as his arm made contact with the ground the baseball popped out. Without a hit, LA knotted up the game in the frame, but the tie didn’t last long.
Given a 4-run lead, Webb didn’t take it for granted. He kept frames short and sweet. After the 2nd inning, LA didn’t manage to put more than one runner on base in each inning. A two-out walk to Betts was followed by a flyout to Freeman (that Yaz nearly lost in the lights) in the 3rd. A single by Hernández — LA’s first knock of the game — was immediately erased on a double-play from Muncy in the 4th. The only other hit allowed was a solo-shot by Hernández in the 7th, which Webb let roll off his back before retiring the next two batters.
It goes without saying that if you want to beat the Dodgers, you’re going to have to beat Ohtani. Though stylistically, he’s as interesting as two-by-four — that’s about all I can say that’s critical of the guy’s offensive abilities. When teams have had success against him (like the Mets), they’ve done a really nice job of keeping him guessing. They didn’t necessarily hammer a specific quadrant or “weak spot” — those might not exist with Ohtani’s swing — but they just kept their approach fresh.
Webb did exactly that by throwing a game he had never in thrown in his career. The sinker, the infamous offspeed or sweeper — no, Webb didn’t lean too heavily on those usual suspects, but highlighted his fifth pitch-type, the cutter. He threw his new fastball more than any other pitch, 30% of the time, to hitters on both sides of the plate, while going to his change-up only 10% (a season-low).
Against Ohtani leading off in the 1st, Webb threw five pitches, four of them were fastballs and his first three were not his primary sinker, but his peripheral cutter and four-seam. Webb then feathered in an off-speed down and away to set-up an elevated sinker that Ohtani watched shoot-by for called strike-three.
Webb would get him looking again in the 6th by, again, leading with his cutter, before introducing the sweeper on the outside edge for the out.
Knizner made up for the dropped tag in the 2nd by rocketing his first hit as a Giant over the centerfield wall in the 8th. That insurance run restored San Francisco’s 4-run lead and was kept pristine by another breezy 8th by Tyler Rogers, who needed just 7 pitches to coax three softly-hit routine grounders (including one from Ohtani). Ryan Walker took over in the 9th, and after a lead-off walk to Betts, retired the next three he faced to secure the win.
Finally, the first meeting between these two clubs, billed by a clash of aces, and it goes to the Giants. The win matched their total victories in Dodger Stadium in 2024. At this time last year, about 70 games into the season, the Dodgers were seven games ahead of their nearest competitor while the Giants sat below .500, and completely out of the conversation. But Friday’s 6-2 win — somehow — has put them tied for first in the National League West.
Very chill.