LOS ANGELES–For the better part of a beautiful Saturday afternoon at a sun-splashed Dodger Stadium, Giants’ left-hander Ty Blach was very good.
But against the Los Angeles Dodgers, if you’re not excellent, don’t expect to go home a winner.
The 26-year-old Giants’ rookie threw seven innings of eight-hit ball against a loaded Los Angeles lineup that’s helped the Dodgers to 46 home victories this season, but it wasn’t enough in San Francisco’s 2-1 defeat.
“Blach did a great job, terrific job,” Giants’ manager Bruce Bochy said. “In this park, against that club, really nice job. He gave us a chance. Just couldn’t do much offensively.”
Though Blach has often times dominated the Giants’ bitter rival over the course of his brief career, his strong outing on Saturday afternoon wasn’t enough for San Francisco to even the three-game weekend series.
“You come out here to win this game so it’s always tough, an outing like that,” Blach said. “But you just try to keep the team in it and give them a chance.”
The Dodgers entered Saturday’s game having won a Major League record 51 consecutive games in which they’ve held a lead –be it in the first inning, the fourth inning, or even the 10th inning. Any lead, any time. So when rookie first baseman slapped a hard-hit single to drive in shortstop Corey Seager in the bottom of the first inning to give Los Angeles a 1-0 advantage, that was, in essence, all she wrote.
It didn’t matter that the Dodgers’ 37-year-old left-handed starter, Rich Hill, was reportedly feeling under the weather on Saturday, because of course, Hill kept the Giants hitless through the first three innings, and allowed just one run before the Los Angeles bullpen closed the gates.
When Giants’ right fielder Hunter Pence finally did give his team a tally in the hit column, with a lengthy solo blast to left field that cut Los Angeles’ lead to 2-1, the Dodgers had already struck first, so inevitably, Los Angeles wouldn’t lose too much ground. If the Dodgers led, as they did after Bellinger drove in Seager, then surely, Los Angeles would when it counted most.
Pence’s home run off of Hill marked his seventh round-tripper of the season, and just his second of the month. As the only Giants’ player with more than 25 home runs in a season in the last five years (he hit 27 in 2013), the fourth inning power surge was a welcome sight, but it was all San Francisco would scratch across against Hill.
After Hill recorded the first two outs of the sixth inning, Dodgers’ manager Dave Roberts, a former Giants’ outfielder, came to the mound to remove Hill and turn the game over to a lights-out bullpen which owns a 2.86 season ERA, good enough for second in baseball. And on Saturday, the bullpen threw 3.1 innings of two-hit ball in relief of Hill.
One of the few highlights of the ballgame for San Francisco was the first Major League plate appearance of Carlos Moncrief, a nine-year Minor League veteran who was initially drafted as a pitcher. The Giants called up Moncrief after the team traded Eduardo Nunez to the Red Sox, and after waiting nine years to receive his first call up, he had to wait four days to step into the batter’s box.
By this point, it’s clear that Moncrief is a man whose patience knows no bounds. On Saturday, he proved it again. Instead of jumping out of his shoes or swinging at bad pitches, Moncrief drew a walk.
“It’s easy to just, you’ve got the dream of hitting a home run your first AB but once I got in the box, it was me versus the pitcher,” Moncrief said. “You just go from there one pitch at a time.”
We should all strive to be as patient as Moncrief. I digress.
Though San Francisco exercised early-season superiority over Los Angeles, winning six of the first 10 games the teams played, the Dodgers have used the first two games of the weekend series to exert their dominance over a team that now sits 33.5 games back in the National League West standings.
While the Giants have put forth back-to-back competitive games, San Francisco couldn’t stop a red-hot Dodgers’ team, even though Blach was sharp and his counterpart didn’t escape the sixth inning.
“You look at the stuff and you say, it’s not overpowering,” Bochy said. “But still, he gets some movement on the ball, he locates it well and that usually works up here. When pitchers are on top of their game, I thought he was pretty good today, didn’t have his best stuff, but he had pretty good stuff. He worked with it very well.”
After falling a season-high 25 games below .500 on Saturday, San Francisco will attempt to salvage the final game of the series, and has adjusted its rotation in an effort to do so. Madison Bumgarner will start for the Giants on regular rest, while Matt Cain will now start on Monday. It’s the surest sign San Francisco is still playing for pride, even if the outcomes hardly look like it.
