There had been no individual player in the history of MLB who had less success against a single team than Cody Bellinger against the Giants in 2021.
After striking out each of his first two at-bats against Kevin Gausman in Game 2, Bellinger was 2-for-53 against the Giants since the 2021 season began. In the NLDS, he was 0-for-5 with four strikeouts.
But this is October, when what happened in April, July, September or even one plate appearance prior can become an afterthought with a crack of the bat.
As Bellinger stepped up to the plate in the top of the sixth inning against reliever Dominic Leone, a Giants fan behind home plate chanted “easy out.”
No prior numbers mattered when Bellinger drove the first pitch he saw, a 95.5 mph fastball down the middle, off the left-center wall. His first hit of the NLDS turned a 2-1 Dodgers lead into a 4-1 separation. A.J. Pollock followed it up with a two-run double of his own, and the sixth-inning rally surged LA ahead.
Behind the Dodgers’ four-run sixth, LA evened the five-game series 1-1. A shaky Kevin Gausman settled in, until he didn’t. SF’s right-handed stacked lineup couldn’t make a dent in southpaw Julio Urías. And now the Giants head down to Los Angeles with the pressure on them, the 9-2 defeat turning this into a best-of-three.
Gausman, San Francisco’s Game 2 starter, sputtered in the first two innings. He threw just 20 of his first 37 pitches for strikes. In the second, he allowed three hits with exit velocities over 100 mph, the second time that’s happened to him in 2021.
Gausman could neither locate nor get outs at that point. Urías, whose season OPS is less than 100 points less than Bellinger’s, drove in a run. So did Mookie Betts to give LA a 2-0 lead in the second inning.
In the bottom half, SF went station-to-station to score a run, but Gausman was in such poor form, manager Gabe Kapler at least considered replacing him before the third. There was action in the bullpen and Tommy La Stella took practice cuts in the on-deck circle. He may have pinch-hit for Gausman had more of a rally manifested.
But Donovan Solano drove in a run with a sacrifice fly, making it a lower leverage, two-out situation for Gausman. He took his hacks and then returned to the mound for the third. And suddenly, the splitters LA fouled off in the first two innings started missing bats.
Between the third and fifth innings, Gausman retired nine straight Dodgers. He struck out Cody Bellinger for a second time in the fifth, bringing him to 2-for-53 on the year.
Gausman generated eight whiffs on his splitter and struck out seven. But the Dodgers chased him out of the game after 5.1 innings when Trea Turner led off the sixth with a double down the third base line. Gausman struck out the next man, Justin Turner, with a splitter, but walked Will Smith to put two men on for reliever Dominic Leone.
Then Bellinger played the hero. His two-run double was his first multi-RBI double since 2019. He drove two one-run doubles in 2021 and only recorded 21 extra base-hits total in the season. The former MVP hit .165 for the Dodgers in 2021 and likely wouldn’t be in the lineup if first baseman Max Muncy was healthy.
But there Bellinger was, opening up the game with his bases-loaded double that left his bat at 102.5 mph. The two runs Bellinger scored were charged to Gausman, but Pollock’s two RBI registered to Leone — his first earned runs since Sept. 15.
The Giants tacked on a run in the sixth, but by then the gap was much too vast. The Dodgers’ “easy out” changed the calculus of the NLDS before the Dodgers poured three more runs on in the top of the eighth.
Down I-5, Max Scherzer awaits.
