Giants, Dodgers traded leads seven times before Los Angeles exploded for 7 runs against Sean Hjelle in the 11th inning.
SAN FRANCISCO — Matching the mighty Dodgers for all nine innings and then some Saturday afternoon, the Giants couldn’t keep once the game reached its 11th inning and the clock elapsed beyond three and a half hours.
Trading leads seven times over the first 10 innings, the Dodgers ensured there wouldn’t be an eighth lead change with a seven-run onslaught against Sean Hjelle in his second inning of work. After intentionally walking Shohei Ohtani, Will Smith cleared the bases with a two-run double as part of a string of six straight hits. By the end of the rally, the Dodgers had doubled their run total to safely hand the Giants a 14-7 loss in the second game of their series at Oracle Park.
Practically all that was left of the announced sellout of 39,663 when the Giants came to bat for their final time was a sea of celebratory Dodger blue. Time of game: 3 hours, 45 minutes.
“We gave a couple of runs away early, but we had a chance to win the game, too,” manager Bob Melvin said. “The guys battled hard. The game went back and forth a million times. We had an opportunity to win the game in extras and we didn’t come through. There’s so many ways to dissect this game, but we had our opportunities to win at the end.”
After David Villar delivered a pinch-hit double to tie the score at 7 to begin the 10th inning, the Giants had the heart of their order coming up and the would-be winning run on third base with less than two outs. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts deployed a tactic that displayed their desperation, moving Chris Taylor from center field to the infield dirt with Patrick Bailey stepping to the plate.
Only needing to lift a fly ball to the outfield grass, Bailey took ball one, fouled off two pitches and swung through a slider below the strike zone for the second out of the inning. That brought up Chapman, who had already reached base four times, but he swung at the first pitch and popped it up to Smith behind home plate.
Asked if the unconventional defensive alignment affected his approach, Bailey said, “No, it shouldn’t” but acknowledged it “wasn’t a very good” plate appearance.
“I was looking for a good pitch to hit over the plate and drive it up the middle of the field and didn’t do a good job of it.”
Chapman said that he didn’t step in the box intending to swing at the first pitch, “but I wanted to get a good pitch to hit and he left a slider up in the zone.
“Unfortunately I took a good swing at it and I just wasn’t able to get the job done,” he continued. “I was really hoping that ball got out of play so I could see another pitch. But I’m happy that I swung at a good pitch. I just didn’t get the job done. … I’m still happy about the way we battled.”
The pond full of runners represented only three of the 15 men the Giants stranded on base, coming up with only five hits in 23 opportunities with runners in scoring position, and neither figure accounts for the two outs they made on the bases or the one Dodgers run they could have kept off the board.
Attempting to steal third after doubling in the second inning, Chapman took off too early and was caught in between bases by Glasnow. They scored four runs the following inning, but it could have been five if not for Jorge Soler running into an out trying to advance from second to third on a ground ball to shortstop.
“We thought we could a little bit more on the base paths against (Dodgers starter Tyler) Glasnow; we were hitting him,” Melvin said. “In Chappy’s case he thought he had a pretty good read and could get there or he wouldn’t have done it. In Jorge’s case, it was one of those tweeners. But again, as the game went along there were some other things we could have done to win the game.”
Both teams traded four-run rallies, which looked modest in comparison to the Dodgers’ seven-run explosion in extras. Combining for eight runs on eight hits and five walks, the Giants and Dodgers brought 19 men to the plate between the bottom of the third and top of the fourth, which took 38 minutes to elapse.
While the Giants’ four-run inning could have been five, they were left wondering if the Dodgers’ four-spot should have been three.
Scoring the final run of the inning, Jason Heyward dove across home plate as Luis Matos’ throw skipped away from Bailey. Charging and coming up firing on Gavin Lux’s single to right field, Matos’ throw arrived on time and on-line but Bailey wasn’t able to corral the ball when it short-hopped him with Heyward approaching.
“Just a tough short hop,” Bailey said. “I thought I had it in my glove and it just popped out.”
Hjelle was the Giants’ seventh pitcher of the game, which began with an opener, Erik Miller, who gave them nearly as much length as the Dodgers got out of their traditional starter and staff ace, Tyler Glasnow, who was knocked around for five runs over three innings in his shortest and least effective start of the season.
“We executed our game plan; we were able to get Glasnow out of the game,” Chapman said. “Every time they scored, we answered back. I thought we did a great job. It’s just, you give a team like that too many opportunities and we let them come back out in the 11th inning and they put up seven runs. It’s tough to come back from that.”
The combination of Randy Rodríguez, Taylor Rogers, Ryan Walker and Camilo Doval kept the Dodgers at bay from the fifth inning until the 10th, when Hjelle allowed the Dodgers to score their automatic runner, setting up Villar’s game-tying double in the bottom half of the inning.
Set to deploy another bullpen game Sunday in the series finale, Melvin said a second inning from Hjelle was the Giants’ only option for the 11th.
“Unfortunately we had to do that,” Melvin said. “Sean Hjelle’s pitched great this year. He really had one inning in him today, and we asked him to do a little bit more. It’s too bad that he gave up as many as he did, but we couldn’t use another pitcher at that time.”
LHP Blake Snell (groin) will make one more rehab start before he is slotted back into the Giants’ rotation. Snell will pitch Wednesday for Triple-A Sacramento, lining him up to return to the rotation for the first game of their final home stand before the All-Star break.
In three innings for the River Cats on Friday, Snell allowed three runs on four hits while striking out six and walking one, throwing 41 of his 62 pitches for strikes.
Also making a rehab start Friday for Single-A San Jose, LHP Robbie Ray threw 48 pitches while tossing 3⅔ scoreless innings. He and RHP Alex Cobb, who makes his first rehab start Sunday in San Jose, are both expected back sometime after the All-Star break.
Listing their starter as “TBA,” the Giants plan to use another opener in the series finale against LHP James Paxton (7-1, 3.39). First pitch is scheduled for 1:05 p.m.
