Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports
The Giants might not go 0-for-19 with runners in scoring position in any stretch again this season. Their offense might have failed them in two games in Los Angeles, but they were not shut down; they were merely not timely. For a veteran-laden team, that is probably more accidental and less damning.
More concerning from the brief sweep at the Dodgers’ hands would be if the Los Angeles offense figured out how to beat the Giants’ best pitcher, learning to read his splitter and lay off a pitch that has led the league in wind induced from swings and misses (a very much unofficial stat).
Entering play, opponents were batting .101 against the Gausman splitter. The negative-18 run value assigned to the pitch, through Statcast, indicated it was the No. 1 pitch in all of baseball. Among pitchers who had thrown 100 pitches, the 49.5 percent whiff rate on his splitter was not even that close to being matched; the White Sox’s Carlos Rodon was second with a slider that was swung and missed at 44.8 percent of the time.
And then Tuesday came, and the Dodgers rarely went. Gausman threw the pitch 26 times. The Dodgers swung and missed just five; perhaps more importantly, they swung just nine times. He did not get a called strike on the pitch, and so 17 were balls. It consistently dove out of the zone, and the Dodgers consistently watched it.
Have the Dodgers figured out the pitch? Or was it an off night? Gausman believes the latter.
“It just wasn’t the same tonight — a lot of uncompetitive pitches,” Gausman said after the Giants lost, 3-1, at Dodger Stadium, getting swept in the two-game set. “Uncompetitive splits out my hand. I almost hit like four or five righties, trying to throw that pitch down and away to them.
“… Made it pretty easy for them to lay off it.”
That is the problem with a starter relying upon just two pitches — if one abandons him, there is little to turn to — but this is the first time Gausman’s signature pitch has not been there for him this year. The ace still managed to go five innings while allowing three runs, two on a softly hit double from Chris Taylor, but his five walks were his most in a game since 2017.
Without his splitter, Gausman threw an awful lot of fastballs — 51 of his 90 pitches — and mixed in a slider that appeared better than usual. But Max Muncy hopped on one of his four-seamers to extend the Dodgers’ lead in the third, Muncy’s seventh home run against the Giants in nine games this season.
“Got in a lot of hitters counts against him,” Gausman said of the Dodgers star. “To be honest, I got away with a lot tonight and should have given up way more than three runs. The command just wasn’t there tonight, so it was a grind.”
The Dodgers’ offense assigned the same five-inning, three-run line to Anthony DeSclafani a night prior. Neither was beaten up, but both would have had to be perfect on nights the Giants’ bats offered little.
Mike Tauchman, who made a tremendous catch but had to leave the game after he hit the warning track dirt hard, will get an MRI on his knee Wednesday, Gabe Kapler said. The manager said it was “a mild knee contusion, potentially a mild sprain.”
What does losing these two against the Dodgers mean?
“It means we have to play better baseball against the best teams,” Kapler said of the Giants, who are 3-6 against the Dodgers. “We have that in us, we’ve seen it in the past.”