![MLB: San Francisco Giants at Los Angeles Dodgers](https://www.sanfranciscosports.today/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/usa_today_23826350.0.jpg)
The Giants were beat by the guys you kinda expect to be beat by because of how unexpected being beat by them would be.
It was gonna be one or the other: Austin Barnes or Nick Ahmed. The number 8 hitter or the number 9. The back-up catcher or the back-up shortstop recently plucked from the scrap heap.
It’s never the ones you expect to do the damage against Tyler Rogers. You got to be a pesky hitter, you got to choke up, throw the barrel out and lunge. Both Barnes and Ahmed had one homer apiece in the 2024 season, making them perfect candidates to populate our nightmares.
Yup, in a 4-4 ballgame in the bottom of the 8th, it felt inevitable: someone had to stun the San Francisco Giants.
Barnes had already fulfilled his duty as an unlikely thorn in the side. He shot an opposite field single to add some early stress to Logan Webb’s afternoon in the 2nd. In the 4th, he ripped an RBI single down the line to score Kiké Hernández and give LA a 3-2 lead.
Hernández, the #7 hitter in the lineup with a batting average below .200 going into this game, had already ripped two RBI hits off Webb.
The veteran utility man slipped a single through a hole between second and first to score Gavin Lux in the 2nd inning. After a minor 2-run tremor by the San Francisco offense against Clayton Kershaw in his 2024 debut, Hernández’s RBI double to right-center re-tied the game in the 4th.
It was that pitch from Webb, a sinker in a 3-0 count, on which the game turned.
Kiké for the tie, Barnesy for the lead! pic.twitter.com/dAAZQK6ec1
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) July 25, 2024
The problem with the fastball wasn’t the location—it had a nice front-door lilt to the outside corner—it was that it played into Hernández’s approach at the plate. He was clearly looking to right field. It’s what you got to do against Webb. Anything pulled gets rolled over into something generally toothless and routine. So get low, look down, and shoot it.
But in a 3-0 count, with a walk as a viable option as it set up the double-play grounder, Webb went into the zone, and even worse, he did so with a fastball.
Hernández got the location and he got the pitch and he didn’t miss it.
Webb would weather another stormy inning before throwing in the towel, allowing a fourth run on 9 hits, 3 walks and 4 strikeouts. In four starts in July (23 IP), he’s posted a 6.65 ERA with nearly as many runs let in (17) than strikeouts (18).
“I’ve pitched pretty s–tty the last three times I’ve thrown.”
Logan Webb didn’t mince his words after another subpar outing pic.twitter.com/7bUaAR6HFG
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) July 25, 2024
LA’s 7-8-9 hitters certainly tipped the scales in this one. They knocked 7 hits and drove in 4 of the Dodgers’ 6 runs. A stark contrast to that of San Francisco’s bottom-third, who went 2 for 12 with an RBI and six strikeouts.
But the line-up as a whole struggled to capitalize on opportunities.
Four consecutive hits plated two runs to start the 3rd. The Giants looked primed to add on and chase Kershaw from the game with runners on first and second and nobody out, but the southpaw stifled the rally by striking out the next three batters, an effort spear-headed by his trusty and unassuming slider/cutter.
Heliot Ramos gives the Giants the lead pic.twitter.com/Nm5IkuxbZJ
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) July 25, 2024
Kershaw K’ed 6 over 4 innings, and the Giants would strike out a total of 16 times—their highest team total of the year. What’s worse is that half of those K’s came with a runner in scoring position. Unproductive outs undermined decent plate production: their 11 hits were the most they had in a game since June 30th (a 10-4 win against LA).
Still, they knotted the score up in the 8th after consecutive two-out hits from Michael Conforto and Jorge Soler.
SOLER TIES THE GAME pic.twitter.com/4JbYK9m3eC
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) July 25, 2024
Whatever endorphins flooded your brain bowl after the unlikely late-inning push were promptly flushed. The Giants weren’t going to win this game. Of course not. Rogers on the mound against light-hitting utility players at the bottom of the order—this tie would not hold.
“Pretty deflating game.”
Bob Melvin didn’t hold back after another tough loss to the Dodgers pic.twitter.com/nFjbw0ogE1
— SF Giants on NBCS (@NBCSGiants) July 25, 2024
It feels ridiculous and slightly inexcusable that with a hundred-million dollar top of the lineup of Ohtani and Freeman to be beat by the spare parts. Incredibly rude, and phrasing I don’t really mean—but there’s no delete key on the Google Doc of my heart. Frustration has taken hold. And it’s easy to dismiss players like Hernández, Barnes, and Ahmed (the Giants did it two weeks ago!) as inconsequential fillers or set-dressing, but the reality is much more nuanced and even more cruel. They’re veteran big leaguers who have spots on the best lineup in baseball because they’re the just right combo of flexible and expendable—which makes them kind of indispensable. They don’t play with ego or pride, just confidence. They swing with a chip on their shoulder. Their overall hitting statistics don’t jump off the page—but those are just numbers, and numbers often skim over the distinct headaches their individual at-bats can give opposing pitchers.
It’s also a Giants-Dodgers game! It shouldn’t be a shock when a newcomer like Ohtani doesn’t necessarily rise to the occasion in this heightened setting. Both Barnes and Hernández on the other hand joined LA in 2015. They’ve spent the majority, if not all, of their careers caring about the Giants no matter how uncompelling they were. This rivalry means something to them. Enemies can bring out the best in each other, and we saw their best.
Hernández and Barnes went 5 for 6 against Webb over 5 innings, driving in key early runs. Hernández’s .333 BA (11 for 33) and 5 RBIs against San Francisco this season are his highest marks against any other opponent. Barnes went 4 for 9 with 3 RBIs.
Now add Nick Ahmed to the seemingly never-ending list of badgering bats that crawl out of their soily and dank ruts to deliver a lethal blow to the San Francisco spirit.
In case you hadn’t pieced it together, it was his homer in the 8th—a sinker he shoveled over the wall in center against his former teammate and team—that broke the tie and drove the final nail.
Worried that attention was diverted from his camp for too long, Ohtani launched a completely superfluous homer on the very next pitch to steal Ahmed’s thunder.
Classic.
Nick Ahmed and Shohei Ohtani go back-to-back! pic.twitter.com/0EnFNucdk6
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) July 25, 2024
That’s it. There won’t be another chance for the Giants to redeem themselves in the regular season. It’s July 25th and the 2024 series against the Dodgers is over. LA won it with a 9-4 record, and Nick Ahmed had the last laugh.