Giants fall short in ninth inning rally, lose to Dodgers 4-2

The San Francisco Giants lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers tonight, 4-2, dropping the series to their seemingly unstoppable division rivals.

The game started off promisingly, with Austin Slater hitting a leadoff double. Slater would go on to be one of only two Giants players to get hits until the ninth inning, getting on base in his first three plate appearances (and, well, more on the fourth one later).

But the rest of his team just couldn’t get anything going against the Dodgers’ Julio Urías, who had a strong start tonight, allowing only two hits and two walks with five strikeouts in six innings. Both of those hits were to Slater.

Meanwhile, Alex Wood had a pretty decent start overall, if he’d had any offense to back him up. Wood allowed two runs on four hits with two walks and six strikeouts in four innings. Not amazing, but not terrible.

His two runs allowed were back-to-back home runs to Mookie Betts and Trea Turner in the third inning. He allowed a leadoff walk to Gavin Lux in the fifth, which put him at 97 pitches and so he was pulled for Yunior Marte who...did not make things easy.

After getting both Betts and Turner to ground into force outs at second, he walked Freddie Freeman and hit Will Smith. Jake Lamb entered to pinch hit, and Marte was replaced by Jarlin Garcia, who got Lamb to ground out to end the inning, but things would unfortunately not go as well in the sixth.

After getting two fairly quick outs to start things off, Garcia allowed a single to Cody Bellinger before Lux hit a triple to right, scoring Bellinger to give the Dodgers their third run of the night. He was replaced by John Brebbia to get the final out, but unfortunately things would not go so well for Brebbia in the seventh.

First, let’s note that the Giants did threaten at least a run in the seventh, with Yermin Mercedes walking and Luis González singling him over to third, but it was not to be, with Joey Bart lining out to end the inning.

And in the bottom of the inning, Brebbia got three ground outs, but allowed his first home run of the season as Freeman hit a solo shot to give the Dodgers their fourth run of the night.

Now we get to the only interesting part of this game. The ninth inning. Forever Giant Reyes Moronta entered to pitch and got quick outs from Joc Pederson and Brandon Belt, before walking Thairo Estrada (who took second on defensive indifference, one of my favorite sentences in baseball). Mercedes took his second walk of the night to get Moronta out of the game and bring in David Price.

Price allowed singles to both González and Bart, each scoring Estrada and Mercedes, to bring up the man of the night for the Giants, Austin Slater, as the potential go-ahead run with two on and two out.

And man, wouldn’t that have been a fun way for the game to end, the only Giant hitter to hit the ball well tonight coming up big in the ninth. Would have been a really swell story.

Alas, he was called out on a really questionable third strike call to end the game.

The Giants will get one more chance to avoid the sweep tomorrow at 1:05 p.m. PT.