If you watched the first 10 innings of this game and then turned it off, you might think you were watching two competent baseball teams.
The San Francisco Giants fell in stunning fashion to the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight, after being roughly tied for 10 innings.
One run. That’s what my brain kept thinking about throughout the game. I have the luxury of waiting until the game is over to start watching and recapping. So I knew the ship was going to sink, loudly and quickly. But despite the way it ended, it really came down to one run.
If the Giants had scored just one more run before the 11th inning, they would have won this game. I know that seems like a basic takeaway, and it is. Made even sillier when you see the final score. But when you’re watching a game for the first time with that kind of hindsight perspective, it’s easy to see all of the missed opportunities and just how much they cost.
The first example was in the bottom of the second. With the game tied at one run a piece, Matt Chapman hit a leadoff double, and then immediately got thrown out trying to steal third. Which meant there was no one on base for Michael Conforto, who followed that up with a double of his own. Sure would have been nice if there’d been a runner in scoring position there to put one more run on the board.
Down 2-1, the Giants mounted a ground attack in the third inning. Dodgers starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow struggled with his command, walking Nick Ahmed to lead things off. Jorge Soler followed that up with the fourth double of the game for the Giants, with Ahmed scoring the tying run from first. LaMonte Wade, Jr. then reached on a fielder’s choice, with Soler getting thrown out at third. Another first out at third in a row.
It was at this point in the game where my father and I got into a debate about whether or not Soler did anything wrong, as the broadcasters were strongly insisting he had. No outs, ball hit to the infield but fielded behind you. No runners behind you. What’s the right call in the moment, without knowing how it will play out?
I was never a particularly great coach or player, but my instincts would be to run in that scenario. If the ball gets away from the defense, you can’t score if you aren’t already moving. That said, another runner in scoring position for the rest of this inning would have been that one more run.
Almost as if to hammer home both sides of the argument, in the next at-bat, Heliot Ramos hit a single to almost the exact same location and this time it wasn’t stopped, rolling into the outfield. /sigh
Patrick Bailey kept things going with a single of his own, knocking in Wade, leaving runners on the corners for Chapman, who reached on a bloop single that was bobbled by Cavan Biggio to score Ramos. Luis Matos wrapped things up for the scoring in this inning, grounding into a forceout at third, allowing Bailey to score and give the Giants a 5-2 lead.
That lead, like every lead in this game, would not last long. The Dodgers mounted their own ground attack in the fourth inning, matching the Giants’ four-runs and re-taking the lead. Spencer Howard, who entered to start the second inning in relief of Erik Miller, exited with two outs in the fourth and would ultimately be rung up for six runs on six hits with two walks. Which would be a rough outing in any game, but was somehow not the worst of this one. More on that later.
The good news for the Giants at the start of the fourth inning is that they had knocked Glasnow out of the game early. The bad news for us is that they had already done the vast majority of their offense. They did get one run back in the bottom of the fifth. With Chapman and Conforto on base, last night’s hero Brett Wisely hit a broken-bat single to score Chapman and re-tie the game at six runs each.
Which is where it would stay until the 10th inning, to the credit of the bullpens of each team. So devoted were these two teams to remain tied, that they each scored a run in the 10th, taking advantage of the automatic runners on second. Jason Heyward advanced Chris Taylor to third and Miguel Rojas knocked him in with a single.
On the other end, David Villar doubled in Wisely to tie it back up, but if the ball had been hit just a few inches higher, it could have been another walk-off win. Wade was walked after this to bring up Ramos, who singled to load the bases for Patrick Bailey.
Unfortunately, even with bases loaded and one out, the Giants couldn’t get that one run. Just one run. One run to make all the difference. Instead, it was just enough to tie the game back up and keep the Giants alive. Even if they ultimately wouldn’t enjoy being so.
Perhaps it was that seemingly stubborn determination to remain tied that angered the baseball gods so in the 11th inning. Who can say. But they sure seemed angry. At the Giants and you, specifically.
Before we get into that, I’d like to let you know that this is all I was contractually obligated to post about this game after the 11th inning played out, and with Brady’s approval:
But I’m both mean and nice, so I’ll get into it.
I’d like to go back to my ongoing theme about a single run, or lack thereof, being the difference in this game. In addition to the issues early on when the Giants still had their scoring shoes on, they had multiple opportunities before the 11th inning to do something, anything, to get one more run and avoid even getting to the 11th inning. There were opportunities to avoid this. It didn’t have to be like this. We shouldn’t have to live like this.
/sobs
Sorry, sorry. I’ll get it together now. Unlike the Giants in the 11th inning.
So the top of the 11th saw Enrique Hernández start the inning at second. Sean Hjelle, who entered at the beginning of the 10th inning, began this one by intentionally walking Shohei Ohtani. A pretty solid choice, given he’d already hit a home run early in the game.
Unfortunately, it didn’t pan out this time, as Will Smith followed that up with a two-run double. Freddie Freeman followed that up with a double of his own, scoring Smith. The hits literally kept coming, as Teoscar Hernández and Taylor had back-to-back singles (the latter scoring Freeman), before Heyward tripled to knock them both in as well. Rojas knocked in Heyward on a sac fly for the Dodgers’ seventh run of the inning.
And unfortunately, Hjelle just had to wear it. This was already a bullpen game on a pitching staff that is limping through injury after injury. Once the wheels started coming off, no help was coming. And Hjelle got rung up for eight runs (six earned) on six hits with one strikeout and a walk in two innings.
The Giants offense went down in order on the other side of the inning. And really, I think last night’s walk-off win, and the early offense of this game had some forgetting exactly which teams they were watching.
So perhaps it was actually that that angered the baseball gods and caused the 11th inning to play out as it did. To remind us that no, the Giants are not actually on par with the Dodgers. That inning was the truth amongst the smoke and mirrors of a tied game through 10 innings.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go sit in the dark and listen to this song with a glass of wine.