Yup, had it all the way
Shohei Ohtani dunked a baseball in McCovey Cove.
Logan Webb gave up multiple home runs in a game for the first time all season and was tagged for the most earned runs he’s allowed in a start.
Michael Conforto, who drank the Dodger Kool-Aid and is hitting on the interstate with an OPS just above .600 and an Arm Value in the 36th percentile, came back to San Francisco and took an ex-teammate deep and threw out another ex-teammate at home.
A lot of Dodger-y things went down in Friday’s game…and yet, the San Francisco Giants, against Rob Manfred’s favorite team, somehow won.
San Francisco stretched an early 3-2 lead into an 8-2 lead with a 5-run 5th against Dustin May, then somehow stayed on top of the bull’s back as LA bucked and booted and kicked for the next four frames. It was a civic effort of suppression. The stands at Oracle were infiltrated by the blue blob from the south. A whole lotta of crisp white Shohei jerseys with the tags still on them, a lot of New Era Dodgers hats flooded the City, but any “Let’s Go Dodgers” chant that gained traction and volume in the crowd was muffled and muddled by the crows of the orange-and-black and their three-beat chant of Beat L-A.
Though watching a six-run lead nearly erased is not necessarily good for our indigestion, the 8-7 hang-tight win was probably good for the heart. LA has the most comeback wins of any team in the Majors. They erase deficits — it’s what they do. They don’t sweat poor-pitching because they’ll get those runs back in a frame or two.
That why-stress-the-details attitude was evident in the 5th in the midst of burgeoning rally when LA manager Dave Roberts decided to keep starter May in to face Rafael Devers (who was getting his first taste of a real rivalry). A decision to sit on one’s hands made despite having a lefty Anthony Banda warm and ready, despite May having already given up a home run to lead off the frame followed by a single and his third walk of the game, despite the Giants threatening to add on to their two-run lead with the heart of the order coming up.
Everyone on the field and in the stands and watching at home expected Roberts to bring in Banda. Devers kept glancing over at the LA dugout as he approached the plate, he paused before digging into the box, peeking over his shoulder at Roberts almost to ask are you sure? are you awake?, Roberts responded by remaining expressionless and motionless, well-tucked in his corner spot at the railing. Maybe with one out, he felt like May could work his way out of the jam. Or hyper-conscious that his bullpen has thrown the most innings in baseball (by a longshot), he wanted to keep from dipping into the well of relievers for as long as possible. Or maybe, it’s possible Roberts isn’t a great manager, who can often fall asleep at the wheel with little consequence because he’s been handed, year-after-year, some of the best line-ups in baseball history that do not need to be fiddled with or massaged or coaxed or, least of all, be managed. I bet Roberts googles his line-ups before he writes them in, has them generated by AI. Siri, where did Will Smith hit in the order yesterday?
Hyper-vigilance is not required by the LA coaching staff to win. They’ve been coached themselves after a first half riddled with injuries and sub-par pitching that pitching doesn’t matter with they offense they have. So yeah, at that moment, Banda should’ve come in to face Devers — a move that might’ve cut a consequential rally short and set LA up for a win — but that would’ve required standing up, walking out to the mound, a whole ordeal for Roberts in other words. So May stayed in, he walked Devers to load the bases, Matt Chapman poked in another run on a groundout, then Roberts finally came out to pull him rather than have him face Willy Adames for a third time. The move… rather wonderfully, didn’t work at all. Adames tripled into the alley, adding another RBI extra base hit to his solo shot in the 2nd, then scored on Jung Hoo Lee’s infield single.
That’s where the scoring stopped for San Francisco. That’s when the vibes peaked.
The six-run lead that felt relatively safe with Logan Webb on the mound was immediately put in jeopardy. The bottom of the 5th started with a solo home run by Dom Smith and ended with him popping up to third. 10 Giants’ batters hit, the frame rolled on for half-an-hour. The consequence of the drawn out inning became evident when Webb next took the mound. He got iced, the sharpness in his command dulled considerably in the long-wait. In an 0-2 count, he hit the first batter he faced, shooting a sinker into Mookie Betts’s inner thigh. Then Will Smith, Teoscar Hernandez and Michael Conforto went double-double-home run, tagging Webb for four runs in the time it took me to brush my teeth.
Both teams turned the pages on their opposing starters. May recorded the win in his last outing, giving up just three runs in six innings, despite allowing six hits and walking four batters. This time the Giants made the hand-outs pay. All four of his walks came around to score. After back-to-back BBs in the 4th, Lee jumped on a high-velo fastball (a pitch that has been a sticking point for him) and lined another 2-run triple off May just like he did in June, and unlike that last time in June, the lead it earned stuck.
Webb couldn’t replicate the success he had against LA back in June. The cutter and four-seam offerings were thrown to great effect, helping set-up two strikeouts of Ohtani. No such luck Friday night. Webb tried to keep things fresh, pitching off-script by pitching on-script, but Ohtani made things difficult from the start. Heworked a nine-pitch walk to lead-off the 1st (this time only one cutter and one 4-seam thrown). In the 3rd, Webb teed up a first pitch cutter to Ohtani who drove it into the bay. Not necessarily a poor pitch selection, just a very poor location. The cutter should’ve been more up and more in, instead it found itself flying through a no-fly zone.
And in the 6th, cwith a six-run lead, the game situation called for Webb to not overthink things and just attack the zone. Something he became more set on doing after hitting Betts with count leverage, and the Dodgers hitters, knowing there wouldn’t be much nibbling, got aggressive. Smith and Hernandez both doubled on the second pitch of their ABs. Webb started to work the edges more to Conforto, but saw an 0-2 count go full after a borderline sinker at the top of the zone was called a ball. Forced back in the zone, Webb stayed predictable, threw his go-to fastball, and Conforto spun it over the centerfield wall.
A 4-run response ended Webb’s night in a hurry, keeping him from pitching through the 6th for the first time since his start against Kansas City on May 21st (eight starts).
LA had arrived in San Francisco as a bunch of losers. They had been swept by the Astros, then by the Brewers. Their streak of six consecutive duds was tied with the team’s longest since April 2019. On one hand, you want to catch a hot team during a cold stretch, but then on the other, if a cold stretch lasts too long, it becomes worrisome for the opponent. Like water, baseball tends to seek level ground. At a certain point, it becomes statistically probable that a losing team is going to wake up and start winning again, and considering LA’s overall quality, it feels safe to assume that the streak demon would be exorcized spectacularly — meaning in a game in which they embarrass their historic rivals by erasing a large deficit in their very own backyard.
That was the expectation. No one expected the Giants’ lead to hold, and after Webb left in the 6th, LA repeatedly threatened in the final innings.
Against Randy Rodríguez, brought on to mop up after Webb, the Dodgers brought the tying run to the plate after Hyeseong Kim singled. Tasked with the top of the order in the 7th, Rodríguez nearly worked around a Betts double (advanced to third on a Lee bobble) with one out, but after popping up Freddie Freeman, Will Smith shot a 1-2 fastball right back up the middle to put LA within a run. Somewhat of a disappointing outcome for the All-Star reliever considering he shattered Ohtani’s bat to start the inning, nullified Freeman with an unproductive out, and had both Betts and Smith in two-strike holes before serving up sub-par offerings that neither veteran missed.
A two-out Kim double put the tying run in scoring position before Tyler Rogers worked a come-backer from Tommy Edman to close out the 8th. And in the 9th, after Camilo Doval retired Ohtani, Betts singled in another 2-strike count and Freddie Freeman walked. The tying run in scoring position, the go-ahead runner on base, and frankly, one of the scariest bats in the line-up stepping into the box in Will Smith — the odds were not in San Francisco’s favor. Smith will be starting for the NL All-Star team next week and for good reason. He already had two hard-hit hits on the night. His batting average leads the National League, the next closest is teammate Freddie Freeman’s, 33-points below his mark. With runners in scoring position, he’s batting above .400. I can’t verify this with numbers, but it feels like every time he’s up in a high-leverage scenario he forces 10-plus pitches from the opposing arm. A professional hitter like Smith facing off against the temperamental and sling-y Doval — things didn’t look great. A decisive knock in this moment felt predetermined, basically written in ink.
Instead, the most wondrous thing happened.
The 8 runs held. The offense came through in big moments, including standout performances from Adames (2-for-4) and Lee (3-for-4), who teamed up for 5 hits, 3 extra base hits, and 6 runs batted in.
San Francisco is now 22 – 16 in one-run games, and LA has lost seven in a row, their most since they dropped 11 in September of 2017.
Can the Giants make it eight?